Slaves maintained an autonomous culture and consciousness apart from their rulers

Evidence

At the very same moment European labor was being thrown off the land and herded into a newly formed industrial order, Robinson argues, African labor was being drawn into the orbit of the world system through the transatlantic slave trade. European civilization, either through feudalism or the nascent industrial order, did not simply penetrate African village culture. To understand the dialectic of African resistance to enslavement and exploitation, in other words, we need to look outside the orbit of capitalism—we need to look West and Central African culture. Robinson observes, “Marx had not realized fully that the cargoes of laborers also contained African cultures, critical mixes and admixtures of language and thought, of cosmology and metaphysics, of habits, beliefs, and morality. These were the actual terms of their humanity. These cargoes, then, did not consist of intellectual isolates or deculturated Blacks—men, women, and children separated from their previous universe. African labor brought the past with it, a past that had produced it and settled on it the first elements of consciousness and comprehension” (121). — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 20 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

As both this and the seventh chapter attempt to demonstrate, the record of resistance for four centuries or more, from Nueva Espana to Nyasaland, leaves in no doubt the specifically African character of those struggles. Resistances were formed through the meanings that Africans brought to the New World as their cultural possession; meanings sufficiently distinct from the foundations of Western ideas as to be remarked upon over and over by the European witnesses of their manifestations; meanings enduring and powerful enough to survive slavery to become the basis of an opposition to it. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 119 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Knowledge of poison conferred power and respect within the slave community; Enslavement transferred complete African ontological and social systems to the Americas; Enslaved people were human beings despite slavery’s alterations of their being (+15 more)

Related

• Enslaved Africans carried their cultures and consciousness into slavery, contradicting primitive accumulation (similarity 0.93)
• Enslavement transferred complete African ontological and social systems to the Americas (similarity 0.91)
• African slaves carried their full cultures and consciousness into the New World (similarity 0.91)
• African culture formed a shared shield against dehumanization in the New World (similarity 0.89)
• African cultural meanings survived slavery and grounded resistance (similarity 0.89)
• Enslaved Africans carried intact cultural systems, not deculturated minds, into slavery (similarity 0.87)
• New World Africans favored spiritual preservation over violent confrontation (similarity 0.87)
• Slave communal practices preserved Black identity and nourished the radical tradition (similarity 0.86)
• The Black Radical Tradition accreted collective intelligence from generations of slave struggle (similarity 0.85)
• Africans survived slavery by conserving native consciousness rather than understanding Europeans (similarity 0.85)
• Trinidad’s African Creoles preserved the slave radical tradition through culture (similarity 0.85)
• African heritage, not slavery, defined the Black condition (similarity 0.85)
• Enslaved Africans carried coherent cultures into the New World, not merely labor. (similarity 0.85)
• Slaves formed their own consciousness independent of planter ideology. (similarity 0.85)
• Slaves’ West and Central African roots shaped New World resistance to slavery. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• African slaves carried their full cultures and consciousness into the New World #corroborates (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 20
• African cultural meanings survived slavery and grounded resistance #corroborates (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 119
• Enslaved Africans carried their cultures and consciousness into slavery, contradicting primitive accumulation #corroborates (0.80)
• Enslaved women preserved their humanity by clinging to traditional African practices #exemplifies (0.75) — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 380
• Slave communal practices preserved Black identity and nourished the radical tradition #corroborates (0.70)
• Enslaved women transmitted cultural knowledge to ensure survival across generations #exemplifies (0.70) — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 331
• Enslaved people also absorbed the view of women as temptresses #complicates (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 112