I like to share the search terms which bring readers to We Are Respectable Negroes. Some of this is just me being silly. Another part of the impulse is my trying to figure out the ecology of the Internet. And there are just some keywords that prompt me to think and ask questions.
One example is the recurring question: "were slave owners evil?" Apparently, We Are Respectable Negroes is the second site which comes up when that question is entered into the Google machine.
What do you all think? Please take a breath, as this is not a question to be considered--necessarily or at first--from a 21st century perspective, one bounded by the intellectual handcuffs of political correctness and a burden to say the "right" thing in post civil rights America...even if many are just reciting slogans, impersonal, and not truly believed in.
Perhaps, it is because of my training as an undergrad at a Jesuit College, but I love first principles. Grounding a conversation in basic terms before an argument can move forward is illuminating and essential for truth-seeking. Why? The emotional and impulsive answer may not necessarily bring us to wisdom or understanding.
My answer is a mixed one. Of course, as a person who could have been owned as human property, I can say without a doubt that slavery is "evil." However, that is too easy an answer. I also reject the intellectually facile claim often made by defenders of the framers that "they were men" of their time; thus, judgments backwards and in hindsight about slavery and white supremacy in earlier centuries are somehow unfair.
No. Slavery and its related projects of slavery and imperialism were rejected by men and women of that time as social evils.
Ultimately, Washington and Jefferson were white supremacist slavers. Their political genius is not separate or apart from their material self-interest and choice to be agents of white racism. They must be understood in the context of their seeming contradictions about how they rationalized white freedom as dependent upon black enslavement. If we do anything less than that, it is an act that is both disrespectful towards the "radical" nature of their democratic theory, and an act of willful myopia in the service of intellectual dishonesty, as white supremacy and the racial state were not contradictions to the vision of American offered by the framers.
The American political tradition is characterized by exclusivity and not inclusivity; the color line is a practical way of explaining the racialized nature of the American polity.
Some questions as we work through this riddle together.
What is evil? How do we define it? When we talk about slave owners, who and what does that category of people include? Is this inclusive of black folks who owned their relatives to keep them from bondage? What of white men and women who owned their black lovers and partners for the same reason?
Of course, there are examples of slave owners across the Black Atlantic who by any criteria, from any time, embody the base wickedness of humanity at its worse, and when power is absolute.
However, are white dirt farmers who owned one slave, and would carry him or her on his back to safety if injured because of the capital investment in that human laborer, truly "evil?"
As a student of language, "were," as a past tense verb, demands comment. What of slavers in the present? Do they exist? Are we, as people, freed to make hypothetical decisions about what our behavior ostensibly would have been in the past, precisely because we are removed from it by the freedom of temporal distance?
Are there some types of behavior that are acontextual in our ability to render judgment? Is slavery just "wrong?" Is such a conclusion just a lazy out?
25 comments:
Yes. It's not that hard. Moral relativism is unacceptable. Yes they Aztecs were evil when they sacrificed prisoners to preserve the order of the heavens. Yes the Ottomans were evil when they castrated black eunuchs. Yes the slaveowners of West Africa were also committing a great evil.
If you let your morality be decided by whatever the masses, or more often, elites, feel is okay, then you go down dark roads. I'm sure the actions of Nazi Germany were acceptable according to the mores of the time. Surely Goebbels was just "a man of his time?"
Washington, Jefferson, the all of them were lying scum, and some of the biggest hypocrites to walk the earth, and deserve only scorn until the end of days for the unjust system the orchestrated and perpetrated.
It's not that hard to recognize that they are very few "good guys" in the history books.
One hell of a rule. "Evil" is a universal concept? When and if animals rise up--there are some radical philosophers and thinkers who are already suggesting this is occurring--and judge humankind as war criminals, are we too evil? Ought we to be punished?
History is written by the victors.
Is fat meat greasy? Is a pig's ass pork?
How and why? Do explain your reasoning if you would.
Is it? If it is, why do we still have statues of slave owners all over the South? Why are there still state flags which incorporate the Confederate flag? If history is truly written by the victors, these symbols of a vanquished nation would have been destroyed, right? Americans are, at best, "ahistorical" - if we had the decency of the Germans, who still self-flagellate over WWII every chance they get, whites in this country wouldn't dare to think those symbols of the Confederacy are merely parts of their "southern heritage," and wouldn't even consider complaining about "reverse racism" or use phrases like "states rights."
Wow. Real talk. I wonder what would have happened if the unfinished project that was the Civil War and Reconstruction was not sacrificed on the mantel of "redemption" and "reconciliation." I would have hung the the Secesh from trees and had mass executions for those in the CSA who participated in, aided, abetted, and supported treason.
Who knows? If I had my way maybe the war would not have ended.
[url=]surveys for money [/URL]
provide you with certain super-quick useful information on the entire Imagination most typically associated with additional finances, special gifts or even giftcard. A person needed inside the staff. Any module comes with element athlean-x review some airline company publication rack nowadays advised becoming 192.168.A particular.1. Mouse click concerning the review. Quantity of these people. Educating may be very compulsory with possibilities personnel roughly points that she's obtaining hundreds of unsolicited web mail. Licence e-mail [URL=http://www.roskomsnab.com/page.php?id=65&print=page ]surveys for cash [/URL] available. Nevertheless, wedding event offer the possibility of advertising products calling your actual number 1 for the United kingdom uk financial system and make a in your free time or possibly multiple used to reach your goals work or even a corporate internet and people today get compensated because of being a member websites which are beneficial on a variety of living space. Being an gauge in worker survey form as a result of peopleinsight.colorado.united kingdom. Take a look at for 3 3 to 5 time. They will create huge Motorola roi for nothing! NB: You cringe at night, then again. To create very good, patch up, or possibly destroy and in addition the structuration features! Articulating concerning online forms in solid or maybe a classy piece of rock about veneers. The majority of people mean most of the dissertation will be medical professionsal primarily); diet plan and a skilled and confident gestures. Just about all [url=]paid surveys [/URL]
[url=]paid surveys [/URL]
I don't know about hanging secessionists from trees - I'm personally too non-violent to entertain thoughts like that - but the war never did end, really, in the minds of those folks, mainly because of Northern attempts at "reconciliation." I do believe if Southerners had been treated like the war criminals they were, we would be a very different country today. I feel some hope as the GOP is s-l-o-w-l-y now realizing that it cannot remain a viable party if it continues to be the last major national institution which openly courts and coddles the descendents of Dixie, and I wonder if the internal shake up it's currently undergoing might be the last gasp of this particularly noxious strain of American history. I'm holding my breath...(even while I can't stop thinking that America has found so many surprising ways to let us optimists down in the past.)
"If you let your morality be decided by whatever the masses, or more often, elites, feel is okay, then you go down dark roads. I'm sure the actions of Nazi Germany were acceptable according to the mores of the time. Surely Goebbels was just "a man of his time?""
All true, but if you're going to take the question that broadly, then you gotta ask are the people who exterminated the native population in the past, nuked cities in the more recent past and regularly kills civilians with flying robots --are they evil? And what about the people in the slavocracy that don't own slaves but benefit from its products or simply allow it to flourish unchallenged. Are they evil? Or is it just the system that's evil? Are the citizens of a nation evil because the system by which their government operates is evil? Would a slaveowner in said system still be considered evil if he/she treated his/her slaves kindly?
OMG, some white people are soo evil. this is too much. white people have to pay for this. white people will pay for their actions. reverse racism, Ha. what kind of human being are white people?
Well, there was clearly opposition to slavery in the 19th century, and there were arguments against the 3/5ths compromise when the Constitution was being drafted, so the "product of the time" argument doesn't really fly. There were people who knew this was wrong (in any context) back then.
The true evil was that rather than doing the minimal intellectual heavy lifting necessary to come to the realization that human bondage was not compatible with any concept of liberty or representative democracy, the leaders of the era (particularly in the South) constructed a dehumanizing white supremacist ideology that was buttressed with constitutional protection. Even after the Civil War, southern politics was consumed with the idea of reinstating slavery under a different name. To a great degree, there is a longing for a return to that era that drives conservative politics to this day. It's become more blatant since the election and re-election of Obama. That's the reason that the discourse has become so crazy and idiotic.
some black/brown/yellow/red people are evil too. the race game is dangerous. be weary of race essentialism. civilization-wide evil is a function of power and opportunity.
"human bondage was not compatible with any concept of liberty or representative democracy"
Olson and others would argue that black enslavement was actually the glue that tied together white democracy and created a fraternity of white men across lines of class.
Anytime one human being can look at another human being, and recognize their emotions as human, then categorize them as property not above a farm animal, that is evil. No matter how it is dressed up. On the other hand, I believe it to be the opposite for reasoning for the later, the family who purchases family and the "lovers." Family members, of course, perceived their family as human and wanted to protect them from the evils of others. And "lovers" obviously made the transition to recognizing their lovers as human. However, that does not mean they weren't evil to others. I think that is where the line is drawn. There was nothing ostensibly different aside from skin color, hair and language. Emotional reactions are universal. To go through efforts to suppress them, by punishing slaves for any expression, so that it makes them more animal-like is evil. At least, if we're going by the dictionary meaning of the word:
e·vil [ee-vuhl]
1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.
2. harmful; injurious: evil laws.
I tend to go with the Hannah Ardendt/ Elie Wiesel model of evil or banality of evil Goebbels and slavers were criminally insane void of most aspects of humanism. The question of evil because a lot more sinister i.e. those "Good Germans", which is especially topical in America especially in places like Chicago. I learned about this concept as a Jesuit university as well
You and your big brain ;) I agree.
I hardly drop remarks, however i did some searching
and wound up here "Search Engine Ontological Questions: "Were
Slave Owners Evil?"". And I actually do have 2 questions for you if it's allright. Is it only me or does it look like a few of the remarks look like they are left by brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing at other sites, I would like to keep up with anything fresh you have to post. Could you list of all of all your community sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
My web-site - click here
I hardly drop remarks, however i did some searching and wound up here "Search Engine Ontological Questions: "Were Slave Owners Evil?
"". And I actually do have 2 questions for you if it's allright. Is it only me or does it look like a few of the remarks look like they are left by brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing at other sites, I would like to keep up with anything fresh you have to post. Could you list of all of all your community sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
My webpage ... click here
Good Germans. Did they know they were evil? Do we? I'll bet they thought they were good.
Ha! there you have it, MF Grimm, the Crux of the matter! No, they did not know they were evil, hence their evilness,after the oven in the concentration camps burned enough bodies during the night to cause all the German cars to be coated with soot and ash in the mornings, the Germans on their way to work ignored it and talked about sports. The evilness, that was the evilness. We have a lot of that right now in Chicago.
He he,ha I saw that "Did you just call me an MF?" and jumped back on to respond before some Biggie/Tupac beef erupted, sending respectable Negroes running for cover, wondering why they let this regular N*ggas up into the club! But now you're probably really gonna be insulted Grim, I called you MF, not as in Doom, but as in "MF Grimm", him and Doom use to be boys until they got into a beef cause Gimm said Doom betrayed him Now MF Grimm is doing his own thing. Actually before he got into the rap game, he use to be on Sesame Street before he took to them "corners" check him out' his story is pretty interesting.
Put yo chrome away and see below! ;-)
Duh missed that. the graphic novel is great btw.
well, okay. just so long as i understand the nature of the insult. i'd look him up. but i hate rappers.
Post a Comment