Tag: Slavery

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I once was talking about reparations for the families of ex-slaves with a woman who finally had enough of me. Now here is the thing I doubt that reparations will be instituted anytime soon. The American public is too tax averse and the subject is too controversial to get anywhere near congressional passage. Even though it is unlikely to happen, there is a pretty reasonable case to be made for giving reparations.

So the woman I was arguing with finally stumped when she asked, “why should I pay for the sins of my father?” I didn’t have an answer at the time but I do now.

This same woman gets all weepy when speaking about all the good America has done. She visited Normandy Beach to see where D Day was fought. She had justifiable pride in those soldiers sacrifice. She believes she benefited enormously from her American heritage. She owed something to the forefathers for the sacrifices they made.

Well, then, doesn’t she also owe something to the victims of her ancestors mistakes. It is terribly easy to claim American heritage when it is doing good. But let’s face it, it didn’t always do good.

My mother’s family were some of the original settlers of my home state of Kansas. Presumably, they took their land from the indigenous people who roamed the plains prior to their arrival. Now I certainly don’t approve of forcing people from their land. On the other hand I have benefited greatly from their actions even though I committed no crime.

Might makes right. The bottom line is that the native population was, through a combination of trickery and force, removed from their land. My ancestors then took advantage of it. If I am proud of what they built and I also need to acknowledge the damage they did to the native population. History cuts both ways.

Getting back to the reparations debate. There is no clear cut dividing line when racism ended. Indeed it lingers on to this day but let’s use the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a dividing line. Before 1964, then, discrimination was legal. What did my ancestors do to prior to 1964 to ensure that Blacks had civil rights. Precious little, I am afraid.

Now these are ancestors that I actually remember not some distant myth of an ancestor. These are grandparents and parents. I am innocent of any crime but my ancestors sat idly by while something terrible was happening.

Which brings me to Trump trying to sanitize slavery by removing a picture of a whipped slave from the National Park system. Trump is concerned that this type of photo gives a negative view of our history and “distorts understanding rather than enrich(es) it.” This is an actual photograph. There is no argument about that. Trump is afraid that people will learn that actual flesh and blood human beings whipped this mans back until it was a mess of scars.

What? Seriously, what? What misunderstanding is Trump worried about? What is gained by removing this photograph? We don’t have to think of our ancestors doing horrible things in order to keep slaves? The problem with wanting to worship our ancestors is that our ancestors were human beings not saints. Sanitizing history doesn’t change it and it actually makes the Civil War more confusing. Why did so many people die to stop slavery when the slave owners were so nice and the slaves so happy?

And this is why reparations are useful. It would be a price that living Americans would pay for the mistakes of their ancestors. It might make, and might is the operative word here, people realizes that at one point in our history we behaved terribly to our fellow human beings and that is important.

Of course, it will never happen but the least we can do now is fight to show the brutality of slavery. A very small price indeed.

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Donald Trump was upset about the Smithsonian’s failure to talk about the good parts of slavery. There are good parts of slavery? Who knew. I am greatly interested in hearing more. I am sure he will be forthcoming with more details sometime in the future.

Trump may have had a point about the information in Smithsonian displays but it was lost when he started to talk about the good parts of slavery. Because Trump has a reputation of never apologizing and never backing down, there will be no apology which puts his supporters in the awkward position of defending Trump’s ridiculous statement when the only sane response is Trump is wrong and he never should have said something so stupid.

A good portion of the Conservative side has taken the best option available to them — they are ignoring the statement completely. Anyone who tries to defend him looks like an idiot and no one dares contradict the notoriously vengeful Trump so silence is about the best option a sane person would have.

Why Trump and Conservatives feel that American History has to always paint the country in a positive light is baffling. History is about human beings doing things. Human beings, some of the time, are going to do the wrong thing. It is inevitable. And it is a good lesson for children. Even people who do good things can sometimes believe and do terrible things. Children need to know this. How do you expect them to navigate life in this rough and tumble world if they believe Americans only do good?

Facts are facts. Slavery existed in the United States at one time. How do you explain American History without talking about it? The Civil War was all about slavery no matter how hard people try to make it about State’s Rights. This fails when looking at what people living at the time say. All the historical evidence points to slavery as the cause of the war. It wasn’t tariffs, agricultural policy, industrial policy, or any one of a million different issues that states might disagree about — it was about slavery.

Well, then, a lot of Southerners opposed slavery but they felt compelled to support their state, friends and family who did. So where exactly do you stop supporting your friends and family when they have bad ideas? I don’t really want slaves but all my friends and family have slaves so, in order that they don’t feel awkward, I am going to fight a bloody civil war so they know I really like them. These people are actually worse than the people who believed slavery was acceptable. It is the old mother’s adage if everyone was jumping off the Empire State Building, would you? Give me a break.

The Civil War is over with. It is no longer relevant to a modern discussion of civil rights. Now, I happen to disagree with this but say I give it to Trump’s defenders in this debate. The Smithsonian’s displays are about the Civil War. They are trying to explain what happened in 1860 and not how we live now. In order to understand America in the 1860’s, slavery has to be discussed and, if it is discussed honestly, the evils of slavery come up from time to time — it is unavoidable.

Some slave owners were nice to their slaves. Oh come on, really. They may have been nice people but they still believed it was OK to own people, to sell people, and to retrieve people if they ran away. That is your definition of nice? There is little evidence that this niceness was apparent to the slaves. If the slave owners were so nice why did they have to have laws returning runaway slaves? Why would anyone want to leave paradise on the plantation?

The slaves were fed and housed. Big Whoop. Prisoners are fed and housed. Hostages are fed and housed. This is basic human behavior. Nothing particularly special or nice about. If you are going to buy someone, force them to live somewhere and tell them they can’t leave — you better damn well feed and house them.

Why people try to make the South out to be the good guys in this scenario is beyond me. They were wrong about everything and I mean everything. There is nothing redeeming about the South’s position on slavery. It was wrong for them to have slaves and it was wrong for them to start a war about it. Trying to make lemonade out of this tainted basket of lemons is impossible. So, for God’s sakes, stop it.

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Donald Trump thinks that Abraham Lincoln mishandled the Civil War. He should have tried more peaceful methods to end the conflict in order to avoid avoid the 600,000 deaths the war caused.

Wow. That is just gobsmackingly arrogant and stupid even for a man who is known for being gobsmackingly arrogant and stupid.

When someone talks like this, it gives me the impression that he has thought long and hard about the Civil War and that, through his study of the war, he saw some alternate peaceful approaches that Lincoln missed in 1860. Well, Donald tell me more. Trump is, after all calling into question the actions of the most esteemed president in American History regarding the pivotal issue of his presidency — the very issue that most people think makes Lincoln great. It requires a thorough explanation of Trump’s reasoning in order to understand how Lincoln erred so badly in his decisions.

Unsurprisingly, Trump just leaves it at that — Lincoln could have done better. Which leads to a different impression of what Trump said. Mostly that he doesn’t know a God damn thing about the Civil War and has no business expressing opinions about it.

The Lincoln of 1860 was quite willing to let the South keep their slaves. He drew the line at expanding slavery to any territory wanting to join the USA. He wasn’t seen as a hardcore abolitionist and was willing to do anything — including selling out the slaves — to keep the Union together. Something that many modern historians rightfully are critical of. What more could he have done to peacefully end the conflict? Particularly after the South attacked Fort Sumter which started the war. Yes, the South started the Civil War. Not Lincoln.

The most terrifying thing about Trump is that he is both painfully ignorant and he has his finger on the button that could send nuclear missiles flying through the air. He, facing his own divided country, delights in antagonizing his political opponents to such a degree that people are talking about a new civil war. Well, if Trump wants to show how to bring peace to a divided country he now has an opportunity to show it. Let Trump heal the divisions plaguing our country now.

Trump criticizing Lincoln. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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Well, the news out of Texas just keeps getting better and better. Not only must a woman give birth to a baby which is doomed to die, the state takes a deem view regarding historical information about slavery. Michelle Haas, amateur historian, believes that the Varner-Hogg plantation, a Texas state historical site, had too much information about the slaves and not enough about the slave owners. You heard me right. The slaves are getting more attention than the slave owners. The horror.

Whats more troubling is that it took only one person complaining for the Texas Historical Commission to throw in the towel. They voluntarily removed the books about the slaves because they were afraid that the Republican-controlled Legislature would be upset by her complaints. One complaint and the Commission gives in. So much for Don’t Mess with Texas.

It begs the question what books about plantation owners are acceptable to Haas? Gone With the Wind?What happens when someone complains about Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler? Are they going to remove it as well? At this point, you might as well close down the store completely because everything is offensive.

 Which is the point after all. This isn’t just about protecting children either, this is about keeping information from adults too. One of the books removed was Alex Haley’s classic history of his family’s experience of slavery. It’s appearance on the bookshelves is there to remind people that there were also slaves at the Varner-Hogg plantation and that plantations needed a large work force of unpaid labor in order to function. What exactly is the problem with discussing slavery? It existed at the Varner-Hogg plantation. Knowing about slavery would help a modern audience understand plantation life. I think most adults can handle this information.

And why do I need to know more about the owners? Of all the plantation residents, their place in the hierarchy of the plantation can be understood by the dimmest kindergartner. They collected the paycheck while the slaves did all of the work. What else did they really do? Give parties, run for the state legislature? You can remove the owners from the story and still get a pretty good idea of what happened on a plantation. On the other hand, you can’t remove the slaves which might also explain why there is more information about the slaves. But, by all means, tell me more about the owners.

And, while you are at it, please spare me the heart warming stories about how well they treated their slaves. It is irrelevant and frankly unbelievable. Owning a person, by its very nature, is bad treatment. Knowing any more about them, can only give people a worse opinion. Now if I can hear about why they thought they had the right to own slaves? Or why Africans were the people they were willing to enslave, I am all ears.

Also don’t tell me that slavery was a worldwide problem and that lots of people had slaves at the time. This isn’t exactly true particularly in European countries. Most of Europe had already outlawed slavery by this time and there were a lot of Americans opposed to slavery at that time so it wasn’t a universal belief. These slave owners clung to an outdated concept of how to treat their fellow human being. This is precisely what the Civil War was about. The slave owners, in case Haas’ throwing sand in your eyes has blinded you to the fact, were on the wrong side of that war.

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The discussion regarding the skills some enslaved people received is raging due to a Florida text book singing the praises of plantations at trade schools. I put my two cents in here.

What is interesting is that the a lot of conservative feedback is focusing on the truth of what is in the text book and not the relevance. The line causing the controversy is about the skills that a slave might acquire while working on a plantation which is really a weak way of trying to find something good about having been a slave.

I will let the historians debate the veracity of the statement because I think there is a bigger problem than the truth here. Who cares if it is true? How relevant is it to understanding the Civil War and Reconstruction. The vast majority of the slaves didn’t receive that training so when the Civil War ended the only skill they had was field work. That a few lucky individuals were blacksmiths while slaves and were able to take that skill and make a good life for themselves is a great story but not particularly illuminating on what happened to the millions who did not.

It is a trick. It allows Governor DeSantis to soften the horrible image that white children might conjure when they learn about their slave-holding ancestors. Because White children, for some reason, shouldn’t have to learn about how wretched the slaves were actually treated. Why they may begin to hate their ancestors? And I say good. It is about time.

This also exposes a much bigger problem with American History. There is a tendency to highlight the successes of a few individuals and say this is what is possible. This is actually what could happen to you. The other side of the story is downplayed. The millions of people who don’t make it out of poverty or don’t make a million dollars. Stories just as true as the success stories but, for some reason, we don’t want to tell. Numbers and statistics aren’t personal stories of success. They are abstract so the child can’t see themselves in this personal story even though it is every bit as likely, if not more likely, as making a million dollars.

All these complaints from employers who have to deal with young people with high expectations of their employment might be better addressed if we gave children a more realistic history of what might happen to them. They might understand that world a bit better and not be so disappointed when it doesn’t happen to them. Maybe we should teach them that hard work is often unrewarded. And talented people sometime go unrecognized. The good guys don’t always win. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes people, even leaders of our country, do horrible things. We want kids to have this glorified image of what America is when it is a lot more complicated than that.

There is this fear if children learn the truth that they will just give up on their country. The thing is they do eventually learn the truth but in the process they will also learn that people they trusted, the teachers and the parents played fast and loose with the truth. How is that better?