That Ain’t White Rice  

Judith Carney disputes previously held beliefs that Portuguese had transported riziculture to South Carolina by utilizing sources to create a plausible alternative narrative while also pointing out flaws in the previously held belief. She pushes the idea that the role of African slaves in the transportation of riziculture from Africa to South Carolina was more important than previously thought. The sources she uses ranges from secondary to primary to support her claims many of which setup circumstantial scenarios to suggest her claims. In the section of Carney’s article discussing the how African Rice (Oryza Glaberrima) got to America and thus how slaves brought rice to America Carney shows how she effectively uses sources to build off one another to create plausible alternative situations. 

In Carney shows examples of slaves being imported for their riziculture skills by citing the Journal of traditional agriculture and botany to lay evidence of the transportation of riziculture by slaves. The information are comments by a slave captain named Samuel Gamble saying how Baga slaves(slaves from Guinea) had good skills in riziculture and were being scattered across the middle passage. The captain’s remarks comes from a book in 1991 about the rice and slaves in South Carolina(Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in South Carolina). The book is published by a university press which release works that are reviewed for accuracy to be used for research which makes it authoritative. 

Judith Carney also uses information from a book from 1870 (Historical Geographic Dictionary of Maranhao Province) which contains an anecdote where the Portuguese wanted to be less dependent on South Carolina rice which was a major rice exporter and imported slaves to work on plantations. Slaves skilled in riziculture were imported from Africa to work on plantations of Asian rice(Sativa Oryza), however some slaves planted Glaberrima rice as it was the rice familiar to them, but Glaberrima had a grain breakage problem and came out less valuable so laws were made to prevent the cultivation of Glaberrima and punished those who tried even white farmers. This source leaves an example of the introduction of Glaberrima rice cultivation by slaves that can be repeated in other countries.  

The previous sources show how slaves can bring riziculture but Carney also uses several sources once each to show that African Rice (Oryza Glaberrima) had been present in South Carolina citing observations of Glaberrima by people in the 18th century. One source is from a 1953 book by E.M. Betts which says that Thomas Jefferson bought Glaberrima rice from Guinea and cultivated Glaberrima to reduce the high mortality rate of slaves who were growing rice in diseased swamps. There were problems with harvesting the rice caused by the husks of the plant that resulted in grain breakage. The information from E. M. Betts, Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book is a compilation of Thomas Jefferson’s activity in agriculture with E. M. Betts own commentary, it is a secondary source and the author’s comments may introduce bias into the story as Jefferson could be changed to romanticize Thomas Jefferson. The book was published by a university press so the source is thoroughly reviewed. Carney also cites John Drayton who has heard of Thomas Jefferson’s experimentation with rice and recognizes the rice as those that are usually cultivated by Africans and called it Guinea rice. The information is from Drayton’s 1802 book(A View of South Carolina) which is very close time proximity of the event making it a primary source and John Drayton was the Governor of South Carolina which shows another moment of Glaberrima’s presence. These sources are only used a few times on two pages to provide the basis for Glaberrima in South Carolina. Since Carney uses information from different sources from different time periods it shows how she uses diversified information to build her argument. 

When Carney discusses the comments about the technicalities of glaberrima cultivation she uses her own scholarship which is evident in the footnotes she leaves about processing glaberrima. The source she cites is from a 1996 article by herself possibly introducing bias and can allow her to ignore the talking points of other scholars, however she does not do this which is proven by the footnote underneath. In the footnote, Carney directly addresses how to avoid a grain breakage problem with a source from Hiko-Ichi Oka, Report of trip for investigations of rice in Latin American countries, which is from the National Institutes of Genetics in Japan. The information the source provides is unrelated to how riziculture was transported, but does provide background information for a reason for the grain breakage problems that appear in many of the sources. 

Carney demonstrates an encompassing knowledge of her topic as she uses multiple sources that range from works that directly relate to South Carolina such as Drayton’s comments to Glaberrima rice’s presence in South America. She gives background information for many of the events that occur such as for the grain breakage that affected Thomas Jefferson in South Carolina to the Portuguese in the plantations in South America. Her scholarship on the subject is also included in the paper, but she does not prominently use her own sources to make arguments showing how she uses multiple views that support her claims. Carney uses most of her sources once in this section to provide small pieces of a puzzle that create the picture of slaves bringing riziculture to America. The interconnectedness of the sources she provides is redundant such as the many sources she provides that shows Glaberrima’s presence in South Carolina. The order of the evidence was not how it was originally formatted, but it shows how Carney’s sources support each other with the slaves being imported for their skills to them using Glaberrima to the grain breakage problem that hindered exportation of rice when the Glaberrima was around.  

In conclusion, Judith Carney uses sources abundantly and the sources she uses are very interconnected. The sources in the section about Glaberrima presence in America are used together to provide multiple pieces of evidence that are diversified build on each other to support her claim. Carney carefully uses sources based on her own knowledge of the topic of rice shown by her own previous scholarship on rice and South Carolina. Even though the sources provide consistent information these are circumstantial, and Carney uses them as a replacement for a non-existent document that would directly state her claim at the time of the publication of her paper. 

Self Reflection

Writing the exploratory essay was difficult due to my lack of experience analyzing sources and this essay focusing on that aspect. Even though there were thorough instructions I didn’t understand how to analyze the sources as the original sources were dense texts and I often didn’t have direct access to the page Carney pulls information from. I may have unintentionally shot myself in the leg by concentrating on one section, I pulled sources only from the section about rice in America, because I felt too overwhelmed by the whole paper and it was recommended to focus on one section. I was also focused on getting a lot of sources that popped out to be analyzed rather than focusing on how a few sources were used. 

I think my essay shows how I failed to analyze Carney’s source use as I just provided evidence she used to support her argument which I did because I thought it did demonstrate how Carney uses sources. What Hopkins was asking for was whether Carney uses sources appropriately, however my original thought is what stuck and what I ended up doing. I also disregarded the flow, since it was preventing me from continuing, for the sake of including whether the sources were primary or secondary and how reputable were the sources. Therefore, the parts of paragraphs analyzing the sources seem disconnected and during these sections I looked for the sources online to say in my opinion whether the sources were worth being included. I think that I only partially explored and analyzed the genre of analyzing source use. 

I tried to outline my essay as a strategy, but I didn’t understand how to analyze the sources and I put the information and the authors the information is cited from instead. While I was trying to analyze sources I had two tabs open on my laptop with Judith Carney’s paper on one and the original source on the other to remind myself what I’m looking at and whether the information matched or whether descriptions of the source were valid. During this I was exploring the Course Learning Outcome (CLO) involving locating research sources where I searched the internet for Carney’s sources.  

The Group tools on blackboard was interesting, but it did not really increase the group interaction as it just felt like another assignment and we didn’t really understand how to use it. Our group used the file exchange the most and a few of us used the discussion to ask questions, but I don’t think we chose the right group tool to use since we couldn’t give feedback directly. The quick peer review session in class was more useful; originally I was going to use other sources but I saw someone else also use it, so I was afraid of copying someone else. I still gained some experience in collaboration and advanced in the collaboration engagement CLO. The assignment paper Hopkins gave did not say we had to cite sources using MLA format just to explore whether the author used a Chicago or MLA format, thus I did not explore the citation conventions CLO.  

In conclusion, the CLOs I practiced involved collaboration, locating research sources, practicing strategies, and attempting to explore an academic genre. I wished that I had more experience in analyzing sources and more collaboration during this assignment.