I can't help but find it "funny" that they try their hardest to look on the "bright side" of ACTUAL FUCKING SLAVERY, but things like wearing masks to prevent the spread of a deadly disease or exposing kids to the fact that gay people exist and are humans to be treated like any other human are abuses not to be borne.
Turning a nightmare of shit into shit pie does not make the shit taste better. You can't try to whitewash slavery without looking stupid and demented for even trying. IMHO.
The reality is that slavery was imported to North America with the Bible. The original colonists considered that is was a natural outcome of warfare and enthusiastically enslaved Native Americans. They were shipped out to the English plantations in the Bahamas to be worked to death, as that had already happened to those native populations already. Hundreds of thousands were involved. And well before the arrival of the first African slaves.
Not 'everyone else.' No one in the Americas, Australia or the Pacific islands did.
The blacksmithing anecdote was just stupid, but that does not mean that every claim about slaves, masters and technology is incorrect.
For example, jockeys and horse managers were almost all slaves in the 18th c. That was a skill that Africans (from the Sahel south) could not have brought with them. Similarly, iI frequently see assertions that black cooks invented Southern cuisine. It's true that blacks were the cooks, but they could not have taught the whites how to make pies or custards.
A more sophisticated notion is so common that it is amazing that anybody wants to fuss about it: when cultures of different capabilities meet, they exchange skills.
Sometime, it takes a very long time. Many of the instruments in a symphony orchestra trace back to the Turks, but while Europe was adapting woodwinds etc., the Turks were not adopting printing with movable type. It took the Turks about 300 years to even begin, close to 500 years to catch up.
Despite the metallurgical skills that people are fixating on here, Africa did not adopt printing either. In part, because type metal required antimony, which so far as I know, Africans had not identified.
Southern cooking depends on two things; making do with the worst quality stuff and using deep-frying as it was the fastest way to prepare a dish. When you spend 14-18 hours working you don't have time and energy to prepare a meal.
I have read the standards (thanx to Daily Beast for linky) and SER and most of Wonkette are dead wrong on this one.
Those standards are fabulous. I have been studying slavery for 50 years and have perhaps a closer link to it than almost any other living American, as my grandfather owned a slave. But I could not have answered all the items listed in the standards.. Nor, I am willing to bet, could any other commenter here.
I do not expect that all those standards will be met, as they go to college graduate history level, but they touch everything.
The line that launched a thousand (well, at current count, 245) comments is, in context, not objectionable.
Don't want to accept ewhat I say? Fine. Go read those standards and then tell us how you think you would score if tested on them.
Boy I don't know. Asking conservatives to wear a mask was tyranny and just like the Holocaust, but kidnapping people, dragging them halfway around the world and forcing them to work for no pay was beneficial.
I feel America needs to face it was build on the backs of slaves. If we turn a blind eye and pretending otherwise it only causes further divisions. Also, I’ll be the first to admit my public education about slavery was inadequate and if not for the internet and being able to research about events I would know nothing. It’s been shocking. Anyway, I’m listening and trying recognize my flaws so I can be more mindful.
Africans had survived for 500,000 years in Africa. They had a society, skills, technology, medicine, communication with other parts of the world, commerce, and culture. The only thing "different" about them was their captivity.
The whole argument is based on the idea that at some point, a slave could somehow obtain their freedom and then open their own blacksmith shop. Whole generations born, lived, and died as slaves. None of them received any benefit in their “personal lives.” Whatever skills they learned belonged to their owners and served only to benefit them.
The South went kicking and screaming before they were forced to free all the slaves and even they, they did everything they could to keep the former slaves from “benefitting” from their skills.
Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke (h/t Roy Edroso) at the National Review was in high dudgeon over that "skills" thing being "taken out of context." He posted a long, indignant Twitter (sorry, X) thread that used the word "lie" a lot and basically amounted to him quoting a lot of material in those Florida "curriculum guidelines" that said slavery was actually pretty bad and the libs aren't giving them any credit at all for that because they're mean horrible people who blow ridiculous grievances out of all proportion, unlike us entirely rational and reasonable conservatives.
I can't help but find it "funny" that they try their hardest to look on the "bright side" of ACTUAL FUCKING SLAVERY, but things like wearing masks to prevent the spread of a deadly disease or exposing kids to the fact that gay people exist and are humans to be treated like any other human are abuses not to be borne.
Turning a nightmare of shit into shit pie does not make the shit taste better. You can't try to whitewash slavery without looking stupid and demented for even trying. IMHO.
The reality is that slavery was imported to North America with the Bible. The original colonists considered that is was a natural outcome of warfare and enthusiastically enslaved Native Americans. They were shipped out to the English plantations in the Bahamas to be worked to death, as that had already happened to those native populations already. Hundreds of thousands were involved. And well before the arrival of the first African slaves.
TALLAHASSEE (The Borowitz Report)—An unskilled Florida man said that he deeply regrets having missed out on the opportunity to be a slave.
The man said that his “lack of access to enslavement” had made his acquisition of essential skills “impossible.” https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/unskilled-florida-man-regrets-missing-out-on-being-enslaved
Brilliant writing, spot on, calling out the absolute horror of slavery.
Pretty sure Africans had iron forges a thousand years ago, just like everyone else.
Not 'everyone else.' No one in the Americas, Australia or the Pacific islands did.
The blacksmithing anecdote was just stupid, but that does not mean that every claim about slaves, masters and technology is incorrect.
For example, jockeys and horse managers were almost all slaves in the 18th c. That was a skill that Africans (from the Sahel south) could not have brought with them. Similarly, iI frequently see assertions that black cooks invented Southern cuisine. It's true that blacks were the cooks, but they could not have taught the whites how to make pies or custards.
A more sophisticated notion is so common that it is amazing that anybody wants to fuss about it: when cultures of different capabilities meet, they exchange skills.
Sometime, it takes a very long time. Many of the instruments in a symphony orchestra trace back to the Turks, but while Europe was adapting woodwinds etc., the Turks were not adopting printing with movable type. It took the Turks about 300 years to even begin, close to 500 years to catch up.
Despite the metallurgical skills that people are fixating on here, Africa did not adopt printing either. In part, because type metal required antimony, which so far as I know, Africans had not identified.
Southern cooking depends on two things; making do with the worst quality stuff and using deep-frying as it was the fastest way to prepare a dish. When you spend 14-18 hours working you don't have time and energy to prepare a meal.
Slaves ate hog and hominy. Southern cooking goes a lot further than that.
I have read the standards (thanx to Daily Beast for linky) and SER and most of Wonkette are dead wrong on this one.
Those standards are fabulous. I have been studying slavery for 50 years and have perhaps a closer link to it than almost any other living American, as my grandfather owned a slave. But I could not have answered all the items listed in the standards.. Nor, I am willing to bet, could any other commenter here.
I do not expect that all those standards will be met, as they go to college graduate history level, but they touch everything.
The line that launched a thousand (well, at current count, 245) comments is, in context, not objectionable.
Don't want to accept ewhat I say? Fine. Go read those standards and then tell us how you think you would score if tested on them.
Boy I don't know. Asking conservatives to wear a mask was tyranny and just like the Holocaust, but kidnapping people, dragging them halfway around the world and forcing them to work for no pay was beneficial.
Is it still economic anxiety the press?
I feel America needs to face it was build on the backs of slaves. If we turn a blind eye and pretending otherwise it only causes further divisions. Also, I’ll be the first to admit my public education about slavery was inadequate and if not for the internet and being able to research about events I would know nothing. It’s been shocking. Anyway, I’m listening and trying recognize my flaws so I can be more mindful.
Obviously blacks taught themselves (and others) blacksmithing, why else is it not called "whitesmithing"?
There is a trade called whitesmithing. Different metals.
Africans had survived for 500,000 years in Africa. They had a society, skills, technology, medicine, communication with other parts of the world, commerce, and culture. The only thing "different" about them was their captivity.
That did not make them different. Non-Africans also existed in captivity.
The whole argument is based on the idea that at some point, a slave could somehow obtain their freedom and then open their own blacksmith shop. Whole generations born, lived, and died as slaves. None of them received any benefit in their “personal lives.” Whatever skills they learned belonged to their owners and served only to benefit them.
The South went kicking and screaming before they were forced to free all the slaves and even they, they did everything they could to keep the former slaves from “benefitting” from their skills.
"Imported".
Jebus, NPS.
Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke (h/t Roy Edroso) at the National Review was in high dudgeon over that "skills" thing being "taken out of context." He posted a long, indignant Twitter (sorry, X) thread that used the word "lie" a lot and basically amounted to him quoting a lot of material in those Florida "curriculum guidelines" that said slavery was actually pretty bad and the libs aren't giving them any credit at all for that because they're mean horrible people who blow ridiculous grievances out of all proportion, unlike us entirely rational and reasonable conservatives.
That is exactly what those standards teach. Go read them, I did.
More research on the European theft of African-based skills. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/05/industrial-revolution-iron-method-taken-from-jamaica-briton
Well, they were already black. So it was just the smithing they needed to learn.
Easy Peasy.