It’s hardly controversial to describe slavery as a great wrong. But what’s the rest of it about?
The conscience of America wouldn’t have needed awakening in this respect if we hadn’t used slave labor in the first place. And the slaves set America free from what - keeping them as slaves?
To draw an analogy, it’s as if a man was unjustly imprisoned for decades, and when found innocent and freed, was thanked for awakening the conscience of, and setting free, those whose miscarriage of justice had put him there.
Bush seems to be trying to spin this as a ‘see, some good came out of evil’ thing, but the only good that came was the ending of the original evil, and that doesn’t exactly count.
He might also have been trying to sell the idea that abolition set American "free” from the European and especially British empire way of doing things. I suppose we could as the speechwriting team, if we really wanted to know. Do you think he bothered to?
j.c.He might also have been trying to sell the idea that abolition set American "free” from the European and especially British empire way of doing things.
That would be kinda odd, since Europe (and the British empire) abolished slavery before the US got around to it. Heck, even Russia had officially abolished serfdom by 1861.
Well, but Britain and most of Europe had abolished slavary long before the 13th Amendment was passed in the US. Most of the abolitionists in the US were inspired by the success of their European counterparts decades earlier.
I think that what the quoted passage is trying to get at—and I agree that it could have been better expressed—is that the enslaved Africans themselves were crucial in helping to achieve abolition and thus to free the whole country from the curse of slavery. They weren’t just passively sitting there like stolen property until the enslaving whites decided to free them.
That’s a matter of perspective, I think. I’d say that another unexpected good that came from it is the fact that a whole lot of people are in America and able to take advantage of the benefits thereof. I have a bunch of doubt that I’d have a law degree or live in a luxury home if I were born in Gambia or Sierra Leone. I hate that my ancestors were stolen and enslaved. I don’t hate that my family isn’t living on a war, famine and disease-ridden continent.
I’m not sure what the point of this OP really is. Bush didn’t condemn slavery hard enough? Is that it? Aren’t there some things that really go without saying at this point?
I think it’s very easy for us living in the 21st century to look back at our ancestors and ask, “WTF were you thinking? I mean, using people as slaves! Have you no decency?” Keeping in mind that slave labor was quite common 150+ years ago.
I smell this leading up to another pointless discussion of slave reparations.
Since I didn’t venture any such condemnation of slaveowners in earlier times, I’m not sure what this is in response to; and
150 years ago, the only place that slavery legally existed was in the United States of America, so it was only “quite common” in the handful of states where it was legal.
You should have those olfactory glands checked, m’boy.
The point of the OP is simply that the second quoted paragraph seems to make no sense whatsoever. (Hence the “WTF?!” in the thread title.) The only sense I could make of it, as you can see, was that instituting slavery awoke America’s conscience to the evils of slavery, which would be a pretty dumb thing to say.
Bush may have meant what either Scylla or Kimstu believes he may have meant, in which case he’d have some sort of point. But I don’t see how to read that from what we’ve got.
Are you sure? And, are you referring to a specific point in time – June 8, 1853 – or are you saying that slavery has been illegal everywhere for the last 150 years? If the latter, my understanding is that slavery is practiced right now in the Sudan.
I don’t know, it makes pretty decent sense to me. I read the transcript, and it’s fairly clear what he’s getting at in this paragraph:
I think it’s an astute observation. “America, Land of the Free” was in fact no such thing until, well, maybe about 1972. But it was the Civil War and its central issue of slavery which finally, slowly, turned the tide in favor of equality.
There are several things in that paragraph alone which I find annoying and even hypocritical, but fuck all that shit. Someone wrote the President a nice speech which tied Africa’s suffering to America’s strength, and that’s fine with me.
I’m afraid that’s not true. The Netherlands didn’t abolish slavery until 1863, for example. Up until that very year, it was still widely used thoughout the Dutch empire, especially in colonies like Suriname and the Antilles.
