Final Reflection

Looking back, it was difficult for me to decide on a single favorite blog post, so I’m going to reflect on the two posts I wrote during weeks 3 and 4—the first, a letter from a black sailor to his wife, and the second, a letter from James Hemings to his mother.

Not only did these two letters speak to each other, but I felt that they captured a lot of the themes and ideas that really fascinate me. In both blog posts (particularly in the questions), I try to engage with more transnational perspectives in thinking about racial identity in America. These two separate cases—the black sailors and the Hemings siblings—really challenge the traditional ways that we tend to think about African American identity and history as something that emerged and existed solely within the bounds of the U.S. nation-state. As their experiences make clear, African American history was also shaped by global processes, forces, and most importantly, actors.

As a (post)colonial historian, I was especially interested in the emergence of Black nationalism within this diasporic network. The pairing of these different readings during those two weeks really allowed me to see that contemporary nationalist thought had its own antecedents in these interactions that I had known very little about, as well as consolidating for me the linkages between global colonialism and local American life. Furthermore, it just goes to prove that “globalization”—despite the newness of the term—was not something strictly limited to our modern era.

The other themes that emerged in these two posts were those of gender and sexuality, which I’ve always been heavily invested in studying alongside questions of race and colonialism. In my posts, I was only able to raise questions, since our readings (and most scholarship) did not tackle directly these ideas. In particular, I wondered about the absence of sexuality (especially homosexuality) in the scholarship. (Side-note: it was hilarious in an ironic kind of way to learn in class that Gordon-Reed believes so strongly in James’ homosexuality after I had compared him to the black sailors, especially in light of the iconic status of the sailor within gay circles.) Secondly, I was also interested in the gendered dimensions of the diaspora, which often conferred mobility only to male bodies. While I’m familiar with the theoretical underpinnings of these ideas, I still have questions about the particularities of lived experiences as they relate to these larger forces.

Finally, I really appreciated that the class looked at issues of identity across all the different racialized groups in America, though I felt there was not as much emphasis on inter-group relations. If there is, it’s usually framed against the dominant White group, while the specificities of inter-minority relations are rarely mentioned. I think the ideas we’ve already discussed would benefit from a comparative approach as well, especially since different ethnic and racial groups have always lived in proximity with each other, and certain interracial conflicts cannot be solely understood under a white/non-white lens.

With all that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the class, and I genuinely feel like my understandings of race in America (as well as identity in general) have greatly improved. Not only that, I was able to learn more about certain periods of American history (especially from 1776 to 1860) that I wasn’t as knowledgeable about before.

Trac