Posted on 04/08/2015 8:17:16 AM PDT by cripplecreek
Last night I stumbled across a collections of interviews conducted in the 1930s with blacks who had been born into slavery. They're kind of hard to read since they're written as the words were spoken with a heavy southern black accent.
Most interesting to me is the lack of anger from these former slaves. In fact, some spoke quite fondly of their former owners. At worst, they spoke with indifference of their former owners.
None of this matches the rage filled narrative of today with the endless claims of payment due.
Slavery and Liberty are incompatible. One cannot be a true American and defend slavery.
No one mastered slavery like muslims. They had both African and European slaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
The definition of "slavery" = mistreatment (at the very least).
“The definition of “slavery” = mistreatment (at the very least).”
__________
Bingo!!! Exactly what I’ve been saying. And there are some on this very thread who are arguing the opposite.
Ulysses S. Grant had a single slave given to him when he was a young man. Grant and the slave worked the small farm together till it failed.
Grant freed the slave which agitated his neighbors mostly due to the fact that their slaves knew about it and freedom was not something they wanted their slaves considering.
Obviously but keeping the lie alive is a purely leftist tactic.
Genghis Khan enslaved all those he did not kill, integrating them into his society and armies. All of the Europeans were once slaves too, wards of those who lived in great estates and in castles. Today those former slaves blame religion but have put their former masters on stipends worth millions as royals - they still toil and the royals live freely. Islam still practices openly subjection of everyone not in charge.
Our US Government considers prostitution overseas bondage, trafficking (of women/of children) or enslavement when oftentimes it is merely a form of employment.
Are the Chinese make Apple iPhones and Apple products slaves. Were the children working at the turn of the 20th century in American slaves to industrial plant owners?
Even a soldier in the US Army, while freely accepts his or her role, becomes enslaved to the time honored traditions of that profession - orders must be followed.
History is replete with slavery; every single society in history or civilization on earth at one time or another had slaves.
While slavery may be offensive to most of us today, it was and in many parts of the world still is acceptable to entire societies.
The UN can never stamp out slavery.
Are those working now the slaves to those who do not work but have more income and benefits based on race in the US today? Ah, slavery is always wrong and the today's American working slaves will agree that it is just a matter of how you phrase the term slave.
Get off your high horse nobody is defending slavery, but seekers of the truth want a true depiction of it. Not hyperbole. The agenda driven distortion of history is a disservice and harmful. This applies to other areas of history too. A lot of exaggeration to go around.
Pretend.
Perhaps ‘no rage’ has to do with these freed slaves celebrating what they DO have vs whining and complaining endlessly about what they had before -and with not seeing themselves as victims but as freed people.
The rage today definitely does not include ANY appreciation or gratitude for the freedoms people have today, or the dole from the government, or the free schools, or the possibilities of an amazing life. It only has to do with whining and victimhood. It’s easy to complain and make something somebody else’s fault.
The challenge is to take what you do have and make something of your own life, regardless. Victims are stuck in envy, rage, focusing on what they WANT rather than what they can do for themselves.
I admire these stories. I think they are real, and to me they show great maturity and common sense. You spend twenty years as a slave, then you are free. Are you going to spend the next 20 whining about the past or getting on with it?
This is what I try to get across to my students. These people were born into slavery, as were their parents, grandparents, etc. They had no other frame of reference, so many of them never even thought of trying to escape because they had no clue how to live without an overseer. It doesn’t make it right. It is just how things were.
It would be a grossly stupid slave owner who would piss off people beyond endurance, when they greatly outnumbered him on the plantation.
How can you distort being owned by another person? Living and breathing, and working only to serve the ends of another? Where does hyperbole come in?
Not really. The post & letters referenced are about American slavery - the slavery that involved keeping people by force against their will & killing or imprisoning them if they dare to leave. Endorsed & practiced by the same people who preached so eloquently about "liberty".
It is a stand out in the genre for being well-written, with Northup born into freedom in New York and having a solid education by the standards of the time. Despite the injustice and cruelty suffered by Northup, the tone of his memoir is matter of fact without racial animosity.
Although first published some forty years ago, the celebrated and pioneering history of slave life Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, by Eugene D. Genovese, remains the best work on the subject.
rich people, “rich” in quotes.
If you could become less emotional about this subject we could talk. But you are of the mind set that the differences in treatment and lives of slaves in the antebellum USA doesn’t matter. It is cut and dry to you. So be it. Live in ignorance.
Live in self-serving rationalization.
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