Biased on the Docks

Ahoy there.

Anchors, like all tools, are morally inert things. They are neither good nor bad in themselves but only become so depending on how they are used and how they are then judged based on that use. Employ an anchor to keep your boat from drifting into a reef and that’s probably something you’d consider good. Apply an anchor to root your ship in place when the kraken comes into the harbor instead of sailing away, well that’s likely an action you’d deem bad. Even after all that excitement, your judgement rests on the use of the anchor, not upon the anchor itself - although you might harbor resentment against the object if you are attempting to navigate away from your own responsibility.

While the anchor is morally opaque until used, its primary function is quite clear at all times - it sticks a vessel in place. Sure, you could hang tulips on an anchor or you could use the anchor as ammunition for a makeshift trebuchet, but we all know what the anchor was built for - anchoring. That’s the meaning of the word, the function of the object, and the way we’ve all come to think about anchors.

What if the historical and linguistic trajectory of anchors had been different? What if we’d never seen an anchor before and one crossed the seven seas from ports unknown and we found it hitched to our doorstep? Would we make it an object for plants to grow on? Would we hurl it at the city walls of our enemies? Would we walk it to the shore, plunk it on the deck of a ship and wish it ‘bon voyage’? And how would our treatment of that initial anchor affect the porthole through which everyone used and viewed all the anchors of the future?

Maybe you’re already familiar with the anchoring effect, or maybe you’ve never heard of it. Hopefully all this talk of ballast has steered you to a harbor that while not 100% safe is at least a place we can sound out the shore and sink into a discussion about what the anchoring effect is and how I’d like to tether it to a piece of art I recently consumed.

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias (a built in tendency of the human mind) that causes us to be influenced by the first piece of information that we learn about something. Suppose, for example, that you were raised in a house where everyone used anchors to grow roses on. Having grown up in such an environment, you’re much more likely to view anchors as a landscaping tool rather than a nautical one. Perhaps you’ll stretch your mind, be avant-garde and grow tomatoes rather than flowers on your anchor, but you’re very unlikely to tie a chain to the thing, put it on a boat, and use it as a means to stop that boat from moving. The function of an anchor has, for you, been fastened to the floral.

How far down can the anchoring effect go, though? Are we humans mentally tied to the systems of society that they are raised inside of? Are all of our problem solving ideas limited by the structures we know, even if they are the instruments of our oppression? I think so, and let me toss this lifebuoy of notion at you and you tell me if it sinks, stinks, or swims.

I recently completed season four of the podcast: Revolutions by Mike Duncan about the Haitian revolution. There is so much I didn’t know, so much I still don’t know, and so much more I want to learn but the one idea that unmoored me the most was that none of the residents of Haiti seemed to be able to move past the idea that Haiti could function as anything other than a slave and plantation based economy that exported sugar and coffee. Everyone, as they came into or close to power, tried to maintain and strengthen their authority by controlling the plantations. When I say everyone, I of course can’t actually mean that because there were some divergent thinkers but broadly, among the four major racial groups 

of the time, there was consensus on nothing except the belief that the plantation system must continue.

The four groups were known as: the “big” whites, the “small” whites, the coloreds, and the blacks. 

The big whites were French plantation owners. Many of these folks were absentee landlords, living in France and bathing in wealth wrung from the blood and sweat of slave labor. When the big whites were forced by circumstances to live on the island, they either dreamed of returning to Paris, or did their best to recreate it in the middle of the ocean. (Duncan refers to the leaders of the American revolution as the equivalent caste as the big whites in Haiti pre-revolution.)

The small whites were all the French people who weren’t plantation owners. They came to Haiti looking to strike it rich, but had their dreams drowned when they discovered that the big whites had all the political, military, and economic power on the island.

The coloreds were people of mixed race, and while there was a super complex hierarchy where the more white you were, the more status you had, the basic thing to know is that the coloreds could rise to higher status than the small whites. Often the children of big whites and slaves, the coloreds were sometimes sent to Paris when they came of age to receive a university education and sometimes inherited property, money, and slaves.

The blacks were people from Africa who had been shipped to Haiti to work the sugar and coffee plantations as slaves. Conditions were horrible. Life expectancy was awful. They were (with few exceptions) viewed as property by all the other racial groups.

During the revolution (1891-1904) each of these four groups either started in power (the big whites), came close to power (the small whites), or came into power (the coloreds and the blacks, on separate occasions). Each, in their turn, considered the economic and political structure of the island and decided that the only way to run a profitable operation was to continue cranking out sugar and coffee with either slave labor or some near equivalent of slave labor.

With the big whites, their desire to keep the plantation system intact is obvious. This was the system that worked almost entirely to their benefit. From their view in the crow’s nest of Haitian society, the only thing that could be made better was to declare independence and shrug off the trade monopoly of Paris. So when the big whites were in power, that is what they proposed: keep the plantations, keep white supremacy, and declare independence so they could trade with the Dutch, Spanish, and English. They wanted, in essence, to replace the flag on the boat but keep everything else the same.

When the small whites rioted, burned things down, and shot those they considered their political enemies (about as close as they came to power), they demanded a cut of the treasure. They wanted to keep white supremacy, keep slavery, and they wanted the ability to own small plantations.  From their spot on the deck of Haitian society, the small whites wanted access to the whole boat but didn’t want to change anything about the vessel.

When the coloreds came to power, they tried to establish racial equality, abolish slavery, keep the plantation system, and wrote a system of labor laws that forced the blacks to work on the plantations keeping them slaves in everything but name. From their contested position on the deck of Haitian society, the coloreds wanted a new flag on the boat, some nice sounding words about how all people could access the whole boat, and laws that kept the blacks down below decks doing all the hard work while receiving very little of the reward.

When the blacks came to power, they established black supremacy, abolished slavery, kept the plantation system, and borrowed the same labor laws that the coloreds had established keeping many of their fellow blacks in virtual slavery . From the death trap of below decks, the blacks (or at least the small cadre that seized power) wanted a new flag on the boat, a new paint job, all the whites thrown in the water, some lofty words about freedom, and a set of laws that kept everyone not in the military still locked down below decks doing all the hard work. Yes to plantations and yes to slavery but let’s call it something else. Same boat, different captains.

While the revolution raged and numerous factions took turns at the helm, it seemed almost impossible for anyone to think of any other way to run things than the way they were anchored to: coffee and sugar plantations cultivated with slave labor. After the revolution, the plantation system eventually collapsed for a variety of reasons: refusal of the international community to recognize Haiti as a nation, continued civil war and unstable governments, and various wars amongst the European powers that hampered trade. 

Things were much more complicated than I’m making them sound, of course. There were cross currents within every group. There were a few whites, blacks, and coloreds who argued and fought for genuine racial equality. There were people who sided with the British or the Spanish. There were plenty of people who didn’t care for politics at all and just wanted enough bread and water to be left alone. I’ve shaped the story to fit my thesis: humans cling to the economic and political systems that they are born into and anything they propose outside of those systems are chained to that anchor.

What do you think? Does the anchoring effect function at the societal level, or am I plumbing depths unfathomable and or barren? Is the Haitian revolution and the plantation system it was moored to a good example of the anchoring effect or could the historical winds have blown another way?

There were hefty doses of genocide, racism, torture, suffering, assassination, and war that went on during the Haitian revolution. Duncan’s podcast includes discussion and analysis of all that. It is not my intention to underplay any of that grittiness with my cutesy writing. The anchoring effect is one thing that floated to the surface for me when I finally finished wading through all 19 episodes, took out my headphones and tried to fit some words to the waves that had just crashed over me.