quote:But I do wonder. In the case of those slaves you mentioned, your point was that the way of life they were forced to live was horrible, but they had to defend it to defend their homes. I wonder, though, that, if given the choice, any of those slaves would choose to have their children live with them in slavery instead of allowing them to live with someone else in freedom.
Apparently you missed my point. The idea was not to discuss the rightness or wrongness of slavery, rather to point out the fact that there were slaves, members of the Southern social system considered by most whites to be inferior, who took up arms (and in more cases shovels and axes) to protect their home and the cultural environment that they grew up with and lived in. The South was as much their home as it was the slave holders.
If one reads about slavery, one can see how terrible the system was and how de-huminizing it was. However, it is important not to miss the fact that for most slave owners, there was a certain familial feeling for slaves. Many owners considered their slaves to be something of an extened family. Sothern slave holders often pointed to the fact that in the nothern industrial system the factory workers were little more than "wage" slaves themselves. Workers to be used and discarded once their usefullness to the factory was over. They would finish the point be saying that slaves were to be protected and cared for in the waning years of their lives, and not thrown into the street.
As a result, one does not see mass migrations of blacks Northward till several years into a failed reconstrutcion program. Again it was only at the point where former slaves began to understand that the reconstruction movement had been usurped by white power organizations such as the Klan that they began to move away from their homes. In a very real way, after the American Civil War was over, there was great disappointment among blacks in the South that one of the aims of the war was to promote social justice in the region was given over to a quick national reconciliation.
****
And as to one of the reasons why I posted such a long list comparing the other Caribbean Countries, consider that if our young Hero was from, say Haiti, a "free" country (Haiti is listed as a "repulbic" in the CIA World Factbook 1999), conservative types would have no problem sending him back to live with his father there.
Regardless of the fact that Haiti has higher: birth rate: 32.55 births compared 12.9 infant mortality rate: 97.64 deaths compared to 7.81
and Haiti has lower: Life expectancy: 51.65 years compared to 75.78 lower GDP: $2.6 billion compared to $16.5 billion
How about we look at Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write.
------------------ Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya. ~C. Montgomery Burns
posted
That's a pretty wide definition of "literacy". Do you mean those who can read the numbers on their TV remotes, and write "Jay was here" on toilet walls, or do you mean they could read War & Peace in under 4 hours without getting a nose bleed, and then follow it up by writing a novel that just used words with more than 5 sylablles?
Although, as a glutton for punichment (and because I can't be arsed checking myself) what are the literacy figures for the UK, US, Canada and Australia? Just for comparison.
And I'll have you know that I'm REALLY smarting over missing the "Name on ecountry better than the US" comment. Bugger it to tarnation.
------------------ *Amusing quote not available, please call back later*
US: 97% UK: 99% Canada: 97% Australia: 100% (that's what is says, not counting the Dingos of course) China: 81.5% Jordan: 86.6% Morocco: 43.7% Papua New Guinea: 72.2% Russia: 98% Switzerland: 99% Turkey: 82.3% Vietnam: 93.7% Yemen: 38% Zimbabwe: 85%
Any more I can do for ya?
------------------ Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya. ~C. Montgomery Burns
posted
You can make me some eggs 100% is impossible. Maybe 99.9999999% *L*. Jay, you are not a paitriotic American, you evil person. How can any country have a higher literacy rate (or better anything for that matter - say a public health system) than the US?
------------------ "Blind faith is the crutch of fools"
>"However, it is important not to miss the fact that for most slave owners, there was a certain familial feeling for slaves. Many owners considered their slaves to be something of an extened family... (extraneous deleted)... saying that slaves were to be protected and cared for in the waning years of their lives, and not thrown into the street."
*chuckle* And you believe this unquestioningly?? I REALLY need to know what the source of this is.. was it out of some slavery apologist's book, or did you have a civics teacher from the deep south?
Would you sell a member of your extended family 'down the river'? Would you sell a member of your extended family's child to another person for a few bucks?
I mean, of COURSE the slaveowners would say that stuff. Today we call this 'rationalization.'
------------------ "Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi
Saiyanman Benjita
...in 2012. This time, why not the worst?
Member # 122
posted
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This has gone on long enough. Shut the hell up already. Talking about it is one thing, but for over a F****** week?????????????
------------------ Well I'm a Bada$$ cowboy living in a cowboy day wicky-wicky-wak yo yo bang bang me and Artemus Clydefrog go save Selma Hayek from the big metal spider Wicky-wicky-wak wicky-wicky-wicky-wak Bada$$ cowboy from the West Si-yiide
posted
Hey, this board is mostly Americans. We're lucky if ANYTHING can hold our attention for an entire week.
We're even MORE lucky when that thing actually turns out to be something substantial.
You know, generally when someone tells me to stop talking about something, I get suspicious. What are they trying to stop me from thinking about? What is it that they don't want to occur to me?
Not that that's happening here, of course. At least, I hope not.
------------------ "Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi
posted
With all these statistics from a reliable source (not to mention that US and Cuba are like enemy, so I doubt the CIA's going to glorify Cuba's conditions), if you guys still insisted that Cuban are all slave, and they know nothing about it. Or something like living conditions are like hell, well, so be it, there's just nothing more to say.
------------------ Okey, okey, here's my question:
If you are an immortal, do you "rot" simply because of the nuclear decay of the Carbon-14 particles inside your body?
posted
Like I said, it was not my intent to turn this into a thread about slavery, but apparently life and history are a little more complicated than some folks are willing to accept.
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
quote:Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence.
quote:There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities.
The above letter had the intent to clarify Jefferson's position on race in general, but it also served as a primer for owners on how to treat slaves. In other words the wise owner was a kind owner.
The relationship between owner and slave was intricate, and what I stated about "something" of a familial relationship is true and not apologetic about the system of slavery. Stating that some owners were more kind than others or that some owners subscribed to a form of paternalism in no way diminishes the fact that slavery based on race as it was in the United States was an inherently evil system.
The slave system necessitated that slaves were to do the hard manual labor. Labor that they did not necessarily want to do and labor that someone else benefited from.
It is important to keep in mind the word is still "owner." It is not friend. There were many slave holders who viewed their slaves as simple children or even more correctly as animals to be cared for and fed including the slaves old age. But always, slaves were viewed as property.
I suggest you take a look at the following:
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Eugene D. Genovese
The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders by James Oakes
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South by Kenneth M. Stampp
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner. Paperback
------------------ Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya. ~C. Montgomery Burns
posted
Hey Blue, is this the same CIA that didn't know the Iraqis were invading Kuwait, and were using 10-year-old maps of Belgrade to determine bombing sites?
CIA, SHMEE-I-A.
------------------ "Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi
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