Microsoft Word - KaoUnwantedHelpNov.docx The  Unwanted  Help?     Enslaved  African  Americans  and  their  Aging  White  Masters     Philip  Y.  Kao   University of Pittsburgh Abstract This  essay  explores  whether  or  not  the  enslaved  African  American  provided  caregiving  to  their  aging  white   ‘masters’  and  other  elderly  whites  in  early  America.  Although  there  is  plenty  of  historical  mention  of  the   ‘house  slave’,  housework,  and  caregiving  for  the  children  of  slave  owners,  there  been  very  little  mention  of   eldercare  across  racial  lines  before  the  20th  century.    This  essay  does  not  provide  any  new  historical  data.   Instead,  it  sketches  out  the  possible  issues  involved  in  the  racialization  of  care  and  suggests  options  for  its   potential  historiography.         Keywords:    American  Slavery,  Race,  Aging,  Caregiving                     Anthropology & Aging, Vol 37, No 1 (2016), pp. 1-8 ISSN 2374-2267 (online)DOI 10.5195/aa.2016.143 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           1 The  Unwanted  Help?   Enslaved  African  Americans  and  their  Aging  White  Masters        Philip  Y.  Kao   University of Pittsburgh   Introduction   Aging  and  the  business  of  caregiving  bring  to  the  foreground  the  nature  of  family  and  social   relationships,   and   that   most   sacred   American   value—the   self-­‐‑made   individual,   autonomous   and   independent  to  the  bone.    Against  this  backdrop  is  a  competing  sentiment,  one  that  idealizes  the  traditional   bonds  and  emotionally  charged  ‘kinships’  that  keep  society  together.    In  this  vein,  the  real  fear  is  not  so   much  that  society  is  breaking  apart,  but  rather  that  no  one  really  cares  about  your  wellbeing  when  you   reach  old  age—not  your  doctor  and  quite  possibly  not  even  your  adult  children.  In  this  context,  caring   about  caregiving  is  just  another  political  slogan.    Who  then  is  providing  the  care  work?   In  this  essay,  I  float  the  idea  that  enslaved  African  Americans  provided  caregiving  to  their  aging   old  white  masters,  but  since  it  was  such  a  taboo  subject,  not  much  has  been  accounted  for  in  the  historical   archives.  Eldercare  is  still  predominantly  found  in  the  family,  but  today  more  and  more  people  are  living   longer  and  developing  conditions,  such  as  Alzheimer’s,  that  require  further  hands-­‐‑on  and  incessant  care.     For  many  of  the  elderly  residents  in  these  long-­‐‑term  care  facilities,  this  means  being  washed,  bathed  and   fed  by  a  non-­‐‑family  member,  and  quite  possibly  as  the  anecdote  goes,  by  someone  (primarily  female)  with   a  darker  shade  of  skin.    The  racialization  of  care  is  not  something  new,  but  it  has  evolved  in  complicated   ways  bridging  the  Global  North  and  South  in  a  political  economy  that  devalues  caregiving  and  sometimes   (ironically)  the  recipients  of  care.    In  her  book  on  the  devaluation  of  care  work,  sociologist  Evelyn  Nakano   Glenn  points  out  that,  “gender,  class,  race  and  citizenship  status  are  central  axes  in  the  social  organization   of  caring”  (Glenn  2010,  184),  and  that  two  types  of  coercion  have  come  to  shape  care  work.      The  first  type   of  coercion  is  status  obligation  pertaining  to  the  role  of  women  as  dutiful  mothers,  wives  and  daughters.   Glenn  refers  to  the  second  type  as  “racialized  gendered  servitude”  (Glenn  2010,  7).    What  I  want  to  focus   on   here   is   a   consideration   of   the   caregiving   relationship   between   particular   people,   or   rather   that   relationship  as  a  structural  feature  in  the  social,  economic,  and  historical  context  of  American  Slavery.  By   looking  through  the  racial  double  mirror  of  today,  and  turning  our  attention  to  history,  this  essay  will   formulate   a   set   of   preliminary   heuristic   responses   to   the   following   question:   Did   enslaved   African   Americans  provide  caregiving  to  their  elderly  and  aging  white  slaveholders?     There  has  been  much  written  about  the  kinds  of  domestic  work  and  unpaid  labor  the  enslaved   African  Americans  had  to  perform  in  the  slave  economy.    Allen  argues  in  a  revisionist  way  that  the  ‘mutual   helping  tradition’  from  Africa—uprooted  and  planted  in  ‘Black  America’—gave  rise  to  what  is  better   known  today  as  caregiving  (Allen  1999,  2).      Yet,  there  is  a  seeming  lacuna  in  the  historical  accounts  of   certain  kinds  of  intimate  work.  Quite  simply,  there  is  a  dearth  of  evidence  suggesting  that  interracial   eldercare  occurred  from  the  early  colonial  period  of  America  through  to  the  early  20th  century.             Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           2 Betwixt  and  Between,  the  Silent  Proximity  of  a  Taboo     Being  destitute  and  elderly  was  a  harsh  reality  for  many  in  early  America.    If,  “The  history  of  old   age  in  the  United  States  has  been  shaped  largely  by  the  search  for  economic  security”(Fleming  et  al  2003,   919),  then  enslaved  African  Americans  who  had  the  fewest  resources  were  the  most  vulnerable.  According   to  Kruger,  “Slaves  were  considered  to  be  too  old  for  the  slave  trade  at  age  thirty-­‐‑six  to  forty”  and  that  a   “receipt  given  to  the  captain  for  his  cargo  of  290  blacks  states  that  a  group  of  impartial  men  had  judged   89  of  them  to  be  over  thirty-­‐‑six  years  of  age  and  that  therefore  ‘three  of  them  must  be  counted  for  two’”   (Kruger  1985,  Chapter  9).    Many  enslaved  African  Americans,  however,  continued  to  work  well  into  old   age;  some  were  given  menial  jobs  while  others  were  sold,  hired  out  or  simply  abandoned.    President   George  Washington  writes  in  his  will  that,  “there  may  be  some  [slaves]  who  from  old  age,  or  bodily   infirmities  and  others  who  on  account  of  their  infancy,  that  will  be  unable  to  support  themselves,  it  is  my   will   and   desire   that   [they]   be   comfortably   cloathed   and   fed   by   my   heirs   while   they   live   […]”   (see   Washington’s  Will).  This  gesture,  however  historically  defined,  did  not  typify  the  fate  of  older  enslaved   African  Americans.      Reginald  Allen  reminds  us  that,  “During  the  slavery  epoch,  the  label  of  ‘quadruple   jeopardy’  was  characterized  for  elderly  African-­‐‑American  slaves  [as]:  1)  being  old;  2)  African;  3)  poor;  and   4)  as  a  slave”  (Allen  1999,  43).   The  plight  of  old  age  and  kinship  (both  real  and  fictive)  surrounding  eldercare,  especially  within   the  enslaved  community,  contributed  to  a  sense  of  morality  and  responsibility.  For  Frederick  Douglass,   neglect  of  the  elderly  even  became  an  abolitionist  theme.  Douglass  tells  us  of  his  old  grandmother  in  his   well-­‐‑known  narrative.    When  she  was  found  to  be  of  ‘little  value’,  her  slaveholders  “took  her  to  the  woods,   built   her   a   little   hut,   put   up   a   little   mud-­‐‑chimney,   and   then   made   her   welcome   to   the   privilege   of   supporting  herself  there  in  perfect  loneliness;  thus  virtually  turning  her  out  to  die!”(Douglass  1998,  2021).     Douglass  goes  on  to  say,  “If  any  one  thing  in  my  experience,  more  than  another,  served  to  deepen  my   conviction  of  the  infernal  character  of  slavery,  and  to  fill  me  with  unutterable  loathing  of  slaveholders,  it   was  their  base  ingratitude  to  my  poor  old  grandmother.  She  had  served  my  old  master  faithfully  from   youth  to  old  age”  (Douglass  1998,  2021).    The  plight  of  old  age  was  not  lost  on  the  whites,  but  it  took  on  a   decidedly  harsh  reality  for  the  enslaved  African  Americans.    There  are  some  accounts  of  loyal  slaves  who   were  freed  in  old  age  or  accorded  some  level  of  gratitude.  In  a  published  and  archived  interview  with   Mary  Henry,  a  slave  and  nurse  to  Mrs.  Julia  Dent  Grant  (wife  of  General  U.S.  Grant),  the  reader  is  told   that  Mrs.  Dent  wrote  a  letter  and  enclosed  a  sum  of  money  for  Mary  Henry  on  her  death  bed.    According   to  the  interview,  “[Mary  Henry]  is  calmly  awaiting  the  end,  buoyed  and  consoled  by  the  religion  “Old   Boss”  and  Mrs.  Dent  gave  her  […]  She  wants  to  die,  as  she  says,  to  join  “Old  Boss  and  Miss,”  and  to  be   buried  in  the  same  lot  and  in  the  same  soil  in  the  cemetery  where  rest  their  bones”  (St.  Louis  Globe-­‐‑ Democrat  1900).     One  might  be  tempted  to  assume  that  since  enslaved  African  Americans  were  working  not  only   in  the  field  but  also  as  nursemaids,  midwives  and  house  servants,  there  had  to  have  been  instances  of   eldercare.  Given  that  the  enslaved  African  Americans  most  likely  sympathized  with  senescence  and  the   plight  of  old  age  for  the  whites,  was  there  a  functional-­‐‑cum-­‐‑emotional  human  connection  being  created   between  enslaved  African  Americans  and  their  aging  white  masters?  If  so,  did  this  arise  from  the  intimacy   and   nature   of   a   nascent   caregiving   relationship?   Did   enslaved   African   Americans   take   care   of   old   slaveholders  and  their  aging  white  family  members?           Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           3 There  are  documented  instances  of  deathbed  scenes  where  enslaved  Africans  were  called  upon  to   pray  for  and  sit  with  their  masters.    In  one  moving  and  comical  account,  former  slave  Mary  Gladdy  recalls   a  story  told  to  her  by  her  grandmother,  Edie  Dennis,  about  an  enslaved  African  American  named  Chuck.   In  this  story  taken  from  the  Work  Projects  Administration  (WPA)  collection  of  former  slave  narratives,   Chuck—a  religious  and  industrious  enslaved  African  American—prays  for  his  ill-­‐‑stricken  and  atheist   master.  We  are  told  that,  “Chuck  then  went  to  his  Master'ʹs  bed  side  […]  and  the  white  man  recovered,   was  converted,  joined  the  church,  and  became  an  evangelist.  He  also  freed  Chuck  and  made  an  evangelist   of  him.  Then  the  two  got  in  a  buggy  and,  for  years,  traveled  together  all  over  the  country,  preaching  the   gospel  and  saving  souls“  (Works  Project  Administration  2007,  23).      Slave  narratives  often  mention  that   enslaved  African  Americans  did  most  of  the  housework,  especially  women  who  cooked  and  took  care  of   the  masters’  and  overseers’  families.      Ellen  Brass,  a  former  ‘slave’,  says  rather  bluntly  near  the  end  of  her   session  with  an  interviewer  that,  “white  folks  ain’t  got  no  reason  to  mistreat  the  colored  people.  They  need   us  all  the  time”  (Federal  Writers’  Project  2001).    For  Bankole,  “Africans  were  active  participants  in  the  care   and  treatment  of  illness/disease;  and  in  assisting  Whites  in  maintaining  their  own  general  health  care”   (Bankole  1998,  141).  Yet  given  the  paucity  of  primary  18th  century  records,  more  research  needs  to  be   done  to  explore  the  extent  to  which  enslaved  African  Americans  were  allowed  to  interact  with  their  old   white  masters  and  mistresses.  Were  they  allowed  to  provide  direct  caregiving  in  the  sense  of  ‘bed  and   body  work’,  or  were  their  services  only  warranted  in  the  deathbed  scenes  of  annals  past?   Since  I  am  arguing  that  it  is  reasonable  that  the  enslaved  African  American  did  take  care  of  their   aging  and  old  masters,  let  me  now  set  forth  some  conjectures.  To  begin  with,  perhaps  there  is  an  historical   silence,  signaling  another  reality  where  the  enslaved  African  American  did  not  provide  any  substantial   caregiving  to  the  elderly  whites.    Geriatrician  Kevin  C.  Fleming  claims  that  from  1650  to  1850,  the  number   of  elderly  Americans  was  small,  consisting  of  less  than  2%  of  the  population  (Fleming  et  al  2003,  914).   High  birth  rates  and  mortality  meant  that  old  age  (and  mainly  for  the  whites)  was  commonly  defined  as   life  after  the  age  of  60.  Few  survived  to  old  age,  but  old  age  was  not  a  defining  factor  for  work  or  social   life   in   early   America;   birthdays   were   accorded   no   special   observance   until   the   latter   half   of   the   19th   century   (Chudacoff   1989).   Furthermore,   some   elderly   African   Americans   continued   to   work   as   sharecroppers  well  into  old  age—even  after  the  emancipation  proclamation.    They  lacked  property  rights   and  were  thus  prone  to  indigence  and  dependence.    In  the  agricultural  economy  of  preindustrial  America,   the  standard  of  living  for  young  and  old  alike  was  bleak.  The  price  of  labor  mirrored  the  cost  of  living,   and  so  people  in  general  did  not  save  much  for  their  declining  years.     There  is  insight  to  be  gleaned  from  investigating  what  aging  meant  culturally  and  socially  for  the   majority  of  whites  before  the  industrial  turn  and  the  onset  of  poorhouses.    For  example,  Carole  Haber   asserts  that  some  (white)  elders  did  in  fact  enjoy  great  power  and  prestige.    But  this  was  not  because  they   were  afforded  special  status  simply  by  being  old,  but  rather  these  elders  were  able  to  participate  in  society,   and  to  maintain  certain  authority  over  valued  assets  (Haber  1983).    For  some,  old  age  contributed  to  their   high  status  as  venerable  elders.  Haber  suggests  that  even  into  advanced  years,  and  in  light  of  the  fact  that   two  decades  could  separate  the  birth  of  one’s  first  and  last  child,  elders  retained  their  parental  roles  and   responsibilities.   Additionally,   David   Hackett   Fischer   contends   that   during   the   colonial   period,   gerontocracy  existed,  and  that  the  old  regulated  social  norms  and  behaviors  (Fischer  1977).  For  Fischer  it   was   ultimately   the   changing   cultural   beliefs,   religion,   political   theory   and   philosophy   more   than   economics  that  signaled  the  end  of  gerontocracy  and  the  beginning  of  gerontophobia.    Between  1770  and   1820  Fischer  found  that  the  revolutionary  generation  sought  a  world  as  a  young  republic  founded  on   revolutionary  ideas,  which  removed  elders  from  their  thrones.    In  other  words,  “Republican  principles  of   equality  and  liberty  served  to  displace  virtues  of  old  age.       Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           4   With  [white]  people  of  any  age  free  and  equal,  there  was  little  reason  to  reproduce  the  hierarchy  of  age”(   Haber  and  Gratton  1994,  5).     Of  course  the  story  is  not  so  simple.  There  are  instances  where  some  elders  were  in  fact  able  to   command  respect  and  honor  from  their  control  of  resources,  but  they  did  not  always  command  affection   or  sympathetic  understanding.  The  usual  line  of  argument  posits  that  the  elderly  did  not  conform  to  the   spirit  and  culture  of  self-­‐‑improvement.  In  order  words,  they  were  an  embarrassment  to  the  cultural  regime   of  self-­‐‑control  and  self-­‐‑sufficiency.    Moreover,  aging  whites  in  colonial  America  were  supposed  to  detach   from  the  world.  They  were  to  be  somber,  temperate  and  fixated  on  withdrawing  from  the  quotidian  world   in  order  to  prepare  for  salvation.     Therefore,   who   exactly   were   these   old   aging   white   masters   and   mistresses   that   the   enslaved   African  Americans  could  have  cared  for,  and  what  constituted  their  attitudes  towards  aging?      Paula  Scott   argues  that  many  Americans  in  the  18th  and  19th  century  believed  that  God  had  set  the  age  of  man  firmly   at  70  years  (Scott  1997).  Scott  draws  upon  18th  and  19th  century  books,  poems,  plays,  almanacs,  and   newspapers  to  ascertain  ideas  on  aging  and  the  American  elderly.    Scott  found  that  old  age  in  its  religious   context  was  not  a  time  of  repose  or  relaxation,  but  of  serious  and  unrelenting  soul  searching.  Old  age  was   a  time  of  fortitude,  a  didactic  modelling  and  a  season  of  preparation  for  another  world.  God  intended  this   season  to  test  the  old,  pushing  them  toward  spiritual  betterment—so  goes  the  ideology.  Scott  quotes   Cotton  Mather  saying,  “A  trifling  and  childish  and  frolicsome  sort  of  carriage,  all  buffoonery  in  an  old   man  is  very  disagreeable”  (Scott  1997,  33).  Meanwhile,  medical  narratives  professed  something  similar  to   the  religious  discourse  at  the  time.  Dietary  restrictions  and  temperance  could  offer  better  control  of  one’s   health  and  longevity.    But  just  how  much  foothold  did  religious  attitudes  and  medical  prescriptions  have   toward  aging  is  still  not  very  clear.     All  in  all,  this  is  a  longwinded  way  of  saying  that  slaves  might  have  provided  caregiving  for  their   aging   white   masters,   but   in   a   quite   different   way   than   we   think,   because   caregiving   was   not   about   elongating  life  and  battling  disease,  but  about  spiritual  caregiving  and  salvation.    Did  the  enslaved  African   American  have  a  direct  role  in  the  meaning  and  exigency  of  old  life  and  death  in  the  white  Christian   world?  Since  many  of  the  black  family  members  were  sold  and  scattered  throughout  various  plantations,   they  were  not  afforded  the  luxury  of  having  nuclear  family  households.  Furthermore,  if  we  take  it  that  the   elderly   were   culturally   and   religiously   expected   to   wean   themselves   from   worldly   and   quotidian   concerns,  then  (re)assigning  house  servants  to  care  for  the  elderly  might  have  been  be  too  much  of  a  real   world  reminder  and  intervention.     Another  major  issue  soon  arises,  namely,  that  the  slaveholder’s  brand  of  paternalism  was  used  to   regulate  and  justify  a  system  of  exploitation  (for  more  see  Genovese  and  Fox-­‐‑Genovese  2011).      It  was  the   slaveholder’s  romanticized  and  ‘compassionate’  rationalization  of  ‘Christian  slavery’  that  led  enslaved   African   Americans   to   be   considered   children   and   property   that   needed   to   be   looked   after.   One   distinguishing  point,  however,  has  to  do  with  the  status  of  the  female  house  slave.      Much  has  been  written   about   the   mammy   stereotype.     The   mammy   cooked,   cleaned   and   above   all   else   raised   the   master’s   children.  McElya  argues  that  the  ambivalence  and  assertions  of  black  people’s  contentment  with  servitude   alleviated  white  fears  on  the  one  hand,  but  reinforced  racial  hierarchy  on  the  other  thus  perpetuating  the   mammy  stereotype  (McElya  2007).  Moreover,  Sharla  Fett  suggests  that,  “African  American  Midwives   sustained  their  calling  by  joining  their  skills  as  birth  attendants  to  an  astute  consciousness  of  both  intimate   and  public  forms  of  power  in  antebellum  slave  society”  (Fett  2006,  65).     Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           5  These  midwives  crossed  lines  of  class,  community  and  race  in  fascinating  ways.  Stacey  Close  argues  that   while  women  house  servants  formed  a  link  between  slaves  and  their  slave  owners;  they  also  exerted  small   acts   of   resistance   (Close   1995   and   Close   1997).     For   example,   they   taught   the   slave   owners’   children   superstitions,  how  to  count  in  an  African  language,  and  aided  runaway  slaves.  Yet  even  in  this  light,  and   despite   the   fact   that   the   mammy   was   often   regarded   as   being   closer   to   the   white   family   than   her   counterparts  in  the  field,  did  she  and  was  she  allowed  to  provide  eldercare  in  the  master’s  bedroom?     Another  reason  why  there  might  not  be  any  explicit  evidence  regarding  how  enslaved  African   Americans  cared  for  their  aging  white  masters,  centers  around  the  notion  that  caring  for  the  elderly  was   not  just  a  religious  and  spiritual  matter  but  also  a  medical  one.    Sharla  Fett  argues  that  there  existed  a   cultural   divide   between   two   different   models   of   health,   the   body,   and   medicine   in   southern   slave   plantations.     The   power   dynamics   involved   in   these   regimes   might   have   dissuaded   such   caregiving   instances.  According  to  Fett,  “Enslaved  African  Americans  were  not  passive  victims  of  medical  malice,   nor  were  they  helpless  dependents  on  white  health  care.  Instead,  communities  in  slavery  nurtured  a  rich   health  culture,  a  constellation  of  ideas  and  practices  related  to  well-­‐‑being,  illness,  healing  and  death  that   worked  to  counter  the  onslaught  of  daily  medical  abuse  and  racist  scientific  theories”  (Fett  2002,  2).  It  is   not  a  surprise  that  slave  owners  subjugated  African  Americans  under  regimes  of  control;  the  enslaved   African  American’s  overall  state  of  health  was  by  extension  related  to  his/her  wealth  in  the  marketplace.   Furthermore,  Glenda  Sullivan  discusses  the  “sick  house”  as  a  place  where  slaves  received  medical  care  on   larger  plantations  (Sullivan  2010).  Enslaved  African  Americans  were  distrustful  of  white  physicians  and   their  medical  institutions.  The  sick  house  functioned  as  a  space  where  masters  and  plantation  mistresses   could  supervise  their  slaves’  progress  and  convalescence.  In  other  words,  institutional/white  medical  care   were  sites  of  disciplinary  power  and  control  tools  over  their  ‘financial  investments’.    On  the  flip  side,  black   healers  grounded  their  healing  work  in  notions  of  spiritual  power,  human  relationships  and  community   resourcefulness,  addressing  a  wider  range  of  healing  and  cosmic  exigencies  than  the  slave  owners  found   legitimate.  Fett  goes  on  to  say  that,  “Self-­‐‑reliant  traditions  of  African  American  doctoring  countered  these   objectifying  definitions  of  slave  health  with  an  original  and  compelling  view  of  human  well-­‐‑being.  Unlike   southern  planters,  enslaved  men  and  women  did  not  assume  that  they  shared  mutual  health  interested   with  their  enslavers”  (Fett  2002,  198).  Not  only  were  competing  views  of  personhood  being  articulated   through  white  and  black  medical  systems,  but  the  hierarchal  nature  of  slave  society  made  it  hard  for   whites  (even  if  they  wanted)  to  accept  forms  of  caregiving  that  were  holistic  and  what  we  might  describe   today  as  person-­‐‑centered  care.  If  elderly  whites  constituted  their  own  practices,  is  it  reasonable  to  assume   that  the  enslaved  African  American  still  found  a  way  to  integrate  themselves  into  a  system—which  shaped   illness  experience  and  end  of  life  care/support?     Finally,  there  is  the  thorny  issue  of  touch  and  intimacy.  Perhaps  the  sight  and  thought  of  a  black   hand  on  an  old  white  body  was  taboo,  inhabiting  an  uncomfortable  space  of  abjection.    It  might  have  been   the  case  that  having  an  enslaved  African  American  wash,  bathe  and  assist  with  toileting  proved  too  much   of  an  affront  to  an  old  slave-­‐‑owner’s  sense  of  self-­‐‑professed  dignity.      If  acts  of  intimate  caregiving  did   occur,  they  were  certainly  not  out  in  the  open  or  readily  talked  about.      Enslaved  African  Americans  and   elderly  whites  signified  two  vulnerable  groups,  two  interdependent  pariahs  which  might  have  come  into   brief  contact,  sparking  a  liminality  that  put  care  before  the  juridical,  women  before  men,  old  before  young,   and  black  before  white.  Approaching  death  and  losing  their  positions  in  society,  white  elders  ‘faded  into   blackness’.  Caregiving  depends  on  degrees  of  trust.    The  issue  is  not  one  of  betrayal,  but  rather  would   caregiving  have  undermined  the  nature  of  power  and  the  forms  of  legitimacy  the  whites  had  over  the   enslaved  African  Americans?  Sociologist  Viviana  Zelizer  describes  certain  facets  that  obtain  when  people   give  and  receive  care  in  intimate  settings.       Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           6 For  Zelizer,  “Everywhere  and  always  intimates  create  forms  of  economic  interchange  that  […]  reproduce   their  relations,  and  distinguish  those  relations  from  others  with  which  they  might  become  confused:  Are   you  my  mother,  my  sister,  my  daughter,  my  nurse,  my  maid,  or  my  best  friend,  [my  slave]?”  (Zelizer  2012,   277).  Taken  at  face  value,  the  intimacy  embedded  in  acts  of  caregiving  would  have  called  into  question   relations  of  servitude,  power,  and  control.    It  is  thus  likely  that  people  thrown  into  situations  where  labor   and  intimacy  collide,  “draw  on  available  cultural  models,  and  they  use  power  and  persuasion  to  negotiate   unequal  social  relations”  (Zelizer  2010,  277).  Ultimately,  “care  in  intimate  settings  raises  the  fundamental   questions:  Who  are  we,  and  what  do  we  owe  each  other?”  (Zelizer  2010,  277).    Thus,  it  is  quite  possible   that   the   enslaved   African   American   was   distanced   from   these   intimate   and   vulnerable   care   sites,   especially  if  one  recognizes  that  subtle  acts  of  resistance  threaten  to  undermine  (even  just  momentarily)   the  ideology  of  paternalism.     Conclusion   Rather   than   argue   conclusively   that   enslaved   African   Americans   did   or   did   not   provide   caregiving   for   their   aging   white   masters   and   mistresses,   I   have   tried   to   point   out   some   possible   perspectives  and  the  issues  at  stake.    There  are  also  some  theoretical  points  that  need  to  be  taken  up  and   elaborated.    For  one  thing,  how  does  a  sociological  theory  such  as  social  stratification  situate  itself  in  the   context   of   slavery   and   cross-­‐‑racial   caregiving?       Does   caregiving   for   the   elderly   cut   across   social   stratification  in  a  way  that  carves  out  an  intimate  space  that  is  too  taboo  to  abnegate  or  even  to  think   about?  If  there  was  in  fact  elder  caregiving  going  on  between  slaves  and  their  aging  masters,  how  were   their  relations  informed  by  the  available  emotional  regimes  of  the  time  (Reddy  2001)?  In  other  words,  a   theoretical   treatment   of   the   interactions   between   specific   emotional   capacities   and   the   unfolding   of   historical  and  changing  social  circumstances  could  cast  caregiving  in  a  new  political  light.  Antislavery   sentiment  and  what  Reddy  calls  emotives,  or  rather  intersubjective  emotional  negotiations,  could  come  to   reframe  our  understanding  of  particular  (and  relational)  histories.  We  need  to  know  more  about  just  who   these   aging   masters   were   and   whether   or   not   enslaved   African   Americans   in   the   north   differed   significantly  in  their  interactions  with  elderly  whites  than  their  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  south.    Finally,   how  was  the  life  course  valued  alongside  the  nature  of  work  during  slavery  and  even  in  the  postbellum   period?    From  Africa,  the  enslaved  African  Americans  brought  with  them  “[…]  their  beliefs  about  the   universe,  their  views  on  death  and  dying,  their  conception  of  human  existence,  and  a  tenacious  reverence   for  the  aged”  (Pollard  1965,  228).    Old  age  was  a  ‘time  approaching  power’,  and  “old  folks”  were  afforded   honorable  status  with  the  trappings  of  wisdom,  experience  and  ancestral  views  (Close  1997,  Wimberly   1997).                                                           In  the  end,  we  are  left  with  an  uncomfortable  situation,  which  is  most  likely,  a  racist  holdover   from  the  past.  One  can  find  a  handful  of  elders  scattered  across  communities  in  America  who  still  refuse   to  be  cared  for  by  attendants  who  are  ‘darker  skinned’.    Slavery  might  be  a  sin  of  the  past,  but  the  intimacy   of  touch  and  its  racialization  means  that  for  some  people,  those  with  black  skins  and  white  masks  will   always  be  unwanted,  even  if  they  are  ‘the  help’.  It  is  true  that  slavery  as  an  economic  institution  no  longer   exists  in  the  United  State,  but  informal  racial  segregation  still  does.    Some  whites  and  blacks  have  learned   to  ignore  each  other  for  different  reasons,  but  because  of  the  growing  crisis   in  care  and  aging,  those   ‘racialized  worlds’  will  no  doubt  collide.    By  uncovering  and  investigating  certain  historical  gaps,  we  can   look  squarely  at  how  our  conditioned  habits  of  thought  and  relations  come  to  inform  our  current  practices,   such  as  caregiving,  in  the  hopes  of  doing  away  with  prejudices  once  and  for  all.   Anthropology  &  Aging   Vol  37,  No  1  (2016)        ISSN  2374-­‐‑2267  (online)        DOI  10.5195/aa.2016.143    http://anthro-­‐‑age.pitt.edu   Kao  |  The  Unwanted  Help?           7 REFERENCES     Allen, Reginald L. 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