Abstract
Literature on the culture of New World slave populations, particularly from the seventeenth century, is extremely limited.1 Rickford notes that there is less direct documentation on American slaves than on any other American group.2 Why should this be? This scourge on the conscience of the nation known as a super-power would serve no purpose other than to diminish it; and diminish it, it does. How does one deal with the history of enslaving people, but to try and erase it? Perhaps the strategy was to not document it so that no paper trail could be found.
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Note
John R. Rickford, African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999) 203.
See also Robert Ascher, “Tin-can Archaeology,” Society for Historical Archaeology, Historical Archaeology (Bethlehem, PA: Society for Historical Archaeology, 1974), 8, 7–16.
Gareth Griffiths, “The Myth of Authenticity.” Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), 166–7.
Joseph E. Holloway, Africanisms in American Culture, Blacks in the Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 1–17.
John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations (New York: University Books, 1970), 305.
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Ivan Van Sertima, African Presence in Early America (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), 25–38.
C. Eric Lincoln, “The Development ofBlack Religion in America.” Gayraud S. Wilmore, African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 8–9.
C. Eric Lincoln, Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), 35.
J. L. Dillard, Black English; Its History and Usage in the United States (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 124.
Vincent L. Wimbush, “The Bible and African Americans: An Outline of an Interpretative History.” Cain Hope Felder, Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 84.
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Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 101.
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Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, Vintage Books edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 159–60.
Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 227.
See Katie G. Cannon, “Slave Ideology and Biblical Interpretation,” Interpretation for Liberation in Semeia 47, ed. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 9–23.
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 152–80.
Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 18, 219. For discussions of antiliteracy statutes, see pp. 7 and 216.
H. Samy Alim, Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 135.
Amanda Villepastour, Ancient Text Messages of the Yoruba Bata Drum: Cracking the Code (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).
Edward Franklin Frazier and C. Eric Lincoln, The Negro Church in America, Sourcebooks in Negro History (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 9–11.
Edward Franklin Frazier and C. Eric Lincoln, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 12–19.
J. Deotis Roberts and David Emmanuel Goatley, Black Religion, Black Theology: The Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts, African American Religious Thought and Life (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003), 118.
H. Giles and P. Johnson, “The Role of Language in Ethnic Group Relations” in Intergroup Behavior, ed. John C. Turner and Howard Giles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 199–242.
Michael L. Hecht, Mary Jane Collier, and Sidney A. Ribeau, African American Communication: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Interpretation, Language and Language Behaviors (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 34.
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© 2013 Annie Tinsley
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Tinsley, A. (2013). Identity Through the Language of the Enslaver. In: A Postcolonial African American Re-reading of Colossians. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326157_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326157_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46769-3
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