This is Harris-Perry's stern warning: "I want us to be super-careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."
Oh, so the slave is the idealized "hard worker"? Then why, just a couple weeks ago did a textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, have to apologize and agree to change a geography textbook that referred to slaves as "workers"?
On reading a caption in his geography textbook that described slaves as “workers”, Coby Burren sent a photo and an annoyed message to his mother. "We was real hard workers wasn’t we," he wrote."We are deeply sorry," said the publisher's chief executive for a map of "Patterns of Immigration" that had a notation: "The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."
Roni Dean-Burren was also disturbed by the language, and posted about the book online. Her comments went viral and the publisher swiftly decided to rewrite the section....
Even assuming you want to follow the instruction to "be super-careful," it's hard — if I may use the word — to figure out which way to go.
The McGraw-Hill incident teaches that you should never refer to slavery without framing it in somber moral terms. It can't be mixed in with other matters as if it were not a unique evil.
The "Paul Ryan is a 'hard worker'" incident teaches that slavery must be mixed into discussions of, well, perhaps anything. If someone complains about the heat, maybe you should get on their case for not acknowledging how much more slaves suffered from the heat. If somebody comments that the food isn't very good, you should lay into them about how poorly fed the slaves were? (That sounds like the opposite of "super-careful.")
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101 comments:
Maybe if MHP were a harder worker she could make coherent arguments. Unfortunately, that's not what she's trying to do. She's trying to gain power for her social class. Logic doesn't come into it only emotion. That's been a pretty successful strategy for the left. Now the right is trying to see if they can make it work with Trump.
Slavery is a tradition that made economic sense before the industrial revolution. It's better to enslave your enemies than to kill them, an improvement on hitting your enemies in the head and taking their stuff, which we're getting back to by the way in the relation of governing class and citizens. See where that goes next.
After the industrial revolution, slavery no longer made economic sense. Everybody is better off is the slave works in his own interest than if he works as a slave. So it persisted briefly under increasingly bogus justifications that had to lose, and did.
Its legacy is enslavement of blacks by black leaders, which is what being careful is all about. Here be eternal eggshells so that we get money without producing anything useful.
Morality follows the money.
What's the final exam like in one of her African-American Studies classes? "Here are some perfectly normal phrases someone might use in a sentence: Floral arrangement, water bottle, learner's permit, hard worker. Now go on at length about why using each of these is racially offensive and requires a profuse apology."
MHP is the Left's Sarah Palin but she owes back taxes.
Keep her on MSNBC.
There has actually been work done (Actual history! Actual research!) about slave diets during the antebellum period. Slaves ate about as well as poor whites. Some slaves lived better than poor whites. Don't tell Melissa Harrris Perry, though. It conflicts with the Narrative.
I am reminded of the hard work MHP engaged in to create the tampon earrings.
Who says America is mired in the cultural rot? Onward and upward!
It's almost as if we live in a world ruled by borderline personality disorders.
Some people are slaves to Slavery.
It can't be mixed in with other matters as if it were not a unique evil.
It isn't a unique evil. It's the normal state of human relations. What's unique is the modern Western, christian rejection of slavery.
I'm sure glad racism and sexism haven't been defined down so low that they are meaningless.
Also, and this might be mean, Africa hasn't gotten the memo that slavery is bad. The West figured it out and stopped but Africa? Still a bit of a problem there. Odd.
ganderson said...Some slaves lived better than poor whites. Don't tell Melissa Harrris Perry, though. It conflicts with the Narrative.
Good lord! What narrative about slavery are you talking about that can be undermined by mere diet?!?
Agent K, in Men in Black: "Human thought is so primitive that it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies."
Melitha Harrith Pewwy, he was talking about you.
Slaves weren't hard workers. (There I said it.)
Why do more than the minimum when you don't get rewarded for it? I think most did just enough to keep from being punished. Union soldiers wrote about seeing these wonderful plantation houses and then you get up close and a gate is hanging half off or there is a bonnet stuffed in a broken window pane. This was because the people who cared didn't do the work and the people who did the work didn't care.
So therefore MHP is racists for calling slaves "hard workers."
MHP is a bigot for referring to slaves as hard workers--it belittles the fact that they are being forced to work and even implies that they enjoy their work (after all, people who work hard are those doing more than the required minimum--exactly the opposite of those laboring only because they are forced).
Someone more famous than me should demand an apology from MHP on behalf of those of us who were descended from serfs and slaves.
Today's Dilbert is appropriate here.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Any discussion of slavery in the US should include the points that the slaves were the losers of Africa and were provided to the slave traders courtesy of other Africans, plus the point that their descendants in America have no real reason to want to go back to Africa now that they are free to do so.
So I watched the van Susteren (born in Wisconsin!!) clip.
Why doesn't her face move when she talks? It looks very unnatural.
Its not completely crazy to note in the subtitle of people in the fields that they arent just "workers", rather they are enslaved.
And likewise shuffling a bunch of papers isnt really "hard" work when compared to the manual labor that *any* of our ancestors did 150 years ago.
But she is really off her trolley claiming we have to be "super careful" about calling Paul Ryan a hard worker. What is the standard of care she is recommending, because she really didnt clear it up. Is "super careful" code for "this term is disallowed in perpetuity"?
"MHP is the Left's Sarah Palin but she owes back taxes."
Sarah Palin made pretty good sense with most of her statements. Perry is an idiot although I confess I don;lt watch MSNBC for examples.
Why does anyone pay attention to this ?
Our post-modern age tolerates and encourages what in earlier decades would at least lead to a psychiatric evaluation.
"MadisonMan said...
So I watched the van Susteren (born in Wisconsin!!) clip."
So very WIsconsin.
Mad Man said: "Why doesn't her face move when she talks? It looks very unnatural."
I'm pretty sure that there's an actual disorder there. I forget what, Bell's Palsy maybe, but something that caused parts of her face to become paralyzed.
The guy won't work weekends. By definition he is not a particularly hard worker. Compared to people who do outdoor manual labor he is a complete pussy. These things are self-evident to non-partisans.
"But she is really off her trolley claiming we have to be "super careful" about calling Paul Ryan a hard worker. What is the standard of care she is recommending, because she really didnt clear it up. Is "super careful" code for "this term is disallowed in perpetuity"?"
It's sort of like people who every time you complain about something, point out someone somewhere sometime who had it worse. Bad day at the office? At least you don't work in a coal mine. Someone pelted you with a snowball? Hey, some people get pelted with rocks! Lost your hand in a machine accident? Just be glad you didn't lose both hands, both legs, and both ears like my Uncle Elmer! He can't even wear glasses anymore!
It gets silly very easily. If Paul Ryan is a "hard worker" then anyone who isn't an idiot (so exclusing MHP) understands this is in the context of other Congressmen, not coal miners or Bangladeshi rope farmers. To say "sorry, if you weren't owned by someone, picking cotton all day, and beaten regularly, you can't call yourself a hard worker!" is inane.
@MM
Don't be a hater bro.
Also a sexist.
And don't call her a hard worker for crying out loud.
Apparently, you've never seen her before because that is the way her face is.
=============================
Also, I agree that Palin was, generally, right about every issue she addressed. Perry is, generally, a moron.
"The guy won't work weekends. By definition he is not a particularly hard worker. Compared to people who do outdoor manual labor he is a complete pussy. These things are self-evident to non-partisans."
And yet we aren't comparing him to people who do outdoor manual labor. We are comparing him to other Congressmen. Or are you suggesting that anyone calling a congressman "lousy at their job" wrong because they aren't nearly as lousy at their job as that Italian cruise ship captain who abandoned ship?
Keep your cotton-pickin' hands off my gin. - Eli Whitney
Hard worker.
The word slavery is offensive to Slavs.
folks working in cotton fields
Are they singing and eating watermelon and fried chicken?
"Black black blackity black."
The "Paul Ryan is a 'hard worker'" incident teaches that slavery must be mixed into discussions of, well, perhaps anything.
That was Crack's point. That's why Crack cracked: He got called on it.
I find this good to hear since my professional career is built on teaching people to be lazy. More info here http://changeover.com/lazymanufacturing.html
"All progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way" Robert Heinlein said it, but I preach it to manufacturers. Although some are skeptical, they quickly buy in when they find out the concept.
Glad to know that I am politically correct, if only by accident. One of the few times in my life. I'll need to savor this.
BTW: If you want to know my qualifications to teach laziness, just ask my wife. She says I am a world champion. But that is just based on what I do around the house.
John Henry
Blogger ganderson said...
There has actually been work done (Actual history! Actual research!) about slave diets during the antebellum period. Slaves ate about as well as poor whites. Some slaves lived better than poor whites.
Some 10mm slaves were imported to South America and the Caribbean. Most died fairly quickly and they had to be constantly replaced.
Somewhere between 300m and 1mm slaves were imported to what is now the US. That stopped in the 1820s. By the time of the War Between the States, the slave population was something like 5mm. Life expectancy of slaves was higher than for Irish immigrants.
But they were not free and none of the above in any way excuses the enslavement of anyone.
John Henry
For the less numerate 300mm = 300,000 and 1mm = 1,000,000
John Henry
Perhaps a bit off topic but prior to 1800, slavery was the norm throughout the world. Not just of blacks but of whites, Indians, Asians and pretty much everyone.
By 1900, it still existed but was pretty rare in the world and was generally looked on with horror.
Much of this, though not all, is due to British efforts to stamp out slavery via the Royal Navy. The effort was mainly driven by religious people.
John Henry
Why would it be good for Ryan, or any other pol to be a "hard worker"? I think it should be an insult to call any pol that.
When they are working hard, we, the people, are usually getting it right up the old wazoo.
I would much prefer that they not even show up for work but stay home drinking and watching The View and Judge Judy.
If they would work hard at repealing some of the hundreds of thousands of laws we have, I could support that.
John Henry
John Henry said...
For the less numerate 300mm = 300,000 and 1mm = 1,000,000
Now you're really trying to confuse people. ( I think you have an extra 'm' after the 300. )
And I'm quite numerate, and had to look up the difference between 'm' and 'mm'.
"All progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way" Robert Heinlein said it, but I preach it to manufacturers.
There is an apocryphal story that Napoleon said that officers should be divided on two axis. Smart/Dumb and Energetic/Lazy
Smart/Lazy were to be senior commanders because they looked for the easiest solutions.
Smart/Energetic were to be staff officers to handle the details
Dumb/Lazy were to be subordinate commanders because they only did what you told them to do.
Dumb/Energetic were to be found and immediately relieved of duty.
IIB,
Thanks for catching the mm. It should be 300m = 300,000
In business, at least in the manufacturing businesses I work in, the m and mm are common shorthand.
Natural gas, for example, is sold to you in McF or "thousand cubic feet"
Monkyboy said:
There is an apocryphal story that Napoleon said that officers should be divided on two axis. Smart/Dumb and Energetic/Lazy
Smart/Lazy were to be senior commanders because they looked for the easiest solutions.
Smart/Energetic were to be staff officers to handle the details
Dumb/Lazy were to be subordinate commanders because they only did what you told them to do.
Dumb/Energetic were to be found and immediately relieved of duty.
I'd not heard that about Napoleon but it does make sense and I am going to steal it.
Walter Chrysler said somethign similar:
"Whenever I have a hard job, I look for a lazy man because I know he will find the easiest way to do it."
John Henry
Thank God Obama isn't a hard worker. Imagine how much worse things would be if he were.
As for MHP, if the Republicans had any brains;I know it's a stretch, they would unbundle cable. No one other than a few thousand morons would pay to watch MSNBC. Indeed much of the cable channels, especially the one's that tend to shill and shrill left would go dark. And just for fun they ought to privatize PBS and NPR, let them run ads or go subscription.
John Henry said...
Some 10mm slaves...
Super-pygmies: 0.39" tall.
For the less numerate 300mm = 300,000 and 1mm = 1,000,000
That sure clears things up!
John Henry said...
Perhaps a bit off topic but prior to 1800, slavery was the norm throughout the world. Not just of blacks but of whites, Indians, Asians and pretty much everyone.
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, don't be a hater. Slavery is about BLACK PEOPLES' BODIES and nothing else. To say that other people might have been enslaved, or that this was not a uniquely white evil, is to be ... well, racist.
Don't be a racist.
MHP says, "....black, blackety, black ... white racist ... black, black black ..."
Watch what you say
Watch what you do
Anything you say
Can be used against you.
It's an invocation of the deconstructionist credo, that nothing means what it appears to mean because all speech can express is power relationships.
Which would translate what she said into, "I have authority by virtue of the historic oppression of my race and therefore whatever you said is not valid."
It's what happens when logic dies, and speech can only be about "Who is to be master ... that's all."
1mm = 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000
"...there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris"
Monkeyboy said...
"All progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way" Robert Heinlein said it, but I preach it to manufacturers.
Larry's First Law is that "Laziness is the foundation of efficiency." Give a job to a lazy person and he'll find the fastest and easiest way to get the job done because anything else is more work.
Over 50 years ago when I was a child, some cotton farmers still used humans instead of machines to pick cotton. I earned my first dollar picking cotton after school. Farmers typically paid 2-3 cents per pound for picked cotton. My mother put a strap on an old flour sack for me to use while bigger people used burlap bags. Being small, I had an advantage in that I didn't have to bend over so much to pick the cotton, but I could only pick about 10 pounds at a time. Picking cotton can be rough on your hands because the cotton bolls have sharp points. It takes a lot of cotton to make a pound. Once the bag was full (or when I couldn't drag it easily any more), I took it to the farmer who weighed it and emptied it into a wagon. It was slow, hot, and dirty work but that's how poor people (I don't know if we were lower middle class or upper lower class) made money on the side. That job is extinct now.
I'm pretty sure slaves worked as little as they could get away with.
How many generations away from slavery does one get before they're little more than a navel-gazing moron?
Interestingly the history of slave labor in the British Empire's North American colonies (that's us) is not monolithic but varied for historical reasons and the Master's ways..
In the Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina it started as indentured servitude that made the Masters pay up front for a contract that had a short payout and release clause for the slave's benefit. To maximize the return the Masters there used harsh over seers and really wanted the slaves worked to death before their termination benefits came due.
As the super wealth of captured West Africans began to flow in to create British mega-fortunes the contract was not used. Theblack slaves were seen as valuable properties for their lives and their children's lives, but the harsh moment by moment oversight continued because of a fear of uprisings and runaways.They were farm laborers in tobacco but mostly in food and livestock that was exported to feed the Sugar Island slaves where no land was wasted for food growing.
On the other hand, in the later settled Charleston area's Sea Islands and low country swamps the Africans selected were especially skilled in Rice culture from native heritage. The English had no idea how rice planting was done so they did not know how supervise it much less did they want to spend summer in the malarial/yellow fever swamps. Those slaves were given a task and then could go home and do their own crops and basket weaving if the rice task was efficiently finished. They were therefore able to stay family oriented and had their own culture. You see that in the style of our Supreme Court Justice Thomas and in the way the black community acted in Charleston after the inane confederate assholes murder spree at a 200 year old AME Church.
Masters ways are the key to slave or non slave abuse. The white men later formed their own slave revolts and called them called Labor Unions.
William Wilberforce worked very hard to end slavery in Great Britain. Some might say he was a hard worker, since it took years to accomplish. But then again, maybe he wasn't hard worker since he was of noble (white) descent.
As an aside, the movie Amazing Grace detailing the above, was a terrific movie.
"Why doesn't her face move when she talks? It looks very unnatural."
She had plastic surgery. Maybe it's related to that.
Slaves weren't hard workers. (There I said it.)
Why do more than the minimum when you don't get rewarded for it?
Which is why Socialism cannot ever work.
I'm pretty sure that there's an actual disorder there. I forget what, Bell's Palsy maybe, but something that caused parts of her face to become paralyzed.
No concrete answer, but it looks a lot like Bell's Palsy.
Right Brando,
I got a similar image of a couch curmudgeon telling the youngins about what hard times are/were like...the walk to school in 10 ft. snow drifts etc.
But MHP's comments should insult the apologists for the "undocumented".Ryan seemingly one of them...doing the work Americans won't etc.
I also hope she feels it important to be super careful about using the term African American.
The McGraw-Hill incident teaches that you should never refer to slavery without framing it in somber moral terms. It can't be mixed in with other matters as if it were not a unique evil.
You want moral terms? Try this: The Democratic Party was the slave party, and continues to this day to be the racist party. It was formed by slave owners, and went to war with the Republcans to maintain slavery. The Democrats in the south fought to maintain slavery, and those n the north tried to get the Union to give up. They were most of those engaged n the draft riots. Then, after they lost the Civil War, the formed the KKK, lynched uppity blacks, and enacted Jim Crow. One of their heroes, Wilson, resegregated the federal govt. a century later, almost all of the votes against the civil rghts acts of the mid 20th centry were Democrats. And, now, the party of slavery and the KKK has given us the first black Presdent, and probably the most openly racist Adminstration since Democrat Wilson's almost a century earlier. Which is maybe a long way of saying that if Ms Harris truly wants to show how evil slavery was, she would switch from belonging to and vocally supporting the party of slavery and racial oppression to the party that freed the slaves, and gave us the Constitution amendment and civil rights laws ending slavery and requiring nondscrimination.
Here's who MHP was admonishing. She was so eager to put down a conservative she reached for any club she could find, no matter how ridiculous.
Tell me again how's she's the smartest commentator on TV.
What if accepting such a crude promise of freedom provided by a mishmash of questionable and mostly ideological sources, is a form continued mental slavery?
Perish the thought.
Blogger traditionalguy said...
Interestingly the history of slave labor in the British Empire's North American colonies (that's us) is not monolithic but varied for historical reasons and the Master's ways..
In the Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina it started as indentured servitude that made the Masters pay up front for a contract that had a short payout and release clause for the slave's benefit. To maximize the return the Masters there used harsh over seers and really wanted the slaves worked to death before their termination benefits came due.
Thomas Sowell has written about this extensively. One of the things he points out is that the harsher the slavery was, such as Mississippi, the greater the lasting economic ill effects, even 150 years after it was abolished.
They did poorly then and continue to do poorly now.
Less harsh slave states, like Virginia, did a lot better then and continue to do better now.
Re Indentured servants: Most of these were white and conditions were pretty abysmal in many cases. Many of them didn't live out their contract. Ben Franklin was an indentured servant to his brother and brotherly love did not make for a smooth arrangement. He wound up running away.
John Henry
I don't know how you quantify gradations of abject misery, but I've recently been reading some books on Russian history. It seems to me that Russian serfs had a pretty hard lot. Their masters were entitled to beat them to death. Even after Emancipation they were subject to public flogging for the most petty offenses. Under the terms of Emancipation, they had to pay off the cost of their liberation. In the nineteenth century, their life span was about thirty five years. The men got drunk whenever they could and beat their wives and children........North American slaves were not the most oppressed people in the history of oppression. There's a kind of grandiosity to their claims of oppression. A lot of people had it worse.
Because no one's asking, a simple bit of advice to give to many black folks seems to be: Spread out your votes between parties, or don't give them away so freely if you can help it.
Investing in family, marketable skills and intellectual capital, as often as possible without being beholden to elected officials and the charity/pity of others is also not a bad plan.
Respect through achievement shuts the ignorant up quickly.
Monkeyboy wrote -
"Dumb/Energetic were to be found and immediately relieved of duty."
And yet Napoleon gave Marshal Ney senior commands to the very end.
What a great catch AA.
Slaves were not "hard workers" in the sense of extraordinary effort. They had very difficult work to do, but part of their coping with the master's power was to work only as hard as they had to. The overseers fully expected that the slaves would not give the task the highest priority, and scheduled to account for this. There were not enough overseers to supervise the work directly in most cases, and expectations were adjusted downward in compensation. This fact is conclusively documented in the scholarship on American slavery.
The work of slavery was harsh, difficult and in many cases unhealthy. In that sense it was very hard on the workers. But the concept of hard work, in the sense of extraordinary effort, was not a slave characteristic.
It is not disrespectful to the slaves to point this out. They did an amazingly good job of finding ways to assert their very limited power, and this was one of the most reliable assertions. Among other things, this approach conserved energy for family, which was the only reliable institution for the slaves. Their ability to sustain family structure in bondage was crucial to their survival.
That may be true, William. But that's a pretty difficult misery to derive power from.
Perry clearly demonstrates what it is like to go through life seeking to ferret out every insult and slight her fevered imagination can conjure up. She needs to feed that soul-killing resentment. That and she's pissed about being forced to iron out her hair for 3 hours every morning.
Seriously HTF has slavery affected her privileged ass. What really worries her is that her social inferiors be looking up at her with blood eyes. Up at her cocoa skin, her caucasian features, her fat wallet which certainly don't scream poor victim so she has to rationalize her entire existence. Don't look down Melissa somebody might be reaching up.
Harris Perry publcly sees "hard worker" as racial.
Vester Lee Flanagan privately saw "out in the field" as racial.
Together they form a complete inage except one is a TV personality and the other killed one.
For thinking such things, one was considered crazy and dangerous by his peers. The other is lauded in certain circles.
I thought Sharpton was bad. Perry is the stupidest person to ever hold their own TV show, in the history of television. Period.
I hate it when politicians say that they worked hard to cut some kind of deal, or they worked all through the night.
They sat around a table jawing. Sitting around a table jawing isn't working.
MHP might just need a diagnostic brain scan.
"Tell me again how's she's the smartest commentator on TV."
I have a very low opinion on the intelligence of TV commentators. But if she is considered the "smartest" I'll need to ratchet that opinion downward a LOT.
Greta is a scientologist, so she should have insight on being a slave/slave master.
Had to look it up. Melissa Harris-Perry is "America's foremost public intellectual".
The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.
This sentence could have easily come from the pen of a Marxist historian. I mean, from a Marxist viewpoint, that the slaves were "workers" was the essential aspect of their existence. Northern "free" labor were called "wage slaves". The Marxists who used that terminology didn't just use the word "slave" in the phrase "wage slave" as an analogy. No, they meant it.
I'm sorry, but what kind of history can one possibly have if every historical fact has to be squished into the Procrustean bed of modern leftist moral categories? Prepare for the canon to be re-bowderlized all over again. Except this time it'll make Thomas Bowdler seem as libertine as Henry Miller by comparison.
John Henry said...
Perhaps a bit off topic but prior to 1800, slavery was the norm throughout the world. Not just of blacks but of whites, Indians, Asians and pretty much everyone.
By 1900, it still existed but was pretty rare in the world and was generally looked on with horror.
Much of this, though not all, is due to British efforts to stamp out slavery via the Royal Navy. The effort was mainly driven by religious people.
John Henry
10/28/15, 8:24 AM
Now a days slavery is mostly practiced by Muslims and those liberals that live on the upper West side...
Part of Adam Smith's argument for a free market or a move away from a world where the state controlled a huge part of the economy and awarded monopolies to it's supporters (which was part of how feudalism worked, although actually it was more complicated than that) was that people working for themselves work far harder and more importantly more effectively than those who are owned by others.
So part of Adam Smith's moral argument for capitalism (although he didn't call it that) was that it would end up destroying slavery. And I believe he was correct, since that is what happened.
Apart from the United States where the Civil War was directly caused by the dispute about slavery, and Africa, where many African nations were compelled to abandon slavery at European gunpoint, everywhere else slavery was given up gradually and more or less without conflict because the power of capitalism was so clearly superior to that of societies organized around men owning other men.
And part of Adam Smith's argument, just a small part, there was a lot more to it, was that slaves don't work hard. They get tortured in an effort to compel them to work hard, but that doesn't work either.
There is a difference between "hard work" and "hard worker." I would think that the average slave would work no harder than necessary given the incentives involved and I think that to the slave's credit.
One thing to keep in mind is that the American experience with slavery is not the only example of slavery, an institution that goes well back into the ancient world and probably pre-history. There was slavery much worse than the plantation experience - the Romans sent large numbers of slaves into the mines where they were not expected to live especially long - and there were slaves who were treated better than 99% of the population doing jobs they actually wanted to do with the caveat that they couldn't leave. The male African slaves that got shipped to the Arab world, as opposed to America, tended to be turned into eunuchs, something that gets pointed out from time to time when comparing the two slave trades.
But, yes, this is beyond ridiculous.
Laugh at the censorious SJW, watch the SJW get really mad, and laugh harder.
It is the only thing that works, and it works really, really well.
Ann Althouse said... If someone complains about the heat, maybe you should get on their case for not acknowledging how much more slaves suffered from the heat. If somebody comments that the food isn't very good, you should lay into them about how poorly fed the slaves were?
Yes, that seems the only sensible response, and my what a lazy, entitled, good-for-nothing whiner MHP is...at least compared to historic slaves in America.
Ooh, please don't fail to notice she threw "single mothers" in there, guys! Hard-working: slaves in the US during the 18th & 19th century, and single mothers today. Not hard-working: anyone else, but especially white men.
Weirdly single dads must not work hard (certainly not if they're white).
Plenty of slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade were brought to the Northern states as well. Ulysses S Grant owned slaves FFS.
Mellissa Harris-Perry is an idiot, but could probably get hired at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and join their speech police.
By her own admission, she hasn't worked a hard day in her life.
Monkeyboy said...
Slaves weren't hard workers. (There I said it.)
Why do more than the minimum when you don't get rewarded for it? I think most did just enough to keep from being punished.
Thaddeus Russell wrote about this in A Renegade History of the United States. Slaves did not work nearly as hard or consistently as free whites and blacks, because they didn't have to, and stood to gain nothing. So much that after emancipation, it wasn't uncommon to find free blacks complaining that they'd had a better and easier life as slaves.
As well, that was the goal of some abolitionists -- to reform the lazy degenerate slaves and turn them into productive, virtuous individuals, according to the Protestant work ethic, by the same necessity that required poor whites to work long hard hours just to survive.
Michael K said... "Why does anyone pay attention to this ?"
Because it is actually out there. And this type of shit isn't even discounted as lunacy at our higher educational institutions. Especially the ones here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Blogger YoungHegelian quoted someone else:
The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.
Who said this? It is pure and utter bullshit. The highest estimate I have ever seen over the years has been "slightly less than a million" Most estimates I've seen have been closer to half a million.
Those were slaves, not workers. Pretty much no workers, in the sense of someone who is more or less free and voluntary, came to the US from Africa.
And, as someone mention, there were slaves in the north as well. Deleware, which we normally think of as a northern state had lots of slaves.
John Henry
The Thirteenth Amendment did not end slavery as a penal sentence for Crimes...like Vagrancy. Vagrancy meant passing through town " without a visible means of support."
That supply of prisoners sentenced for vagrancy made the chain gangs for road work and made Municipal Taxes by renting them as penal slaves to the plantation owners who had recently been robbed of their slaves by The Army of Tennessee's rudely passing through.
Today that slave abuse has hydra headed regrown as abuse of Mexican men traveling back to Mexico with their "Hard Earned" wages in cash that the State and locals cooperating with Feds now stop for fake reasons and simply steal ( Condemn )for their use.
Government becomes a criminal enterprise whenever it can get away with it. Second Amendment anyone?
I am surprised that nobody has pointed out the etymology of the word "Slave"
It comes from "Slav". As in the millions of Slavs that the Turks captured and enslaved over the centuries.
Also surprised that nobody has pointed out who brought the black Africans from the Interior to the slave ports on the coasts. Blacks and arabs.
Or that the number of African slaves who came to the New World was pretty small in the scheme of things. About 10mm to SA and the Caribbean and another half million to the US.
Out of the 100 million or so who were taken as slaves. Most were sold east, Turkey, Iran, Arab states, Egypt, Libya. About half died on the journey and the rest survived less than 2-3 years since it was cheaper to work them to death than to feed and treat them decently.
John Henry
The real reason the North was willing to fight a war against slavery under the tall Illinois Trial Lawyer was to draw a line that protected white men's being paid their earned wages. The USA was special in that NO ARISTOCRACY was recognized, ergo: no slavery was legal. The Southern Tidewater Aristocrats (Anglicans) culture was in shock by these Massachusetts Bay Puritan's culture running things the old Presbyterian Reformation way.
If you want slavery, then you want the Roman Empire back and its Kings and hierarchy legitimized by sweet Popes and priests praying for the dying slaves.
Several people have called MHP stupid and I would agree tht she is seriously boneheaded.
I rather doubt that she is stupid in the sense of having a low IQ. I say that having just looked at her Wikipedia page. I was surprised to see that she has a PhD from Duke.
She says some really dumb shit on TV and in the press, though.
John Henry
"incident teaches that slavery must be mixed into discussions of, well, perhaps anything"
What do you mean, perhaps? You, a law professor, at UW, in Madison, WI.
Gusty, Interesting stuff there
"Just Words? – is primarily passive programming about Microaggressions (informed by the work for Dr. Derald Wing Sue)."
Apparently not excellence in grammar.
Included words of offense: "crazy", "lame", "politically correct", "rape" and..after most of us have come to terms with navigating the distinction, a lumping together of nigga/nigger.
I love the term "passive programming".
I think they should go beyond a "lame" poster and turn this into a Twister game. Seems more apt.
The Re-enslavement of the World is happening as we speak under a strategic mass theft of wage earner's wages using the complete hoax that CO2 controls Climate as an excuse to triple all existing electricity bills and necessarily re-create the Roman Empire by surrender to a UN Imperium complete with its own Roman Catholic Pontiff kissing babies.
Yes..that wiki summary of her accomplishments speaks volumes..
"I want us to be super-careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because... " it sounds like a complement to Paul Ryan, and if there's anything we want to be careful of, it is saying something complementary about a Republican, especially a Republican not known for stabbing his Party in the back at every turn, so I'm going to babble for a bit about cotton picking single mothers and then say "I feel you."
The fecal veneer is thicker in some places.
"I rather doubt that she is stupid in the sense of having a low IQ. I say that having just looked at her Wikipedia page. I was surprised to see that she has a PhD from Duke."
She has a PhD in Political Science. So, yes, she probably has a subnormal IQ.
Don't worry, Melissa. No one thinks you're a hard worker...
You have to understand that MHP is especially sensitive to the subject of slavery because she's so devoted to liberty.
Nah, seriously . . . I could hardly type the above sentence without breaking up in laughter.
It's not that calling Ryan a hard worker is racist. It's not. Not is it that slaves were hard workers is racist, its not. Neither is racist.
The message here isn't that it's racist. The message, as always, is, Shut Up!
Why do we spend all these messages and intellectual thought on a blog when we are being told to shut up? The proper response is a middle finger. Or, no.
One can only take offense, one can not give it.
MHP sees this picture she has of slaves working in the cotton fields when she hears the words "hard worker".
Freshman at the University of Vermont in Burlington hears sexism when she hears the word "too".
They take offense.
Maybe she should check her black privilege.
That would be biracial privilege.
Thank you John Henry for mentioning Robert Heinlein's lazy man tale "The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail", if I correctly remember the title of that story within a story. I read that as a young man (I'm in my mid-fifties now) and have never forgotten it.
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