Argent, real evidence doesn’t need big red letters.
Slavery and indentured service are not the same thing. They’re barely even similar. The differences are numerous but some of the more obvious were that people entered indentured service voluntarily; that indentured services contracts had defined expiration limits; that indentured servitude was not hereditary; that there were contractual limits on what work identured servents could be required to perform; and that indentured servants kept most of their civil rights.
While there are class divides in American culture, racial divides are much more important. The very fact that you admit most people disagree with you on the importance of economic divides indicates their relative unimportance - if it was as important as you claim, people would know about it. But the reality is that most Americans group themselves by race long before they group themselves by class. And class identity, unlike racial identity, is fluid in American society.
And I read Goad’s book. He’s a fool and not a very good writer.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
That’s the problem right there - assuming that white Americans are automatically on top of the heap. They’re not. I have said this a million times in debates on this forum, and the vast majority of the time my posts get drowned by others and completely ignored. Every now and then someone else will acknowledge what I’ve said, so maybe that will happen here. So here it is:
The real American divide is ECONOMIC, not racial.
[/QUOTE]
Did I say otherwise? I wasn’t making any great proclamation on the power of white Americans, I was only trying to explain why many Dopers don’t “understand” the concept of national or regional pride. I think it’s fair to say that everyone who posts on this board is at least somewhat privileged.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
True, but seldom in the same breath. They’ve got a way of almost taking the negatives as positives, or at least glossing over the essential contradiction.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, there is that. I will claim and can support if challenged, that I do, do both however.
Taking the negatives as positives is especially true of New Yorkers (In this case meaning those living in the city itself*). It is almost a game, the greatest piece of NYC pride from what I know is the “We are so tough, we did make it here despite all the problems.”
NJ and Californian self-mocking seems to have a different tone to my ear. I almost forgot the old Chicago second city bit to. That seemed more common in the past; I don’t get that same vibe any more. I still see jokes about their politics and Cubbies though.
Jim
Note, that is another part, you don’t need to be born in NYC to be a New Yorker, you need to be living there, any of us that left “The City” are obviously not as tough as those that are living there. Many Southerners, Mid-Westerners and immigrants become New Yorkers simply by living and thriving there for several years. I have no clue what the make or break point is, I think it is more of an attitude.
[QUOTE=Hypnagogic Jerk]
Did I say otherwise? I wasn’t making any great proclamation on the power of white Americans, I was only trying to explain why many Dopers don’t “understand” the concept of national or regional pride. I think it’s fair to say that everyone who posts on this board is at least somewhat privileged.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I agree with your post. That overblown text wasn’t really directed towards you, it was just a general statement.
It’s true that indentured servants had limits on the amount of time they had to be indentured. It’s my understanding that because of this, they were frequently worked to death because masters wanted to get the most out of them before their time was up. A slave, on the other hand, was a long term investment and (ideally) was maintained over a long period of time, since there was no end to their enslavement in sight.
What limits were there on the kind of work indentured servants could be required to perform? And do you think those limits were really enforced thoroughly?
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
And class identity, unlike racial identity, is fluid in American society.
[/QUOTE]
Race is absolutely fluid in American society.
Example: Right now we have a black man as a serious contender for President of the United States. Would this have happened 50 years ago?
I don’t understand how you could think that race is truly more of a dividing issue than class, when we still have the majority of the money in the United States in the hands of a tiny number of ultra-rich individuals, we still have factories and farms closing all over the country and countless people (black and white) losing their jobs.
The media is constantly yelling “RACE! RACE! RACE!” in our faces - I wonder why? Could it possibly be because the powers in charge would rather that lower-class blacks and whites distrust and fear each other than band together and unite against the fat cats and giant corporations? Have you ever seen the movie The Killing Floor, about the Chicago stockyards in the early 20th century? The company bosses deliberately incited racism and stirred up tensions between the black workers and white workers. Divide and conquer.
Well written, Sampiro. This (post 100 ) will go into my short list of posts that may bear referencing in some future thread on related subjects.
It is however heartbreaking to think how many of our southern brethren whose honor you’ve defended would treat you unkindly for being intelligent, articulate, and also gay.
[QUOTE=missred]
When was the last time that you crossed the Ohio river? /QUOTE] Last week, why? I also lived in South Carolina for two years, and I’ve travelled in the south extensively. In addition I went to college in southern Maryland, which kind of counts although it’s debatable.
Most of the south was an agrarian economy that never really recovered after the civil war. The mindset of the southerners is the biggest factor working against their assimilation. IMO.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I am irked, however, by those who believe the war on the Union’s part was fought to end slavery; it quite simply was NOT, at least not in the beginning.
[/QUOTE]
This is just one of the excellent points you make. Any semi-serious student of history will find that ambivalence about slavery is as old as the institution itself. Thomas Jefferson’s intense concerns about slavery - while he was a slaveowner - are a case in point. Slaves were necessary to support the agrarian economy, but slavery was not palatable to many people.
The notion of freeing the slaves was not a paramount consideration when the war started, or even most of the way into the war. Lincoln toyed with several ideas, including sending the slaves back to Africa. This was one of many proposed “solutions” to the slavery issue, and it was scrapped largely on the grounds of cost.
The tender concern so many ascribe to Lincoln and other northerners in regard to the welfare of the slaves is revealed for the disinterest that it was when you look at what happened to former slaves after their emancipation. Almost no effort was made to transition them into a society with which they were completely unfamiliar and for which they were not prepared in any way. The “freedom” they had so longed for became a cruel irony in practical terms. Many - perhaps most - of them ended up staying where they were, working for their former masters under conditions that were the same or even worse than they had been before.
The emancipation of the slaves really had so much more to do with bringing the economy of the south to its knees than anything else. That one action ensured that the wealthy and powerful landowners in the south would never again cause trouble for the union.
[QUOTE=DianaG]
First of all, what’s this “we” shit? (Which, of course, goes to the root of **jsgoddess’s ** question.) Secondly, does it bother you *at all * that your heroes were fighting for the “right” to own other human beings?
I have no generalized opinion of “southerners” any more than I have a generalized opinion of “northeners”. People is people, mostly. I do, however, have an opinion of confederate flag-wavers, and it’s that they are, at best, ig’nint yokels.
[/QUOTE]
“We” as in I am a southerner.
Of course I didn’t own slaves and I think slavery was abhorrent. However it was practiced by many people at that time, including northerners.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
However, one need look no further than this thread to see that, like slavery, the South holds no monopoly on mythmaking or painting with mile wide brushes. (And as always I’m appalled by how people who would probably go apeshit over someone painting all Muslims/all black people/all gays/all Christians/all atheists with the same mile wide brush think nothing of using one to slap on a few paints to all Alabamians or all southerners as if we were all of exactly the same mindset; Alabama’s the most biodiverse state in the nation in terms of flora and fauna and its people aren’t that much more homogenous.)
[/QUOTE]
Then you point out where anyone in this thread other than southerners tried to claim anything homogeneous about southerners.
There have been a number of “We southerners do X” posts. Where are the ones that say, “You southerners are all Y”?
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
If you abide living in a place you can’t stand because the economics are better for you, it sounds like you’re the whore in this situation. And if you can’t find the natural beauty in Georgia it’s because apparently you haven’t looked beyond the Atlanta suburbs. Take some night courses and improve yourself, maybe you can get back to Washington and it’ll be better for all of us.
[/QUOTE]
So here we have someone who, instead of explaining why life in the South is worth the higher taxes; and who incorrectly assumes that I haven’t hiked in every state park within 200 miles of my front door; or that I haven’t taken classes at Georgia Tech; someone who didn’t see the thread where I corrected the poster who misidentified this image as a symbol of Southern culture by ID’ing the photo’s location as Indiana; and who missed my Pit thread about the time one of the locals painted “fuck niggers” on the street in front of my house because my daughter’s boyfriend was black but where I laid no blame whatsoever on “Southern Culture” for the offense.
Here we have somone who reacts to my objection to higher taxes, less desirable scenery (and why do they call Providence State Park “The Grand Canyon of Georgia” instead of the Grand Canyon the "Providence State Park of Arizona?) and especially my skepticism that somehow a cultural con is being worked, by taking it as a personal insult and offering (in Great Debates!) personal insults.
I certainly will not blame it on stereotypical “Southern” intollerance or some chip on the shoulder left over from 1865. I think it’s because there are people who like to pick fights with strangers on the internet; which has nothing to do with being a Southerner and everything to do with being an asshole. Theses are smart people on this board, Cosmic Relief, and when you try to degrade a debate into a quarrel they won’t respect what you have to say.
[QUOTE=Slithy Tove]
…and who missed my Pit thread about the time one of the locals painted “fuck niggers” on the street in front of my house because my daughter’s boyfriend was black but where I laid no blame whatsoever on “Southern Culture” for the offense.
[/QUOTE]
That’s good that you showed restraint, but why would you or anyone else logically blame the actions of some asshole on Southern culture in general?
I’ve travelled all over the country and the most racist place I have ever seen is Boston. Not MS, SC, or Alabama, but Boston. When I was in the watering holes there I heard the N word more than I have ever heard it in other places in my whole life combined..
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
You have to admit though that the Reconstruction was brutal, corrupt, unjust, and did not help anyone except certain northern commercial opportunists.
[/QUOTE]
Having read actual history, I do not have to admit much of this made up revisionist history, at all.
Was their corruption? Yeah, but no more than existed in the same areas before the war–often controlled by the same aristocracy who had brought about the war to begin with.
Was it brutal? Not really. although there were a few limited instances of retaliation after Union soldiers were murdered. (Unless you are talking about the localized brutality inflicted by a small number of Southerners on some of the black population.)
Unjust? Heck, what other war of secession as been lost where the worst thing that hppened to the losers was the disenfranchisement of two people, their primary civil and military leaders, and where the winning side then invested millions to rebuild the war-torn region?
The false myth of the carpetbagger is one of the enduring foolish claims from that era. Atlanta and Birmingham and other places were rebuilt on Northern money. However, that money did not come from absentee landlords sitting on Wall Street, but from people who came to the South and risked their wealth to invest it in potentially disastrous ventures, generally staying and raising their children as Southerners.
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
If you abide living in a place you can’t stand because the economics are better for you, it sounds like you’re the whore in this situation.
[/QUOTE]
I realize that you were simply playing on the expression used in the post to which you replied, but please avoid what amounts to name calling (regardless of its rhetorical employment) in this Forum.
[QUOTE=Sprockets]
This is just one of the excellent points you make. Any semi-serious student of history will find that ambivalence about slavery is as old as the institution itself. Thomas Jefferson’s intense concerns about slavery - while he was a slaveowner - are a case in point. Slaves were necessary to support the agrarian economy, but slavery was not palatable to many people.
The notion of freeing the slaves was not a paramount consideration when the war started, or even most of the way into the war. Lincoln toyed with several ideas, including sending the slaves back to Africa. This was one of many proposed “solutions” to the slavery issue, and it was scrapped largely on the grounds of cost.
The tender concern so many ascribe to Lincoln and other northerners in regard to the welfare of the slaves is revealed for the disinterest that it was when you look at what happened to former slaves after their emancipation. Almost no effort was made to transition them into a society with which they were completely unfamiliar and for which they were not prepared in any way. The “freedom” they had so longed for became a cruel irony in practical terms. Many - perhaps most - of them ended up staying where they were, working for their former masters under conditions that were the same or even worse than they had been before.
The emancipation of the slaves really had so much more to do with bringing the economy of the south to its knees than anything else. That one action ensured that the wealthy and powerful landowners in the south would never again cause trouble for the union.
[/QUOTE]
This post shows a surprising lack of insight into what led up to the secession. The growing divide between North and South over slavery. The abolitionist movement that politically was from the north. The point of no return that was the election of Lincoln. I wonder how an educated person could to believe what was written in the post quoted.
[QUOTE=Sprockets]
The notion of freeing the slaves was not a paramount consideration when the war started, or even most of the way into the war. Lincoln toyed with several ideas, including sending the slaves back to Africa. This was one of many proposed “solutions” to the slavery issue, and it was scrapped largely on the grounds of cost.
The tender concern so many ascribe to Lincoln and other northerners in regard to the welfare of the slaves is revealed for the disinterest that it was when you look at what happened to former slaves after their emancipation. Almost no effort was made to transition them into a society with which they were completely unfamiliar and for which they were not prepared in any way. The “freedom” they had so longed for became a cruel irony in practical terms. Many - perhaps most - of them ended up staying where they were, working for their former masters under conditions that were the same or even worse than they had been before.
The emancipation of the slaves really had so much more to do with bringing the economy of the south to its knees than anything else. That one action ensured that the wealthy and powerful landowners in the south would never again cause trouble for the union.
[/QUOTE]
You started off well enough, but you started losing ground the more you posted.
Thr North did not fight the war to free the slaves or end slavery.
This is a true statement; the North fought to preserve the Union.
(Of course, the reason the South voted for secession was a fear (not justified by any remark by Lincoln) that there was going to be an active movement to force aboilition, so the South did go to war to preserve slavery, even if it was not (yet) in serious jeopardy.)
Lincoln was pretty much opposed to slavery, but as president of the U.S. (which recognized the legality of slavery) he was not that excited about endng it. On the other hand, the Emancipation Proclamation was a political act intended to prevent Britain and France from providing any more support for the Confederacy. It was not an action planned to harm plantation owners for all time, just a tactic in an ongaing war.
You claim that no effort was made to assist freed blacks to enter society was simply wrong. The Freedman’s Bureau was an active agent of the U.S. government. It did fail, ultimately, but that had to do with local intransigence in the South, lack of decent direction (as no one had ever really tried doing anything similar so there was no blueprint to follow), vetoing of funding by Andrew Johnson, and eventual removal of support as voters got tired of supporting an agency that was failing to provide clear return on investment.
