If you can’t accept the bad parts, you haven’t earned the good parts. If slavery isn’t part of your heritage, then neither are the Constitution, jazz, or baseball. Et cetera.
“Balanced” is an interesting word. Perhaps you can clarify.
Jazz is something I can download, or not. Baseball is something I can watch, play or ignore. The Constitution is something I live under.
Heritage is an excuse that Serbians used to kill their Moslem neighbors for their cars and VCRs. History is a fact, but heritage is a con job.
I don’t know what’s stupider–the idea that everyone who visits a plantation learned about slavery “quite thoroughly” in school, the idea that slavery is covered quite thoroughly in all schools and not rushed madly through in an effort to cram 200 years of American history into one school year, the idea that watching Roots is a replacement for seeing actual, real homes built with slave labour, that museums should never teach anything hurtful, the idea that movies and TV covering slavery is enough to close the book on it forever, or precisely what a “balanced perspective” would look like when in reality the tour guide is pointing out that slave labour built, maintained, lived, and died on these grounds.
They’re all in a tie for first place.
:rolleyes:
“Gee, I didn’t think Auschwitz would be such a downer! Can’t they talk about the way it was constructed, or how the gas chambers worked? Why do they have to talk about all the dead Jews?”
It’s insulting to even compare Auschwitz and a southern plantation in the same sentence. There’s no comparison what so ever. You know that. Auschwitz was a death camp designed specifically to exterminate large groups of people. Don’t even think about comparing the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of people to slavery.
They may have been slaves, but people raised families on plantations. They had homes, married, they grew up on the plantation, played there, and grew old. There were all kinds of jobs on a really large plantation like Mt Vernon. Blacksmiths, farriers, carpenters, wheelwrights, and many other tradesman. The field hands and other farm laborers were only a part of the bigger picture. A plantation had to be self sustaining. Some jobs were held by free men and some by slaves. It was a mix of people all working together.
Yes, I have visited Mount Vernon. Twice. A wonderful experience. I sure as hell wasn’t visiting any death camp.
Birkenau was the death camp. Auschwitz was a …slave labor camp.
people today seem to assume a slave spent their entire lives chained to a tree, crying and weeping. That may have been true for a short while with slaves brought from Africa. But at some point they coped with the situation and found a way to make the best of it. Later generations were born on the plantations and knew no other life.
They had lives just like anybody else. Humans have an amazing capacity to cope with whatever circumstances they find themselves in. At the end of the days work they went home, ate dinner with their wife, played with their kids, petted the family dog. Told stories, sang, played games. They were real families on these plantations. Yes, they were slaves. Yes it was wrong. But somehow, in spite of everything the human spirit still prevailed.
So, maybe don’t go?
Slaves were bought and sold like horses. I’m sure it was nice to raise a family only to watch your preteen daughters being sold to another plantation owner in another county.
Slaves did not “have homes.” They were imprisoned.
So what? People in North Korean labor camps have “all kinds of jobs.” So did detainees in concentration camps in WWII. POWs had “all kinds of jobs.” What is your point?
Plantations were not self-sustaining. And what does it matter that slaves worked alongside free men? They were still human beings who were held in bondage.
They were PROPERTY, and those happy families were quite frequently ripped apart because who cares if the livestock stays in touch with their offspring? They were beaten and deprived-- yes they were valuable property, but still property. Even if they didn’t spend all their days chained to a tree, or whipped until bleeding, or killed because that;s what their OWNER decided was the best course of action, do you really believe the pretty picture of married slaves raising their children and playing with their pets? Are you SURE you learned ANYTHING in school about slavery? you’re painting a happy little picture of a horrible, horrible thing.
What do you think a museum should do, if not educate?
So what right did they have to complain, amirite? Christ.
NO THEY DID NOT.
*Cue soulful negro spiritual music, gradually reaching a crescendo as you read these paragraphs.
That’s totally an unfair characterization of slavery. You’re leaving out tons of stuff.
Like all the rape, for example.
I’ve seen where the slave cabins were at Mt Vernon. They would be considered small by todays standards and primitive. But they were cabins just like many poor white farmers lived in.
I’m not sure where people get the idea these people were closely guarded prisoners. That would never work. It would take too many resources to operate a plantation like a labor camp prison. Everybody had important jobs to do. They couldn’t stand around guarding slaves all day.
Slavery worked because the majority of slaves were 2nd, 3rd and even 4th generation slaves. They knew no other life. They didn’t have to be guarded or chained up. Very few ran off. Yes the ones that did run off were hunted and if caught they got returned and punished. That was the exception. Most coped with the situation the best they could and lived as fulfilling a life as they possibly could under the circumstances.
I’m not trying to glamorize it. It was a hard life, filled with work. But humans find ways to still live even under adverse conditions. They fall in love, they make kids, play with those kids. They find ways to entertain themselves when they aren’t working. The human spirit is amazing.
Oh, but surely, in the midst of these wonderful lives slaves had, no one would rape someone’s wife or mother, right? I mean, that would cut into the singing of joyful songs and playing with the family dog.
Watch those kids leave after being sold.
In Mount Vernon, most of the married slaves didn’t live together.
And of course, the marriages weren’t legal or anything, because slaves were PROPERTY.
Yeah, I’m sure the slaves were nice and comfy in their little cabanas.
So slaves were free to wander about and find more opportune employment for themselves? Is that what you’re saying? Just so you know, they weren’t. The fact that they knew how the system worked and therefore never tried to escape doesn’t mean they were happy to be there. They had no other choice.
That’s right. They had “learned their place.” Why do you keep insisting that this meant they lived an Ozzie and Harriett existence? They were SLAVES, for fuck’s sake! It was not pleasant for them. It was not a nice quiet life of singing around a campfire and telling stories. These are human beings who were held against their will to be treated as livestock.
Yes, you are.
Why do keep spouting shit like this? You sound like a slave trader trying to convince a reluctant buyer who’s on the fence about owning slaves:
“Don’t worry about all the beatings and starvings you’ll have to administer. They’ll buck up! They’re a very hardy species. You beat ‘em one day, and the next they’ll be singin’ hymns. They’ll be perfectly happy with the table scraps you feed them.”
“Ok, I’ll take two, I guess.”