Thanks, Monstro. That helps me better-understand the POV; where the author was coming from.
I could see the “us” as a *subliminal *association, so to speak. Not that a person would necessarily associate themselves with all aspects of southern living, but if they and their family were from Mississippi, then to use “us” wouldn’t strike me as having much value other than simply identifying with a geographic region.
But what I was speaking to, specifically, was dude calling these people “potential slave owners”. That was going too far.
The writer isn’t calling anyone a “potential slave holder.” Read the bit you quoted again: he says the listener is a “potential slave holder,” not the speaker. In this case, the “listener” is the author himself.
Thanks, Miller. I did re-read it and more of the article. I mis-pictured the preceding quote coming from 2 visitors whispering between themselves in the crowd, but now I see.
While I get where the author was going with that comment, it’s a stretch for him to suggest that anyone in the room would think anyone else in the room is a “potential slaveholder”. Though I clearly got the players wrong, I still got the feeling of the act.
I was looking for a way out of that article though, and I guess I made one up I thought/think the OP presented an interesting topic. But I didn’t mesh with the tone of the piece and I got snippy.
I think that is a southern language thing, the royal us and we and you. I’ve heard it used in situations where the only way to sensibly parse it is as meaning humanity as a whole.
I remember taking a tour of the Cold Harbor Battlefield. It was the young guide’s first-ever tour, and apparently she was a local. The second time she used the phrase, “Fortunately we …” referring to the Confederate Army, I reminded her that some visitors had no use for the Confederacy, and didn’t consider the outcome of the battle to be fortunate at all. To her credit, she apologized and did better.
Check out the history of Irish slaves sent to the Caribbean. Steak sauce goes well with felt hats, but a little vinegar and oil is better with the straw ones.
Slavery goes all the way back through time. Every group of people throughout the world were held as slaves at some point in history. It was standard practice when any conquering army looted, raped and pillaged a conquered area. People were rounded up and brought home as slaves. War prizes. Greeks and Romans had slaves. The Babylonians enslaved the Jews. The pacific islanders waged war and took slaves.
Its only been in very recent history that large civilizations did not hold slaves. A major step forward in human history, but it still exists in some parts of the world.
Its time the US looked forward instead of focusing so much on what happened a hundred fifty years ago. Its not 1865 anymore.
None of this lecturing addresses my point. When talking about American slavery, how many white people display their identification with the enslaved by using the “royal we”?
In my experience, white people either don’t use the royal “we”, or they only do so when talking about the non-enslaved. Just like white people don’t talk about how the American government took “our” land when they really mean the Native Americans.
If you can find me example of a white person doing this, THEN I will eat my hat.
I can show you a number of examples of black people identifying with the enslaved by using “we” and “us” pronouns. And I’m guilty of doing it too.
But the effects continue, from the Lost Causers and the glorification of southern plantation life and the people who fought to preserve to the more recent Jim Crow laws and so on that grew out of it. And chattel slavery has not generally been as widely spread as other types, as I understand it, though it certainly existed.
Conditions for everybody in the past were brutal. Think of the feudal system and the Lord of the manor. The peasants and serfs were little better than slaves. People were routinely thrown in debtors prisons. Have you read Oliver Twist? The life of homeless street kids? That happened. It still happens today in many third world countries. The feudal system continued in Russia until the bolshevik revolution.
People were so desperate for a better life that they sold themselves as indentured servants just to get passage to America.
Life sucked for everybody except for the very rich and powerful. Even today the divide between the haves and have nots is wide. Its is much better. We do have a middle class. The lifestyle today in America is a paradise compared to a starving peasant grovelling in the dirt at the Lord of the Manor’s feet.
Theres no denying history. Oppression, slavery, poverty all happened. I think its more productive to face forward. Send all your kids to college. Take advantage of every opportunity and build a better life for the next generations. There are new immigrants doing that right now in America.
Look at the numbers of when most white people came to the U.S. after 1865. The vast majority of white Americans can’t trace their ancestory to American slavery.
Part of the Irish-American identity has to own the Draft Riots, Italians the Bensonhurst killing, the Koreans for shooting Black kids over stolen Pepsi, etc. etc. but slavery isn’t going to get much traction. It just isn’t.
Yet it doesn’t stop a lot of white people from talking about using “we”, “us”, and “our” when it comes to the good stuff. Like how “we” fought the British and proclaimed “our” independence.
Fascinating. I was born in southwestern Virginia, and in my history classes in the 70s, we didn’t shy away from the horrors of slavery. We were taught the truth, I guess you’d say, and so had a realistic view (probably as much as possible from 110 years or so after the fact, and given we were 5th-8th graders) of the situation.
I really feel sorry for the tourists in that article, because they genuinely don’t know about their own cultural history.