Dear Ron DeSantis: African blacksmiths would like a word

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Dear Ron DeSantis: African blacksmiths would like a word

Florida's DeSantis curriculum erases a looooong legacy of African ironwork. Plus, Sondheim at the Bowl and Ceruti at the Getty, in our weekly arts newsletter

www.latimes.com

Dear Ron DeSantis: African blacksmiths would like a word​

King Munza, of the Mangbetu ethnicity, wields a scepter in an engraving by J.D. Cooper, published by Georg Schweinfurth in 1874.

(Don Cole / Fowler Museum)
BY CAROLINA A. MIRANDACOLUMNIST
AUG. 5, 2023 8 AM PT

The world is ending but the arroz con pollo at the Colibrí pop-up in Hollywood is keeping life worth living. I’m Carolina A. Miranda, art and design columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and I’m here with the good Peruvian food and the essential arts news:

Cultures of iron​

Over the last couple of weeks, my colleague Michael Hiltzik has been systematically demolishing the red hot garbage that is the state of Florida‘s new academic standards, recently passed by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ cronies, which state, among other things, that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Queried about the standards, DeSantis pointed to “folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”
First things first: There was no benefit to being enslaved. Period.
Beyond that, Florida’s State Department of Education has been busy getting its basic facts wrong. A state rep supplied a list of 16 African Americans who had allegedly “benefited” from the trades they picked up as slave laborers; Hiltzik combed through the list and notes that nine of those people were never enslaved and at least 13 of them did not learn their skills while enslaved.

Earlier this week, Hiltzik followed up with a report on the backgrounds of the non-historians devising some of these historical standards — and the “supine” ways the press has covered the controversy. (Pure fire.)

Iron was associated with political and spiritual power by many African cultures. Seen here: The Mangbetu King Munza at court, 1870, in an engraving by J.D. Cooper.

(Don Cole / Fowler Museum)
For one, DeSantis and his ilk misunderstand how slavery worked. Kidnapped African laborers were notblank slates onto which Europeans bestowed knowledge and skills. The Washington Post dug into Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett-Fischer‘s deep study of the institution of slavery, “African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Freedom,”published last year, which notes that laborers were often kidnapped because of their skills.
Enslaved workers from the Windward Coast of West Africawere brought to the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida to cultivate rice— because they’d already been cultivating rice for thousands of years. Cultures known for boatbuilding were sent to Chesapeake, an important riverine and seafaring port, since they could support navigation. Herding cultures like the Fulani (and their descendants) were in demand in states with livestock ranching.
African knowledge helped build these local economies. Not the other way around.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Which brings me to blacksmiths.
A tweet (I’m not calling it an “X”) by Times art critic Christopher Knight reminded me of a staggeringly wonderful exhibition organized by UCLA’s Fowler Museum in 2018. “Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths” later traveled to the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., and the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. As Knight noted in his review of the show, blacksmithing traditions in cultures south of the Sahara had deep roots that went back millennia, well before the dawn of chattel slavery.
For the record:
11:32 a.m. Aug. 6, 2023An earlier version of this newsletter stated that “Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths” traveled to the National Museum of African American History and Culture; it went to the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.
African blacksmiths arriving in the Americas had deep knowledge of the construction and management of furnaces, the smelting of ores and the fabrication of these metals into aesthetically striking designs.

A 19th century throwing knife by an unknown artist of the Nkutshu peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

(Don Cole / Fowler Museum)


Moreover, the Fowler’s exhibition didn’t simply show that many African cultures, such as the Dogon of Mali or the Bantu-speaking Kongo, were remarkable blacksmiths. It revealed that iron was central to many African cosmologies.
“Iron permeates the lateritic soils of Africa as well as the beliefs, practices, and histories of the continent’s myriad cultures,” writes African art historian Henry J. Drewal in the exhibition’s highly informative 512-page catalog. “Taken from earth, ore containing iron must be heated and its impurities separated before the iron itself is worked tirelessly to be transformed into matter useful for culture. Ironworkers — smelters and blacksmiths — are those possessing the extraordinary bodily knowledge and wisdom to make momentous transformation possible. They, together with the medium they transform, are alive with spirit. This presence makes them cosmic connectors capable of transforming nature to create culture.”

A late 19th century lamellophone produced by the Chockwe peoples of contemporary Angola.
(Troy Sharp / Musical Instrument Museum)
Iron smelting techniques appear as part of African origin myths, and the figure of the blacksmith, along with his tools, is often imbued with extraordinary significance. To don iron objects was to wield power, as shown in a 19th century engraving of King Munza of the Mangbetu culture. In the Karagwe Kingdom of northern Tanzania, a new king was installed to the beat of a drum that echoed the rhythm of a blacksmith’s hammer, write historians William J. Dewey and Allen F. Robertsin the catalog, “thus ‘forging’ an ordinary person into a king through ritual processes.”

Thousands of enslaved workers with knowledge of ironworking were intentionally brought to labor in the United States because of their great skill. The idea that African workers were “taught” how to forge metal by some benevolent slaveholder is absurd. All that decorative wrought iron that graces Southern buildings? It is part of an African tradition thousands of years deep.
DeSantis and the Florida State Board of Education would know this ... if they picked up a book.

 

[3rdWorld]

Slavery was meant to steal ingenuity and skills from Africans..
Why didn't the whites just get slaves from Latin America which is closer than a whole ocean away?
Because only the Africans had skills.
History is taught to benefit the white man's image and retain his stolen property.

 

[Geode]

They had whole articles/catalogs at the time on which regions to steal africans from based on skill and temperament.

 

[Voice of Reason]

They had whole articles/catalogs at the time on which regions to steal africans from based on skill and temperament.

yep

 

[3rdWorld]

They had whole articles/catalogs at the time on which regions to steal africans from based on skill and temperament.

The first place they tried was Angola.
But Angolans are a different sort of man, they will never be your slave even if you beat and kill then. So they moved further up the coast to the west.

 

[TRUEST]

Slavery was meant to steal ingenuity and skills from Africans..
Why didn't the whites just get slaves from Latin America which is closer than a whole ocean away?
Because only the Africans had skills.
History is taught to benefit the white man's image and retain his stolen property.

Africans were especially needed due to their dark skin. You take a dark skin man thousands of miles away from his homeland. You bring him to a place where everyone that looks like him is automatically considered a slave. He can’t run anywhere because it would be too easy to spot him.

Latin American natives knew the layout of the land. After all, they were the original inhabitants before the white men arrived. So when these natives were enslaved, many of them ran away. And you as a white man was not gonna get help from other natives about where to find your native slave. The newly arrived Africans had no such allies.

 

[the elastic]

They had whole articles/catalogs at the time on which regions to steal africans from based on skill and temperament.

Let them tell it and these crackas will make it seem like the enslaved were only picking crops all day or playing mammy in the house.

 

[Family Lives Matter]

This is woke culture the only blacks we need to teach the kids about are the Tate brothers and those fat black women whos heart imploded that used to stan trump

 

[O³ (O cubed)]

Slavery was meant to steal ingenuity and skills from Africans..
Why didn't the whites just get slaves from Latin America which is closer than a whole ocean away?

The short answer is that they tried. They weren't strong enough.

They also tried with the natives. They would easily escape and go into the land they already knew better than the whites.

 

[Geode]

Africans were especially needed due to their dark skin. You take a dark skin man thousands of miles away from his homeland. You bring him to a place where everyone that looks like him is automatically considered a slave. He can’t run anywhere because it would be too easy to spot him.

Latin American natives knew the layout of the land. After all, they were the original inhabitants before the white men arrived. So when these natives were enslaved, many of them ran away. And you as a white man was not gonna get help from other natives about where to find your native slave. The newly arrived Africans had no such allies.

also disease was killing them off too quickly to be useful.

 

[GoPinheiro]

Africans were especially needed due to their dark skin. You take a dark skin man thousands of miles away from his homeland. You bring him to a place where everyone that looks like him is automatically considered a slave. He can’t run anywhere because it would be too easy to spot him.

Latin American natives knew the layout of the land. After all, they were the original inhabitants before the white men arrived. So when these natives were enslaved, many of them ran away. And you as a white man was not gonna get help from other natives about where to find your native slave. The newly arrived Africans had no such allies.

Lmao, how do you even rationalize this with the fact that at some point, in certain regions, there were more enslaved people than slave owners? Or, the fact that there were and still are natives with brown and darker skin? Wouldn't this defeat your theory? Because, more people, from the same skin color, concentrated as slaves, also means that it is more likely for revolts to happen...

Lol, the fact is, the demand of enslaved Africans was based on their skills, especially skills related to iron smelting, gold extraction, agriculture, textiles and healthcare.

For instance, before the industrial revolution, the richest economies depended mostly on mineral resources like gold and also on their agricultural output, not on technological services, like we see now. Europeans found huge arable lands in the Americas, and were not really good at agriculture themselves(If you do your own research, you will find out that no major crop was domesticated in mainland Europe. Most, like 99.9%, of what they eat, was domesticated by other groups).




So, to be more specific...Beans, domesticated in the Americans, are similar to Cow-pea Beans, domesticated by Africans. Corn, domesticated in the Americas, is similar to Millet and Sorghum, domesticated by Africans. Tomatoes, domesticated in the Americas, are similar to African Eggplants(Also called Bitter Tomato). Sweet Potatoes, domesticated in the Americas, are similar to Yams. European wanted to compete with China, in the rice market. Rice was only domesticated in Asia and West Africa. I mean, the list goes on…Plus the knowledge of Coffee (One of the biggest commodities at the time). At the time of the colonization of the Americas, coffee had already spread from the Ethiopian highlands to the Sahel.

And the same applies to gold. The Americas was full of gold and people from the Sahel were experts in gold extraction.

To summarize, the people they found, natives, were really good at it but, they were less resistant to old world diseases. So, enslaved Africans became the main option due to being more resistant to diseases and also having similar knowledge as far as minerals and agriculture. Enslaving Native Americans was super common. However, it wasn't common for them to survive with the same rate as enslaved Africans.

 

[Luke Cage]

My grandpa twin brother was a blacksmith, somehow learned the trade without ever being a slave

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

They had whole articles/catalogs at the time on which regions to steal africans from based on skill and temperament.

Share info

 

[Amestafuu (Emeritus)]

There should be lawsuits against the state for teaching bullshyt. There has to be a stop to this.