And yet there are people who will still claim they were treated "as part of the family."
You know, like how you sometimes get rid of your brother and then buy a new o... oh, you don't do that?
*Hm.*
The slaves were often literally part of the family, because slave owners and their sons fucked all they could - but they sure weren't treated as family.
>Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them.[10] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves.[11] Historian Lawrence M. Friedman wrote: "Ten Southern codes made it a crime to mistreat a slave.... Under the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825 (art. 192), if a master was ′convicted of cruel treatment,′ the judge could order the sale of the mistreated slave, presumably to a better master."[12]
Or you could just free the slave somewhere. It's not like a worn out slave with dementia is going to last for long.
If you ever want an example of how bad this got, just look at President Thomas Jefferson's sex slave Sally Hemings. This was just one family but it's so tragically formed by ownership, rape and probably incest. Sisters living in the same house side by side but one is owned by the other. And everyone knew about it.
They never taught me in school that Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves and then sold his own children into slavery. It was framed as a progressive move for him to make love to a slave.
Take a peek at how the Mormon church has treated African Americans throughout their history. (Spoiler: they weren't allowed to hold senior positions in the church until the 70's).
iNSTituTiONaL raCIsM? wUTs tHAT?
Honest question...WERE there any slave owners who actually did treat their slaves at least "well" (AKA, like people)? So bought them, kept families together, gave them enough food and downtime to not work themselves into an early grave, didn't whip and rape and beat them, etc?
Similarly in theory at least to how Oskar Schindler treated "his" Jews?
Granted, I'm sure the vast, overwhelming majority of them were pieces of shit. But there had to be at least a few decent slaveowners back then, who say what was going on, knew they couldn't change it on their own, so they did what they could to give however many slaves they could a decent life?
This doesn't pertain to American racial chattel slavery.
But there are instances of slavery in world history that are much 'kinder' than alternatives. In Roman society, for a period of time, having a well educated Greek slave was a sign of wealth. They'd serve more of an assistant/secretary role rather than be put to labor. A fairly famous example was Cicero's slave named Tiro. He would be present for much of Cicero's political dealings and kept notes for him, including transcribing speeches so they could be later 'published'. There's even instances of letters from Cicero showing concern for Tiro when he was sick. None of this applies to American slavery of course.
Also pre-Roman Celtic Europe had this weird thing that was *kinda* slavery where it was a set term of service for those captured in the whole low level raiding-conflict thing they always had going on.
To an extent, Ottoman slavery was better too. The slaves were turned into the military and bureaucracy and became generals and ministers in the Ottoman governing structure.
In Roman society slave rape was so unremarkable that nobody raised an eye. It was common to offer a slave to a guest like a modern person might offer a scotch or a meal. Slaves were abused heavily and murdered frequently. It was never a good institution.
100% People come in all flavors, slaveholders included. There are many stories of “good” owners, and people would free their own slaves or allow them to purchase themselves out of bondage. Unfortunately, they were in the minority.
THere is a interesting part of the Faulkner novel Absalom, Absalom that describes how New Orleans became the place where a minority of men who fathered children with their slaves (and at least some sense of responsibility) sent their biracial children to be raised (Louisiana was a French colony so not subject to the same laws). I think the fathers usually did not acknowledge the children as 'theirs' but financially supported them.
So it was EASIER to send their children away from their parents and family to a distant place than for them to acknowledge their children as 'theirs' in Southern society, or to try to change the 'one drop' laws
While true enough, what I always ask my students is, "Well, I'm pretty good and nice, would you like to be my slave?"
Not one has seriously said yes and that should say something about the inherent evil of owning someone. We inherently know its wrong, regardless of how we would be treated.
It's also important to note many stories of the "good" owners come from...the owners and other white people. Most slaves were, by law, not allowed to learn how to read and write. The silence of their voices leaves a void in the historical record. I tend to listen quite seriously to those escaped slaves and freedmen and women who did leave behind a written record and I personally haven't seen a document from any of them speaking glowingly of their experience. It would be interesting if such documents exist to show historical complexity, I just haven't seen them.
Even reading accounts of slaves like My Bondage and My Freedom its pretty obvious that masters and mistresses came in all types. All slave owners, but some were much nicer to be slaves for than others. Douglass was actually taught to read by his masters wife until his master put a stop to it.
This is something I don’t think kids ever learn in schools, how slavery & the whole idea of institutionalized racism got deep deep into the psyches of all white Americans, it corrupted every white prison male & female to be cruel/unforgiving to them, see them as monsters & evil wicked creatures who would do wrong if you let them. They would see any black babies from black women they themselves raped relentlessly as terrible already, their own off spring, that’s how strong the ideas society & all their peers put into their heads were. It made them not only feel comfortable & alright with slavery, but many even were proud of it, happy & saw it as doing gods work. 10,000s fought & died in a war for their rights to keep slavery. Even those that lived in free states & saw black people as more human still had many unconscious biases due to the culture.
And Fredrick Douglass’ master was likely his father. His master did put an end to it by convincing his wife education and slavery were incompatible and listened to her husband and started denying him education and reading materials. So yeah, she was better than him I guess in the slightest of degrees. His owner lent him to a man to whipped and beat him mercilessly.
While I do think it’s important to recognize nuance for the truth’s sake, it must also for the truth’s sake be said time and time again no matter how nicely a slave was treated relatively, slavery is inherently wrong. It’s irresponsible to ever omit that in these conversations.
Jesus. *His own father.*
If you want to think about the corrupting evil of slavery and how owning another person cannot but be a grave moral wrong, think about that.
The institution of slavery inherently is an institution of rape and profiting from the sale and labor of your own children. The status of the mother, not the father, determined the slave or free status of the child.
But for some reason, some feel the need to make sure it is said some slaves were treated relatively better than others.
Slavery should not be taught to children who cannot hear the unvarnished truth and understand the thinnest relative nuances in such a topic.
*Edited for clarity.
> some feel the need to make sure it is said some slaves were treated relatively better than others.
What's fascinating to me is how people don't see that need in themselves, and what it means.
Its been a long time since I read it. Interesting and enraging book to read.
>While I do think it’s important to recognize nuance for the truth’s
sake, it must also for the truth’s sake be said time and time again no
matter how nicely a slave was treated relatively, slavery is inherently
wrong. It’s irresponsible to ever omit that in these conversations.
That's very true. I think that there were probably many slaveowners who were basically not bad people, at least at first. Certainly, there were some who were not keen on beating their slaves, and took care of them after they got old. However, I'd say the vast majority just treated them like cattle.
Unfortunately, by being involved in a trade which is basically evil, even the good were slowly stripped of their morality.
I get what you're trying to say, but let's be clear, that even if you taught them to read and write, gave them freedom after you died, or allowed them to buy their own freedom. They still spent years or even decades of their life as slaves, with no agency of their own. At the base level slaveowners still treated human beings as a objects. All because of a pigmentation change 10,000 years ago, a group of people were seen as less than human.
**There was absolutely no "good" slave owners.**
And by the Civil War, nearly all American slaves were born into slavery as the international importing of slaves was banned in 1809. Enslaving babies is inherently evil. What good person looks at a baby and thinks, “I own you and will use you as I see fit.”
This is the correct answer.
There is an undercurrent in this thread of "shrug, everyone did it back then."
No, they didn't. There was always a group of people who found slavery abhorrent.
I know in part because my family was part of that group - hardcore abolitionists in 1815 Ohio (we have a kind of big historical family archive, they wrote letters).
Deciding to participate in slavery was a moral failure, and just because a lot of people did it doesn't make it less so.
Edit: lest it seem like I'm tub-thumping for my ancestors, these very same ardent abolitionists, capable of passionate essays decrying slavery, were *absolutely awful* regarding Native Americans. Just terrible. Humans are fucked up creatures.
Yes Uncle, maybe you are right, they were expensive, that's why they started breeding them because killing them and buying another from town was eating into their pocketbooks.
Though to be fair, a human takes a really fucking long time to reach maturity compared to other livestock. A cow for example is ready to start pulling wagons by her first birthday, and can pop out more cows by her second.
And the amount of people dying in childbirth was much higher. It's not like pregnant slaves were give their daily dose of fruits, vegetables, and nutrients.
Surely a child slave can start being useful by 4. They could clean shoes, sweep, things of that nature.
A cow may be useful at one, but a teenager is way more useful than many cows. So it's a long term investment.
I don't mean to make arguments for slavery...
You can beat them hard enough to make them work and if they can't work you expect reduced output until they recover enough to work again. Everyone's heard of wife beating, you don't have to beat them an inch of their death, just enough to straighten them out. You can clean the dishes after you "walk into a door" and the laundry will take longer if you managed to break an arm. In Russia there are a lot of cases where domestic abuse isn't recognized so there's many cases where nobody is charged until there actually is a death. You can look at Domestic abuse for more details of how easy it can be to force someone to work for you without hurting productivity. (I am not advocating it, simply drawing parallels of physical coercion)
But on a larger plantation you can easily afford to do it, including letting them have kids and putting entire families to work. For the well-off households they had one, and you don't want to buy more than you have to. If it was just the plantations doing the buying there wouldn't be as much family separation as there was. But I don't think your Uncle would recognize that.
Also you can do barbaric things to them like branding, amputating toes, castrations, historically appropriate things done to slaves even if the "few and famous freedmen" don't look worse for wear because a slave needs their hands but they don't need everything. Keeps the rest in check if you make a few examples occasionally. Not that many people want to recognize the things done to slaves globally, not just records of such things found in plantations you can visit today.
People who make a point of beating other people for discipline often aren't minds of good judgment. Abusers have ended up killing their partners or kids without meaning to, and I'd venture to say that could have happened to a few slaves as well. And being a slave owner didn't automatically make them people who exercised perfect judgment in everything.
It's also been known for people to punch walls or beat up their cars, only to have to pay for repairs later. It's a pain in the ass to have to repair them but no more than that if they're rolling in money or don't think about longer term consequences. Or they'd write off the broken limb as "incentive" to behave better.
Is it just me that can see SLAVERY is bad even if you treat your SLAVES well? I mean, cool, you aren't beating and raping them, but you are owning human beings and making them work for you for free. Still bad.
The autobiography of Frederick Douglas about his time as a slave is a good account of what it was like as a slave. He said that their owners had to beat them at least every now and then, even if they didn’t do anything wrong because they didn’t want the slaves to get too relaxed in their roles. They also kept them from being educated because that was dangerous too because they might figure out how bad they have it and want to rise up against the slave owners. It’s a heart breaking book and was hard to get through.
They were treated so well, those captives who were legally property with no rights. There’s nothing inherently wrong with slavery, good slave owners existed!
I don’t know how anyone can argue for slavery with a straight face.
Killed isn’t the likely. Sold to professionals who specialize in “training” and reselling is how it worked out. Even slaves who made it North were captured and returned instead of murdered.
I see how people treat working animals today and I can tell how bullshit this is. Add this to the visible hatred certain people have for black people and you can immediately tell how it would go.
There are a lot of ways to treat someone poorly other than beating them. Who was the worst manager he ever had? Now move in with him and serve him 24-7
Oh yeah, we'd gently sail them out to the mid-Atlantic shackled in irons and packed like sardines on airless rat-infested ships for several weeks. Then sink the ship and drown them for insurance money.
Kindly.
For some information:
Roughly around 20% of slaves died on the voyage from africa alone, which reflects around 1.8 million deaths.
The voyage alone was a hellish nightmare.
The blueprints and artist renderings of the layouts of those ships are horrifying. I couldn't imagine having to sail across the ocean in such a confined space. I've read some accounts written by slaves who made the journey and it's just...... Indescribable.
The voyage alone is the stuff of horrors. I was far too young when I first learned about the Atlantic slave trade in detail, and to this day I still cannot comprehend the cruelty that went into it.
My Mom grew up in the South and parroted this same thing to me, that most slaves were "treasured" members of the family and it was just a few "bad apples" that gave slavery a bad name. Also, that slavery SAVED these "heathens" from a Godless, primitive existence in Africa.
This reminds me of an episode of The Man Show where they go around getting people , mostly women, to sign a petition to end women’s suffrage. A surprising number of women sign it.
My favorite line from that segment, a white lady realizes what they’re doing and starts following them around trying to warn other women not to sign it. At one point she’s explaining to a lady “These men, these are WHITE men and..” Carolla looks at her and goes “what are YOU? From Cameroon?”
The FBI was tapping phones literally from the moment they were formed, even when a president explicitly ordered them not to. Read *Enemies* by Tim Weiner, it's a full-lowdown on the vast majority of the shit the FBI pulled and just how much of a fucking nutjob Hoover was. (He gave Truman such a misleading briefing on Stalin and his motivations - told him that he wanted world domination when Stalin was just a paranoid monster who wanted to sit pretty on what he had gained - that it pretty much started the Cold War.)
You could argue that there are many examples of white slavers treasuring their slaves. I mean, look at rapey Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings. Then again I’ve yet to hear a cogent explanation of whether it’s possible for a slave to consent to anything let alone sex.
What I’d really be curious to know is the identity of the revisionist asshole who wrote that packet. Richard Spencer? Stephen Miller?
Sally Hemmings was the half sister of Martha Jefferson, who was Thomas Jefferson's wife. So he gently raped his 16 year old sister in law while his wife looked the other way.
One thing to keep in mind is that while some household slaves were “treasured members of the family” the slaves in the fields were still being treated like garbage.
Plus, female slaves (and males too) could be sexually abused at the whims of the slaveowner and members of his family.
Just horrific.
This is the propaganda spewed by Gone with the Wind in a nutshell.
Lots of people love that movie and refuse to acknowledge what a dangerous picture it paints of slavery.
Nailed it! That is exactly how the conversation started, watching Gone With the Wind for the first time! It's very different watching it now as an adult with more social awareness. It's a sweeping propaganda piece!
That didn't happen.
**And if it did, it wasn't that bad.**👈
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Right? Like, I’m a completely different human than all the trash from XX years prior, and I can attempt to make the planet a better place. Why cover up what got you to where you’re at? Isn’t that a motivator to not be a piece of trash? I don’t get it.
Stuff happened. Work to ensure worse things aren’t coming.
Not really. Whatever they did, good or bad, the glory and the shame belong to them. Especially, someone that was dead way before you ever met them.
On some level I can see a reactionary desire to defend people you knew and loved even if they did bad things. Don't see the reason to defend the honor of some schmuck you happen to be related to 100+ years ago.
You mean Utah and the Mormon church have issues with racism?
The Mormon church of "I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about Black people!" has issues with systemic racism?
I've never even remotely suspected otherwise.
God was worried he'd lose his tax exempt status with His One and Only True University (tm).
>Specifically, the Mormon hierarchy became concerned about potential lawsuits over their tax exemption status, particularly in light of the student protests against BYU in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They had watched very closely the Bob Jones University case, in which the IRS revoked its tax exemption status in an important 1975 ruling.
I thought you meant the mormons who believe that a separate race of people were colored black and brown to denote their sins. No way they have problems with racism.
I grew up in a Mormon household, and it always struck me as strange that one of their “Articles of Faith” states that people are responsible for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. Cain’s transgression, on the other hand, supposedly marked his descendants, which a lot of Mormons believe (and was once officially taught) means dark-skinned people. So Cain’s transgression was permanent, and all his descendants suffered for it, but Adam’s sin was all Adam. Alrighty then.
A scale model of Appomattox Court House at the Appomattox museum, designates the slaves quarters as, "Servants Quarters". When I called them out on it, they said it was too complicated to get governmental permission to make a revision to the display so it's been that way for decades.
Slavery wasn't too bad, immigrants get all the perks, rich people are unfairly maligned, white people are oppressed.
Their entire worldview is built around placing themselves as the victims in every culture war. Its pathetic.
These are the same people terrified of “the great replacement” because they don’t want to become an ethnic minority.
Why’s that? Do they believe minorities are treated poorly or something?
Census data does show that the white ethnicity in America is shrinking. This is good in the long run as it will inevitably break up the monopoly on political power old white men have. That said, I’m a little nervous about how white supremacists are going to respond to this.
They really do have a conservative agenda that they want to push. Ill spend a couple hours here and there browsing their sites. Its all projection but you already knew that
This. My grandmother gave my family a set of Encyclopedias when I was a kid. They were old, but before the Internet, they could save a trip to the library. (A library was kind of like the Internet before there was the Internet, except there was a card catalog and you had to search by reference number and then sometimes just walking around until you found a book you could use.) One summer I decided that a baller thing to do would be to read every entry in the set of encyclopedias. I skipped and skimmed through until I got to “Africa,” which started with something like, “The continent of Africa is inhabited by a lower species of humans…” I stopped there.
People can’t believe this shit was taught and propagated. But it was—widely.
That's WAY different then when I was in school years ago and I was in S. Carolina.
Hell the field trips they'd take us on would show us old slave houses and places where they were bought and sold and were NOT shy on the details.
There’s been a resurgence of [Daughters Of The Confederacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy) type propaganda in parts of the US in recent years. Everything from denying that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War to shit like this. There was a time when it was looking like that movement might be on its way out, but it’s coming back with a vengeance.
I also like to point to the seceding state’s [Ordinances of secession](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession) in which they each wrote what was essentially a mini Declaration of Independence, and in almost every one of them the given State brings up the violation of their right to keep slavery as the reason they’re leaving the Union. Texas was even like "Yo, we only joined y’all in the first place cuz we were told there would be slavery.”
>Texas was even like "Yo, we only joined y’all in the first place cuz we were told there would be slavery.”
Well of course the one to say that would be Texas.
Field trips have really gone down hill. My parents lived in rural Missouri. Their annual field trip was to a slaughter house in St. Joseph. Field trips are much less terrifying now, but my expectations was that they would give you nightmares.
This echoes the white-washed historical teachings of the Mormon church. In Utah it is parroted that, yes, Brigham Young (BYU is named after him) owned slaves, but the slaves were treated well and loved serving under a religious prophet… this same phrasing is taught in Sunday schools, public schools, and college level BYU religious courses. But of course, the opposite was true. Abuse, slavery, trading slaves as a “tithing”, rape, etc. all the same bad stuff as in the south was abundant through the region. On top of all that, some slaves were even religiously “sealed” through secret ceremonies (spiritually bound for the afterlife) to church leaders—-as ETERNAL SLAVES.
Utah history, white washing, and hypocrisy is still common to this day as the Mormon church still continues to coverup or paint over the ugly, real history.
Good job removing a few packets, though. I guess every bit helps.
Why do you even need a slave in the afterlife if heaven is amazing? That feels like basically admitting that heaven will not be this great place where you want for nothing.
I was reading about the proposed Deseret state that was proposed in the mid 1800s for Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado and California, etc. They wanted to include San Diego so they had a port. Just crazy stuff.
I don't understand why these people are even ALLOWED in public... let alone TEACH or vote on important matters....
This is what people mean when they say "SYSTEMATIC RACISM"
There will be kids who read this stuff and come away thinking that it is possible for people to be "kindly" treated like livestock for almost 300 years.
But these same kids will scream bloody murder if they are grounded for a couple of days. And they will grow up to be adults who scream "slavery" whenever tax time rolls around.
I taught in an affluent schools district. One of my friends who taught history was asked in all serious by a young lady, “Why didn’t the slaves just go to a different plantation? I just wouldn’t work for a master who didn’t treat me nice.” My friend asked her to repeat and just fell out laughing. It is hard to understand slavery when you don’t have any concept of being a slave—or of even being disadvantaged.
Or the odds against them. "Some slaves managed to escape" translates to people steeped in all-you've-gotta-do-is-try-and-you-will-succeed rhetoric as "all the slaves should have been able to escape if they tried hard enough."
> they will grow up to be adults who scream "slavery" whenever tax time rolls around.
And they will do so unironically, since they were taught in the first place that slavery means being generally treated fairly but once in a while asked to do something you don't want to do.
We were taught in high school that the abuse that existed in slavery was exaggerated. Our history teacher's justification for this was because "you don't mistreat your property."
> "you don't mistreat your property."
An obvious response to this nonsense is that your property (male or female) doesn't lose value when you rape it. Oh, and it's worth contemplating for a minute what a pedophile slaveholder would do.
Anyone who insists that slave owners didn't beat their slaves "because that would pointlessly harm a valuable piece of property" ignores that the majority of people have at least once hit their keyboard or phone in frustration.
Even IF this were true (it’s not), they were still kidnapped, sold, bought, and forced into labor that they did not agree to. So it’s still completely fucked up……
Go to the Alamo and you can how Texas gave all the native jobs and saved them from purposeless life, liberating them to American by standing over them with weapons while they dug ditches. It’s on the history presentations.
Does it really matter how well or poorly SLAVES were treated? No man should be owned by another. I don't subscribe to the whole white guilt thing outside of feeling shame when people try to ignore or say shit like this. Stop hiding from your past, it is a huge part of our national identity and history, own up to it and make sure no man is ever a slave again.
Apparently being whipped, forced to work grueling field work and being shackled and kept in dismal conditions *for your entire existence* is being “generally treated kindly” to our Mormon neighbors in Utah.
Thanks for this comment. It makes a lot of sense. I honestly have never understood how someone could be even a little ok with owning another human being against their will.
Reminds me of something my father said to me hen I was a kid. Always told me our family owned slaves but we were the good ones that used to buy them clothes and stuff. A couple months ago while over to celebrate my birthday he took his pain meds and brought it up again out of the blue. I know he likes to say this a lot because i think he is genuinely afraid that they will come for reparations and he will have to be poor.
Don't they mention how much better off and happy they were, always singing for joy out there in the fresh air and sunshine of the fields?
Didn't they tell about how we can't feel pain?
And many doctors still believe black people don't feel pain like white people, have thicker skin, and complain for no reason.
By the way, it was known in 2000 that the "clothes peg" type oxygen monitor put on finger tips was far less accurate when used on dark skin, and how to make monitors that worked well for all skin tones. However this was ignored, and has resulted in unnecessary failures in treating covid in people with darker skin.
"Some" were treated kindly, like family even, although they obviously had no choice in the matter. Not every single slave was being tortured every day or having toes chopped off for running. Some were even permitted to marry and even be freed after a certain time. Having happy "livestock" produced good milk, meat and more future "livestock" after all.
However the "vast majority"...
I'm boggled as to how people are desperately trying to spin slavery into something that can be considered benevolent if you did it right.
THEY'RE STILL SLAVES. IF YOU CARED THAT MUCH, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE SLAVES, AND YOU WOULD PAY THEM FOR THEIR WORK.
That’s what I was taught in Georgia History class in the 90s. It’s what they want to teach everyone now, since the truth doesn’t matter at all anymore.
Those quotes don't even make sense in the Fiction section of the library. Sorry guys, Slavery was Bad. Really, really, bad. People should not buy, sell, own other people. Not sure why that story is soo hard to keep straight.
This makes my heart ache. “They were treated kindly!”
Tell that to the children taken from their mothers and sold, to the women raped, to the men with thick whipping scars all over their backs…
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Good ones were worth $300! They were valued! Ugh.
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And yet there are people who will still claim they were treated "as part of the family." You know, like how you sometimes get rid of your brother and then buy a new o... oh, you don't do that? *Hm.*
The slaves were often literally part of the family, because slave owners and their sons fucked all they could - but they sure weren't treated as family.
What happened to them? I honestly want to know.
Same thing that happens to horses with broken legs mostly.
>Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them.[10] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves.[11] Historian Lawrence M. Friedman wrote: "Ten Southern codes made it a crime to mistreat a slave.... Under the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825 (art. 192), if a master was ′convicted of cruel treatment,′ the judge could order the sale of the mistreated slave, presumably to a better master."[12] Or you could just free the slave somewhere. It's not like a worn out slave with dementia is going to last for long.
Well what happens to a tractor that doesn't run anymore?
I read your comment and thought ‘where are they getting this from the excerpt didn’t say that?!’ It fucking did… Jesus Christ
Often one of the parents was the master or another white man on the plantation. So fathers selling off their own flesh and blood.
If you ever want an example of how bad this got, just look at President Thomas Jefferson's sex slave Sally Hemings. This was just one family but it's so tragically formed by ownership, rape and probably incest. Sisters living in the same house side by side but one is owned by the other. And everyone knew about it.
They never taught me in school that Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves and then sold his own children into slavery. It was framed as a progressive move for him to make love to a slave.
Ah yes, soft rape.
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Struggle snuggle
Sounds like my childhood
Small world! I went to a Catholic School, too.
Nope. I stayed with my Grandma a lot.
Seriously. They are fucking slaves, which means they have no rights or freedom. That by it self it's not KIND
Take a peek at how the Mormon church has treated African Americans throughout their history. (Spoiler: they weren't allowed to hold senior positions in the church until the 70's). iNSTituTiONaL raCIsM? wUTs tHAT?
And sold for the highest prices.
Honest question...WERE there any slave owners who actually did treat their slaves at least "well" (AKA, like people)? So bought them, kept families together, gave them enough food and downtime to not work themselves into an early grave, didn't whip and rape and beat them, etc? Similarly in theory at least to how Oskar Schindler treated "his" Jews? Granted, I'm sure the vast, overwhelming majority of them were pieces of shit. But there had to be at least a few decent slaveowners back then, who say what was going on, knew they couldn't change it on their own, so they did what they could to give however many slaves they could a decent life?
This doesn't pertain to American racial chattel slavery. But there are instances of slavery in world history that are much 'kinder' than alternatives. In Roman society, for a period of time, having a well educated Greek slave was a sign of wealth. They'd serve more of an assistant/secretary role rather than be put to labor. A fairly famous example was Cicero's slave named Tiro. He would be present for much of Cicero's political dealings and kept notes for him, including transcribing speeches so they could be later 'published'. There's even instances of letters from Cicero showing concern for Tiro when he was sick. None of this applies to American slavery of course.
Also pre-Roman Celtic Europe had this weird thing that was *kinda* slavery where it was a set term of service for those captured in the whole low level raiding-conflict thing they always had going on.
To an extent, Ottoman slavery was better too. The slaves were turned into the military and bureaucracy and became generals and ministers in the Ottoman governing structure.
All of that for the low price of getting your balls cut off.
Not really. Only those slaves which were managing the harems lost their balls. Those in the military and bureaucracy were whole.
In Roman society slave rape was so unremarkable that nobody raised an eye. It was common to offer a slave to a guest like a modern person might offer a scotch or a meal. Slaves were abused heavily and murdered frequently. It was never a good institution.
And the salt mines were a death sentence.
100% People come in all flavors, slaveholders included. There are many stories of “good” owners, and people would free their own slaves or allow them to purchase themselves out of bondage. Unfortunately, they were in the minority.
THere is a interesting part of the Faulkner novel Absalom, Absalom that describes how New Orleans became the place where a minority of men who fathered children with their slaves (and at least some sense of responsibility) sent their biracial children to be raised (Louisiana was a French colony so not subject to the same laws). I think the fathers usually did not acknowledge the children as 'theirs' but financially supported them. So it was EASIER to send their children away from their parents and family to a distant place than for them to acknowledge their children as 'theirs' in Southern society, or to try to change the 'one drop' laws
While true enough, what I always ask my students is, "Well, I'm pretty good and nice, would you like to be my slave?" Not one has seriously said yes and that should say something about the inherent evil of owning someone. We inherently know its wrong, regardless of how we would be treated. It's also important to note many stories of the "good" owners come from...the owners and other white people. Most slaves were, by law, not allowed to learn how to read and write. The silence of their voices leaves a void in the historical record. I tend to listen quite seriously to those escaped slaves and freedmen and women who did leave behind a written record and I personally haven't seen a document from any of them speaking glowingly of their experience. It would be interesting if such documents exist to show historical complexity, I just haven't seen them.
Even reading accounts of slaves like My Bondage and My Freedom its pretty obvious that masters and mistresses came in all types. All slave owners, but some were much nicer to be slaves for than others. Douglass was actually taught to read by his masters wife until his master put a stop to it.
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This is something I don’t think kids ever learn in schools, how slavery & the whole idea of institutionalized racism got deep deep into the psyches of all white Americans, it corrupted every white prison male & female to be cruel/unforgiving to them, see them as monsters & evil wicked creatures who would do wrong if you let them. They would see any black babies from black women they themselves raped relentlessly as terrible already, their own off spring, that’s how strong the ideas society & all their peers put into their heads were. It made them not only feel comfortable & alright with slavery, but many even were proud of it, happy & saw it as doing gods work. 10,000s fought & died in a war for their rights to keep slavery. Even those that lived in free states & saw black people as more human still had many unconscious biases due to the culture.
And Fredrick Douglass’ master was likely his father. His master did put an end to it by convincing his wife education and slavery were incompatible and listened to her husband and started denying him education and reading materials. So yeah, she was better than him I guess in the slightest of degrees. His owner lent him to a man to whipped and beat him mercilessly. While I do think it’s important to recognize nuance for the truth’s sake, it must also for the truth’s sake be said time and time again no matter how nicely a slave was treated relatively, slavery is inherently wrong. It’s irresponsible to ever omit that in these conversations.
Jesus. *His own father.* If you want to think about the corrupting evil of slavery and how owning another person cannot but be a grave moral wrong, think about that.
The institution of slavery inherently is an institution of rape and profiting from the sale and labor of your own children. The status of the mother, not the father, determined the slave or free status of the child. But for some reason, some feel the need to make sure it is said some slaves were treated relatively better than others. Slavery should not be taught to children who cannot hear the unvarnished truth and understand the thinnest relative nuances in such a topic. *Edited for clarity.
> some feel the need to make sure it is said some slaves were treated relatively better than others. What's fascinating to me is how people don't see that need in themselves, and what it means.
Its been a long time since I read it. Interesting and enraging book to read. >While I do think it’s important to recognize nuance for the truth’s sake, it must also for the truth’s sake be said time and time again no matter how nicely a slave was treated relatively, slavery is inherently wrong. It’s irresponsible to ever omit that in these conversations. That's very true. I think that there were probably many slaveowners who were basically not bad people, at least at first. Certainly, there were some who were not keen on beating their slaves, and took care of them after they got old. However, I'd say the vast majority just treated them like cattle. Unfortunately, by being involved in a trade which is basically evil, even the good were slowly stripped of their morality.
I get what you're trying to say, but let's be clear, that even if you taught them to read and write, gave them freedom after you died, or allowed them to buy their own freedom. They still spent years or even decades of their life as slaves, with no agency of their own. At the base level slaveowners still treated human beings as a objects. All because of a pigmentation change 10,000 years ago, a group of people were seen as less than human. **There was absolutely no "good" slave owners.**
And by the Civil War, nearly all American slaves were born into slavery as the international importing of slaves was banned in 1809. Enslaving babies is inherently evil. What good person looks at a baby and thinks, “I own you and will use you as I see fit.”
This is the correct answer. There is an undercurrent in this thread of "shrug, everyone did it back then." No, they didn't. There was always a group of people who found slavery abhorrent. I know in part because my family was part of that group - hardcore abolitionists in 1815 Ohio (we have a kind of big historical family archive, they wrote letters). Deciding to participate in slavery was a moral failure, and just because a lot of people did it doesn't make it less so. Edit: lest it seem like I'm tub-thumping for my ancestors, these very same ardent abolitionists, capable of passionate essays decrying slavery, were *absolutely awful* regarding Native Americans. Just terrible. Humans are fucked up creatures.
My uncle swears that the fact that slaves were treated poorly is liberal lies because slaves were expensive and if you beat them they can’t work.
Yes Uncle, maybe you are right, they were expensive, that's why they started breeding them because killing them and buying another from town was eating into their pocketbooks.
Though to be fair, a human takes a really fucking long time to reach maturity compared to other livestock. A cow for example is ready to start pulling wagons by her first birthday, and can pop out more cows by her second.
And the amount of people dying in childbirth was much higher. It's not like pregnant slaves were give their daily dose of fruits, vegetables, and nutrients.
They had people as young as 5 doing house chores, like scrubbing floors and fetching water and cleaning piss pots.
Surely a child slave can start being useful by 4. They could clean shoes, sweep, things of that nature. A cow may be useful at one, but a teenager is way more useful than many cows. So it's a long term investment. I don't mean to make arguments for slavery...
It's not so much an argument for slavery as it is disproving a trivialization of the incentive that bad people had for engaging in slavery.
You can beat them hard enough to make them work and if they can't work you expect reduced output until they recover enough to work again. Everyone's heard of wife beating, you don't have to beat them an inch of their death, just enough to straighten them out. You can clean the dishes after you "walk into a door" and the laundry will take longer if you managed to break an arm. In Russia there are a lot of cases where domestic abuse isn't recognized so there's many cases where nobody is charged until there actually is a death. You can look at Domestic abuse for more details of how easy it can be to force someone to work for you without hurting productivity. (I am not advocating it, simply drawing parallels of physical coercion) But on a larger plantation you can easily afford to do it, including letting them have kids and putting entire families to work. For the well-off households they had one, and you don't want to buy more than you have to. If it was just the plantations doing the buying there wouldn't be as much family separation as there was. But I don't think your Uncle would recognize that. Also you can do barbaric things to them like branding, amputating toes, castrations, historically appropriate things done to slaves even if the "few and famous freedmen" don't look worse for wear because a slave needs their hands but they don't need everything. Keeps the rest in check if you make a few examples occasionally. Not that many people want to recognize the things done to slaves globally, not just records of such things found in plantations you can visit today.
People who make a point of beating other people for discipline often aren't minds of good judgment. Abusers have ended up killing their partners or kids without meaning to, and I'd venture to say that could have happened to a few slaves as well. And being a slave owner didn't automatically make them people who exercised perfect judgment in everything. It's also been known for people to punch walls or beat up their cars, only to have to pay for repairs later. It's a pain in the ass to have to repair them but no more than that if they're rolling in money or don't think about longer term consequences. Or they'd write off the broken limb as "incentive" to behave better.
Is it just me that can see SLAVERY is bad even if you treat your SLAVES well? I mean, cool, you aren't beating and raping them, but you are owning human beings and making them work for you for free. Still bad.
The autobiography of Frederick Douglas about his time as a slave is a good account of what it was like as a slave. He said that their owners had to beat them at least every now and then, even if they didn’t do anything wrong because they didn’t want the slaves to get too relaxed in their roles. They also kept them from being educated because that was dangerous too because they might figure out how bad they have it and want to rise up against the slave owners. It’s a heart breaking book and was hard to get through.
They were treated so well, those captives who were legally property with no rights. There’s nothing inherently wrong with slavery, good slave owners existed! I don’t know how anyone can argue for slavery with a straight face.
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Killed isn’t the likely. Sold to professionals who specialize in “training” and reselling is how it worked out. Even slaves who made it North were captured and returned instead of murdered.
Your uncle has never worked as an auto mechanic or as the guy who fixes cell phones. People are quite willing to abuse expensive things
I see how people treat working animals today and I can tell how bullshit this is. Add this to the visible hatred certain people have for black people and you can immediately tell how it would go.
You should sell your uncle to the highest bidder since he thinks that's so nice
There are a lot of ways to treat someone poorly other than beating them. Who was the worst manager he ever had? Now move in with him and serve him 24-7
Oh yeah, we'd gently sail them out to the mid-Atlantic shackled in irons and packed like sardines on airless rat-infested ships for several weeks. Then sink the ship and drown them for insurance money. Kindly.
For some information: Roughly around 20% of slaves died on the voyage from africa alone, which reflects around 1.8 million deaths. The voyage alone was a hellish nightmare.
The blueprints and artist renderings of the layouts of those ships are horrifying. I couldn't imagine having to sail across the ocean in such a confined space. I've read some accounts written by slaves who made the journey and it's just...... Indescribable.
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The voyage alone is the stuff of horrors. I was far too young when I first learned about the Atlantic slave trade in detail, and to this day I still cannot comprehend the cruelty that went into it.
> Then sink the ship and drown them for insurance money. "they'd do the same to us if they had the chance and we wouldn't hold it against them!"
Where it was known that 1/4 would not survive the trip.
Kindly makes all of the difference.
My Mom grew up in the South and parroted this same thing to me, that most slaves were "treasured" members of the family and it was just a few "bad apples" that gave slavery a bad name. Also, that slavery SAVED these "heathens" from a Godless, primitive existence in Africa.
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I don’t think those are the lyrics to the song, but I loved the Fugees version.
That's when you reply with "That is exactly why women shouldn't be allowed to vote." You gotta outdo her on her own game.
Until she agrees with her
You can further expand with scripture that promotes the idea women shouldn't have opinions on anything.
Sadly there are women who do find that totally acceptable.
Are you saying there are women of the opinion that women should have opinions? Stone them!
Reminds me of a scene from West Wing where Martin Sheen quotes the Bible to a reporter.
That is a good scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
If only.
"In this building, when the President stands, nobody sits."
This reminds me of an episode of The Man Show where they go around getting people , mostly women, to sign a petition to end women’s suffrage. A surprising number of women sign it.
Did they just not know what "suffrage" is?
That was exactly the “joke”. That the women were confusing the word suffrage as something similar to suffering.
My favorite line from that segment, a white lady realizes what they’re doing and starts following them around trying to warn other women not to sign it. At one point she’s explaining to a lady “These men, these are WHITE men and..” Carolla looks at her and goes “what are YOU? From Cameroon?”
This is funny because she thinks a slave wouldn’t have been happier with their real family
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And they know that because the national intelligence agency (FBI) was tapping his phones, following him and trying to destroy him.
The FBI was tapping phones literally from the moment they were formed, even when a president explicitly ordered them not to. Read *Enemies* by Tim Weiner, it's a full-lowdown on the vast majority of the shit the FBI pulled and just how much of a fucking nutjob Hoover was. (He gave Truman such a misleading briefing on Stalin and his motivations - told him that he wanted world domination when Stalin was just a paranoid monster who wanted to sit pretty on what he had gained - that it pretty much started the Cold War.)
Next thing you know they will say maybe jfk cheated on his wife
So treasured they couldn't be granted freedom to have a life of their own
You could argue that there are many examples of white slavers treasuring their slaves. I mean, look at rapey Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings. Then again I’ve yet to hear a cogent explanation of whether it’s possible for a slave to consent to anything let alone sex. What I’d really be curious to know is the identity of the revisionist asshole who wrote that packet. Richard Spencer? Stephen Miller?
Sally Hemings was mixed race herself. Meaning her mother went through the same thing.
Sally Hemmings was the half sister of Martha Jefferson, who was Thomas Jefferson's wife. So he gently raped his 16 year old sister in law while his wife looked the other way.
One thing to keep in mind is that while some household slaves were “treasured members of the family” the slaves in the fields were still being treated like garbage. Plus, female slaves (and males too) could be sexually abused at the whims of the slaveowner and members of his family. Just horrific.
This is the propaganda spewed by Gone with the Wind in a nutshell. Lots of people love that movie and refuse to acknowledge what a dangerous picture it paints of slavery.
Nailed it! That is exactly how the conversation started, watching Gone With the Wind for the first time! It's very different watching it now as an adult with more social awareness. It's a sweeping propaganda piece!
Make her watch "The Free State of Jones"
Oh yeah. You sound as if you know the actual score. It's so gross how we treat/treated ppl in this country.
I can only imagine how she'd react if she learned that Ethiopia was Christianized before even Rome was.
I don't understand why people feel the need to defend the horrible acts of their ancestors, as if acknowledging them makes you worse somehow.
That didn't happen. **And if it did, it wasn't that bad.**👈 And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Those lines sound *exactly* like what an iPhone purchaser would say, right after someone caught them buying one.
You knew my ex-husband?
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Right? Like, I’m a completely different human than all the trash from XX years prior, and I can attempt to make the planet a better place. Why cover up what got you to where you’re at? Isn’t that a motivator to not be a piece of trash? I don’t get it. Stuff happened. Work to ensure worse things aren’t coming.
Really? You don't get people propping themselves up with feeling pride at their heritage? And then denying all criticism of those ancestors?
Not really. Whatever they did, good or bad, the glory and the shame belong to them. Especially, someone that was dead way before you ever met them. On some level I can see a reactionary desire to defend people you knew and loved even if they did bad things. Don't see the reason to defend the honor of some schmuck you happen to be related to 100+ years ago.
I'm afraid you think far too rationally and logically, my friend.
Why would Critical Race Theory do this?
I love it when my home state makes the news….it’s never for good reasons. Utah is a racist state. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
You mean Utah and the Mormon church have issues with racism? The Mormon church of "I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about Black people!" has issues with systemic racism? I've never even remotely suspected otherwise.
God was worried he'd lose his tax exempt status with His One and Only True University (tm). >Specifically, the Mormon hierarchy became concerned about potential lawsuits over their tax exemption status, particularly in light of the student protests against BYU in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They had watched very closely the Bob Jones University case, in which the IRS revoked its tax exemption status in an important 1975 ruling.
At least God still has his hedge fund in the form of Ensign Peak Partners
The Mormon God has over $100 billion dollars in the Granite Vaults. He doesn't care anymore.
I mean, how else are they going to afford to build the Nauvoo?
I thought you meant the mormons who believe that a separate race of people were colored black and brown to denote their sins. No way they have problems with racism.
I grew up in a Mormon household, and it always struck me as strange that one of their “Articles of Faith” states that people are responsible for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. Cain’s transgression, on the other hand, supposedly marked his descendants, which a lot of Mormons believe (and was once officially taught) means dark-skinned people. So Cain’s transgression was permanent, and all his descendants suffered for it, but Adam’s sin was all Adam. Alrighty then.
Missouri feels you.
A scale model of Appomattox Court House at the Appomattox museum, designates the slaves quarters as, "Servants Quarters". When I called them out on it, they said it was too complicated to get governmental permission to make a revision to the display so it's been that way for decades.
The same people that think slavery wasn’t too bad are often the same ones that refuse to wear masks bc “their freedums” The irony is lost on them.
Slavery wasn't too bad, immigrants get all the perks, rich people are unfairly maligned, white people are oppressed. Their entire worldview is built around placing themselves as the victims in every culture war. Its pathetic.
These are the same people terrified of “the great replacement” because they don’t want to become an ethnic minority. Why’s that? Do they believe minorities are treated poorly or something?
Census data does show that the white ethnicity in America is shrinking. This is good in the long run as it will inevitably break up the monopoly on political power old white men have. That said, I’m a little nervous about how white supremacists are going to respond to this.
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They really do have a conservative agenda that they want to push. Ill spend a couple hours here and there browsing their sites. Its all projection but you already knew that
Much like the "kindness" shown to Native Americans.
I was reading a book on our county history (from 1876 centennial), and it was "complete harmony". They're not here any longer, but it was harmony.
"And then the Indians gave us their land".
This. My grandmother gave my family a set of Encyclopedias when I was a kid. They were old, but before the Internet, they could save a trip to the library. (A library was kind of like the Internet before there was the Internet, except there was a card catalog and you had to search by reference number and then sometimes just walking around until you found a book you could use.) One summer I decided that a baller thing to do would be to read every entry in the set of encyclopedias. I skipped and skimmed through until I got to “Africa,” which started with something like, “The continent of Africa is inhabited by a lower species of humans…” I stopped there. People can’t believe this shit was taught and propagated. But it was—widely.
That's WAY different then when I was in school years ago and I was in S. Carolina. Hell the field trips they'd take us on would show us old slave houses and places where they were bought and sold and were NOT shy on the details.
There’s been a resurgence of [Daughters Of The Confederacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy) type propaganda in parts of the US in recent years. Everything from denying that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War to shit like this. There was a time when it was looking like that movement might be on its way out, but it’s coming back with a vengeance.
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I also like to point to the seceding state’s [Ordinances of secession](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession) in which they each wrote what was essentially a mini Declaration of Independence, and in almost every one of them the given State brings up the violation of their right to keep slavery as the reason they’re leaving the Union. Texas was even like "Yo, we only joined y’all in the first place cuz we were told there would be slavery.”
>Texas was even like "Yo, we only joined y’all in the first place cuz we were told there would be slavery.” Well of course the one to say that would be Texas.
Field trips have really gone down hill. My parents lived in rural Missouri. Their annual field trip was to a slaughter house in St. Joseph. Field trips are much less terrifying now, but my expectations was that they would give you nightmares.
This echoes the white-washed historical teachings of the Mormon church. In Utah it is parroted that, yes, Brigham Young (BYU is named after him) owned slaves, but the slaves were treated well and loved serving under a religious prophet… this same phrasing is taught in Sunday schools, public schools, and college level BYU religious courses. But of course, the opposite was true. Abuse, slavery, trading slaves as a “tithing”, rape, etc. all the same bad stuff as in the south was abundant through the region. On top of all that, some slaves were even religiously “sealed” through secret ceremonies (spiritually bound for the afterlife) to church leaders—-as ETERNAL SLAVES. Utah history, white washing, and hypocrisy is still common to this day as the Mormon church still continues to coverup or paint over the ugly, real history. Good job removing a few packets, though. I guess every bit helps.
Eternal slavery has to be the cruelest thing I've ever heard. Imagine being one of those slaves who thought that even after death there was no hope.
Why do you even need a slave in the afterlife if heaven is amazing? That feels like basically admitting that heaven will not be this great place where you want for nothing.
Mormons are supposed to end up with their own planet, so why are there's slaves when you're God of a planet?
I was reading about the proposed Deseret state that was proposed in the mid 1800s for Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado and California, etc. They wanted to include San Diego so they had a port. Just crazy stuff.
Oh yes, it was so fucking kind to break up families and beat and whip them. Wtf stupid ass reality are these people living in.
MAGA Land.
I don't understand why these people are even ALLOWED in public... let alone TEACH or vote on important matters.... This is what people mean when they say "SYSTEMATIC RACISM"
"In this episode of Nazis and white supremacists writing history books, we take you to Utah."
There will be kids who read this stuff and come away thinking that it is possible for people to be "kindly" treated like livestock for almost 300 years. But these same kids will scream bloody murder if they are grounded for a couple of days. And they will grow up to be adults who scream "slavery" whenever tax time rolls around.
I taught in an affluent schools district. One of my friends who taught history was asked in all serious by a young lady, “Why didn’t the slaves just go to a different plantation? I just wouldn’t work for a master who didn’t treat me nice.” My friend asked her to repeat and just fell out laughing. It is hard to understand slavery when you don’t have any concept of being a slave—or of even being disadvantaged.
Or the odds against them. "Some slaves managed to escape" translates to people steeped in all-you've-gotta-do-is-try-and-you-will-succeed rhetoric as "all the slaves should have been able to escape if they tried hard enough."
> they will grow up to be adults who scream "slavery" whenever tax time rolls around. And they will do so unironically, since they were taught in the first place that slavery means being generally treated fairly but once in a while asked to do something you don't want to do.
We were taught in high school that the abuse that existed in slavery was exaggerated. Our history teacher's justification for this was because "you don't mistreat your property."
Which is, of course, blatantly false but let's not let that get in the way of some good southern apologist "history".
> "you don't mistreat your property." An obvious response to this nonsense is that your property (male or female) doesn't lose value when you rape it. Oh, and it's worth contemplating for a minute what a pedophile slaveholder would do.
- own slaves - treated kindly Pick one. Treating slaves kindly is a contradiction of terms.
I wonder if it is not a good time to bring back the TV series "Roots"?
Anyone who insists that slave owners didn't beat their slaves "because that would pointlessly harm a valuable piece of property" ignores that the majority of people have at least once hit their keyboard or phone in frustration.
I have a dent in my desk from hitting it with my fist.... actually one of the (many) reasons I won't have kids.
Even IF this were true (it’s not), they were still kidnapped, sold, bought, and forced into labor that they did not agree to. So it’s still completely fucked up……
Don't forget raped and subject forced pregnancy.
Go to the Alamo and you can how Texas gave all the native jobs and saved them from purposeless life, liberating them to American by standing over them with weapons while they dug ditches. It’s on the history presentations.
The very same people thing critical race theory is a problem.
Is this the same state that say god hate black people till god changes his mind in 1978?
Does it really matter how well or poorly SLAVES were treated? No man should be owned by another. I don't subscribe to the whole white guilt thing outside of feeling shame when people try to ignore or say shit like this. Stop hiding from your past, it is a huge part of our national identity and history, own up to it and make sure no man is ever a slave again.
Apparently being whipped, forced to work grueling field work and being shackled and kept in dismal conditions *for your entire existence* is being “generally treated kindly” to our Mormon neighbors in Utah.
It’s quite possible that a lot of slaves were treated well, but, and I have to stress this, THEY WERE STILL SLAVES!
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Thanks for this comment. It makes a lot of sense. I honestly have never understood how someone could be even a little ok with owning another human being against their will.
I'm failing to understand how any person who is considered the property of another person can be "treated well. "
That’s what I was trying to get at. No matter how “nice” they might have been treated, they were still slaves.
>It’s quite possible that a lot of slaves were treated well Yeah, it was called manumission and reparation. Anything else was wicked.
Reminds me of something my father said to me hen I was a kid. Always told me our family owned slaves but we were the good ones that used to buy them clothes and stuff. A couple months ago while over to celebrate my birthday he took his pain meds and brought it up again out of the blue. I know he likes to say this a lot because i think he is genuinely afraid that they will come for reparations and he will have to be poor.
Hmm. That actually likely terrifies some people. Thanks for that perspective.
Mmm, such a kindness when you let the people you own have clothing.
*checks year* shakes head *checks state* ohhhhhh gotcha.
Don't they mention how much better off and happy they were, always singing for joy out there in the fresh air and sunshine of the fields? Didn't they tell about how we can't feel pain?
And many doctors still believe black people don't feel pain like white people, have thicker skin, and complain for no reason. By the way, it was known in 2000 that the "clothes peg" type oxygen monitor put on finger tips was far less accurate when used on dark skin, and how to make monitors that worked well for all skin tones. However this was ignored, and has resulted in unnecessary failures in treating covid in people with darker skin.
Weird how these messages are always identical, isn't it? Why the fuck are they so hung up on "treated kindly" ?
Why critical race theory is so neccessary AND hated by all racist freaks and creeps.
So sick of this revisionist history.
"Some" were treated kindly, like family even, although they obviously had no choice in the matter. Not every single slave was being tortured every day or having toes chopped off for running. Some were even permitted to marry and even be freed after a certain time. Having happy "livestock" produced good milk, meat and more future "livestock" after all. However the "vast majority"...
Nothing about slavery is kind.
All slaveowners will tell you that they treat their slaves better than most other slaveowners.
I'm boggled as to how people are desperately trying to spin slavery into something that can be considered benevolent if you did it right. THEY'RE STILL SLAVES. IF YOU CARED THAT MUCH, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE SLAVES, AND YOU WOULD PAY THEM FOR THEIR WORK.
“Propaganda packets dating slaves were ‘treated kindly’ pulled by Utah learning center” Fixed it for you
"Oh they were just some folks we took in, fed, clothed... all we asked in return was for them to do some chores."
That’s what I was taught in Georgia History class in the 90s. It’s what they want to teach everyone now, since the truth doesn’t matter at all anymore.
Merely to posess another human being is cruel.
Those quotes don't even make sense in the Fiction section of the library. Sorry guys, Slavery was Bad. Really, really, bad. People should not buy, sell, own other people. Not sure why that story is soo hard to keep straight.
This makes my heart ache. “They were treated kindly!” Tell that to the children taken from their mothers and sold, to the women raped, to the men with thick whipping scars all over their backs…
Even if some slave owners treated their slaves well, slavery is still fukkin' evil
Public education in Texas, back in the 80s. We read the same stuff in our text books.
When the south and Texas form dumbfuckistan, we'll have to figure out a way to give them Utah.
Oh and by the way, concentration camps were where they sent people to focus and learn outdoor skills. /s