Exploring the Relationship among Economy, Power and Inequality
It was a very rewarding and touching experience to read Dancing and Carousing the Night Away by Hunter and African Path to the Middle Passage by Marcus Rediker. Both articles are related to African American, and describe the racial inequality and hardships faced by them in different period of time. The African Path to the Middle Passage takes up the topic of enslavement history, and traced the slave sources of Atlantic Slave Trade to the complex African geographical, political and cultural factors from 15th to 19th century. On the other side, Dancing and Carousing the Night Away points out the racial, gender and social class inequality in the post-emancipation period in American history by using the example of public dance halls in Decatur and Atlanta, where African American workers were keen on going after work and danced “the night away”. Although one describes the beginning of African American slavery and the other one describes the period following the end of slavery, racial inequality exists in both cases. Reflected on the two articles, I learn that economy and power play important roles in inequality, and I would like to explore the relationship among them. In this paper, I suggest that economy and power are huge incentives for inequality to occur; also, inequality in turn serves for the dominating group in the society to maintain their powerful status and advantageous access to economic opportunities. However, the resisting power is also strong and cannot be overlooked. Over time, the inequality structure changes due to the interaction between the dominating power and the resisting power.
The dominating society group, in order to gain bigger power and achieve higher economic status, tries to control, restrict and exploit other society groups, and therefore, creates violence and inequality. For example, in the case of Atlantic Slave Trade, the African trading societies and merchants were incentivized by the economic opportunities provided at the time. There is a strong relationship between Atlantic Slave Trade and African societies’ pursuit of power and political status. As suggested by Rediker, different African societies benefited from the slave trades, where they could receive higher technologies, like firearms, from the Europeans. With these weapons, they were able to defend themselves and to violently raid and take over other societies, and therefore, establishing a society with bigger power and higher political and economic status. Similarly, African merchants were able to thrive in their societies by accruing money and power, and therefore, improve social class status. In the case of Dancing and Carousing the Night Away, although the end of Civil War is marked as the end of slavery in America, it was not the end of “inequality”. As shown in the article, the society was harsh on working class African Americans. Although they were supposed to be “free individuals” at the time, the society critiques still tried to control their behaviors even in their free time. According to the article, Proctor warned employers that “household laborers would not perform well’, because “they use their leisure unproductively – dancing instead of preparation for the next day of work”. The fact that Proctor at the time was able to publicly make the statement reflects that employers, using their advantageous status and power, tried to restrict and control their workers, in order to exploit their labor to gain as much economic profits as possible.
What’s more, the inequality created allows the dominating group to exercise their power and in turn, maintain their powerful status and access to economic opportunities. As mentioned in African Path to the Middle Passage, the trading individuals and societies were able to use their power to influence the societies’ justice system to maximize their benefits. For example, some societies let innocent people go through unfair judicial processes and make them into criminals, in order to trade them with Europeans in exchange of the trading benefits. Also, some merchants, like “Captain Lemma Lemma”, who had accumulated money and power from the trades, use his power to violently raid or kidnap innocent people for slave trading. In the case of Dancing and Carousing the Night Away, with the fear of losing control and in order to maintain their advantageous social status, white people and the middle class African American harshly criticized the public dancing activity. They used their dominating power and the social norms determined by them to justify their critiques, by describing the dance as immoral and sexual in nature and relating it to crimes, drugs and sex. Moreover, by using their power, the dominating society groups were able to impose strict regulations and high amount of taxes on public dance halls, resulting in difficult business operations. The examples show that inequality helps the dominating groups to maintain their controlling status, and allows them to exercise violence and power on other social groups.
After exploring the power and economy as incentives for creating inequality, and the use of inequality to in turn maintain powerful status, I think it is crucial for us to know that the resisting power is also strong and cannot be overlooked. The society today, compared with the past, has improved in a lot of aspects with regards to inequality. And the reason behind that is the continuous resisting efforts and their influence over time, which causes the inequality structure to change. For example, in the context of African Path to the Middle Passage, though facing lots of hardships, the traded slaves were not obedient along the way; rather, they resisted “immediately and spontaneously”. As described by Rediker, “people fought back, fled, did whatever they could to escape the enslavers”. From being captives by the enslavers, to getting onboard the slave ships, to completing the voyage, and to eventually arriving the “plantation societies of the New World”, the traded slaves did not stop resisting, but brought the resistance with them into the “New World”. Their resistance efforts should not be overlooked, as the “slaves” traded in the Atlantic Slave Trade were not slaves; rather, they were strong individuals who never gave up resisting and who exercised influence over time. In another case of Dancing and Carousing the Night Away, the working class African American, exploited by the dominating groups on their bodies, labors and freedom, were able to resist in their everyday life by simply keeping on “dancing the night away”. And this day to day resistance to inequality helped cultivate a united culture among working class African Americans all over the country, and helped nurture a changing power that was stronger and stronger every day. Overtime, this power promoted changes on social norms about gender, labor and races, and helped the working class African Americans gain more freedom.
It matters a lot that I have explored on the relationship among economy, power and inequality. Inequality is a very complicated phenomenon and social issue, and I had always wondered what exactly it means, what influences it has on people, and if we have the ability to improve the situation. Also, it is an issue that influence everyone in different aspects of life. What I learned so far has helped me gain a deeper understanding of the issue and partially answer some of my questions.
Knowing that greater power and economic benefits are some of the incentives that cause and create inequality, I started to think what inequality really means. It is dangerous to misunderstand its meaning. The issue of inequality that we are trying to fix is not to make everyone equal in the end, because in essence, everyone is different in his/her own circumstance and we need to acknowledge that. Furthermore, a society where resources are distributed equally to everyone is not ideal, because people will lose their incentives to work and produce goods and the society will therefore be not functional and not progressive. The issue of inequality that we are discussing here is the issue of fairness and justice. The fact that the dominating society groups, by exercising their power, try to control other groups in order to maintain their own power and gain economic benefits, shows that inequality is about the unfair distribution of resources due to the restriction imposed on less powerful groups by the more powerful groups. Inequality is therefore the unfairness and injustice in the access and opportunities of distributive resources. For example, inequality causes unfair economic opportunities that different groups have. Nowadays, there are still much less management level women in the workplace than men, because women are not encouraged to be “bossy” or “demanding”, and women are still considered not as capable as men and cannot make as good decisions. And this situation is a matter of inequality, because women’s career and economic opportunities are restricted not based on their skills, but based on the discrimination and stereotypes on their gender. Another example is that in the American baseball industry, the lowest level professionals are largely comprised of Latinos. The main reason is that management wants to get cheap labors with high talents. Therefore, Latino players are signed cheaply compared with white players, even though they have comparable skills and talents. This is a matter of inequality, because the career and economic opportunities are restricted by race and country origin.
Although it is very painful and sad to know about inequality and how it influences people from less powerful groups, I am not despair. What struck me the most while reading Dancing and Carousing the Night Away and African Path to the Middle Passage is the resistance that the less powerful groups never ceased to produce. It was very touching to know that although facing so many hardships, the traded slaves brought resistance with them into the “New World”, and the working class African Americans resisted in their day to day life by simply keeping on dancing. The power of resistance gives me hope and strength to believe that there is always something we can do to make changes and improve the inequality situation.
