The peculiar American institution makes for peculiar American conversation, or more likely none at all. American slavery defies cogent dialogue, stirs a muddle of denial, rage, shame, embarrassment, confusion.

Ira Berlin, history professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and authority on American slavery, has heard all that. Time after time he has seen historical fact drowned by emotion, political opportunism. He goes on, nonetheless -- writing, studying, teaching. An oceanographer in the depths of a treacherous karmic sea.

"We don't really have a language to talk about slavery," says Berlin. "Black and white don't talk to each other very much. This is a subject of great sensitivity. We don't have a language to do it. So people are not sure whether to raise the subject is to shame people, is to embarrass people, is to reveal something about yourself. You know, some horrible faux pas."

Berlin, 57, has his name on two recently published additions to the national conversation, such as it is.

He has written a book called "Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America." He also is one of three editors of a book/cassette tape set of oral history called "Remembering Slavery," much of which consists of former slaves telling their stories in interviews conducted under the auspices of the Depression-era Works Prog- ress Administration. The historic sweep of "Many Thousands Gone" and the tight focus of "Remembering Slavery" together show the lives of individual slaves and the ways in which their travails continue to influence how Americans think about race.

A 'social construct'

In the prologue of "Many Thousands Gone," Berlin writes that it "has become fashionable to declare that race is a social construct." That is, a product not of biology but life circumstance. The notion has been widely accepted in an abstract sense, especially on college campuses, but it does not seem to affect the way black and white people deal with or perceive each other.

"I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that race is a social construct," he says in an interview at his office. "What I think is missing is that we assert that but we don't prove it. And when we don't prove it, then people don't accept it."

To illustrate the point if not "prove" it, Berlin has amassed exhaustive detail in "Many Thousands Gone," one of 15 books on slavery he has either written, edited or co-edited since the early 1970s. The book shows that North American slavery, notwithstanding the violence that sustained it, often allowed slaves some room for negotiation with their owners, a measure of economic independence and dignity. Even within the confines of a system of oppressive, there was not one "slave life," but many.

Without minimizing the horrors of the institution, "Many Thousands Gone" shows that in slavery, relationships varied from one historical moment to the next, from one part of the continent to another, from town to countryside. Berlin's purpose is not to put a soft edge on slavery, but to show how relationships between the races flowed from the economic and social situation.

"It seems to me in understanding the details of those on-the-ground struggles, ultimately that's where an appreciation of how circumstances define race comes out," says Berlin.

Forces of history

Not only was the ideology of black inferiority used to justify the brutality of the Southern plantation system, but slavery shaped racial attitudes in more subtle ways. In the North in the middle to late 1700s, slavery expanded, triggering more restrictions on freeing slaves. The free black population grew smaller and less prosperous, "and white Northerners slipped into the practice of equating bondage with blackness. Northern lawmakers reinforced that presumption by circumscribing the liberty of free blacks."

Using an array of historical records and secondary sources -- much of it accumulated in the course of 30 years' research -- "Many Thousands Gone" portrays slave lives in the context of their time, subject to forces of history. He organizes his study by slave generations, identifying the "Charter Generations," "Plantation Generations" and "Revolutionary Generations" spanning the early 17th through the early 19th centuries.

The book presents two broad categories of slave cultures: societies with slaves, in which slavery is one form of labor among many; and slave societies, in which slavery is the center of economic production and the master-slave relationship becomes a model for other social relationships. Slave society, represented by the plantation cultures that arose around tobacco, cotton and rice, was far more brutalizing than society with slaves.

Slaves of the "charter generations," particularly those living in urban areas, enjoyed more independence and social freedom than slaves who followed. Many pursued their own trades, accumulated property and socialized with white men and women "in taverns, at cockfights and at 'frolicks.' " At the same time, however, living conditions for slaves could be dismal, their treatment harsh at the hands of their masters.

"Many Thousands Gone" identifies the greatest source of "degradation of black life in mainland North America" as the development of the plantations, "a radically different form of social organization and commercial produc- tion controlled by a new class of men whose appetite for labor was nearly insatiable."

One of many examples of its brutality in "Remembering Slavery" appears in an interview with former slave Laura Smalley, who was not quite a teen-ager when the Civil War began. She told an interviewer in Texas in 1941 about seeing a slave woman tied at the wrists, beaten and tortured:

"You know she couldn' do nothing but jus' kick her feet. But they jus' had her clothes off down to her wais'. They didn' have her plum naked, but they had her clothes down to her waist. And every now and then they'd whip her, an' then snuff the pipe out on her. You know, the embers in the pipe ..."

Slavery, says Berlin, presents "this incredible paradox, this painful paradox" for Americans trying to come to terms with history. On the one hand, the horrifying violence, the daily humiliation of slave life. On the other, says Berlin, slaves demonstrated "enormous cultural and political and social creativity."

The challenge in facing this subject honestly, says Berlin, "does take a bit of political maturity and a bit of political restraint and a bit of admitting both things are true.

"Mostly, we've been in a state of denial. You know, I mean this notion that 'My folks got off the boat in 1908. I didn't have anything to do with slavery, my parents didn't have anything to do with slavery, my grandparents didn't have anything to do with it. So don't bother me. That's not my thing.' "

The bad with the god

Berlin has heard this often enough from students and others. His answer: If as an American you embrace the most noble aspects of the history then you must also confront its morally degraded side. Among the white men who became rich and politically influential in the slavery system were presidents, Supreme Court justices and legislators. The ugliness of their means of ascent, Berlin says, is as much a part of American history as the admirable deeds for which they are known.

"With a bit of political maturity," says Berlin, "you understand that we are both the bad and the good."

An hour after this interview at College Park, Berlin appears on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program, along with a writer and the executive producer of a PBS television series on slavery. Listening to many of the calls is eerie, as they echo Berlin's observations of the way Americans get "tangled up" in trying to talk about slavery.

Nonetheless, Berlin remains optimistic. He started studying slavery amid the civil rights movement in the rather naive belief that if you understood the root of racism you simply "went out and fixed it." That didn't quite happen. But the current moment is also rich with possibility, what with so many books, movies and television programs coming out on slavery.

"It's not exactly clear what it represents, but it represents an attempt to deal with the question of race," says Berlin. "When we try to do it, it turns out to be often very awkward. But nonetheless I think that we're trying is very important. I think as we try we get better at it."

Pub Date: 11/02/98