White observers dismissed Black religious and linguistic reworkings as inferior without reciprocity

Evidence

Villard had just come from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, where he had observed the war’s first emancipated people and the first regiments of Black troops. Villard shared with the Garrisons his racist observations of the “half-heathenish blacks” in coastal South Carolina. As he did so, he condemned the Blacks’ “savage superstitions” and described their “fetish worship” in ways that showed he did not understand their African religions or the ways in which they were remolding Christianity to suit their cultures. Villard derisively called their Gullah language “jargon” and looked down on them for not comprehending “our English.” Using the same line of thinking, the Sea Island Blacks could have called Villard’s language “jargon” and his religion “savage” and looked down on him for not comprehending their “Gullah” or their gods. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 596

Categorization

• CANDY: The reciprocal framing — Sea Islanders could have called Villard’s English ‘jargon’ and his religion ‘savage’ — is a compact, tweetable reversal point.
• XREF: connects to: Settler values made white authors habitually erase black labor and humanity. — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 51