he is “not ashamed”
He should therefore be happy to act as a slave for a descendent of one of those ‘workers’.
Isn’t that special?
Right. And yet it’s US that want to “erase history.”
I don’t know about North Carolina, but my 4th grade Virginia history book explained that although some masters in Virginia were harsh, the great majority treated their slaves really well, and that their slaves were happy - noting, as if to prove the point, that it was in the masters’ self interest to be kindly. And another supposedly important historical fact - on which I was actually tested - was that General Lee’s horse’s name was “Traveller.”
The Virginia public schools taught me many things - just not the things they intended to.
“…some guys on the farm, you can call them slaves if you want to, but I would just call them workers…”
“Workers” whom Great-Grandpa could rape at will.
“Workers” whose children Great-Grandpa could sell off.
“Workers” whom Great-Grandpa could whip, starve, or hang at his pleasure.
We all know exactly what “heritage” those Confederate statues represent.
This story makes me sick to my stomach.
Damn leakers! Where did you get a copy of Tom Price’s plan to eliminate government assistance by having corporations take care of all the needs of their “workers?”
There you have it…the south hasn’t changed.
The US, much to Putin’s delight, is crumbling under Trump and heading for a bloody and brutal 2nd civil war. This one may be the end of the United States.
I was at the Mudd House, as in Doctor Mudd, the guy that set John Wilkes Booth’s leg after he broke it assassinating Lincoln. The house is open one day a year for tours, I was there with some Cub Scouts.
During the tour, Doctor Mudd’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren all quite old kept referring to the number of “staff” it required to run the farm, both the house and the fields. This is Maryland of course, so after this happened about the third or fourth time I interrupted –
"You keep referring to the ‘the staff.’ "
“Yes?”
“Was this staff . . . uh, were they paid?”
She paused, then said, “no, they were slaves.”
“Thank you for clearing that up.”
The boys in my Cub Den got to hear history, and politics, in that short answer.
There’s this strange dichotomy, where a slice of Southerners are proud of their Southern heritage (there were Confederate soldiers in the yard demonstrating riflery) but don’t speak of the slavery. This is quite a minority, but a measurable one for sure. Sorry ladies, Grandpa was a slave-owner. You can choose to be proud of him or not, and I appreciate you have to look at the whole man, but when you boil it down you have to own the fact that there were slaves on your Grandpa’s farm, regardless of which way you feel about it. Referring to slaves as “staff” or “workers” just makes you look embarrassed and two-faced.
Heavily footnoted, I assume…
Somebody should ask if they could leave even if they were “happy”
Define “happy,” please.
Alamance County Confederate Monument
Graham, NC
Dedication date: 5/16/1914
Sponsor: The Graham Chapter, The United Daughters of the Confederacy
Jews in WWII German concentration camps were actually “customers.”
He said we can call him anything we like. OK, he’s a racist, a white supremacist and an ignorant old fool.
And the generation before you learned that slaves got all the fried chicken and watermelon their stomachs could handle. Most Americans don’t have a clue about the true horror of chattel slavery, which leaves an opening for revisionist racists.
Good work. Next time refer to them as “enslaved people”.
It’s hard when someone who wants to think of themselves as ‘the victors’ have someone questioning their version of history.
On a practical sense, this is why the cultural divide is so great.
The emotions have just gone haywire. I am not going to be a victim of political correctness. I am just not going to do it. Label me all you want, say what you will about me.
He just can’t accept this is not about him and that accepting his ancestors did something wrong doesn’t diminish him in the slightest. He even admits reality supports the need to remove the memorial to those who laid down their lives to enslave others.
Interesting sidenote: classicist Page duBois has long been on a mission to remove historians’ rose-colored glasses when it comes to Classical Greece. We whitewash a lot of that history because we want to see ancient Athens in a certain way. Her book Slaves and Other Objects portays an African slave on its cover to highlight similarities in Athenian slavery and American slavery. My favorite bit: historical and archeological museums in Athens actually refer to Athenian slaves as “workers” rather than slaves, again to tell the story westerners want to hear.