*move on*

[ July 09, 2001: Message edited by: Jay the Obscure ]

FoT: considering that the Founding Fathers were racist, sexist, et al, why was it surprising? Oh, but you left, "hipocritical" off the list.

Let's see ... who owned slaves? Washington and Jefferson, right off the top of my head.

Yes, but they did it because it was the only moral option open to them. The other choice would have been to release all the slaves immediately, before educating them. If they'd done that, then they all either would have died, or they would have been claimed or tricked and sold right back into slavery. Unacceptable. The welfare of the slaves was the primary concern, and the best thing their owners could do by them was to give them the best education possible, and then free them. Exactly what Washington and Jefferson did.

And how many of them had out of marriage affairs? Jefferson, again, right off the top of my head, with ... one of his slaves, wasn't it?

Sally Hemmings, and no, he didn't. The kid of scandal wasn't his. Nor was the second kid. Now the third kid was a genetic match, but considering he was born years after the (false) claims about the first being Jefferson's kid first broke into a scandal, it seems more likely that it was one of his male relatives in the area. His brother and five nephews are distinct possibilities.

Apologist? I apologize for nothing, because I did nothing wrong. Tell me: what was the better alternative? What would YOU have had Jefferson and Washington do that was so much better than what they did? Release the slaves immediately? Because we've already established that they would simply have died for lack of food, or else been taken advantage of and sold right back into slavery, probably to a far more unpleasant owner. Thus again I ask, what's your proposal that's be so much better?

Welfare for slaves? By making them work in the fields and live in shacks?

A) You know nothing about the conditions in which the slaves in question lived. Don't presume that you do.

As for slave living conditions ... well, I might now know first-hand how slaves were kept, but www.mountvernon.org has a pretty good idea. Read:

quote:

---

The slaves living at the Mansion House farm were housed in communal quarters. The House for Families, pictured on the left, was used until 1793. Archaeologists excavating the site 200 years later uncovered many objects which helped us discover how slaves in the House for Families lived.

Some slaves lived above their place of work, such as the kitchen or carpentry shop. Others lived in quarters adjacent to the greenhouse. Although we know a great deal about many of the slaves living on the estate, the records, for the most part, do not tell us how the living spaces were assigned, or who lived in each quarter.

Slaves living on the outlying farms were not housed as well as those on the Mansion House farm. They lived in small wooden cabins, with dirt floors, which were drafty and hard to keep clean. A Polish visitors described these cabins as "more miserable than the cottages of our peasants."

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Let's look at the equity of this "deal."

• I'm forceably removed from freedom and from my family.
  
• I'm sold into chattel and raced based slavery.
  
• I'm kept out of the education system.
  
• I'm kept out of the political system.
  
• I'm kept out of the dominate cultural arena in a systemic way that precludes any advancement on my part.
  

And now you want to work for free for the same people who kept me in slavery?

Yeah, that's sounds like a great deal for me! Sign me up for that!

Or maybe you, Omega, you should sign up for a couple of decades of involuntary service. That's an equitable deal in exchange for your paultry education.

[ July 10, 2001: Message edited by: Jay the Obscure ]

And now you want to work for free for the same people who kept me in slavery?

Yes, THAT explains it ALL doesn't IT.

This works then:

• I'm forceably removed from freedom and from my family.
  
• I'm sold into chattel and raced based slavery.
  
• I'm kept out of the education system.
  
• I'm kept out of the political system.
  
• I'm kept out of the dominate cultural arena in a systemic way that precludes any advancement on my part.
  
• I owe the system so much for that treatment that I should work for free another 20 years.
  

Washington, Jefferson, and others had demand for slaves. Shit, look how much the slave population at Mount Vernon increased. Because of this demand (yes, part of it was satisfied by births within the slave population, but not all), more ships went out to Africa, captured some natives (yes, with help of other African tribes), and carried them back to the U.S.

It's all one big, vicious circle, and for all their noble talk about how bad slavery was, they still bought slaves. They helped perpetuate the system, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Yes, maybe they did own slaves, but it is NORMAL, and the RIGHT THING for them to do so in their period of time. Time move forwards and things do friggin' changes, stop applying our standards on them.

And maybe THEY ARE doing a favour for their slaves! Generalization does not apply to everyone, and maybe they knew better and treated their "slaves" as good as any other normal, white people.

Yes, maybe they do have affairs, but like I said, things are different back then, monogamy ain't that big a deal in their time.

And don't forget, without them, you won't even be talking about all this shit in this very board right now.

[ July 10, 2001: Message edited by: BlueElectron ]