As mentioned in the morning thread, VP Harris will be visiting Florida today to call attention to the new standards for teaching black history in the state, which she called “revisionist history” in a speech last night:
“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said at a convention for the traditionally Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta Inc. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”
The DeSantis-appointed African American history task force that created the standards pushed back on criticism by Harris and others. You can read about how DeSantis stacked the task force with right-wing allies here, but to summarize, most are black Repubs, and some are known crackpots.
One task force member who issued a statement pushing back on the criticism is Frances Presley Rice, a right-wing crank who produces helpful (to Repubs) screeds about how Dems are the REAL racists because they did Jim Crow. Here’s an excerpt of the statement the task force released:
Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history… We encourage everyone to view these robust standards for themselves.”
So I took them up on that challenge. Here are a few items I found while skimming through a fraction of the published standards [PDF] yesterday:
Instruction includes writings by Africans living in the United States and their effect on the abolitionist movement (e.g., Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, David Walker, Martin Delaney).
Did y’all know these historical figures were “Africans living in the United States”? I thought they were Americans since each was born in this country. But see, that’s exactly the type of liberal nitpicking that infuriates conservatives. They probably wrote it that way on purpose.
Examine the causes, courses and consequences of the slave trade in the colonies from 1609-1776. SS.912.AA.1.1
Examine the condition of slavery as it existed in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe prior to 1619.
Benchmark Clarifications: Clarification 1: Instruction includes how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey). Clarification 2: Instruction includes the practice of the Barbary Pirates in kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery in Muslim countries (i.e., Muslim slave markets in North Africa, West Africa, Swahili Coast, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean slave trade). Clarification 3: Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian cultures (e.g., Sumerian law code, Indian caste system). Clarification 4: Instruction includes the similarities between serfdom and slavery and emergence of the term “slave” in the experience of Slavs. Clarification 5: Instruction includes how slavery among indigenous peoples of the Americas was utilized prior to and after European colonization.
I think this is their subtextual retort to “The 1619 Project.” Since white people were enslaved prior to that, and black and indigenous people have been enslavers, suck it, libs — little Snotleigh need not feel guilty or uncomfortable. Not that he ever really did, but I think that’s what this is all about. Just a hunch.
Describe the emergence, growth, destruction and rebuilding of black communities during Reconstruction and beyond.
Benchmark Clarifications: Clarification 1: Instruction includes the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on individual freedoms (e.g., the Civil Rights Cases, Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, lynchings, Columbian Exposition of 1893). Clarification 2: Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre. Clarification 3: Instruction includes communities such as: Lincolnville (FL), Tullahassee (OK), Eatonville (FL).
Emphasis mine. I think the Ocoee Massacre remains the most deadly election-related race massacre in U.S. history to this day. So how did black people perpetrate violence? At Ocoee, in self defense, a black man named July Perry shot and killed two members of the KKK lynch mob that had surrounded his house because a friend was thought to have taken refuge there after attempting to vote in Florida while black.
The mob eventually lynched Perry anyway, killed more than 30 other black people, burned their houses and businesses to the ground, and established Ocoee as an all-white “sundown town.” But it’s important to know that both sides acted violently and had violence perpetrated upon them.
Anyhoo, when DeSantis pitches himself as “Trump without the baggage” or “Trump except competent,” there’s some truth to that. (Though at present, he seems to be finding out that “Trump without the showmanship” isn’t a political winner.) The truth is Trump knows how to stir up racial resentment and ethnic division and is capable of delivering on it for the base in crude ways like the Muslim ban.
But DeSantis is the master of the bamboozle because he understands how government works. He also knows how to satisfy the lizard-brain urge to strike back without getting the icky bigot schmoo all over himself and his supporters, at least in the eyes of people who aren’t paying much attention.
In this instance, DeSantis has layered on plausible deniability by enlisting crackpot people of color to do the dirty work, including Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. and the department’s African American history task force. Trump had to hand out “Blacks for Trump” shirts to white people. DeSantis is building a diverse coalition of right-wing cranks to whitewash black history and enact a far-right agenda.
We’re goddamn lucky the man has all the charisma of a damp lump of dryer lint, and I hope our luck holds. But we’ll need more than luck. As VP Harris said, “We will not stand for it.”
Elizabelle
Had never heard of Ocoee. Thank you, Betty.
Baud
DeSantified.
Elizabelle
Are we treated to the travails of the Irish? They were slaves, I tell you. //
The Thin Black Duke
The first step in erasing marginalized groups is erasing their history.
Old School
In addition, all prom themes will be required to be Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town.”
jimmiraybob
I’m wondering how long it’ll be before they officially reassert that Lincoln and the Union were the traitors that stood in the way of the advancement program for chattel slaves that the compassionate peoples of the Confederate states were trying desperately to implement. And that seceding from the Union was really all about helping the chattel slaves against northern aggression.
Codifying the Lost Cause narrative.
WereBear
Trump fans love the baggage. They crave the incompetence.
Finally able to read my copy of Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers by John W. Dean and Dr. Robert Altemeyer. There really is a pattern and we all know what it is.
Alison Rose
I’d love to ask any white person who believes this: “So do you wish that it had been reversed, and white people were the enslaved ones? Y’know, since it was so beneficial for the enslaved people and all.” And when they say no, give them a wide-eyed stare and ask why not. And if they hem and haw and just say well you know PARTS of it were maybe not great, tell them I’m super confused and I don’t know history because people like them erased it, so could they elaborate and tell me what the bad parts of slavery were. Make them fucking enumerate all the reasons why THEY would’ve have wanted to be enslaved. Then ask why Black people should have been happy about it.
They’d still find a way to weasel out of admitting their bullshit, but it would be enjoyable to watch them bumble around, and hopefully might wake a few other people up.
Baud
Basic whataboutism. Obviously slavery isn’t unique the U.S., but the practice of white Americans enslaving black people has unique affected American history and society. Although it’s always possible to find some crazy liberal somewhere, I would think almost all American liberals would welcome a decision by any other Western or non-Western country to deal with the contemporary effects of historical injustices in their society. But white right-wingers feel picked on because American liberals are going to focus on American society for obvious reasons.
Maxim
Very fine people on both sides.
@Baud: American slavery was practiced in an especially pernicious way, not only because of the racial division, but because of the widespread practice of splitting up families by selling them off.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
We visited wife’s sister and her husband last weekend in the North Carolina town he grew up in (he wanted to return there after his retirement as a NPHS doctor, to live in his childhood home). Anyway, he was driving me around and told me that he went to segregated elementary and middle schools, and that official desegregation didn’t happen until his freshman year in high school. He said he suspected his elementary school principal was the local Grand Dragon.
He also told me that to his father’s credit, he wasn’t sent to the local “Christian Academy” that so many of his friends found themselves at post-desegregation.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Baud:
I always heard the one about “black tribes were enslaving other black tribes for sale”, but it missed a basic point – the slave trade incentivized the taking of slaves by making a market for it.
Baud
@Maxim:
I can’t say I’m an expert in other forms of slavery. I wouldn’t even consider myself an expert in American slavery. But I think it’s apparent that Roman slavery doesn’t have any identifiable present day effects. Our society, on the other hand, continues to be drenched in the after-effects of American slavery, as demonstrated aptly by what DeSantis is doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Exactly.
mrmoshpotato
And the rest are soon-to-be-known crackpots! 😁
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Maybe I’m paranoid, but DeSantis and crew seem to have a talent for picking issues where there might be a multiracial, unisex normie perception that liberals are overly sensitive and should shut up and move on.
Example: there’s no way a claque of “anti-woke” academics inadvertently used the word “slave” instead of “enslaved people” — they figured it would provoke controversy. They’re betting that most people who hear complaints about that will roll their eyes and dismiss the complainers as woke scolds.
They’ve adeptly exploited genuine controversy about trans-inclusive language, women and girls’ sports, etc., to paint all liberals as crackpots. I think Trump was dumber and cruder and therefore easier to dismiss.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@jimmiraybob:
My grade school and middle school history instruction consisted of slavery>genteel antebellum society>Uncle Tom’s Cabin>Lincoln-Douglass Debates>Lincoln Election>complicated reasons for secession>noble Confederate officers kneeling in prayer by horses -> Appomattox … Reconstruction; evil yankee carpetbaggers
I kinda slept through US history in high school, because my desk was in the back and against a wall, and that teacher was an assistant football coach who liked to run filmstrips in a dark room while he went to bullshit with the other coaches. My head hit that wall for a nice mid morning nap n’ drool every single class.
It wasn’t until adulthood that I read anything about the Cornerstone Speech, the extent of gratuitous SCOTUS fuckery in the Dred Scott opinion, the extent of how much fucking around was occasioned by the Fugitive Slave Act, how Reconstruction was abandoned, Tulsa, Ocoee, etc.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think that’s a classic Republican strategy. Trump is really the exception here because his style is more “in your face” rather than being clever.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Betty Cracker:
You’re not wrong.
WereBear
I rampaged through every library I could as I went to a wide variety of schools, so I can’t remember what was taught. Compared to the real stuff I would find in the adult section, it was definitely watered down.
mrmoshpotato
I’ll take the damp dryer lint over Meatball Ron DeathSantis.
(My continuing apologies to meatballs.)
WereBear
I can easily picture DeSantis in the white-shoes-and-belt with a polyester suit (they don’t wrinkle) of my humid Florida childhood. The ones that were really too old for youth ministry and had mean little eyes like a hog.
E.
Thank you for highlighting this BC. It is so depressing, sad, and embarrassing. I told my wife today that if our child was headed to a school that teaches this, I would favor moving to another state. We are in TN with a three-year old so it may come to that after all. The “Africans living in the U.S.” sent literal shivers down my spine and I’m a white guy. A white guy whose ancestors only got to America a century ago. Nobody ever called me a Swede living in the U.S.
Geminid
@E.: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s father was Swedish. So naturally his fellow Marine officers nicknamed him “Dutch.”
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: I’ve heard some of them basically say ‘Well, we took them from that hellish jungle they were livin in over thar. Brought them over to freedum & Murca’
Matt McIrvin
I remember “‘Slave’ came from ‘Slav'” being the “Irish were slaves too” of people of Eastern European ancestry complaining about affirmative action, back in the 1980s. The etymology is correct but not tremendously relevant to US history.
Paul in KY
@Maxim: Roman slavery was much, much better, IMO, than the hellish version imposed on our black brothers & sisters.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@WereBear:
So I keep noticing the @antifaoperative threads posts listing the misdeeds of cops, pols and pastors regarding sex crimes against minors.
I remember – even as a kid – thinking that grown assed men and women in their late twenties on up must be weird to hang around with teens as youth pastors. I tended to find them creepy and developmentally stunted – we had our own language, didn’t really want them around, and had no unique insights to offer them, so why would they want to socialize with us? That role was not the role of a teacher or mentor.
bbleh
@Alison Rose: that’s how I deal with people who oppose affirmative action. “So you think you’d be better off if you had been born Black, to Black parents, and so on? No? Do you think you’d be as well off, with your house and your cars and … no?”
schrodingers_cat
@Paul in KY: There are examples of slaves of Muslim sultans ascending thrones in India.
Paul in KY
@Baud: From what I’ve read, Roman slavery was much more egalitarian and had many more codified safeguards than the version practiced down South.
Cameron
Our Liberal Media: “Responsible education officials in Florida bring rationality and balanced guidance to American history in the classroom by teaching ‘Both sides did it.'”
Baud
@Paul in KY: The Romans would say that.
@Cameron: It takes two to enslave.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I truly think DeSatanis (and his wife) are more inherently evil than TFG.
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: I know exactly what you mean. He’s got the sour-faced look and rageful demeanor of an ambitious dean at a crappy fundamentalist charter school — one who’s been (unfairly, in his opinion!) sent out to supervise the pick-up point in the hot sun and is just itching to express his resentment by screaming at a child or kicking a puppy.
West of the Rockies
@Alison Rose:
I like that plan. But, of course, the bigot you were addressing would probably swiftly scamper/slither away while sobbing that you are the real racist–racist against white people!
Paul in KY
@WereBear: A leisure suit. Maybe sky blue or a death-chamber-green colour. Hair all slicked up.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: Some of them have pretty fantastical beliefs about what affirmative action is/was. There’s a pretty common belief among white people that any Black kid who graduates from high school with reasonable grades gets an automatic four-year free ride college scholarship.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s consistent with their view that 20% of people are trans and half the US budget goes to foreign aid. And that blue cities have all burned to the ground.
justawriter
And Rosewood was an urban renewal project
Matt McIrvin
@jimmiraybob: Ever read the actual letter that is the source for the myth that Robert E. Lee was against slavery? It’s basically that. Lee bemoans the moral stain that enslaving people puts on the souls of the white men who do it, but says that it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make for the sake of the benefit to Black people from being enslaved.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Ah, the classic ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you” defense.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Great point! Our slavery was so much more barbaric.
Keith P.
Ron doesn’t see people as color; he sees them as flavors of pudding – vanilla, chocolate, lemon, butterscotch.
Baud
OT interesting reddit thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/155gidz/thoughts/
Paul in KY
@Baud: You’re right. They would say that. But only after studying both and debating and whatnot before coming up with their reasoned response.
gvg
@Paul in KY: Uh I think there were some salt mines and other things that weren’t OK. Also gladiator fights for the amusement of rich decadent citizens. We just don’t know as much about really ancient times. I also recall some snippets about Greek slavery and serfdom in various times and places. If you dig into it you always end up getting sick. Its always bad. Really. Don’t bother to split hairs. Don’t try and compare. Power imbalances are corrupting. Excuses about them are corrupting even if you are trying to make someone see how bad another thing is. Slavery is bad.
Cameron
No slouch he, Governor DeSantis has his pudding-drenched hands on all kinds of projects, not just public-school indoctrination. Consider his assault on woke beer:
https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-wants-sue-bud-light-1814445
jimmiraybob
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
It wasn’t until after high school that I really started to become interested in American and European History. And even at university I had to seek out the stuff that was otherwise being whitewashed out of existence.
The truly sad thing about teaching state-approved “patriotic” history rather than factual history is that it robs the people of their own self-autonomy by creating a mythical realm versus reality. It is literally state brainwashing.
Omnes Omnibus
@gvg: Yes. I think the correct approach to any of these arguments is “So what? This slavery happened here. It was wrong, and people are still suffering its pernicious effects.”
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Some Roman slaves could have a decent life, especially if they were educated. Others could be treated pretty rough, though. The Elder Cato had strict rules that his slaves stay in the beds and sleep if they were not working. Dinner guests described how Cato would excuse himself after dinner to go whip a slave who had made serving errors. Later generations considered him a model Roman.
A Roman citizen had the right to crucify his slave for serious misbehavior. But then, a Roman father had the right to execute not just his slaves but his children. The Romans were a cruel and bloody race, and historians have attributed their strict devotion to law to their need to bridle a violent nature.
This is not to say that slavery as practiced in the US was less evil than in ancient Rome. It was clearly more evil.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Interesting read. My take: they are assholes who like being mean to people, especially people they think are ‘beneath’ them.
Alison Rose
@Paul in KY: Willing to be every last one of them would have gladly remained in their original lands. But racists would never accept that. HOW COULD ANYTHING BE BETTER THAN PROXIMITY TO WHITE PEOPLE.
Paul in KY
@gvg: It was bad (duh) but the slaves back then had more actual rights and could buy themselves out of slavery, etc. Still alot better than being stuck as a slave in MS (unless you got sent to the salt mines).
Redshift
It finally dawned on me recently what the “nothing that makes a student feel uncomfortable about their ancestry” BS is really all about. I hadn’t connected it with the bizarre conservative belief that “white guilt” is the entire reason why liberals favor civil rights, action to make our society more equitable, etc. It’s an article of faith with them that we all feel guilty and responsible for what white people broadly did. So “don’t make little Snotleigh feel guilty or uncomfortable” is “let’s make sure he doesn’t learn anything that might make him a liberal.”
It’s just so ludicrous on its face. Another one of those questions they’ll never listen to: when has a kid ever sat in history class, hearing about terrible things done by people in the past, and thought “those are my people, and I’m responsible for what they did!” The answer is never. If they care enough to feel anything, it’s maybe “that’s awful, those are terrible people!” And that’s what they want to prevent.
Alison Rose
@West of the Rockies: REVERSE RACISM!!!!
Then I’d strap them to a chair and Clockwork-Orange their eyes and make them watch this.
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
They don’t believe that. What they believe is that Black Africans were a bunch of savages, and the European slavers were doing them a favor by introducing them to European civilization, especially Christianity. They [ETA: meaning White folk defending slavery] wouldn’t benefit from slavery because they are already civilized Christians. Of course this justifies continued maltreatment of Blacks today; you can tell they’re less civilized by the high Black crime rate and other negative social indicators. They still aren’t really civilized, so they don’t deserve equal rights. Once you’ve accepted the basic tenets of White supremacy, and all this stuff makes perfect sense.
mrmoshpotato
Haha!
New Deal democrat
“Instruction includes writings by Africans living in the United States and their effect on the abolitionist movement (e.g., Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, David Walker, Martin Delaney).”
Wow, this is the exact logic of Dred Scott. Even free Blacks could not be US citizens, so they were not Americans, just “living in the United States.” Except I don’t think even Roger Taney would have called them Africans instead of Negroes, so in that respect it’s even worse.
rikyrah
The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) tweeted at 11:00 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:
.@NoLabelsOrg are functionally pro-Trump. They’ve admitted themselves that they will split the vote and help Trump win. They are willing to sacrifice our American experiment to benefit their right wing, dark money donors. It’s despicable. https://t.co/XARFg0LP26
(https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1682420279702609922?t=AALm0i8tyTBAWe7HssjXAA&s=03)
Alison Rose
@Roger Moore: Sure, but there are plenty of them who insist that enslaved people had it pretty darn good and were actually quite happy to work for the kindly plantation overseer. There was one history book in Alabama or somewhere that said the enslaved people loved taking care of their cabins as if they were their own. Lots of white folks will tell you outright that slavery wasn’t any different than any other kind of work.
rikyrah
@The Thin Black Duke:
YEP
jimmiraybob
@Matt McIrvin:
I think that I did once when I was “researching” the actual causes of the civil war (including the Cornerstone speech and other news articles).
But just to be sure, I looked it up: “How long their subjugation may be necessary is Known & ordered by a wise & merciful Providence.” In other words, it’s not up to man to decide the issue but the Christian God to bring his order…. and who knows when that’ll happen so may as well divide the Union and get 3/4-million Americans killed to protect the institution.
At least I think this is the letter (Antebellum): Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (December 27, 1856).
He always could have gone with “God sent Lincoln and the tide of abolition with a mission to end the evil” but no. When people make up what God does and doesn’t want it always seems to trend toward individual preference and prejudice.
Cameron
@Redshift: Maybe the kids would feel more comfortable if the teacher wore one of those “Fuck Your Feelings” t-shirts.
The Pale Scot
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Most of the incentive were firearms, if a tribe refused to participate they would the slave instead of the slaver
Redshift
@Paul in KY:
From what I’ve read, they got more rights in the later periods of the empire (possibly because the Romans were no longer conquering much new territory and bringing home lots of slaves); in the earlier periods they had pretty much none and were just property. And while scholars debate the specifics, there’s general agreement that the number of Roman slaves who were freed was pretty small, even if the possibility was there.
It’s tempting to use other societies like Rome to demonstrate how our slavery was worse, but that comes with a risk of being drawn into overly-positive interpretations the “less bad” system.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Trump is winning with the Republican base because they want in your face rather than clever. They’re tired of hiding their bigotry behind clever language and attempts to convince normies. They want to own the libs, and now that Trump has supposedly given them that they don’t want to go back.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: And the Lincoln Lads (h/t driftglass) are despicable for building their careers telling Rethuglican voters the bullshit they wanted to hear.
These assholes want a party that knows No Labels is bullshit? It’s called the Democratic party, pal!
Jay
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66271537
p.a.
If you actually want to respond instead of just walking away: when you hear “well, they were still better off here…”
Remember the middle passage death rate was ~40%. “Were they better off?”
Interesting tangent: many conservative societies are deeply interested in genealogy- bloodlines don’tcha know.
Not Southern Slave society. Didn’t want to dig too deep into who exactly their forebears were playing with and to whom they might have had a blood connection.
E.
@gvg: Slaves in Greece and Rome were usually war captives. They were not distinguished by color or race, merely by the bad luck of being on the losing side in some skirmish or another. Those who were able-bodied males died swiftly in mines and road building, or, in later Rome, arenas. Children of slaves were considered free. I don’t know if it was worse or better but I do know it was awful. Either way, pretty irrelevant to U.S. history.
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Oh, yes! They caulked the holes in the walls of the shacks & tried to keep the vermin down, etc. etc. Just like a modern homeowner they was!
Paul in KY
@jimmiraybob: A racist sees what he want’s to see and disregards the rest…
Paul in KY
@Redshift: I am thinking more about the Imperial Period. Good points. It was all terrible.
Jay
While slavery has a long history of presence in Africa, the slave trade to the America’s and the Caribbean changed the whole structure and supercharged “the industry”. Entire tribes and Kingdoms were destroyed, changing the local balances of power ,robbing entire civilizations of technology and inherited knowledge. Some regions still have not recovered from the effects.
trollhattan
@Jay: So it’s literally happening. We are jailing the women. And the mothers, other family members, anybody else involved. A personal matter is now a felony.
I am so very relieved that no actual crime exists in Nebraska and they can amuse themselves with other matters in their spare time.
Alison Rose
@Jay: Nice family values they got there in the Cornhusker state.
Redshift
The big thing that I never learned about in school, and didn’t learn about until fairly recently was that “race” as we now have it was created to justify slavery and colonialism. The idea that there were broad categories of people defined by continent and vaguely looking similar wasn’t a concept Europeans already had. First the slave trade for profit started, and then it required a reason why some people were inherently lesser and could be property.
Prejudice against the next village or the next tribe is probably inherent in humans, part of favoring people related to you to ensure your genes carry on, and plenty of societies extended that to prejudices about entire ethnicities or territories, but building on that to assign characteristics and worth to broad categories of unrelated people is a thoroughly modern thing.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@New Deal democrat:
My favorite aspect of Dred Scott was that SCOTUS gratuitously ruled the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional while simultaneously nationalizing slavery by allowing you to move anywhere with your slaves, keeping them as slaves and even enslaving the descendants of those slaves even when born on free soil.
Taney then seemed surprised and shocked by the outrage, and felt that because he had spoken, that was the final expression on the matter.
Mike in NC
Ron DeSaster just wants to be the greatest governor in the history of Floriduh, who up until now was Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, who more than a hundred years ago wanted to drain the Everglades and evict all of the African-Americans living in the state. It’s nice to dream big!
Sister Golden Bear
@The Thin Black Duke:
Definitely.
Redshift
@E.:
I thought that was one of the distinctions of the Roman system, but I was looking it up to respond to something here and apparently that was not the case. (An example of how easy it is to accept something that sounds plausible and supports what one wants to believe about it being less bad.)
But the point about race is key — there was no concept that some kinds of people automatically ought to be slaves. Similar to the BS bit from the Florida standards about white people being enslaved by Muslims — they weren’t enslaved because they were white, but because they were captives. The fact that it happened to white people (among others) is only significant if you’re steeped in white supremacy.
Redshift
@Redshift: And the other big thing was that the various arguments that Christianity supported slavery were also made up after large-scale slavery was well underway, as a justification. They also weren’t a pre-existing belief that motivated people to start it.
Steeplejack
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
This was in Kentucky, right?
Citizen Alan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I don’t remember elementary/middle school discussion of slavery at all. I do remember that the entirety of the discussion about slavery in HS American History consisted of spending several days watching the then-recent Roots miniseries. And that was probably better and more accurate than what I’d have gotten had I stayed in the nearly-all-white county school my older sister graduated from instead of the school in town that was about 25% black.
MisterDancer
And as Kay among others have said time and again, no one in the national media will pay a lick of real attention.
New Deal democrat
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: “Taney then seemed surprised and shocked by the outrage, and felt that because he had spoken, that was the final expression on the matter.”
in the mid-1970’s, Potter Stewart and an aide were being driven to the White House for a ceremony, and spotted a demonstration. Told that it was pro-lifers protesting on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he was equally clueless, saying, “I don’t understand. We decided that.”
Now Chief Justice Roberts et al simply don’t understand why the country doesn’t just bow down and obey.
Scout211
FAFO Texas edition.
Geminid
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: During Senate debate over legislation restricting slavery in territories gained in the Mexican War, a Southern Senator had a question for sponsor Ben Wade of Michigan:
“Does this law mean I could not take my beloved Mammie to New Mexico?”
“You could still take your ‘beloved Mammie’ to New Mexico,” Wade answered. “You just couldn’t sell her once you got there.”
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin:
Related, one of the things I learned from the Smithsonian African American History Museum (it’s amazing! go if you get a chance) is that the horrors of slavery were no secret to anyone at the time. They obviously weren’t to the people directly inflicting them, but with the way the colonial and early America period is often portrayed, it’s easy to imagine that ordinary people were just willfully blind to it, and could be convinced by the “well-treated” myths.
The museum has a number of quotes from people who profited from slavery but weren’t getting their hands dirty, things like “yes, it’s a terrible degrading thing, but without it, how would we get our sugar?” Quite eye-opening.
Bill Arnold
@gvg:
This. Slaver/Slave relationships are always bad.
Even including softer versions that aren’t chattel slavery. (Link to illustrate an aspect of the evil.)
(Am not fond of social hierarchies in general, but that’s broader and philosophical.)
Brachiator
The supremely ironic Randy Newman song is the kind of history these idiots would teach.
When I was a teen, I would read some conservative pundits trying to push the supposed benefits of slavery. It is crazy to see these arguments resurfacing again.
MisterDancer
These “white people got enslaved by Muslims!” assholes are unserious people. We know this, because they actually ignore the very real use of racial differences in various aspects of slavery in Islamic-focused governments.
We know this because of the Zani slave rebellion(s) in the latter have of the 800s CE. Generally regarded as the most serious of the rebellions, some scholars see it as significant that the Zani are, basically, Black people — taken from SE Africa into the area that is modern-day Iraq for the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. There are discussions that the Rebellions happened, in part, because (and I’m treading lightly, here) the ‘Abbasids valued darker-skinned slaves far less than ones taken elsewhere, and treated them far more brutally. On top of a lack of allowing the Islamic traditions of slave-freeing (manumission) to be as freely applied, there was a massive rise in anger amongst this specific slave population.
And although I’m certainly years behind state-of-the-art on Ottoman enslavement, I certainly recall that there was a serious difference in treatment of slaves in that ear, centuries later, also driven by skin color. Indeed, the Ottomans as I recall explicitly sought different kinds of slaves from different populations, although I’d have to dig out citations, thereof.
But in general, Islamic states were…not as color-blind as we tend to think.
Tony G
@Baud: When I was a kid (back in the sixties and early seventies) we didn’t learn about ANY of the anti-black massacres and lynchings in U.S. history. That’s what people like DeSantis want to return to — a time before education was “woke”.
EarthWindFire
@jimmiraybob: You mean they haven’t? I’ve heard plenty from rw clowns about how slavery in the Confederacy would have gone away on its own because of the Industrial Revolution and reasons. So the North never should have gotten involved.
That the actually happened sharecropper system and Jim Crow completely proves them wrong doesn’t sway them from this alternative history one bit.
rikyrah
Talking about Sundown Towns:
THEE PainInMyalgia![]()
![]()
(@tweetysoph86) tweeted at 6:26 PM on Thu, Jul 20, 2023:
I don’t know if this helps but people on TikTok have tried to do a kind of updated Green Book. These towns shouldn’t be allowed and are evil to say the least but we all know they’d happily say they didn’t see/do anything & law enforcement is in on it too. TikTok:@wearepushblack
Michelle_BYoung (@michelle_byoung) tweeted at 6:40 PM on Thu, Jul 20, 2023:
“Law enforcement is in on it too” this the KEY point. One of the main reasons W folks can travel through Black areas safely (aside from most of us don’t want revenge) is law enforcement WILL ACT if something happens to THEM that’s not true when harm comes to Black people.
(https://twitter.com/michelle_byoung/status/1682173667269279746?t=-eAPEb50q–15dHGGwDluw&s=03)
rikyrah
Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) tweeted at 10:18 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:
As Trump’s efforts to block expected indictments out of Fulton County continue in the lower court, Chief Judge Ural Glanville has entered an order recusing all Fulton County Superior Court judges from ruling on the matter.
A judge from another judicial circuit will be assigned. https://t.co/7RqYupb3dK
(https://twitter.com/AnnaBower/status/1682409647293046789?t=JAhzp_TW3xa2HljkB_sSxg&s=03)
rikyrah
Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) tweeted at 7:12 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:![]()
A good description of the GOP’s math problem and their strategy.
“They aren’t geared toward growing the GOP vote, merely toward suppressing Democratic totals.”
https://t.co/cGu5bhwpBE
(https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1682362834141716482?t=l1-OtnlNcwG-GYE0iSq-0w&s=03)
rikyrah
Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) tweeted at 7:37 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:
Trump prosecutions consume campaign funds and messaging as charges mount. One bit here: Ronna McDaniel and Dave Bossie went to Bedminster Monday to argue for Trump to participate in GOP debate; he wouldn’t commit but listened. W/@iarnsdorf: https://t.co/kBdbSJcsuX
(https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1682369103376392192?t=AJG_aHfKaLrAr1OApvJc3Q&s=03)
rikyrah
Awe :)
Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) tweeted at 1:53 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:
Mother deer and her newborn baby fawn https://t.co/PEd4RLKT0E
(https://twitter.com/Gabriele_Corno/status/1682282607738847232?t=1pRjMowlPhVBM9Gish3eOg&s=03)
rikyrah
Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) tweeted at 7:41 AM on Fri, Jul 21, 2023:
WATCH: RFK Jr.’s cousin Jack Schlossberg comes out against him, “I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment.” https://t.co/m6JK29PsjS
(https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1682370184705630208?t=fv8j7uB32hkDG1eMnn7qkw&s=03)
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
One elementary school I went to was named for a prominent figure in the city’s history. The remnants of his plantation was across the street, and was later moved. The first junior high school I went to was named after a Confederate general. This was Texas in the early sixties.
The history textbooks gingerly mentioned slavery. And discussions of Reconstruction era carpetbaggers held to the stereotype of rapacious white men coming down to exploit the South.
The larger issue is that except for slavery, black people essentially did not exist, either in American or world history, apart maybe from a mention of Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver.
A side note. Even a lot of early women studies and gay studies were “white only” history. People of color were invisible or inconsequential. And when I first studied the Harlem Renaissance, women were minor characters and the very significant contribution of gay artists were deliberately omitted in favor of the counter propaganda of rescuing the black man from invisibility.
History has been fucked up in many ways. And people of good will have done much to try to correct the problem. This makes the right wing pushback totally despicable.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Steeplejack: Yep.
Mainstream textbooks.
JaneE
Re: Ocoee I would like to see a “clarification” of the actions of the July Perry and how his violence should be viewed in light of Florida’s stand your ground law. If the lesson includes even the suggestion that his violence justified that of the whites, why does current Florida law say that deadly force is justifiable when you feel threatened? Not that the presence of the current law would have changed much of anything, but it would have made Mr. Perry’s actions not only understandable but legal as well.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Scout211:
I was wondering when that was going to happen, since my recollection was that the Rio Grande is technically navigable.
Citizen Alan
@EarthWindFire:
Few arguments utterly disgust me as much as the suggestion that slavery would have gone away on its own. Because in a society premised on the idea that slaves were not fully human, the response to finding themselves with a large surplusage of slaves would not have been to end slavery, but simply to reduce the surplusage down to more appropriate levels, either slowly through eugenics or more quickly through targeted extermination campaigns. The idea that an enduring CSA would have ever tolerated freedmen in their midst in any significant numbers is ludicrous and repulsive.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@rikyrah:
That judge is going to come from MGT’s congressional district, unfortunately.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
A new Prince is born
:-)
E.
@Brachiator: I am working through a current college survey of American history textbook and it is astonishing how different it is from the textbook I used years ago, which I still have and recently consulted. The newer book rarely leaves race, indigenous people, the Caribbean, or Mexico out of the picture. It shows how our history is suffused with these relations.
Brachiator
@EarthWindFire:
Obviously , racism would not have gone away. There was nothing in the Confederate constitution that allowed for black people to be recognized as human beings or potential citizens.
There is also the possibility that slavery would have expanded had the South been allowed new territories and states.
And the recognition of slavery would have poisoned the North. Would any of the civil rights amendments been passed?
jimmiraybob
I’d also reference the intense bloodfest of trying to expand slavery to the territories and new states entering the Union.
Once you get beyond the official myth of the Alamo, you find that TX independence was about establishing chattel slavery into the northern reaches of Mexico.
Also too, western Missouri and eastern Kansas was a blood field over the attempt to expand slavery.
It was never going to “go away” without intervention.
artem1s
I have no problem at all with a more complete history of world slavery being taught in public schools. Why not, as long as they instances sited are taught within the appropriate historical context. But you have to actually teach the history of Russian monarchy, Stalinism, and oligarchic economic systems to adequately cover Slavic slavery and serfdom. Do they really think the history around pre-revolutionary Spanish occupied Americas genocide of indigenous people and how their labor and lives were stolen to enrich European nations and fund their never ending religious wars is going to make white kids feel less awful about the Confederate States version of slavery?
I’ve been saying for years that trickle down and Citizen’s United and SCOTUS rulings declaring corporations as people is a yearning for US capitalism to utilize and legitimize serfdom. I’d love it if a real world version of the effects of Reganomics and the importance of labor unions in building the country was actually taught to junior high school kids. And we should not be whitewashing the pre-revolutionary genocide perpetrated by the Spanish and other Europeans out of our classrooms either. The whole of the US Southwest was stolen from it’s legitimate occupants who Trump (and the GOP) has declared should be walled off from the land their ancestors occupied long before they became part of the US.
It’s all about how the guidelines are applied in the classrooms. A good teacher could make great use of these guidelines and really make little Snotleigh blush (or worse become a dyed in the wool Feminazi). If these instances of slavery are taught the way they should be, I’m betting the ‘suck it libtards’ crowd would be appalled if their kids learned the half of it.
UncleEbeneezer
The whole point of focusing on African complicity and Eastern-European roots of Slavery is to distract from the myriad ways that America uniquely contributed to racializing, monetizing and ratcheting up the cruelty and systemic nature of it. It’s all to say:
Everybody does it…they did it to themselves…what’s the big deal…maybe it really wasn’t that bad!
PaulWartenberg
Florida Republicans want to whitewash Rosewood and Ocoee and a hundred other racist things that have happened in our history, because they want to make it easier to do it all again. >:-(
Will
I have no issues with teaching more about slavery and how awful humans have treated each other for thousands of years. It’s healthy if we ever want to truly evolve in our thinking and really be, to use a religious expression, our brothers and sisters’ keeper.
The issue is conservatives and MAGAshits. They don’t want to teach the topic to better us all, they just want to teach it so they can be all “NOPE, don’t look over there!” Yes, the history of all slavery should be taught, but in the United States, most of the focus should be on the African and African American experience as it is the one that is key to OUR history. We fought a civil war over it. I shouldn’t feel like I have a better grasp of the economics of the triangle trade than how awful human beings were treated in our country and just used as labor solely because the color of their skin until I take an AP American History class in high school.
artem1s
@Brachiator:
This is an outright lie. The very first thing they did was to codify slavery. The Confederate Constitution made it illegal for any of the Confederate States to pass any laws restricting slavery in any way (so much for the Northern aggression and states rights argument for succession too).
UncleEbeneezer
@Brachiator: The Confederate Constitution explicitly made Abolition by any State, illegal!
UncleEbeneezer
@Will: Exactly
Old School
Baud
@artem1s:
@UncleEbeneezer:
So much for states’ rights.
RevRick
@Maxim: It was based upon kidnapping, murder, rape, theft, torture, brutality, and degradation. Did I omit anything?
Geminid
@Baud: That’s what they said when Confederate General States Rights Gist was killed at the Battle of Franklin!
Yarrow
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Sounds familiar. It’s little wonder that Americans’ knowledge of history is so poor when so many history classes are taught by football coaches who couldn’t care less about history or how much the kids learn. In my high school the coach gave extra credit if your notebook was one of the school colors. Good times.
Gretchen
Some of these folks think it’s a gotcha that Harris is descended from a white enslaver in the West Indies. How did that guy happen to have black descendants ?
FelonyGovt
@Old School: Right. And the Venn diagram of those people (ETA: white people who think racism against whites is a big problem), and the people who say they’re “persecuted” because they’re Christian, is probably close to a perfect circle.
patrick II
Probably? That is not even a close call.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
They crave the incompetence.
They don’t actually. They do understand the incompetence.
They do not understand reality. They want to change reality because it does not suit them. They want to exchange reality with their bullshit. Which they do understand. They just don’t think it’s bullshit.
Brachiator
@artem1s:
Yep, it is interesting to note how the Confederate constitution emphatically defines the right to keep and hold black people as slaves.
Ruckus
@Baud:
This.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Trump is really the exception here because his style is more “in your face” rather than being clever.
Of course you understand the reason for this, SFB is in no way clever. He has to be in your face because that is ALL he’s got.
Old School
“Satanic Temple” is trending on Twitter. I see it is because right-wing sites (specifically The Blaze) are upset that Fox has a policy of matching employee charitable giving.
So? Lots of companies do that.
But you see, they don’t exclude the possibility of matching gifts to the Satanic Temple, Planned Parenthood, etc.
Cue up the firing squad!
JaneE
@Paul in KY: More egalitarian in the sense that anyone could become a slave, not that slaves were in any way comparable to their masters.
There were basically 3 sources of slaves: losing a war (common throughout the ancient world), kidnapping by pirates, and criminal punishment. Instead of being put to death criminals might be sentenced to life in the mines, which was still a death sentence.
Slaves in categories 1 and 2 might be anyone, literally anyone. It was possible for a slave to function almost independently if they were educated or skilled, working and sending a portion of their earnings to their owner, but it was relatively rare, just as something similar was relatively rare in this country. Regardless of their actual treatment, legally the slaves had no more rights than a piece of furniture. Free Romans (and Greeks) found the possibility of enslavement horrifying.
Baud
@JaneE:
Couldn’t one become a slave if they couldn’t pay of their financial debts? Or is that a Hollywood invention?
Ruckus
@gvg:
Excuses about them are corrupting even if you are trying to make someone see how bad another thing is. Slavery is bad.
THIS. Especially the last 3 words. No matter how well or humanistic the system is run, it’s still slavery. It is still wrong. And always has been. The people perpetrating slavery KNEW it was wrong, they just did not give a shit because they could PROFIT from it.
LAC
So when are we going to see protests from Florida citizens? Grass roots efforts to stop de santis from forcing another term? I see so little evidence that this means anything to Floridians. Depressing
TriassicSands
I’m in the hospital right now and I have been struggling with the mess we pretend is a health care system for more than 20 years now. If you add SNAFU to Clusterfuck and then to FUBAR, you still fall far short of the idiocy of our system. Many rules and regulations would be considered by insane people to be insane, though I’m pretty sure the people who wrote the rules and regulations were probably insane. And very, very stupid. When I tell people what I can and can’t do, they laugh, cry, or collapse in a mass of quivering protoplasm. Even the good people in the system can’t provide the best care possible because of the restrictions. Often, they can’t provide any care at all. I’d go into details, but I wouldn’t be halfway finished after 100 pages.
The most expensive “health care” in the world designed by insane, brain dead clowns on LSD, shrooms, PCP, and a couple of gallons of Everclear. What could go wrong
Right now, I’ve been on hold for well over an hour trying to speak to someone I need to speak to.
cain
Just do the same thing that Moms for Liberty do “my son is uncomfortable with this teaching – we need to ban it.” I mean it worked for white kids, amirite?
Anotherlurker
@Yarrow: Not just football coaches. I went to catholic school and was taught by nuns. These nuns were mostly Irish coal miner’s daughters from the Scranton Pa. area. They never touched on slavery or Reconstruction. The closest they came to a discussion of Reconstruction, they presented separate but equal as a reasonable compromise.
These nuns could be brutal to their students. Just one example is how Sister Rose Genevieve grabbed my younger brother by the ears and slammed his head on the desk for the Capital Crime of talking in class. My brother was in the 2nd grade. He is permanently deaf in one ear as a result.
Couple that with not 1 but 2 pedophile priests in residence at the time and you see why the quality of education I received was subpar. I only started to learn once I got to college and was exposed to college history and philosophy courses. Intellectually, I started to flourish once I was removed from that horrible environment of indoctrination.
Religious education is, IMHO, child abuse.
Sorry about the off-topic rant.
cain
@Alison Rose: Can we make the argument that serfs benefited from being serfs??
TriassicSands
@cain:
Only if they could say, “Serf’s up!” and tow into 60 to 80 foot waves.
Old School
@TriassicSands: I’m sorry you are experiencing this. I hope things get better.
cain
@Roger Moore: well shit – those germanic tribes were just angels weren’t they?
cain
@rikyrah: See the ‘white-ification’ of indigenous tribes here.
TriassicSands
@Old School:
Thank you, I appreciate it. But it will probably be luck if that happens.
JPL
I would bet that not one of us was taught about the benefits of slavery.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands:
Beat me to it.
Matt McIrvin
@jimmiraybob: Lincoln’s take “Maybe the war is God punishing us AND the secessionists for letting this evil fester so long” was a more interesting one. (Particularly since I think there was an implied “and me personally” in there.)
TriassicSands
@Brachiator:
I’ll sell you credit for it. All you have to do is quietly make a few people sorta, kinda disappear. I won’t mention any names, but you probably know to whom I am referring. But you shouldn’t ruin your own life even if those actions would be of immeasurable help to the planet.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: Yeah, “races” before the early modern period and the colonial slavery machine were categories more like “Italians” or “Englishmen”. Lumping a huge range of people together into a nebulous and flexible classification of “white” was done for a specific purpose.
MisterDancer
@LAC: Just because you didn’t hear about them doesn’t mean protests haven’t occurred:
And that’s aside from the more personal instances of people standing up to these bullies:
And, of course, the simple fact that there is work to get an Abortion Rights ballot measure out for 2024, work that’s gathered 100K signatures so far in the space on a month, in FL.
People are working damned hard to break this. This isn’t work in secret, but it is work that isn’t flashy, and isn’t getting the attention that the assholes get.
But it’s work we should be aware of, and honoring, nonetheless.
Ruckus
@Anotherlurker:
Religious education is, IMHO, child abuse.
I agree. I was sent to an all boys catholic trade school for my first year of HS. And I was one of very few non-catholic students. I still remember the priest who was vice principle. I’ve met some assholes in my 7+decades but never one as big of one as that ass. I heard him speak to other students and use language that very few humans since use in the manner he did. He’s the person that gave me the idea for the concept of Asshole Deluxe. He was the poster child. There were good teachers in that school. There were good humans in that school. He was absolutely not one of them. My thought was that he was vp because he was Asshole Deluxe. I have no proof but I also have no other reason why he would have that position. Not competence, not intelligence, certainly not personality, he had it because he was Asshole Deluxe.
Yarrow
I hope they ask DeSantis about this at the primary debates. “Governor DeSantis, the state of Florida now teaches that enslaved people benefited from slavery. Is this something you believe?” And after his BS answer, ask Tim Scott the same question. “Senator Scott, do you believe that enslaved people benefited from slavery?”
gvg
@Redshift: Holding people responsible for something their ancestors did seems to be a pretty universal wrongheadedness and is a behind a lot of Xenophobia. Look not just at the bible but a LOT of of stories about old tribal fights and national wars and family feuds. One of the modern innovations of justice is the principle that you only get convicted for what you did not your relatives. This is still really hard for a lot of people to understand.
However the corollary is you really have no right or reason to feel pride or claim glory over something an ancestor did. You didn’t do it. THAT is also a threat to these unaccomplished minnows. That is what the status threat is about. If we tear down the statues and point out how evil these shitty slaveowners were, we are actually attacking them and the way they raise their children to think and we are hurting their self esteem. This is their own fault for bad logic and not going out and doing worthwhile things themselves instead of trying to claim they were born already important.
I never thought that way. I got that our country was established to do away with nobility and bloodlines instead of merit. I don’t give a damn who my ancestors are. My dad did get into looking them up after his mother died because he missed her…but I still really just don’t care. I love my family but I know them.
It has taken me quite awhile to see this and I still just don’t get it. They really think telling the truth about how bad slavery was has something to do with THEM. Of course when they get into defending it, they also buy into still thinking they are better than someone with a dark skin. I would judge their character as not good at all because of their own actions not their already damned ancestor if they even had a slaveholding ancestor. Dumbass moral morons.
I am white. Never made me feet the least bit bad to read about what some other white creeps did long ago. I don’t identify with them. They just left a huge problem and a mess for my generation and others before and apparently after. I have to know what they did. I also have to know what the other people in the here and now are up to.
Yarrow
@Anotherlurker: My across the street neighbors went to Catholic school. They were always talking about the terrifying nuns and how they hit the kids, and whether the paddle with holes in it was worse than the one without. They were scared of the nuns.
Ironcity
@gvg: “After all, even in Egypt the Pharoah had to import Hebrew braseros” Tom Leher
Brachiator
@gvg:
There are also people who believe that the United States of America is and always has been perfect, and that anything that does not reinforce this myth cannot be tolerated.
gvg
@Brachiator: I was in school in the late 60’s through 1981 in Florida. We did discuss slavery. Probably not enough but it was not hidden. I don’t think we touched the lynching…..not sure. I got it at home from Civil rights parents who would mention things while they watched the news. Some things didn’t get covered but it always seemed like there wasn’t enough time. On the other hand quite a few kids like history and read a lot of extra which was easy to find. Mostly white schools. Integrated. My younger sister actually encountered more slanted history a decade later and it was the religious teachers that had the worst viewpoints. Parents eventually put her in a private school. Schools seem to be really mixed and it matters which teachers you got, a lot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The whole concept of enslave other groups for their own good comes from the Romans and slavery really never stopped in Europe from the ancient period, just having Christian slaves was banned.
Ruckus
@gvg:
I say bravo.
But.
And it is/can be a pretty big but. We personally may not be our ancestors but skin color has been for millennia an issue. We can’t deny that or gloss it over because we ourselves do not believe the bullshit. I am a white man and have seen the history of being a white man and it is often NOT good. My grandfather once used the N word in my presence, over 60 yrs ago. Once. I would never have seen him in that light had I not heard that. But then I knew. I worked with my dad for decades and he could swear almost as good as me but I never heard or even suspected him as someone who would use that word or concept. He hired people from all walks and colors because he didn’t see them as anything other than human beings. He taught me better than his father did. That is how change, betterment for all happens. In all my life I never heard my parents bad mouth anyone for their race, color, creed. Their actions, their words sure, but not for their humanity.
This is how change happens. Not by laws, although that can help. But by how we are taught to see human beings, actually to see all animals that live on the planet. Hunt wild animals for the trophy? Bullshit. Racism because of skin color? Bullshit. The largest reason skin color is different is the amount of melanin in it. Melanin is the pigment that gives us color, our eyes, hair and skin. We all have varying degrees of melanin in our bodies. That is it, the level of melanin is what make us different. We are all human. We are all not the same, not height, not color, not weight, etc, but we are ALL human. Some of us just act better or worse. Some of us are better or worse. But we are all human.
EarthWindFire
@Old School: Probably dead thread but Aldean’s song is a half truth if my dad’s new town, pop. 3,000, is an indicator. He’s a volunteer stagehand on a production of a play about transgender teens, written by a local. Even small towns are starting to come around.
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus: I was 35 or so when I politely but firmly told my father to never use the N-word again in my presence. And he never did. And, if my mother is to be believed, he voted for Obama twice before he died.
jimmiraybob
That was indentured servitude and it had time limits.
Chattel slavery evolved, as can be seen in colonial law codes, to narrow it to blacks, to make blacks subhuman property, and then making them property in perpetuity (cheaper to breed slaves than purchase them on the open market).
All of this was done with direct Biblical justification of white Reformed (Calvinist) Protestant oversight.
gvg
@Ruckus: School desegregation was terribly important. Familiarity helps a lot, and discomfort allows bad mythology. I have all my life been around black people and they are just normal. I am shy in person so I have not had a lot of black friends (nor white actually, introvert bookworm commenting here) but they have always been around. To the point that I get uneasy and suspicious if there aren’t at least some, and start checking on schools or businesses where I don’t see any. I don’t think I would have been so definite that they are just people had they not always been around, because I am so people phobic. Maybe because I read so much but getting the schools integrated was a big deal.
Florida has been undoing that for the last few decades by some very underhanded ways in which they blame teachers, make schools responsible for student test scores, test constantly, make no allowances for reasons a district might have lower scores such a parents having to work more jobs or not having the education to help the children themselves and then cutting the funding to the “poor performing schools” with a constantly rising required minimum score. Since poor districts get less money teachers can’t afford to stay and parents are desperate to get their kids out of there. It started 30 years ago and after 2 or 3 generations people don’t realize any more that they are being manipulated into blaming teachers and avoiding helping poor and minority areas while starving the schools. Even the “good” schools are getting less in my judgement than they did when this started. All with slogans like hold teachers accountable….for what? There are at least 50 causes for every student who does less well than you want. Right now its mostly the conservative religious politicians and the blamer parents who did this. Some of the churches wanted some money too. White segregation is behind a bunch of it I can see. How to undo it and get to good schools is a lot harder than pointing fingers though.
Betty Cracker
@MisterDancer: Thank you so much for that thoughtful reply. Millions of Floridians are trying to fight back against very powerful opponents, and it’s nice to see that acknowledged occasionally.
@gvg: Well said.
Geminid
@Baud:
@Geminid:
1st Confederate officer: “Welp, no more States Rights.”
2nd: “Yeah, he sure got infringed upon by that Yankee cannon!”
SuzieC
@Citizen Alan: I was about the same age when I attended a family gathering and my Aunt, my sister’s father, used the N word. I had my son with me. He was about 9 or 10 at the time. I turned to him and said “we never use that word.” My bigoted aunt never apologized. She may have used the word in front of me again but she would always say something like “I know you don’t like this.” My parents never used the word growing up, even though we lived in the South for years, but they never condemned my bigoted Aunt either. That was left to me.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Bill Arnold: I can’t get the link to work. Would you mind reposting it? Thanks!
pluky
@Redshift:
Molasses, to rum, to slaves.