Customer Reviews

Rituals Of Blood: The Consequences Of Slavery In Two American Centuries

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

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?

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.)

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.

Patterson has successfully taken on so many "big" issues in his lifetime that to recommend him for his contemporary social analysis might seem like damning him with faint praise. That is hardly my intent, but I would like to suggest to readers unfamiliar with his work and perhaps not up to the challenge of his cosmically-dimensioned books on Freedom, Slavery, and Social Death that he is a one-of-a-kind social commentator and provacateur as well. His singular profession as a historical sociologist (or sociological historian)allow him access to statistics that illuminate America's racial history in a way nobody else I know has ever accomplished. Of course, he CHOSE those statistics, an act of genius in itself, but the questions he asks of them and his analysis of the answers makes him, in my opinion, indispensable reading. He has somewhere in this book or another (I've read nearly all)cited the statistic that, when asked what percentage of the American population is African American, both white and black Americans over-estimate the actuality by a multiple of between 3 and 4. That is an astounding stat, and explains so much about our recent world, much of which Patterson takes on, but the balance of which should give food-for-thought to the rest of us. And that is only one, relatively incidental, issue the man takes on. Bravo to Patterson for ALL his work!

This is the second book in a trilogy.It satarts from where the first book Paradox of integration ends.It is essentially divided into 3 essays The first essay is entitled broken bloodlines and discusses present day gender conflicts in the African American community.Emphasis is laid on issues such as Increasing divorce rates and singles also declining remarriage rates.These are traced back to the days of Slavery and sharecropping till he gets to the present day.The educational disparity between males and females is also discussed. The second essay Feast of blood deals with the heinous practise of Lynching and the macabre postcard industry it spawned also discussed is the role of clergy and the African American response. The third essay American Dionysus discusses the image of African Americans today with various examples.This is related to Greek mythology. In conclusion i recommend this book.It indeed has illustrative charts and pictures which are quite nice for a better understanding of the issues at stake.

Firstly, What's the purpose of this "book," and who is the target audience?

Since Mr. Patterson has chosen to refer to Black People as "Afro-Americans," a term we don't use in referring to ourselves, I'll kindly refer to Mr. Patterson as "the negro."

I see no purpose or motive in the execution of this "work" other than to cause commotion and create confusion as it pertains to "race relations" within the United States. Why would a West Indian Negro (Patterson) devote himself to measuring Black People against Whites using carefully selected "statistics" that totally place the current condition of Black People in America as the fault of (according to this negro Patterson) no-good, abandoning and battering, sexually promiscuous, hip hop Black Men? And why the direct attack on American-ized African Men only? Wasn't there slavery in Jamaica where Patterson was born and raised, and aren't there African Men there that can be included in this "study" of the dynamics and damages caused by slavery?

Why just Africans in America, Orlando?

Who at Harvard put you up to this?

Is there anything good to be found in Black People in general, and Black Men specifically? After reading this propaganda, some people may be hard pressed to find it, if you believe this negro's "statistics" and account.

This Negro speaks of "lower-class" Black People as if there is more than one class of Blacks within the United States, which is usually judged at a distance, solely by color. This is not Jamaica, or at least the parts where Patterson is from that has a color caste system of "light-skin/dark-skin" confusion. No matter how much money you have or where you're employed, there is but one class of Blacks in America, and you can ask your lodge brother Skip Gates if you doubt me.

These "essays" are a complete and total waste of time for any person who is interested in Positive Movement towards a better understanding of race relations in America, or globally. Just the term "Afro-American" as used throughout the book is demeaning and condescending, coming from a negro who probably attempts to pass as Black. (when convenient).

No mention of Garvey?
Elijah Muhammad?
Malcolm X?
But you see Du Bois throughout. No wonder.
Another Harvard agent.

Patterson's "essays" are a disgrace to even the appearance of African People, and this is a slick attempt to masquerade this hit piece as "scholarship."

Complete and total waste of time and money. Thumbs down.

The author begins his sometimes turgid and unnecessarily skewed first essay by distinguishing between internal and external causes of Afro-America's social problems. He then proceeds to overanalyze -- entirely from the Black feminists point of view -- the internal part (Black cultural behavior) while providing no analysis at all of the external part (White racism).

For the external part, the author seems content with insinuating (rather than analyzing) what he describes as the "dominant role" racism plays in Black social pathology. That he chose not to analyze AT ALL the contribution made by racism -- even though the amount of statistical evidence to draw on in this area is vast and well known -- is only the first of several glaring flaws of this analysis.

The second flaw is equally unforgivable.

His overly wrought and libertine statistical analyses turn out to be little more than a Trojan horse for Black feminists propaganda -- or white supremacists propaganda, depending on which of these you prefer. The content is about the same in both, check out the White supremacist web sites, they are a mirror image of the Black feminist refrain about how low-life Black men really are.

By now we are well familiar with the litany of Black male sins that make up the Black feminists and the white supremacist refrain: They are irresponsible criminal, sexual predators, who are also drug addicts and serial child abandoners, among others.

That the anti-Black male views of the Black feminists espoused by this author are everywhere congruent with those of the most rabid racists should have been a clue to the author that at least a modicum of balance might have been in order if only to preserve and retain a semblance of academic integrity to his analysis.

Even so, lack of balance and bias alone do not necessarily have to render an analysis flawed, or make for bad sociology. After all, Blacks too must get used to allowing the statistical chips fall where they may - especially when the critique is generated from within.

That said however, the failure to provide even a minimum countervailing Black male point of view can only be considered unconscionable, and does, in my view strip away any remaining pretense of academic integrity this research may have had. This alone in my view reduces it simply to more feminist propaganda, by other more sophisticated but pseudo-academic means.

It is an especially egregious error not to have a Black male voice in the analysis when the author himself is a Black man and when the main object of this thinly disguised anti-Black male diatribe turns out to be none other than an evaluation of the Black man's role in Black social pathology itself.

There is a larger frame of continuity through which this kind of skewed pseudo analysis can be viewed: It is just another window of the larger anti-Black male racism that has been dominant in American culture since the slaves landed in Maryland in 1609.

At the same time that the Black male is being castigated and his voice muted, the reader is called upon to lament, ad nauseam about, and to commiserate with, the unjust plight of the overworked, over-educated, under-loved, lied to, betrayed, ever virtuous, sexually-cheated and ever-deceived Black woman, while her own very serious cultural transgressions are excused, rationalized and explained away. (Talk about a cultural sacred cow?)

Some rather important statistics about Black women were either buried so deeply within the analysis that you could barely see them, or were left out altogether. Most of these "hidden" or "omitted" statistics are not just noteworthy but are potential "deal breakers."

For instance, although the author did mention that Black women are the greatest child abusers and that their homosexuality rates are the highest among American subgroups, and that they also get married in much smaller percentages than any other groups, he failed to mention that the same Department of Labor statistics used as his primary source for this information, also reported that 75-85% of black women are so obese before they reach the age of 25, that it is considered a serious health risk. Nor did he mention that as many as 85% of inner city Black women have children out of wedlock before their 25th birthday; and that until the recent change in the welfare laws, they also received welfare payments, which specifically precluded consorting too closely even with the fathers of their children.

It does not take rocket science to see that these statistics bear directly and consequentially on one of the author's key issues, Black marriage and family formation. Indeed, there is little need to talk about how many Black men are in jail when more than three-quarters of Black women do not even meet the minimum qualifications for marriage: not already having a child, and being physical attractive and healthy enough to make themselves desirable for marriage.

Only common sense is needed (not sophisticated statistics) to see that Black men (and men of all other races) are not rushing out to marry a class of women that have already started a family without them, and are seen as the least attractive (and least healthy) of all among America's female subgroups.

If ever there was a bloated undeserving hero of a race, it is this now tired, dishonest, overdrawn picture of the woe-smitten super virtuous Black female. It is such a dramatic an exaggerated lie, that it is finally beginning to have the inevitable boomerang effect. How can a group retain the image of being virtuous when 75% of them have children out of wedlock? It all but staggers the imagination.

But like the paradigm for maintaining social order in America's profoundly racist culture, the myth of the Black super virtuous female can only be "ascribed" and maintained as a hero in the white supremacist drama if she continues to assist in the dirty and underhanded project of further demeaning the Black male making him it's perpetual culprit and anti-hero. The contemporary super virtuous Black woman, like the Aunt Jemimas of the past, seems more than up to this dirty task.

The author's accommodation to the Black feminist position seems to have no known end. For instance, one of his proposed solutions to the Black social dilemma is a favorite mainstay of Black Feminists: to have Black women start dating white men.

If that is the best solution, that sociology can proffer, for the sake of these women and the Black race, I hope that white men will all be lined up with their wheel barrels waiting for them.

Despite all this, the book is still well worth reading. Three stars.

This book's author is a Black sociologist at Harvard University who wears a suit, tie and glasses and sympathizes with Christianity. He is a stylish writer who is as at home with social statistics as with Madonna's complaints that her one-time Black lover -- the basketball star and transvestite, Dennis Rodman -- failed to give her cunnilingus when the pair met for sex. More especially, Patterson abjures constructivism; he thinks American Blacks are in a "desperate" state of criminality, drug-addiction and family breakdown; he agrees that Black teenage pregnancies are "catastrophic" for both mother and child; and he denies that Black social problems are attributable to poverty or to the daily grind of White racism. Altogether, Patterson looks as promising a Black sociologist as Whites are likely to find.

What, then, can have inspired Patterson's latest title, Rituals of Blood? Why, nothing less than a belief that Black ghetto bastardy and violence - not least to Black women and in turn from these women to their Black children - can be blamed on nineteenth-century Whites. These primitives, not content with enslaving Blacks and denying them marriage prospects, proceeded to hack off Blacks' ears, fingers and genitalia in the process of roasting them alive at joyfully attended lynchings. According to Patterson, this meant that Black males were in no position to supply adequate male role models to the children they casually sired; that Black womenfolk learned to despise them; and that Black men in turn came to hate their own mothers and Black women in general. Patterson sees only more trouble ahead. Niggas with attitude, like the musician Puff Daddy, apparently serve the function only of letting Whites indulge the 'Dionysian sides' of their natures. Meanwhile, rap artistes lead Black youth to impossible dreams and to a sustained non-involvement with the normal world of work and family life that will outlast all the corresponding efforts of affirmative racists and welfarists. In their "Dionysian entrapment", "hypnotized" Black youth replace Uncle Tom's cabin in the sky with the "all-or-nothing hope of one day slam-dunking the basketball net" and head towards their "fateful moment" of the gathering future.

At the core of this dramatic account of forever-collapsing Black culture lies an impressive collection of survey statistics which bolster Patterson's feminist analysis of the essential modern problem of American Blackdom. So hostile and suspicious are the two Black sexes that 46% of Black men have never been married (compared to only 27% of what Patterson calls 'Euro-American' men). A Black woman in the USA can expect to spend just 22% of her lifetime being married (compared to the 43% spent by Euro-American females in one or more viable marriages). Surveys reveal the reasons for the frostiness between the Black sexes: 56% of young Black men say they cheated on even their very first sexual partner - which the refreshingly judgmental Patterson finds nothing short of "deplorable." "....the great majority of Afro-American mothers," says Patterson, "have been seduced, deceived, betrayed and abandoned by the men to whom they gave their love and trust." Tracing these problems further back, Black children experience high rates of sexual abuse: Blacks are a minority of the population in Chicago, but 70% of child sex abuse in that city is Black-on-Black. Nor does Black isolation occur just because a third of young Black men are in jail at any one time. Contrary to what Patterson calls the myth of Black brotherhood, Black men have markedly impoverished social networks compared to Whites; and their minimal contacts seldom link them with any realistic world of employment that is both gainful and legal.

Thus it is that Patterson proposes his solution to US Blackdom: that the urban ghettos be broken up and Blacks dispersed among Whites who will be further assisted to marry them by laws which would guarantee Blacks 'equal opportunity' to marry a decent proportion of Caucasoids - who currently miscegenate freely with all races/ethnicities except the unhappy Negro.

What can be said of this engaging thesis before 'equal opportunity' enthusiasts take their next step forward to oblige childless White suburban women to take Black lodgers and turn them swiftly into husbands? There are in fact three remarkable omissions from Patterson's story.

First, the attribution of Blacks' problems to White enslavement and the "lynching cult" neglects that Africa had its own pattern of Black-on-Black slavery, inter-tribal violence and brutal tyranny long before White sailors ever showed up to buy the slaves readily supplied by Black potentates and princelings. The notorious Zulu king Chaka was witnessed despatching 60 twelve-year-old boys before breakfast and massacring 500 women for witchcraft. Patterson fails to establish his causal thesis that the White man's slave trading can be blamed for anything very much.

How, then, do there occur the appalling relations between the Black sexes? Astonishingly, Patterson shows little sign of having heard of Africa -- let alone of personally visiting or studying the Dark Continent. On West Africa's Gold Coast, he could easily have learned that women mistrust Black men and that men reciprocate exactly in the pattern of America's slave-holding South and the inner-city ghettoes of Kingston and London today. Just as in Virginia of 1800, hardly any Black woman in West Africa will trust her man for a day.

As its last omission, Rituals of Blood entirely ignores the levels of crime, bastardy, welfare dependency and inter-sex suspicion among Whites having the same levels of IQ as Blacks. Despite The Bell Curve having copiously documented the causal role of low IQ in social pathology, the names of Charles Murray, Richard Herrnstein, Arthur Jensen and Phil Rushton are simply not thought worth a mention by a Harvard sociologist - indeed, intelligence and IQ also remain unmentioned. Such a high level of wilful ignorance is astonishing. Patterson should recall Mark Twain's observation that a man who won't read books can claim no serious superiority over a man who can't read them.