Skilled Black workingmen withheld technical knowledge from whites as covert resistance

Evidence

James’s paternal grandfather was the pan boiler, his maternal grandfather, Josh Rudder, was the engine driver. See James, Beyond a Boundary, op. cit., pp. 17–19, 22–25. Both grandfathers had achieved positions normally reserved for whites in the nineteenth century. Rudder, especially, achieved an expertise with locomotives that still put him in occasional demand even in his late retirement. He jealously husbanded his knowledge from whites. On one instance, having performed one of his miracles, James described the old man’s reaction. “An enthusiastic crowd, headed by the manager, surrounded Josh, asking him what is was that had performed the miracle. But the always exuberant Josh grew silent for once and refused to say. He never told them. He never told anybody. The obstinate old man wouldn’t even tell me. But when I asked him [one] day, ‘Why did you do it?’ he said what I had never heard before. ‘They were white men with all their M.I.C.E. and R.I.C.E. and all their big degrees, and it was their business to fix it. I had to fix it for them. Why should I tell them?’” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2339

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the earlier theme of Black artisans and skilled labor building independent power; also connects to theories of ‘weapons of the weak’ and epistemic resistance in enslaved and colonized communities.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the deliberate withholding of expertise as a quiet, intimate form of sabotage and dignity-maintenance among colonized technical workers.