Rituals Of Blood: The Consequences Of Slavery In Two American Centuries [Paperback]

Orlando Patterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1999 | ISBN-10: 158243039X | ISBN-13: 978-1582430393

In the first essay, Patterson analyzes the very latest survey data to delineate the different attitudes, behaviors, and circumstances of Afro-American men and women, dissecting both the external and internal causes for the great disparities he finds.In the second essay, Patterson focuses on the lynching of Afro-American boys and men during the decades after Reconstruction, particularly on the substantial number of cases that constituted apparent ritual human sacrifice. As no one has done before, Patterson reveals how the complex interplay between Christian sacrificial symbolism and the deep recesses of post-bellum Southern culture resulted in some of the most shameful, barbaric events in American history.The third essay brings us into the late twentieth century, with an investigation of the various images of Afro-American men portrayed by the media. From the demigod (Michael Jordan) to the demon (Colin Ferguson) to the demigod-turned-demon (O. J. Simpson) and the crossers of racial and gender boundaries (Michael Jackson and Dennis Rodman)—all contribute to the cultural complications of our contemporary society.Rituals of Blood advances Patterson’s new model of ethnic relations that opens American society to a new and freer dialogue.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Orlando Patterson is the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158243039X
• ISBN-13: 978-1582430393
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Complex, difficult, and disappointing..., July 14, 2000

By 

Stephen Armstrong (Hadley, Ma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rituals Of Blood: The Consequences Of Slavery In Two American Centuries (Paperback)

Orlando Patterson's thesis is that America's experience with slavery and post-Reconstruction violence against black persons(extending over another 100 years), and black men in particular, continues to taint and distort American race relations. On one hand, he writes breathtakingly well, passionately, fluidly, and coherently. It is hard not to feel the shame and sorrow of American racial life. On the other hand, he characterizes modern racial life - and especially the thinking of white men - as tortured as that which preceded the Civil Rights era. His examples? Dennis Rodman and his sexual encounter with Madonna. O.J. and the murder of Nichole. By using these examples, he substitutes (white? male?) prurient interests for good sociological analysis and the results of yellow journalism and bad justice for coherent models of how America thinks about race.

He is a brilliant writer, so he almost carries it off. Almost.

I was reminded of Garcia Lorca's play, Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding). In America, we are wedded together, at times loving one another and at times drenched in the blood of our past. Even this fine writer and thinker knows that we cannot restore innocence to our thinking and behavior, which is why Lift Every Voice is the first hymn in our hymnal. In the face of our bloodlust we can never find innocence, but better to go ahead as best we can than to be captured in the idea that our bloodlust is permanent, indelible, and inevitable. Can we never truly love one another, as our ancestors could not and did not?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding analysis, March 15, 2006

By 

Henry Sands - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rituals Of Blood: The Consequences Of Slavery In Two American Centuries (Paperback)

Rituals of Blood traces the impact of slavery on modern-day Black Americans in such an incisive way as to be required reading for anyone who wants to speak on the subject of the past, as it impacts on the prospects of Black Americans. It's main thesis: the degradation of Africans from the day they entered this country until now, has been constant and devastating. The conclusions Professor Patterson opine are supported by unimpeachable resources from some of the best sociological minds, past and present and hard data. This is must reading for Blacks and Whites.

Henry William Sands, Esq. (Ret.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Continuing After-Shocks of Slavery, May 26, 2011

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GD Venerable - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Rituals Of Blood: The Consequences Of Slavery In Two American Centuries (Paperback)

Referred to Patterson's book by a colleague in anthropology and sociology, I was unprepared for the thrill and shock of the information contained in Rituals of Blood. Thrilled, because critical sociological data on two centuries of American slavery are well-codified and catalogued in one place. But while my colleague and I may argue with some of Patterson's conclusions, this does not detract from the shock of seeing documented those factors and conditions that shape the status of twenty-first century Afro-America and the human relationships African Americans attempt and fail to form. I welcome the book's evidences of what has warped friendship, intimacy, and sexuality and find the background reality that created the warpage far more egregious in their impact than I had ever imagined. Not so shocking is how clueless is American society as a whole and Black American society in particular to this reality. (The truism about a serious dearth of marriageable black men for every eligible black woman, we learn, is hardly a recent development.) The data certainly provide new outlines to draw from for understanding why the status of friendship, relationship formation, and constructive marriage among African Americans borders on tragic. (Patterson allows us to recognize more objectively that Tyler Perry's cinematic works, like "Why did I ever get married?", are more painfully accurate than is comfortable for many observers to bear.) There is much work to be done in the area of mental-emotional "reparations and recovery" of Afro-America as an urgent prerequisite for group survival. At least Patterson has created a map of the socio-psychological territory and how it shapes the cultural, political, and economic terrain in which Black Americans struggle to live their lives.