On Roll, Jordan, Roll

I have mixed views on this piece. It’s important to American historiography, undoubtedly, but I don’t know that it holds much water today, especially Genovese’s thoughts on paternalism. To Genovese, paternalism is fundamentally a way of “mediating racial and class conflict,” and paternalistic attitudes minimized the amount of dehumanization that slaves experienced. At the same time, paternalism reinforced racism and class exploitation. I agree with the latter case, but not the former.

A second interesting innovation that Genovese makes—and one that I agree with—is the role of religion in creating a sense of self. Rather than reliving the perpetual humiliations that enslaved people experienced, they instead built a world in which they could present themselves to God on their own terms. On a philosophical level, this case makes a lot of sense to me.

With those two thoughts in mind, I don’t see Genovese’s Marxism as clearly as others have. I know that he was a Marxist before becoming a southern traditionalist in the 1980s, but here you can see him abandoning the straitjackets that come with Marxist dogma to produce something new and innovative, if not always correct. His thoughts on everyday resistance to slaveholders are shared by many who continue writing on slavery and other forms of labor exploitation, but much of the other material here is thoroughly dated.