1.1 Million People watch Traces of the Trade on P.O.V.
July 10th, 2008Entry from Tom DeWolf’s blog
I’ve now had Nielsen “ratings” and “shares” of television audiences explained to me. It doesn’t mean I fully understand them, mind you, but it does allow me to pass along one significant conclusion. On the evening of the premiere of Traces of the Trade on PBS’s acclaimed documentary series P.O.V. approximately 1.1 million people tuned in to watch all, or most, of the film. As many as 1.7 million–which includes channel surfers–watched at least part of Traces of the Trade that evening. I don’t know what this means in terms of markets–like Oregon and Rhode Island, for instance–in which the film was broadcast on a date other than June 24. In other words, I’m not sure how the total audience would, or could, be calculated.
On the evening of June 24, P.O.V. received a .8 rating and a 1 share. The “rating” is calculated from metered stations in the top fifty markets that aired Traces and refers to the percentage of households who own TVs in each market who tuned in to watch. The “share” refers to the percentage of households with their televisions turned on that tuned in to watch. For comparison’s sake, on that same evening, NOVA at 8:00pm received a 1.1 rating. Frontline at 9:00pm received 0.9. Cable ratings for the 10:00pm hour (Traces was intended to be broadcast at 10:00pm in most markets) include CNN/0.8, Bravo/0.7, Comedy Central/0.8, HBO/0.3, History/1.0, and MSNBC/0.5.
At appearances I’ve made since June 24 I’ve had many people tell me they watched Traces on P.O.V. I’ve had many more tell me they saw or heard previews, interviews, or articles about it. The numbers of people logging onto the Traces website shot up significantly, as well as visitors to my blog. At the P.O.V. blog, where they offered people the opportunity to ask questions of the author here, the filmmaker here, and to comment on the film here, there are more than 750 postings.
P.O.V. is very pleased with these numbers. We’re also quite pleased. Interest in the film, the book, and the message of hope inherent in this ongoing American journey continues to grow.
http://inheritingthetrade.com/blog/?p=146
July 11th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I am concerned because none of your suggestions on this site regarding action involved teaming up with an African American group who is in pursuit of reparations or in pursuit of helping to remedy the disparities. I am African, born of two parents, one who could not read and the other had only a high school education. Both came from families of enslaved Africans, who had endured decades of severe poverty, post slavery. So this young couple, as did so many couples before them, had the task of trying to, some how, recover from this horrendous tragedy of enslavement. Consequently, Mom and Dad instilled the ideas of achievement and pride into their six children, making education as important as breathing air. My Dad drilled in our heads, “Having no money is no excuse to not go to college!” Well, this meant that my day, a janitor and my mom, a postal worker had to work day and night, not having decent shoes or good winter coats, and poor quality food, just so my siblings and I could go to decent schools; the public school system in our town was horrible. So they did this, and off to college each of us went. Almost all of us at one time or another was homeless and hungry during our tenure in college. Even though we were poor, we weren’t poor enough to receive aid for school; therefore, we each struggled to make ends met and have all accumulated thousands of dollars of debt in our attempt to make good on our parent’s efforts to forge the family ahead. I am currently just finishing medical school, owing over $100,000 in educational loans. My brother is soon to get his Ph. D in linguistics, he owes close to this amount as well. My sister has a masters in economics and other siblings have recently graduated or still attending undergraduate institutions. One thing we all have in common, WE ARE ALL STILL POOR! All of us, with the exception of my sister, live below the poverty line, with my sister being only one check or two away from poverty. Two of my parent’s children have families, my sister and my self; both families live under the poverty line. Some of us have tried to curtail the debt by working to accumulate the money for tuition, only to postpone potential earnings, perpetuating even more poverty. Eventually, we will gain employment within our perspective fields, using the majority of our income to pay back the debt instead of forging ahead. In spite of our education, we will still be in the ranks of the working poor or two to three paychecks away from being poor; our American dream!
African Americans, incur great amounts of educational debt, while consistently receiving less pay doing the same jobs as their white counterparts. This is a well-established fact, not to mention all of the other disparities well documented, even via PBS. So TODAY we suffer. We suffer because America took from us. Whether it was your ancestor who took from us or the ancestor who lived two states away from your ancestor, you are reaping the benefits of economic practices of yesterday. Those benefits were, and still are at the expense of my ancestors; oddly my family is still paying for these benefits, as if we owe America for its misguided, abusive past. The least Americans can do to help us recover from this holocaust, is to implement educational loan forgiveness programs, giving full scholarships for education, from preschool through graduate school. Americans could also legislate programs that use “best Practice” methods to develop positive coping mechanism so vital to any victim’s recovery.
THIS IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AMERICA. White Americans (at that time, only whites could exercise autonomy in America) created and/or perpetuated a system that kidnapped, and enslaved innocent people and their innocent offspring. Furthermore, White Americans set laws and put systems in place to impose additional restrictions on the children, grand children and great grand children of enslaved Africans, further perpetuating the past criminal act of kidnapping and enslavement. To offer only a apology is to perpetuate the abuse!
America became “the wealthiest” nation in the world as a result of the treacherous free labor of my Great-Grandma’s mother, who was bludgeoned to death by her master as she worked in Alabama fields, and the free labor of My Great Grand Pa who died in 1887; when travel down South, I still visit his grave! Maybe is was not your ancestor who owned slaves; however, your ancestor benefited from the labor of my ancestors directly or indirectly, while some Americans, like the DeWolf family, benefit more than others. What is more important, each American has only a definite amount of time on this earth to seize this wonderful opportunity to have a positive impact and move this country in the direction of wholeness and strength. DON’T WASTE IT!
July 15th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Eerily, I watched the information and differing types of media that I am ingesting to wrap my brain around slavery. I speak spanish and teach students and adults and I a reminded that when I travel to Jamestown, Va or Winston-Salem North carolina that these were not the only places slaves entered the United States my, ancestors, male and female, human beings, God created beings not some form of chattel.I bless you for this information as I continue to put my familial research in order. Your constituent. Jonathan Jones of Claremont, County , VA.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I have just learned of the slavery in Newport, Rhode Island and am awed and amazed at what I have discovered. My family and I wanted a new adventure 5 years ago and headed for the Newport Jazz Festival. Just recently, a friend told us about the DeWolf family and their involvement in the slave trade. To my amazement, the very hotel in which we reside on our trips to Newport is in the heart of the old port which brought in thousands of our ancestors. Our next visit will take us on a tour of God’s Little Acre, and some other points of interest. We decided that our ancestors, not the Jazz Festival keep us returning to Newport. I am very facinated with the history of the African Slave Trade and Newport is certainly worth investigating.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I was a history major in college, before the hysteria of Political correctness, when facts and the truth were important instead of an ideological, political, and social agenda.
I don’t think anyone can claim that Slavery was “a good”, but like indentured servitude (which I assume brought some of my ancestors over), slavery was a founding institution of colonial america.
It lay heavily on the minds of the founders and their successors, but no one could figure out a way to end it to universal satisfaction, though the trade the DeWolfes thrived on ended in 1808.
However the reparations brigade and others may denounce the truth, most africans and even their immediate descendants who came over on the triangle trade had better lives in many respects than the families they were taken from–by fellow africans.
Much as many people would like the facts to be otherwise, there was genuine affection between the owners and the owned, and life on southern plantations was easier and more fun for many many black people before 1861 than it was for many decades thereafter. That’s the simple truth, and unless that is admitted, “reconciliation” is anything but.
Jefferson complained in his diary about all the laughter and singing in the slave quarters disturbing his sleep. Doesn’t sound like major unhappiness among the servants to me.
The DeWolfe descendants probably have a lot less to worry about than they are made to feel in these politically correct times. But if they want to feel guilty, they are welcome to do so. The descendants of the slaves their ships transported have had, and now have, far better lives than had their ancestors stayed in Africa. At least by almost any yardstick.
Those I hold in contempt are the descendants of New England Slavers who got religion once the slave trade was outlawed. Once they could no longer make money off slavery, the descendants became abolitionists.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:40 am
I was a history major in college, before the hysteria of Political correctness, when facts and the truth were important instead of an ideological, political, and social agenda.
Indeed, the truth is more important than a political or social agenda.
In that vein, I would offer several corrections to the history you offer, in the hope that we can arrive at a shared and unbiased understanding of the historical facts.
Almost no one, in the founding generation or in the decades following, was even trying to find a way to end slavery. On the contrary, most people benefited substantially from slavery, there were few abolitionists, and those most directly involved in slavery fought fiercely in support of the institution.
The slave trade did not end in 1808. While most of the D’Wolfs got out of the trade when the legal ban went into effect, not all did, and a thriving slave trade to the U.S. existed in the 1820s, and again in the 1840s and 1850s.
It is absolutely untrue that “most africans and even their immediate descendants who came over on the triangle trade had better lives in many respects than the families they were taken from.” On the contrary, pre-colonial African lives were not unhappy ones, and life under American slavery was harsh, often brutal, and never to be preferred to freedom and life in one’s own society.
It is also wildly inaccurate to say that “there was genuine affection between the owners and the owned.” While there may well have been isolated cases like this, we know that most slaves were worked very hard, deprived of such basic privileges as family and religion, and punished horribly if they defied their owners in any way. At a minimum, any “genuine affection” felt by the owners was blind to both the inhumanity of enslaving fellow human beings, and to the genuine feelings of those whom they enslaved.
I do agree that “life on southern plantations was easier and more fun for many many black people before 1861 than it was for many decades thereafter.” This fact, of course, speaks to the brutality of life under Jim Crow and the various post-slavery laws and social norms in both North and South.
I would suggest that for human beings to want to entertain each other with laughter and singing in captivity is hardly a sign of happiness. You can be sure that prisoners of war often try to laugh and sing, even under the most appalling conditions.
You’re right that the descendants of the slaves now enjoy a higher standard of living than the descendants of those who remained in Africa. But this hardly speaks to the morality of slavery, or to the suffering of their ancestors which made this possible, or to the injustice inherent in your cavalier dismissal of widespread racial injustice.
Finally, it may please you to know that your assumption about the descendants of New England slave traders, and the behavior which you find so contemptible, is incorrect. By and large, they did not become abolitionists, and in fact often continued to defend slavery and the slave trade, as James D’Wolf did in the U.S. Senate.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Mr. Perry,
You have a right to your opinion, but while you agree that the facts and truth are important regarding history, many of you points are based on ideology.
At first I thought you might have taken a few courses in Black History, because of your views, but I guess not. They are probably pretty common at Harvard and Princeton, hotbeds of political correctness–like most campuses for some decades now.
New England, and Pennsylvania were the hottest beds of abolitionism in the nationm your ancestor to the contrary. Even the literary crowd in New England more or less ostracized Herman Melville for not becoming an active abolitionist, though his put all of them to shame.
I also disagree that southerners did not have moral worries about slavery. Liberia was an early recognition and effort to deal with the problem, and though the anti-slavery societies in the south died after New England’s campaign to eradicate slavery got underway, there were efforts to end slavery in my region until the 1820s.
And you are absolutely wrong to claim there was no general affection between the owner and the owned in the old south. Had it been otherwise, we would have been murdered in our beds, as Bishop Tutu apparently believes should have happpened to whites in South Africa. Afew years back he was quoted in the news as having said White’s shouldn’t be complaining in SA, they should be grateful they weren’t murdered in their beds.
The South is the most complex society in our nation, and no one outside can truly understand it, even now. Many of us can’t even understand it, ourselves.
If you and your family want to feel guilty, by all means feel free to do so. But while I do not defend slavery and regret it occurred, I do not feel guilty about it. After all, it ended in 1865, and nobody living is responsibile for it.
There are no legal grounds for any claims for Reparations. And no “moral” ones, either.
Thank you for printing my earlier post, and for taking time to reply to it.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Dear Mr. Phillips,
I am sorry your arguments are simply without merit. I wish you had heard the discussion after the screening of “Traces of the Trade” at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in NYC. It was the most honest discussion about race in American today that I have ever heard. I wonder, have you seen the film? If you think for a moment that what happened in American during the slave trade, and for a 100 years after, is not a direct correlation of race relations in America today then you are naive at best.
If for 100 years after World War Two the Germans lynched, maimed and raped the Jews for merely looking at a Christian, would the world have stood by and done nothing?
Our schools do not really teach the horrors of the slave trade. Have you looked at a high school history book or an AP history book lately? Yes we learn about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks but do we hear the hidious stories of mothers watching their children’s fingers cut off one by one before being lynched? Or made to watch as they were burned alive? You have to dig for this history lesson. Not everyone goes on to major in history. After reading your letter I suspect even a history major is left wanting. Thank God for the smidgen of politcal correctness that has happened over the last few years. Because of PC maybe a small amount of truth is now being taught in the history classes of Amercia!
My daughter was with me at the screening of the film. She was so moved by the film she had to leave for a moment to collect herself. She recently moved to Washington DC and sees everyday the aftershocks of slavery. The sad thing is not enough people will see this film. Watching it you know that you are in some way responsible even if it was not your direct relative who was in the slave trade business. Your silence is responsible. I now tell everyone I can about the film and hope to have a screening at my local college.
In closing sir, I suggest that you try and go to a public screening of the film. It had a profound impact on me.
Sincerely,
Susan Bell
August 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Mr. Phillips,
I appreciate your willingness to persist in this conversation, and your open-mindedness as to whether or not I was educated in these issues in an environment of political correctness. As one indication that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, politically correct, I do not consider this subject to be “Black History” at all, but rather an integral part of U.S. history.
I agree that the North was the center of abolitionist sentiment in the antebellum United States.
However, that does not mean that most northerners, much less most Americans, supported abolition and were seeking a way to end slavery. On the contrary, abolitionists were a tiny minority in the North. There was widespread slavery in the northern states well into the 19th century, and the entire northern economy benefited heavily from southern slavery.
I’m not sure what I said that suggested that no southerners had moral concerns about slavery, but I did not mean to imply that at all.
Liberia, of course, was founded as a result of the American Colonization Society, which was a national, and not a particularly southern, organization. (My northern family, for instance, was deeply involved.) The history of the ACS is a complicated one, and cannot be reduced simply to a desire on the part of southerners to eradicate slavery. It was largely spearheaded, for instance, by free blacks looking to better the circumstances of their enslaved brethren. Also, the very success of the ACS and the formation of Liberia suggests that the problem was not, as you suggest, that no good solutions to slavery could be found.
To suggest that the affection of slaves for their masters prevented widespread revolt is, I believe, naive. There were, of course, numerous slave revolts in U.S. history. There was also little incentive to revolt, as the likelihood of success was slim (sneaking into a house, for instance, and hoping to kill the adults before one could grab a gun), the odds of being caught and hanged were high, and there was rarely any hope of escaping the law to freedom in the North.
I agree with you that there are no moral or legal grounds for reparations for slavery, at least not as that term is commonly understood.
We can also agree that there is no cause for anyone alive today to feel guilty about slavery.
However, this doesn’t mean that we can, or should, ignore or distort the nature of slavery and its profound implications today. I believe that Susan Bell has already done an excellent job of making this point.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:41 pm
In spite of the fancy exchange of words in the above statements, the TRUTH remains. To prosper as a result of tasking others with back-breaking work and paying them $0.00 is WRONG! No intelligent, compassionate, evolved human could ever consider this to be “normal”. Wrong is wrong, no matter how you use thoughts and words flip it.
It’s well understood that Slavery was a business and brought great wealth to the owners as well as their deecendants. Decendants enjoying the wonderful benefits that are a result of the work of their morally incorrect ancestors should feel deep compassion for another human being (if slaves are considered human and deserving of compassion), and take meaningful ACTION that bring about undeniable change in the lives of of those slighted by the dirty traces of trade.