https://theintercept.com/2021/06/04/georgia-racism-education-schools/
Triggered snowflake parents demand safe space upon discovering “facts don’t care about [their] feelings.” I could have sworn the confederacy worship was simply about “not erasing History.”
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The Intercept’s slant notwithstanding, it is simply a fact that slavery was not an invention of White Supremacy.
Contrary to the opening scenes of “Roots,” White slavers did not run down Africans on horseback and throw big nets over them. They bought them from Arabs on the coast who wholesaled them from African warlords in the interior. Slavery was an ongoing business in Africa a century before Jamestown was founded.
That does not exonerate America’s participation in the practice but teaching kids that White people invented African slavery is still a lie and should not be taught.
Slavery was a great evil, and children should learn that, but they should learn it in its true historical context.
BTW, free Blacks in Louisiana were in fact slaveholders, both on plantations they owned west of New Orleans and in very large lumber operations. The term being “sold down the river” stems from the practice of selling of recalcitrant slaves to that lumber operation, which had a very high turnover.
Yes, slavery was awful, but it predates America and racism by thousands of years and all races participated.
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I don’t think anyone is claiming American colonists invented slavery or that throughout history only white Americans owned slaves. At issue is whether that legal, institutionalized white supremacy was foundational to the creation of the USA. If so, how do we interpret its continuing legacy in this country’s institutions. Can we trace modern phenomena to the way the country was founded? This is what discussing history looks like.
The other side posits slavery and, presumably though unmentioned, official policies of indigenous genocide as deviations from an otherwise perfect, nay divinely ordained, country’s founding as the “Shining City of the Hill.”
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“BTW, free Blacks in Louisiana were in fact slaveholders, both on plantations they owned west of New Orleans and in very large lumber operations.”
So were the Cherokees who were effectively slaughtered on the “Trail of Tears” by Andrew Jackson’s decrees.
Just before the Civil War, I believe there were 4.5 million slaves in the South. So a few thousand owned by free Blacks or indigenous tribes is almost a “rounding error” anomaly. In other words, a straw man.
Yes, slavery is an old institution. In many cases they were the spoils of war, punishment or a cultural artifact of hierarchical organization. Slavery in the US was from a purely economic purpose. And although we did not invent the practice, we did perfect it even to include breeding once the Atlantic slave trade was banned.
But the really egregious part was the century of brutally enforced caste system of racial apartheid after the end of slavery in 1865.
How can anyone in their honest and right mind even think that slavery should not have had an impact on our racial issues today. White Supremacy along with Biblical backup was the only justification for slavery and its aftermath. If all men were created equal, what was the justification for millions in bondage and and additional 100 years of 2nd class citizenship?
We will never reach a color blind society so long as we refuse to acknowledge the role of race from the 1600’s to the present day. It is not the elephant in the room, it is the whole room.
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A very long rebuttal to a point not made.
The claim was that slavery was a result of White supremacy. Clearly that was not true.
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So why was Jim Crow so pervasive and so long in duration?
You are tap dancing.
White supremacy didn’t necessarily cause American slavery. But it sure kept it going. How else could you explain the rationale that some people could be forced to work for nothing and have their wives and children removed all because of skin color. Or worse, the “one drop rule” of even a hint of Black blood in a person.
If that is not White supremacy in all its glory and its political effects, what is it? Lynching while the town watched, picnic baskets and kids included, did not have much regard for non-Whites.
Red lining, restricted service in the military to just cooks and supply corps, union exclusion, sundown laws…not White supremacy? Miscegenation laws…not White supremacy? Making it illegal for slaves to read and write.
Don, the list is extensive and yet you obvioulsy have other rationales for the treatment of African-Americans for centuries in our country, not some Arab trading port.
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Time only goes in one direction.
The claim was that slavery was a result of White supremacy. That is clearly false.
If you want to make the argument that White supremacy made it worse here than other places, show some support for that argument but I suspect it was equally bad elsewhere, including in Africa.
And of course White Supremacy continued after slavery ended, That is a separate shame.
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“The claim was that slavery was a result of White supremacy. That is clearly false.”
The discussion is about slavery in the US and it’s aftermath.
In those terms, White supremacy has a huge role in perpetuating our racial divide today.
Historical origins of slavery throughout the world history are not why we had slavery continue long after the Atlantic trade stopped. The reason was economic and the justification was clearly supremacy.
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There is no defense of the mistreatment of Blacks after the 13th Amendment. That remains our national shame.
The reasons slavery continued after the Atlantic slave trade ended are more complex. A large part of the blame rests with New York banks and Massachusetts insurance companies.
Virginia was debating phasing out slavery in 1836, The primary hang-up was financial. Slaves were bought with mortgages, just like tractors today, They were insured against loss or escape.
The New York banks that held the mortgages still had to be paid even though there would no longer be a slave and the insurance companies held that emancipation was not an insurable loss.
The plantations could not afford to both pay wages to the former slaves and pay the mortgages as well. That impasse remained until the war ended.
Speaking of White supremacy, remember that Lincoln was part of an organization dedicated to providing a homeland in Africa for the freed slaves. Not all White supremacy was in the South.
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White supremacy was pervasive. Lincoln included. No argument.
All of your economic examples are part of the story but only in so much that slaves were sub-human property. And that is White supremacy.
Like I stated white supremacy was not the cause of slavery in the world history but it was crucial to justify it here. Mortgage or no mortgage.
How can a bank or an owner justify the financial impact unless Africans were considered inferior humans? Plus the church also provided additional ammunition by various warped interpretations of Scripture.
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“There is no defense of the mistreatment of Blacks after the 13th Amendment. ”
But it IS defensible prior to the 13th? Nice.
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“The board drafted the resolution without public input and then blocked comments from the YouTube livestream. Impassioned pleas, it seems, are fit only for those on one side of this argument.”
But cancel culture is a left wing phenomena. When it is done by conservatives, it is just fine and dandy.
Calling for open discussion and then shutting down one side of the discussion seems to be the new pro-racism/anti-historical context go to.
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From The Intercept: “The resolution contains language barring instruction in ways that suggest that racism is acceptable. But it also says the state school board believes that no teacher, administrator, or other school employee should offer instruction suggesting that ‘meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; (or) that the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States; or that, with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.'”
These restrictions seem reasonable to me, although I lament the madness of our times that parents should have to fight to implement them. In a K-12 environment it should be enough to teach that racism and its variants are undesirable. The more subtle notions the list of restrictions would ban belong in college-level instruction, if they belong anywhere at all.
The essential issue here is pedagogical, not ideological.
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“The more subtle notions the list of restrictions would ban belong in college-level instruction, if they belong anywhere at all.”
We just ignore the challenging, thought-provoking topics? Best not to stir the pot? I think high school students could handle these discussions and would likely benefit from them.
All education is ideological.
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RE: “I think high school students could handle these discussions and would likely benefit from them.”
I don’t. I also think high school teachers are unqualified to host them.
RE: “All education is ideological.”
No doubt, but also no excuse. Some ideologies are bad. CRT is one example of that.
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“I also think high school teachers are unqualified to host them.”
Unless of course they lead the discussion in the manner YOU best think?
As far as CRT goes, it seems the RIGHT fears historical context more than the left fears the result of the AZ fauxdit.
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RE: “Unless of course they lead the discussion in the manner YOU best think?”
No, I said that I don’t think they should have the discussion at all.
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“Some ideologies are bad” is the kind of essentialist, reductive thinking that comes from neglecting controversial topics.
Speaking of, can you explain Critical Race Theory to me in 50 words or so?
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I have done already in other threads.
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Which ones?
Or does “why, because you say so?” not apply to you?
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No it doesn’t. He tends to hold his opinions to be of grander thought process than the parroting that it really is..
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You have parroted others without critical thinking applied.
Mr. Chandler has asked you to repeat, if you can, your explanation of what CRT is. If you are afraid to post it again (even a link to a previous post) just say so.
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RE: “Or does ‘why, because you say so?’ not apply to you?”
It applies. Here’s my answer to your challenge:
CRT is an offshoot of Marxist social theory which posits that race exploitation causes the class structure of society.
The point, however, would be the same if, say, eugenics were the ideology. Just because all education is ideological, that’s no excuse for teaching eugenics to children.
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Not really. It began as a legal framework to explain how for example, an institution could be discriminatory against a back woman while not necessarily being discriminatory against black people or women, in general. (Intersectionality evolves from this line of reasoning.)
It came about as an attempt to understand why, despite the nominal victories of the civil rights movement, minorities were underrepresented and underperforming whites in most every measure. If everyone is legally equal, why this discrepancy if not for some structural disadvantages being baked into the framework.
Also, to teach kids that black people experiencing the host of inequalities that they do is part of the natural order of things is a form eugenics.
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RE: “If everyone is legally equal, why this discrepancy if not for some structural disadvantages being baked into the framework.”
The question is somewhat illogical, since it presupposes its own answer. The effect could otherwise be accounted for in terms of simple Pareto distributions, among other possibilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
In any case the GA resolution seeks to ban specific outputs of CRT scholarship, which I consider to be reasonable because CRT itself is dubious.
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RE: Pareto. I find it hard to believe that white families having 8-10 times the median wealth of black families is the result of random distribution.
“…CRT is dubious.” Why, because you say so?
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Identify your enemy’s shameful behaviors, past or present. Poke at them every day until the enemy shrivels from embarrassment. Alinsky all the way; better called Communist Race Theory.
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https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-empowering-of-the-american-mind?r=7hgxp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy
Sorry, but I can’t recall how to do the tinly/url thing.
A very interesting essay on what could be done to improve the K-12 education system.
“It is time for serious changes in K-12 education. We need a renewed focus on cultivating our liberal tools for discovering knowledge, fostering independence, and respecting individuality—all the while encouraging a diversity of thought among students and their families.”
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The GA school board resoultion is consistent with your essay, especially:
“Principle 4: Demonstrate epistemic humility at all levels of teaching and policymaking.”
The resolution would ban teaching that slavery was a key factor in the founding of the U.S. Indeed, epistemic humility would require exactly such a ban, since the idea that slavery was a key factor in the founding is much disputed by academics who have studied that very question.
That is to say, grammar school teachers cannot teach the idea as fact and grammar school students lack the education to debate the idea on its merits.
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…”since the idea that slavery was a key factor in the founding is much disputed by academics who have studied that very question.”
I disagree. Simply because our Constitution was written on the 3/5th’s compromise to ensure Southern states would ratify it. To ignore that fact is to ignore the fact that slavery WAS a key factor in the founding of this country.
Academics may dispute it, but this layman sees it for what it was.
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No, they censored a false narrative. I have asked numerous times on this forum why blacks who sold blacks in Africa are not included in this “slavery” discussion as the evil supplier of slaves but there is always some lame excuse to sweep that under the rug. The board was right and made the correct decision.
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“On the first day of January, 1808, a new Federal law made it illegal to import captive people from Africa into the United States. This date marks the end—the permanent, legal closure—of the trans-Atlantic slave trade into our country. The practice of slavery continued to be legal in much of the U.S. until 1865, of course, and enslaved people continued to be bought and sold within the Southern states, but in January 1808 the legal flow of new Africans into this country stopped forever.”
https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/end-trans-atlantic-slave-trade
So from 1808 until 1865, the Arab or African slave traders were not a factor. In other words, Americans had their own slave culture and it including breeding and selling families, intact or not, for 57 years after Africa stopped supplying captives for slave trading.
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Who can help Bob figure out why the actions of Africans in Africa aren’t the main focus of American history curricula?
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Who can help YOU understand history and the the world outside of your little box of gotta blame the southern US whitey for thousands of years of slavery narrative…
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You have no real in history or studying of it. You prove it with your inability to provide anything but racist tinged garbage.
Quit reading SOUHTERN history and using it as your bible. They lost, yet were still able to control a narrative about “lost cause” and the like. And you being you, believe it to be the ONLY factual narrative wrt to slavery and the history of it in this country. An how, even after the Civil War and the 13th-15th Amendments to the Constitution, white supremacy continued and the idea of it continues to this day. To say otherwise is to show your own ignorance of facts.
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It’s well documented WORLD history you moron.
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But we aren’t discussing WORLD history, asshole. We are discussing AMERICAN history.
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That was a lot of pointless babble while trying to escape and ignore African culpability in slavery. Here is a story you might like of Blacks coming to terms with the facts you claim is my ignorance.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-20/willful-amnesia-how-africans-forgot-and-remembered-their-role-slave-trade
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Yes, OK Africans sold their fellow countrymen into slavery.
It still does not change the fact that in this country, even AFTER slavery was abolished, former slaves and their descendants were mistreated strictly based on the color of their skin. And in many places even today, this is still happening.
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Who is blaming “Whitey” for “thousands of years of slavery…”?
I think the concerns are with American slavery and its impact on race relations in the US. And the issues are still relevant in great part because the descendants of slaves were denied citizenship until about 60 years ago legally, and less time culturally.
Keeping our history of apartheid hidden in education is ignoring reality.
Look at the kerfuffle over Tulsa’s destruction of an entire Black suburb in 1921. Researchers found that newspaper articles were clipped out before microfiching for the archives. One of the most egregious human rights violations in our history was not taught in schools and “whited out” (pun intended) by politicians.
We are a country that has done great things, but also at some costs that we are not ready to deal with even today.
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