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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
NoNukes writes: I'm willing to accept the general principle that we might overlook some good qualities in folk because of slavery, but the story of how the Confederacy came into being would not seem to be told without mentioning slavery at all. No one is arguing this. Could we bring this multi-post misrepresentation to an end? You must be saying to yourself, "So many things to misrepresent, so little time." Make your life easier, let a few go.
At best we could tell the story and leave the characterization of those folks up to readers. How would adding the characterization make the story incorrect? Is it really preferred to describe the slave trade in terms like "The Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations". Should we describe the arrival of Africans during that period as immigration.[1] Does that tell the story more correctly in anyone's eyes? Asking readers to characterize people for holding views that you're misrepresenting? Good show! Nobody here is advocating what you describe here, and especially do not agree with the Texas textbooks described in your link.
I see in this thread folks who talk about the fact that in a previous generation people considered homosexuality evil as some kind of cautionary tale. If I were to go back into the archives, I wonder how many folks I might find who did call those folks homophobes and who correctly compared the suffering of gays to those of African Americans during the 60s, who now claim that it is wrong to characterize folks who were even worse in their behavior? Good grief, it just doesn't stop. Your time would be better spent arguing against views actually expressed. --Percy
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I don't get your problem. Do you think misrepresentation is some kind of honorable debate technique? If you can't find something to argue with, then just spin what someone wrote into something disagreeable. They'll surely respond to correct you, and now you've got someone to argue with.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: bluegenes writes:
Having a child forcibly removed (your example) isn't something slaves necessarily experience, and can certainly happen to non-slaves. Having your child SOLD, with no chance of ever seeing it again, was fairly common practice. That's a far cry from custody issues. That doesn't contradict what I said, and the abduction of the children of non-slaves isn't only in custody issues. In some areas of the world, it was a common source of slaves (the Ottoman Empire was one). It is also done for adoption, now illegally but not always so, and for forced marriage, as well as the rare cases of rape/murder, which are probably the most harrowing. Most of the accounts of individual American slaves that I've read do not include they themselves being sold away from their parents or having their own children sold away or being raped or being regularly or severely punished, although all those things were far more likely than they were for non-slaves. Even in one particular slave system in one country, there is not a standard experience, let alone for slavery as a whole throughout history. There are different people with different lives, not non-people.
ringo writes: bluegenes writes:
You don't appear to have grasped the point, but genocide is characterized by a marked reduction in the population of the group concerned, not by a marked increase. In Canada, we recognize the concept of cultural genocide. You don't have to physically kill people to kill their society. Loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of family all contribute to making slavery like death. If you're using a term in a way that differs from the standard dictionary definition, you should have made it clear. The phrase "cultural genocide" is used, but I think "culturecide" (still rare) would be much better. There are forms slavery that don't involve significant loss of culture, both when it happens within ethnic groups and between different ones. Sometimes a conquered culture exists as a slave group amongst the conquerors with cultural independence (Hebrews in Egypt, for example). Culturecide certainly wasn't the motive for transatlantic slavery, but considerable rapid cultural change was inevitable, and some of it (conversion to Christianity for example) would certainly have been pressed or forced at times. The slaves ended up as English speaking Christians, but lots that related to western Africa remained, and some does today. The slaves evolved a interesting and vital culture which ended up being very influential in America and the world. We wouldn't be the same without them!
ringo writes: bluegenes writes:
It was you who claimed that slavery was similar to genocide. No. I said that slavery is "like" death. Slavery IS genocide. You couldn't be more wrong. Even culturecide is not an inevitable part of it. My Saxon ancestors enslaved each other happily without culturecide! Actually, you've said that slavery is similar to genocide earlier in the thread, so it's interesting to see that it has now become genocide. Why don't you write to the dictionaries and tell them they should be treating the words as synonyms instead of something completely different, as they currently do?
ringo writes: bluegenes writes:
... you seem to be implying that the "people involved" would perceive slavery as similar to existence in an afterlife. That's very different from claiming that slavery is similar to genocide. Huh? You think that sending a whole society to the afterlife before they want to go is not genocide? I pointed out that your claim is very different. The [unsupported] claim that other people perceived a similarity between their lives and an afterlife is not the same as the claim that slavery is actually similar to genocide, or that you think so. As for your question, I've no idea what effect being dispatched to an afterlife would have on a society. Perhaps you should ask an expert, like Faith.
ringo writes: bluegenes writes:
In fact, most of the American slaves certainly were religious, and the optimists among them would be looking forward to an afterlife that was radically different from the state of slavery. That's what I said. Their lives were like death and Hell. They were hoping for Heaven after their physical death. No. You were claiming that their lives were like death, which no life is, and now you seem to be claiming that they perceived their lives as being like Hell, a claim about the perception of others that you haven't supported. As I pointed out above, there's no standard slave experience, and the southern slaves were many individuals with many different life stories, and many different perceptions of their variable circumstances. Edited by bluegenes, : tpyos
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Tat imposing your will upon another people is extremely difficult and often counterproductive In short, just another "Don't" lesson. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Asking readers to characterize people for holding views that you're misrepresenting? Actually, I did not accuse anyone of holding such a view. That text was lifted from a school textbook on slavery and I provided a reference for that expression. What I am finding here is a desire to sanitize history masked as "putting history into perspective, or judging folks in their time and place, where such time and place excludes even contemporary views which also judge the same folks harshly. Folks who enslaved folks, regardless of whether those folks were in Africa or the US, did immense harm to an entire race of folk for their own personal gain. That's the sum total of what slavery was about. Folks who were complicit in that operation have earned whatever harsh judgment they have gotten. If those folks are your heroes, then you are the one who owes an explanation of why that might be. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
we have folk claiming that even owning slaves was not evil. That's a misrepresentation? Really? I'll ask you here whether the Southern slave owners were evil? Was Jefferson Davis owning of slaves evil or not evil? Is it not the case that a primary reason for the founding of the confederacy was the desire to continue an evil practice; namely slavery? Or are you going to continue to tell me that evil is not in your vocabulary and that you are hesitant to even label those folks morally wrong. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
What's the point of all the moralizing against a practice that was just about universal in the world, and still is outside the west, as if you are somehow above such things yourself, as if you wouldn't have been just as pro-slavery as anybody else under the right circumstances? It doesn't make it less evil to recognize that fact but it ought to make your argument a little less condemnatory of persons. Any of us could have been a Nazi under the right circumstances, including you. That doesn't make it less evil, it just means making moral distinctions between individuals of this fallen human race can be disgustingly self-righteously prissy and pharisaical. And I say this as someone who is for severe punishment of crimes by individuals.
I just saw the film "Railway Man" on Netflix, about a WWII British POW of the Japanese, and all through it I wondered how people -- the Japanese in this case -- could ever be that cruel to other human beings. And I understand the film whitewashed the reality. (At least it did get across to me that waterboarding really is torture, which all the self-righteous posturing at EvC failed to do), but there was far worse than waterboarding they did to the English prisoners. The film wasn't all that great in my opinion, but the true story it was based on is very touching. The most amazing and important thing is that the Japanese officer responsible for the torture of this Englishman, the "railway man," sincerely repented of his crimes after the war, after seeing that his government had been lying to him. He met with the ex-prisoner and they became friends. His remorse seemed truly genuine. I understand that's not really the topic here, the topic is whether a nation should remember its dead if that seems to commemorate an evil ideology that did harm to human beings. I don't know if human beings can live with permanent condemnation of a former ideology. Germany seems to be doing it I guess. Did Japan ever fully repent? I don't know exactly how to solve this problem. On the one hand it seems it's only human to remember those who died serving their country, on the other it seems there should be some public remorse shown even in those memorials for the inhumane ideology. I just keep coming back to the position that we're all fallen and guilt is a heavy load to bear. Not all have the grace of that Japanese officer to truly repent. However this problem should be resolved, though, I think you are being a self-righteous know-it-all prig about it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Cat Sci writes:
I googled the word "evil" in Percy's posts in this thread. I'll just quote the first of many instances:
ringo writes:
I haven't seen him claim that. And when nobody is evil, as Percy claims, it also loses its utility. Percy writes:
In other words, nobody should be judged as evil for doing evil deeds. Their evil deeds should only be compared with the evil deeds of the other people around them.
I believe that people should be judged in the context of their time and place in history.Message 86
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Cat Sci writes:
You're still not making any point.
Your perception of slavery is lacking.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Cat Sci writes:
Anything you directly do in the name of your country, you are directly responsible for. "I was only following orders," is not a valid excuse.
So, anything your country does you are directly responsible for.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
So you're saying that selling a slave's children was okay? Or selling a father away from his children? Or selling siblings to different buyers so they'll never see each other again?
The ban on the international slave trade (in 1807 I think) forced the South to rely upon itself for the supply of slaves and made slave families important. Slave children had little value as a commodity, but their value would naturally increase as they approached maturity. Percy writes:
If I mean literally, I'll say literally.
...then you can't insist that literally "Slavery IS genocide" because that is false. Percy writes:
Hence the comparison between slavery and death. Slavery is in many ways equivalent to death, therefore slavery is in many ways equivalent to genocide.
... genocide is the systematic killing of a group....
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
Huh? Murder isn't a standard experience either but we still consider it a bad thing.
Even in one particular slave system in one country, there is not a standard experience, let alone for slavery as a whole throughout history. bluegenes writes:
We are talking about a specific example of slavery here - slavery of Africans and their descendants in the United States before 1865.
There are forms slavery.... bluegenes writes:
Surely you've heard phrases such as, "Give me liberty or give me death," or, "Live free or die." The comparison between loss of freedom and death isn't something I made up.
Why don't you write to the dictionaries and tell them they should be treating the words as synonyms instead of something completely different, as they currently do?
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1055 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I actually agree with a lot of what you wrote for once. However:
What's the point of all the moralizing against a practice that was just about universal in the world By the time of the US civil war, slavery was banned throughout Europe (except the Ottoman Empire), in every independent American country except Brazil and the US, and in large portions of the European empires, so it was already on the way out.
and still is outside the west, Slavery is now illegal everywhere. It still exists, certainly, but it still exists in the West, as well. Thankfully it is today rare almost everywhere; it is clearly not universal.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
What's the point of all the moralizing against a practice that was just about universal in the world, and still is outside the west, as if you are somehow above such things yourself, as if you wouldn't have been just as pro-slavery as anybody else under the right circumstances? Interesting question. What if I suggested to you that in the right circumstance you might be a Jesuit. Would that end your long standing judgment of those folks? If I become pro-slavery under the "right circumstances" then I would be embracing evil. But many folks in those times did nothing of the sort.
I think you are being a self-righteous know-it-all prig about it. So it is easier to judge me that it is to judge any slaver. I see.
The most amazing and important thing is that the Japanese officer responsible for the torture of this Englishman, the "railway man," sincerely repented of his crimes after the war, That's right, that officer was remorseful and repented of his sins after his country lost the war. That puts him miles ahead of folks that did not learn such lessons even after getting the dog crap beat out of them. Nice story. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
The ban on the international slave trade (in 1807 I think) forced the South to rely upon itself for the supply of slaves and made slave families important. Slave children had little value as a commodity, but their value would naturally increase as they approached maturity. This is an example of the kind of justification that I find morally bankrupt. Nobody was forced to enslave anyone other than via circumstances of their own making. These folks understood that their own lives, families, and economic situations were way more important than was the family of any darky, so they did whatever the $#%$ they wanted to do to maintain their cheap supply of labor. So quite naturally the value of children increased. Dehumanizing Africans made enslaving them more palatable. Can we also say that Southerners were forced to dehumanize Africans as a measure of salvaging their own consciences? I suppose we could... What you are saying when you use the term 'forced' is akin to a person murdering his parents and then asking the court to take mercy on an orphan. Beyond that, what you say here is not even historically accurate. Chattel slavery, under which the children pf slaves were automatically slaves (with some exceptions for cases where the mom was white) was practiced in the colonies well before the ending of the international slave trade. The actual dates I've seen for the start of the practice are all in the sixteenth century. Yes, the practice of separating families did get worse as the slave trade dried up, but that is in part because of the immense profits that folks in those border states could generate by selling the off spring of slaves. Eventually, even the deep South folks (SC and GA) had enough slaves to make profits by selling slaves to folks further west. In addition, selling slaves south and west had the benefit of making escape much more difficult. And God forbid a slave escape, stealing wealth from his former owner. The result of all that was yet another reason for Southern slave holders to want even more new territories for slavery. But "forced"? well, yeah, with some scare quotes that at least hint at the real circumstance. And to nitpick just a bit, the Constitution as adopted included a ban on any US attempts to ban the slave trade prior to 1808, so perhaps you can revise your estimate of when the slave trade ended. It was within months of the date allowed by the constitution. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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