Our Nig: Gender and Race 1

Our Nig: Gender and Race Yesterday and Today

Woullard Lett, M.S.CED

Ujima Collective
Manchester, NH
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 2

“Our Nig,” the semi-autobiographical novel by Harriet E. Wilson (2002), was an

account of gender and race relations set in the United States during the nineteenth century

and it continues as a metaphor of gender and race relations today. This novel recounts a

time in American history that suffered the upheavals and torments of a snake shedding

old skin as the industrial forces of the North challenged the economic supremacy of the

South and its empire built on cotton and slave labor. But left intact was the intellectual

muscle and philosophical sinew that gave definition and expression to White supremacy.

Vestiges of the social order and psychological predisposition of the long past days of

Harriet Wilson that defined people of African descent as piteous or pariah continue to

exist today.

The social and economic institution of “slavery was a spiritual and emotional

assault on blacks as well as a physical one (Hymowitz and Weissman, 1978, p.45).” By

1830, slavery had been abolished by law in the North but the slave population of the

United States had grown to over 2 million” (Johnson and Smith, 1998, p.306). These

bonded men and women served as a festering reinforcement of the white supremacist

notion that people of African descent, slave or free, were less than fully human. This

notion had the institutional support of academia and the scientific community. It was

reinforced in the public mind through intense psychological warfare using “popular

culture” that attacked the intellectual ability, the moral sufficiency and the ethical

integrity of people of African descent through images like Jim Crow. According to

Johnson and Smith (1998):

…. the attacks grew even more pointed with the introduction of Jim Crow.

Sometimes he was known as Cuff. Snowball. Sambo. Whatever his name, he

 Our Nig: Gender and Race 3

represented the ugliest of what whites saw in blacks. He was a caricature designed

to prove that a black man was not a human being, but a parody of one. (p.302)

The northern states of the U.S. claimed the moral high ground by virtue of having

ended slavery and serving as the breeding ground for much of the abolitionist and anti-

slavery movement. But even in the north, racism, the lesser of two evils spawned by

white supremacy, the other evil being slavery, continued through policy and practice.

Advocates for full social and political equality for people of African descent existed, but

were rare.

White supremacy was a central theme in the ideas expressed by Harriet Wilson.

She identified a number of the psychological constructs that under girded white

supremacy then and continues to support it now. These observations include the

hypocrisy of paternalistic progressives, the role of internalized oppression, and the

traditional role of terror as a social command and control strategy in communities of

African descent.

Paternalistic progressives

Discrimination against Blacks in reform movements is a part of American history.

Contemporary reform movements continue to reflect this experience with an intransigent

whiteness present in the women’s movement, the US globalization and free trade

movement, the environmental movement, etc. While discrimination through acts of

commission has lost its social acceptance, active discrimination through omission can be

intimated by the racial apartheid reflected in organizational membership rosters of all

kinds.
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 4

During Wilson’s day, this behavior among abolitionist was recognized not only

by her but also by others. According to Perkins (1981, p.318), the opinions of people of

African descent during that era included the sense that “whatever they [white abolitionist]

do for us savors of pity, and is done at arm’s length,” while another commented that

white abolitionists were only interested in the emancipation of blacks and not their

‘elevation.’” Speculation, in the introduction of Our Nig, regarding the potential adverse

financial impacts that telling this truth might have on Wilson’s aim to raise funds through

publishing her work reflected fear of the repercussions and consequences of such a

paternalistic attitude among abolitionist.

Anti-black discrimination was a common feature of the nineteenth-century

women’s suffrage movement (Terborg-Penn, 1978). White women also identified their

interest as being separate from Black men, during the nineteenth century, by objecting to

the possibility that Black males might gain the vote before them (B. Hooks, 2000, p.56).

At the time, it was acceptable to actively keep Blacks out of organizations. Now it is

considered acceptable to passively accept the absence of Blacks in organizations.

Internalized oppression

According to Hooks (1995), systems of domination, imperialism, colonialism, and

racism actively coerce black folk to internalize negative perceptions of blackness.

Internalized oppression is evident in Wilson’s treatment of Frado’s parents and her self-

reflections. Wilson (2002) characterizes her white mother’s marriage to her black father

as constituting “another step down the ladder of infamy (p.13). She describes a feature of
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 5

Frado’s appearance worthy of compliment as being “not very black” (p.25). The presence

of pigment producing melanin was considered a mark against the bearer.

Frado bemoans her fate of being of African descent, i.e., Black, throughout the

book. This view of the oppressor being adopted by the oppressed is also reflected by the

contemporary limerick “if you are white you are right, if you are brown stick around and

if you are black, get back!” Bell Hooks reminds us “construction of color-caste

hierarchies by white racist in nineteenth century life is well documented in their history

and literature. That contemporary white folks are ignorant of this history reflects the way

that dominant culture seeks to deny, via erasure, a history of race relations that

documents their accountability (Hooks, 1995).

Another significant sociological insight shared by Wilson (2002) through the lens

of Frado was the connection between God and whiteness and the corresponding

disconnection between Black people and the divine. This connection was manifest

through the unfavorable position blacks suffered in society whether marginalization in

the North or slavery in the South (J. H. Ladner, 1981). Wilson explored this theological

conundrum through Frado’s ruminations regarding God’s complicity in making her Black

and subject to abuse while making her abuser White and privileged because of it (p.51). It

is reflected in Frado’s existential question of “is there a heaven for the black?” For many

people of African descent during the nineteenth century, the answer was “yes, but it is

segregated.”

There are those who would argue that this particular viewpoint is a relic from an

uninformed past. But continuing debates regarding the phenotypic features of Jesus

Christ has made the front covers of Time and Newsweek magazines and remain resistant
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 6

to change in the popular culture regardless of the opinions of experts and scholars. The

recent blockbuster movie, the Passion of Christ, serves as an example of the popular

image of Jesus Christ as having been born to Western European parents. In turn, this

reinforces the divinity of Whites and the denigration of Blacks.

Role of terror

While the self-image projected by Whites of themselves is often benevolent and

positive, “whiteness in the black imagination is often a representation of terror (Hooks,

1995).” The treatment of Frado by Ms. Bellmont is a metaphor for Black white relations

then and now. The excess and unwarranted punishment of Frado by an authority figure

symbolizes the same terrorist relationship expressed through continuing excessive force

meted out by authority figures to people of African descent.

A litany of death and injury visited upon people of African descent since their

arrival on American shores chronicle this tendency toward psychopathic behavior in

“White on Black” violence, both personal and institutional. The image of whiteness in the

Black imagination is an irrational white woman full of hate and hurt, it wears a white

peaked hood and stands beside a burning cross or maybe a blue uniform with a shiny

badge or even an army uniform prowling the bowels of an Iraqi prison.

It is widely accepted and acknowledged that there have been significant changes

for the better in Black/White relationships, both socially and economically, since the

nineteenth century. But “even though legal racial apartheid no longer is a norm in the

United States, the habits that uphold and maintain institutionalized white supremacy

linger (Hooks, 1995, p.36).” These norms were the attitudes and unspoken

understandings that contributed to the mentality that condoned slavery, allowed the
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 7

misuse and abuse of Frado and her intellectual mother, Harriet E. Wilson, and continues

to lie hidden and coiled in contemporary Black/White relationships, now striking silently

but no less deadly.

That white supremacy holds the power to deny livelihood, take freedom, punish

undeservedly and, conversely, to reward according to its pleasure was a fact during the

life and times of Wilson and Frado and continues today. While some claim a post-race,

colorblind society that heralds the commodification of Black culture as the ultimate social

homogenization, others believe that “the eagerness with which contemporary society

does away with racism replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism and

diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror (Hooks, 1995, p.47).”

Conclusion

The fact that the authorship of “Our Nig” has been questioned based on the doubt

that a woman of African descent could produce writing of its quality is not surprising.

But it is a bit disheartening. Yet, it is no more disheartening than the myriad minor

offenses and abuses suffered by Frado in the past and people of African descent today.

Harriet E. Wilson teaches us that the will to power, the tenacity to overcome challenges

and the fight for a place in time and a space in consciousness is only futile if unexpressed.
 Our Nig: Gender and Race 8

References

Hooks, B. (1995). Killing rage: Ending racism. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Hooks, B. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics. Cambridge, MA:

Southend Press.

Hymowitz, C. & Weissman, M. (1978). A history of women in America. New York:

Bantam Books.

Johnson, C. & Smith, P. (1998). Africans in America: America’s journey through slavery.

New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.

Perkins, L. (1981). Black women and racial “uplift” prior to emancipation. In F.C. Steady

(Ed.), The black woman cross-culturally (pp. 317-334). Cambridge, MA:

Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc.

Terborg-Penn, R. (1978) Discrimination against Afro-American women in the woman’s

movement. In S. Harley and R. Terborg-Penn (Eds.), The Afro-American woman:

Struggles and images (pp. 17-27). Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press.

Truth, S. (1851). Ain’t I a woman. Retrived May 11, 2004 from

http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/sojour.htm.

Wilson, H.E. (2002). Our Nig; or, sketches from the life of a free Black (3rd ed). New

York: Vintage Books.