This thread is getting pretty scholarly for the Pit, so I just wanted to say:
Fuck the Florida GOP for pushing this bullshit narrative, for which the clear purpose is to protect white kids from ever having the legacy of slavery taint the God Bless America feeling they should wear proudly every day.
That’s true, that is an important distinction, though if you look into what was done to post Civil War blacks, and indigenous people, it often was lifelong slavery in all but name.
The Florida education story is terrible, but I hope this story isn’t also ignored:
Yeah, that was part of my Question 3 (“when, where, and how often?”)
I think for many of us, when we think of slavery the first thing we think of is those people doing menial labor out in the fields, mindlessly picking cotton all day. not the people doing skilled labor. Does having such an image of them (as only toilers in the fields) dehumanize them, or is it an accurate picture of how slavery dehumanized them? (And does it depend on whether we’re looking at before or after the invention of the cotton gin?) Is that why it’s important to learn about how slaves worked in “painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation”; or does that distort the picture by focusing on the small percentage instead of the more typical cases? These are the kinds of questions I would want people with way more historical knowledge than I have to address.
I think it does not matter at all.
A slave cannot get any “personal benefit” no matter what useful skills they might have.
So you are saying that the “which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” part is flat-out false? I bow to your greater historical knowledge, but I’d be interested in seeing a cite.
I suppose a slave owner might give the more useful slaves some extra…something…because they are more valuable than a field-hand.
That said, by definition, a slave is someone’s property. Anything they do is to the benefit of their owner. Whatever crumbs the owner sees fit to toss to their slave is up to the owner.
But I admit, I am not a historian.
I’m not directing this question directly at you, it generally applies to much of this thread:
What difference does it make?
How many slaves were taught what skills is just part of the ongoing effort to whitewash American racism and it’s horrid history. Slavery was just as wrong, and racism based, even if every slave was given a college education in agriculture or engineering. It was all wrong no matter the conditions, and the actual conditions were awful, the very worst form of slavery where people were born and died as slaves. I don’t think any time needs to be spent on this nonsensical assertion by racists in Florida except to point out the absurdity of the premise that slavery was in any way beneficial to slaves.
It question is not, “is it literally true?” the question is, “is it intended to mislead?” and the answer is yes.
I believe it is flat out false as long as they are a slave.
To which I would reply essentially as I did to Whack-a-Mole: You may well be right, but I’d be interested in seeing an authoritative cite.
This is akin to saying while 2 + 2 = 4 might be right you will not accept that answer unless it comes from a mathematician who won the Fields Medal.
We help our children acquire skills in preparation for competent adulthood/independence. We plan for them to eventually be free.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around an argument that slaves/enslaved people who learned skills for the exclusive benefit of their owners – people willing to (send poor people to) fight to the death in order to perpetuate the Peculiar Institution – could ever have been seen to have facilitated those skills for the benefit of the enslaved.
IOW: If you think you’re always going to own this person, and will always take their wages, and will benefit from their enhanced market value attributable to any incremental skills they might have, then it’s hard to see that as any kind of benefit to the enslaved.
As it happened? Because of Emancipation? Did some enslaved end up with slight advantages over others? Maybe. But it’s unimaginably gross to me to – as part of a curriculum – teach that that was by design, rather than by ballistic default – at the point of a gun.
But their lives were not their own, while they may have had “dreams and desires”, those were doomed to be unfulfilled unless they happened to align with those of their owners. I don’t think that was your intention, but your post reads like a defense of slavery. It was a brutal and inhumane practice on every level and should not be whitewashed.
Their husbands, wives and children could be taken away from them, for any reason or for no reason at at all. There wives could be forced to have sex with the master and/or his friends, and if the enslaved person objected they could be beaten to death…..it was not a crime to murder a slave if it was done in the name of “correction”.
They may not have been “sad sacks” but they had no agency of their own, that was the idea. They may have occasionally had the pretense of agency, as long as what they wanted to do aligned with their master’s interests — but it could all been taken from them the second those interests diverged.
I agree that the term enslaved person is more humanizing than slave, but don’t conflate that into a story about the humane side of slavery.
I have an ancestor that was an “early abolitionist”, from the Revolutionary War era. He also wrote a lot, and many of those writings survived…..although nothing substantial has made its way onto the internet. He consistently referred to “hereditary slavery” to differentiate from other forms of servitude, I don’t think he every used the word slavery without that modifier.
I’m not defending slavery in the least, so fuck off with that noise.
FWIW, I didn’t think @Ann_Hedonia was accusing you of doing so.
But this whole thread is reminding me that the internet—and certainly the BBQ Pit—is notoriously bad with nuance.
True. But I think it’s important to know that they contributed skilled work, in many fashions, to the civilization they weren’t allowed to have a share in. Most people who haven’t done it think of agricultural field labor as something anybody at all could do, requiring no brains and no particular ability. If they also think of enslaved people as only capable of such work – you see where that leads.
But the emphasis needs to be on their being skilled and being capable of skills – not on those skills being to their “personal benefit”. Their ability, like their bodies, was stolen.
Discussing the merits of slavery isn’t a topic with a lot of nuance.
It appears the original post has been edited, but how else would you interpret “I’m not even going to tackle your ‘but slaves had hobbies” defense of slavery’” as anything but an accusation that I’m defending slavery?
But discussing the historic realities of slavery, and the way they should be taught, and things of that nature, may well be.
“They want to teach kids that slavery was a good thing” sounds, to me, so much like a strawman that I get suspicious and want to know the straight dope.
Only, by saying so, I risk being accused of “discussing the merits of slavery” and sticking up for that strawman.