College president has a powerful lesson about slavery
Dr. Jane Gates used her degrees in political science and philosophy to teach a lesson on language to state Representative Josh Elliott (D-Hamden). Elliott claimed at a Feb. 26 rally of professors that a CSCU contract proposal treats community college employees “like chattel.”
Gates, the interim President of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU), quickly reacted. “I will not sit back and allow someone who has not been involved in this process to compare our contract proposal, which, by the way, includes livable wages and job security for university professors, to the horrors of slavery— a stain on our nation’s history from which we have still not recovered. I am disappointed,” Gates, who is Black, wrote, “by Representative Elliott’s comments. I hope he will take the time to learn how inappropriate it is for him to try to use the horror of slavery rather than take the time to discern what the truths are and how best to act upon them.”
Slaves were the slaveholder’s chattel. His personal property. The Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision extending the ownership of slaves into free states was the high court’s most discreditable. There is nothing ambiguous about the meaning of the term when applied to humans. Gates did not apply an obscure definition to the word. Elliott wielded it in its most wounding way, as a weapon intended to diminish and humiliate Gates.
Elliott is, remarkably, the co-chair of the General Assembly’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee. He met with Gates on Monday and, according to a CSCU statement, “expressed his regret for his choice of words.” While Gates accepted Elliott’s regrets, union leaders escalated the controversy.
On Tuesday, union and faculty leaders launched a vicious attack of their own on Gates. They issued a statement accusing her of trying to distract from their demands
“by focusing on a single word that, to some, is most saliently associated with enslavement ... Gates purposely equivocates to move the subject away from the issues to a personal attack with a nod toward slavery that gives it all a delicious air of indecency (the red herring by way of ad hominem). … There is no need to get distracted by these games.”
These are not games. We have long examined and changed our use of language. Teachers in the 21st century ought to know and recognize that “chattel” when applied to humans refers to slavery. The interests of one side’s contract negotiations and scoring some points with a favorite legislator do not change the meaning in an Orwellian bid by union leaders to gain an advantage. Connecticut’s demographic crisis and limited resources mean that we will continue to have fewer college-age students and more empty seats.
My arguments do not possess
the force of an English professor at Tunxis Community College. Kerry Beckford read the union statement and was moved to compose and send a searing reply. She wrote, in part:
“My professorial world is occasionally challenged by conditions that are not always to my liking. Committee work is never-ending. Faculty advising can feel brief and ineffective. I could go on. The point is that the perfect workplace does not exist. The typically innocuous wrinkles, while bothersome, are simply a part of my robust work life and do not prevent me from doing my job and doing it well.
“But make no mistake,
I am not chattel.
“I am, however, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave named John Wesley
Snead. He was born around 1828 in southern Virginia, a mere
30 minutes from what was Thomas Jefferson’s summer home, Poplar Forest. John Wesley was only a boy when he was purchased by his slave trader master.
“Chattel means slavery.
“By supporting Rep. Elliott’s choice of words, you do not speak for me. Rep.
Elliott does not speak for me. I expect my colleagues to consider the power of language when the urge is to communicate something they feel is of vital importance.
“I am the descendant of generations of men and women who were chattel, people who had no reason to ever dream that one day the blood of their blood would be a college professor. Yet, here I am, a strong, fearless, Black woman, who is also a college professor.
“I am many things. But I am not chattel.” Beckford’s statement tells us about more than chattel. Reading it, we learn that students taking an English course at Tunxis Community College are receiving an exceptional education in the word and the world.