From an earlier report about this school assignment: "The question appears to be about the Code of Hammurabi — an ancient code of law, which talked about how to punish slaves thousands of years ago."
The problem seems to have arisen from the babyish form of the question: "How will you punish the slave?" If it's really you, a present-day American, you wouldn't punish the slave or even accept that a person could be a slave. Why didn't they ask "What would happen to this person under the Code of Hammurabi?" Maybe if we saw the larger context, there would be some invitation to the students to imagine that they lived within the time and were bound by the Code. Maybe there's some idea of a classroom exercise that is more vivid and "hands-on" than simply reading about what happened in history.
UPDATE: The school district identifies that source of the lesson, a website called Teachers Pay Teachers, and says: "We have reached out to the organization Teachers Pay Teachers demanding the removal of this racist activity and a public apology for originating and monetizing it." In response, Teachers Pay Teachers has removed the lesson from its website and denounced it as "unacceptable, inappropriate, and antithetical to TpT’s values," and asserted that "it prohibits any resources that are racist, offensive or 'trivialize traumatic experiences.'"
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112 comments:
That’s hilarious. The whole damned thing.
Shoot. I'm impressed that they were even discussing the Code of Hammurabi. I didn't know that was still allowed.
I guess it won't be after this.
How could slavery be mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi when everybody knows that slavery is America's peculiar institution?
Is the theme today. 'Which of these persons are the biggest dicks?'
a.Pharmacy student
b.6th grade teacher
c.Woke pillow maker going after My Pillow owner and recovering addict.
Right now the Pharmacy student is the least objectionable.
Context. Exactly - of course it is a question meant to see if the student read the assignment. Worded poorly for today's hyper sensitive eyes, yes.
Also, this lesson has probably been taught for years and years. And no complaints until now?
There is a lot to this story, as with most stories, that is missing.
Isn't that a little early to be teaching BDSM?
Fifty Shades of Sixth Grade.
I am Laslo.
You can punish a slave by setting them free. At least in semitic law (Jewish and Islamic), this was proscribed.
There was slavery before 1619? That unacceptably dilutes the narrative.
A slave has disrespected his master by telling him, "You are not my master." How will you punish the slave?
non serious question Isn't the answer, clearly:PILLOW FIGHT! ??
The Hebrew bible contains extensive discussion of the laws around slavery and indentured servitude. There are different rules for Hebrew slaves or non-Hebrews. About the nicest thing about these laws is you're commanded to feed your slaves and servants before you eat. But then, you have to feed your beasts of burden before yourself as well. The way we were taught, the code of law enshrined therein was comparatively merciful to the standard practices of the day. Similarly, when we covered the Code of Ham. it was about how it represented a great advance in justice, enshrining people's rights at a time when justice was typically at the whim of the leader. In light of the past few thousand years' development of civilization, that seems a persuasive perspective. But it's not the only one.
The irony in progressive's being unable to see this perspective, focusing instead on injustice contained in these documents, is that they're the ones who think history has an arc, a narrative, and that it bends towards justice. These are the signposts along that march, and they can no longer read them or see their meaning in the context of this narrative. We are truly counting down towards the year zero.
The Plain English Movement might well endorse the teacher's wording of the question.
A Person of Color has disrespected Joe Biden by telling him, "You are not my master."
How will you punish the POC?'
Tell him; "You Ain't Black!"
Revelations contains a greek word that has historically been translated as chariot, but that's a misunderstanding of the ancient greek. It actually says something about retards riding Gamestonk to the moon.
Classic Laslo.
The problem seems to have arisen from the babyish form of the question: "How will you punish the slave?" If it's really you, a present-day American, you wouldn't punish the slave or even accept that a person could be a slave.
Ask Nike or Apple.
Once in junior high my social studies teacher took me aside before class and asked me to take the side in the coming discussion that slavery was good for blacks, in a “what if you had to argue” sort of way. I did as he asked, and I wonder what would have happened to me if I had done that today.
Laslo has a point though, there should be a "safety word" in these kinds of discussions.
“🎸I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood🎶"
gilbar said...
A Person of Color has disrespected Joe Biden by telling him, "You are not my master."
How will you punish the POC?'
Tell him; "You Ain't Black!"
2/5/21, 7:06 AM
Perfect!!
My 6th grade son had this assignment. We did the assignment together because there was an awful lot of the Code to go through to find the answers. It was a good assignment. Quailing over whether the questions should have been phrased in the first person, 60 years after the Civil Rights Act and 160 after the slaves were freed? Please.
You're a slave instead of being killed after being conquered. That was an economic efficiency. The system was hit the guy on the head and take his stuff, and it was inefficient because capital was all tied up in defense.
The free market changed the economics. A slave contributes more to society working in his own interest than working as a slave, so slavery died out.
It wasn't a new morality. You're not better than the ancients, you're just living in a different and more efficient (so far) system.
It wasn't the Code that bound them but the economic system. The Code stabilized the economic system, making it less chaotic.
Historical imagination is completely missing today.
Temujin.
My thoughts as well. Maybe there are responsible teachers out there.
daskol.
Otherwise known as 'the gods of the copybook headings.' or 'bad luck'.
The hit the guy on the head and take his stuff is the new left.
WKOW never mentions that the assignment was dealing with the Code of Hammurabi in their latest stories, now that the mob is fully engaged.
Enemies of the people.
Zavion feels unsafe. Well there you go. Is Zavion a name from another galaxy. Don’t be afraid, Zavion, words don’t hurt on this planet
[Lawyer B'Ivory] LaMarr
The shyster with an IMDB page strikes again!
[6th grade schoolchild] Zayvion now feels unsafe and unwelcome in the school.
FWIW, McWhorter wrote a column on black fragility; I think it's mostly shysters like B'Ivory (LOL be upon him) creating plaintiffs out of thin air.
Here's a head scratcher. Does slavery exist when value compensation is provided for effort? Today - when the wealthy are weaponizing the poor against the middle class - can you have a 400k home in a nice part of town zoned R-1A and a 3 car garage, quiet neighbors and presidency of the PTA and be a slave?
If they can just print and hang paper to represent value, if value is arbitrary not objective (as many would argue it is), then who is the slave.
Kind of what we are starting to go through in America soon....right?? The elite is taking away all of our rights, and telling us what we can and can't say, what we can, and can't do, and what businesses are good and which ones are bad. They own us, and we are their little serfs sending in our money to them to make them richer and richer, whilst they take more and more away from us and they live high off the hogg...(spelled purposely that way). I don't feel like a free citizen anymore, do you??
I can remember in the late 90s when an aide to DC Mayor Anthony Williams was hastily for using the word "niggardly" to describe the mayor's budget proposal. After a public outcry, he was rehired.
The AP interviewed Julian Bond, the chair of the NAACP, as part of its coverage of the incident. He said: "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people’s lack of understanding. This whole episode speaks loudly to where we are on issues of race. Both real and imagined slights are catapulted to the front burner. Seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on this issue. These affronts do happen, they are expected to happen, and even innocent parties can find themselves victims."
The same article also featured a quotes from DC radio host Kojo Nnamdi: "There’s quite a bit of hubbub, quite a bit of buzz about it. It’s indicative of the state of race relations in Washington. A simple explanation should have sufficed. When it comes to race in Washington, apparently a simple explanation doesn’t get it."
Hey, even a 54-year-old "professional painter who was born in Trinidad and moved to Washington 31 years ago" and "is black" agreed: "People make a big deal. It’s just politics. You make a little mistake and you’re in hot water."
That was pretty much the prevailing opinion. For the sake of balance, though, the AP was able to find a 22-year-old "black employee in a sporting goods store" to say: "I don’t agree with him saying that kind of word. He should be punished because it’s so close to...a degrading word." For a little backup, they quote a usage dictionary: "some speakers and writers have come to shun it just to avoid misunderstandings," and some random "author...who is white" said "modern sensibilities should be taken into account when using legitimate but problematic language."
NAACP Head: Word Flap Handled Wrong
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Once more the Left instructs white people that black people, as a race, are easily offended and obsessed with the past.
The delightfully named B'Ivory LaMarr.
Zavion feels unsafe.
I'm pretty sure that Educatrix Jill would agree that education policy should be based on the emotional reactions of special-needs children, especially 6th graders who are so dense that they think they're slaves.
jerpod said...
The delightfully named B'Ivory LaMarr.
2/5/21, 7:49 AM
Great-great-great grandson of Hedley.
A teacher taught the history of law to their student.
How will you punish the teacher?
Are there any historical issues other than slavery in America?
I've seen enough complaints of grievance, irritation, shock, and apparently-unreasonable-firings-and-discipline to firmly believe that almost everything we read neglects a really significant amount of context and situational consideration. When someone gets fired for a Really Stupid Thing, my guess is that that person also had some history of other Really Stupid Things, or was causing trouble in some other way. That's been my personal experience with such folks, anyway.
Sometimes these "outrageous things" are just reports of people presuming the best of their situations and saying stupid things with assumed context, and sometimes it's just stupid people living up to a track-record of stupidity.
It's interesting to me that such stupidity rises so frequently to the level of print, though.
Reporters gotta report, I guess. Readers love to be outraged, too.
I don't know if my comment will be seen, as it's late in the thread, but here goes:
The assignment asks the students both what they, as a person of the 21st century would do, AND what would've happened during the time under the Hammurabi Code. The irony in all of this, is that of course the "what would you do" part is the super woke portion of the assignment!!
Up until August, my kids were in the Sun Prairie school district and I was an employee therein. The combination of having zero faith in their abilities to "virtually educate" and their divisive and extreme political statements in the wake of the George Floyd incident were the push that my husband and I needed to remove them from public education, and we are now homeschoolers.
It has been the only good thing to come of the ridiculous lockdowns and COVID reaction, but at least it's a GREAT thing!! We will never submit our children to public education again.
Maybe there's some idea of a classroom exercise that is more vivid and "hands-on" than simply reading about what happened in history.
Maybe they can have a slave auction where they auction off some of the students to other students. (things like this used to happen)
I can remember in the late 90s when an aide to DC Mayor Anthony Williams was hastily for using the word "niggardly" to describe the mayor's budget proposal. After a public outcry, he was rehired.
Some Hispanic American woman was cancelled because she called her big black dog, Negro.
"How will you punish the slave?"
By having him read, over and over, all the relevant slave verses of the Qur'an until he thoroughly understands the nature of Islam.
I notice in the paper today that Sun Prairie schools are demanding an apology from the website that was the source of the worksheets. As if the lack of discernment on the part of teachers is the website's fault.
As if the lack of discernment on the part of parents is the website's fault.
FTFY
You've got two people involved here who are/were raised by parents who named their children Zayvion and B'ivory. The children should be given some slack.
@Gahrie, I think any teacher with 2 cents' worth of sense should know what's gonna happen if this worksheet splashed onto the front page of the Newspaper, or on to Twitter. My question would be: Why are Sun Prairie teachers so devoid of sense.
I won't argue against the idea that there are parents out there looking for reasons to be aggrieved.
We are really rewarding people who feel "unsafe" lately. Why should Zayvion feel unsafe? He should not. His parents should tell him he is completely safe.
But that's not what we're doing. It's a race to the bottom.
"The question appears to be about the Code of Hammurabi — an ancient code of law, which talked about how to punish slaves thousands of years ago."
Wait. Are you saying there was slavery before 1619?
Patrick Marsh Middle School
"This shows Test Score Ratings for different races/ethnicities. Big differences may suggest that some student groups are not getting the support they need to succeed [sic].
All students 5/10
White 7/10
Black 1/10
Hispanic 2/10
Two or more races 3/10
Asian 4/10"
A completely typical school except for the relatively low scores of the Asian kids, who are often afflicted by inverse systemic racism.
It is true this account lacks the necessary context to see what was really going on. Not having that, I will say this much. If it is now forbidden to ask students to try to get inside the head of a slave owner and see the world as he saw it, there is then no way at all to teach students what slavery even was. For slavery was a relationship of master and slave, and to plumb its depths, and I mean its horrible depths, one HAS to envision the humanity and complexity of both slaves and slave owners. Take a look some day at the opening chapters of Eugene Genovese's "Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made." But I guess it's hopeless. The indignation stories like this provoke in the Woke is the biggest enemy of real history teaching in schools now, where history is now dying and on life supports.
I like these kinds of feel good stories that makes me feel better about my latent racism.
Around the turn of the century, my middle school son had an assignment to rewrite the Bill of Rights from individual rights to collective human rights. The idea was to show that human rights were a brader category than individual rights, a questionable premise. I had him look up the Soviet Constitution, and paraphrase from it. He got an A on the assignment. We laughed.
Never had anything to do with slavery so cannot answer the hypothetical. I can tell you what the slave owners in the US did - Pass "welfare" legislation designed to destroy the former slaves families, tell the slaves they are not good enough to get into a good college so they need preference, pass laws locking up their male children, tell them they are and will always be victims so that they have no incentive to work hard, and finally locate planned parenthood clinics in their neighborhoods to cut back on the "surplus" population. At least that's what the Democrats have done...
"LaMarr also says [6th grade schoolchild] Zayvion now feels unsafe and unwelcome in the school." If my name were Zayvion I'd also feel unsafe.
You are a Christian virgin girl living in Constantinople in the Middle Ages. You have been captured by a Moslem army and thus compelled to become a sex slave to one of the Moslem soldiers.
How does that make you feel?
Should you try to kill your Moslem master?
>>LaMarr also says [6th grade schoolchild] Zayvion now feels unsafe and unwelcome in the school.<<
Yep, now those slave traders are going to feel like they can just start coming around to that school! The young Negroes are now in great peril there.
>>Why didn't they ask "What would happen to this person under the Code of Hammurabi?"<<
Because the students were already aware of the fact that they were studying the Code of Hammurabi, perhaps?
>>Maybe if we saw the larger context, there would be some invitation to the students to imagine that they lived within the time and were bound by the Code.<<
So that they wouldn't think that the teacher meant for them go out and round up some slaves and give them a good thrashing? Yeah, I see your point.
meanwhile the dems were wearing the apparel of ashanti slave traders, but it'll be fine,
Gahrie said...Some Hispanic American woman was cancelled because she called her big black dog, Negro.
I used to like Negra Modelo cerveza, but when I became woke I realized it was racist because .... well, just because.
"B'Ivory] LaMarr wants the teachers to be fired, saying he feels their actions were deliberate. LaMarr also says [6th grade schoolchild] Zayvion..."
B'Ivory? Zayvion?
How about black parents give their kids real names?
Let's start with that.
Multi-trimester psychological assault. Kneel, baby. Bow down before the one you serve. Social distancing. That said, diversity breeds adversity.
It your attorney’s name is B’Ivory Lamar, it is likely you already lost
“ Are there any historical issues other than slavery in America?”
No, because it only happened in America.
“ ... has removed the lesson from its website and denounced it as "unacceptable, inappropriate, and antithetical to TpT’s values," and asserted that "it prohibits any resources that are racist”
That’s the thing about other cultures. It’s racist to learn about them.
The new assignment:
A teacher has disrespected his student by asking her this question: 'A slave has disrespected his master by telling him, "You are not my master." How will you punish the slave?' How will you punish the teacher?
"...and denounced it as "unacceptable, inappropriate..."
Teaching that the earth revolved around the sun used to be unacceptable and inappropriate once too.
Until it wasn't.
The science was settled 400 years ago.
Prohibiting resources deemed racist by the US education administration means all resources created by white people are verboten, as it is established ideology that all white people are inherently, irredeemably, even unconsciously racist. Fruit of the poisonous tree, as it were, to use anything of theirs.
I, for one, look forward to the day on which the woke in the US find what real racism is like in the world today. That day hopefully will not be when the Chinese express their opinion of us barbarians, openly, deem us Untermenschen in law, and begin the elimination of all non-Chinese.
"If it's really you, a present-day American, you wouldn't punish the slave or even accept that a person could be a slave."
Are you sure about that? Aren't we being told constantly that we Americans are racists that want to put slaves back into chains?
Another reason I did go into teaching in a public school...
I hope the teacher was not a cis white male, or they are really screwed.
The correct answer is "I'd tell his master to cut off his ear." It's Code of Hammurabi, Law 282.
There was slavery before 1619? That unacceptably dilutes the narrative.
Wait. Are you saying there was slavery before 1619?
No, because it only happened in America.
I'm not sure why people keep saying things like this. The centrality of slavery to understanding American history remains true regardless of the role slavery has played in other times and places.. What claim or argument are these statements supposed to refute?
@tim in vermont:
How could slavery be mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi when everybody knows that slavery is America's peculiar institution?
Because that is not what the phrase "peculiar institution" referred to.
The exercise was no dumber than all the other critical race theory nonsense our kids are being fed.
The compassionate and empowering approach would be a post-racial curriculum that does not "otherize" minorities by doing what-if's around slavery. Treat everyone the same. Avoid activities that single out a group with some immutable characteristic as victims and other groups as oppressors.
How hard is that?
Snowflakes galore. Wait until the wokesters allow the Sharia Code to be taught and or enforced. And then ask these questions of your little sixth grade tikes. Abdul steals a camel. What is his punishment (bonus points for cauterizing the wrist after the hand is cut off). Abdul's wife commits adultery. What is the punishment? Bonus points for offering to cast the first stone.
We are entering a peculiar time in America where a good portion of the populace simply can not accept the idea that people in other times lived by mores other than those held by the present wokesters. Other times other mores--what are those? It is one way to erase history.
Such woke nonsense today. Before the industrial revolution, everything had to be done by manual labor and that is why slavery existed - it was labor to get things done. After the industrialization of farm work - it went from 90% of the population growing food and products to 5% - slaves were no longer needed to do the work so it all vanished. Economics does that you know.
No one in the woke category seems to acknowledge that slavery also extended to indentured servants that were around 60% of the population flow into the Northern States. Europe had the famines and people needed to survive - they sold themselves for 7 years and then started over.
The ONLY reason that the South didn't go the indentured servant route (which was over 70% cheaper than chattel slavery) was a little thing called malaria. The Caribbean sugar islands had discovered that Africans had immunity to the disease (childhood) while European workers had a 80% fatality rate - so guess what workers they imported.
But that isn't woke "history" so it's bad and racist for reasons. The lawyer mentioned in this story needs to be disbarred for being unable to comprehend the difference between a lesson based on history and his conflation with US history.
More reasons to defund public education today.
The price of being born in the richest, most powerful nation that still serves as a beacon of freedom for the entire planet is having to live up to higher standards. So yes, American slavery, the aftermath and the remaining wounds are much more damning than slavery in the ancient world and in modern shithole countries.
American exceptionalism is a high standard.
I don't see why we're not allowed to trivialize traumatic experiences of others. It keeps them from getting the upper hand.
@J. Farmer
Everyone acknowledges that American slavery was peculiar. The reason it was peculiar is because:
A) It was by no means the dominant form of slavery in the Americas
B) Economically it demanded hugely more cost in the value of chattel transfers than elsewhere (black american slaves brought 1000x their value in america than they did in other markets)
C) It was one of the few instances of slavery where 'masters' assisted their own slaves in freeing themselves from bondage
D) Geographically, it represents a rare example of enslavement practiced across major geographic obstacles
E) North American slavery, not uniquely, but still rarely extended chattel bondage to the offspring of slave couplings
One last thing....
North American slavery is unique in the fact that a giant war was fought and hundreds of thousands died to free people under the yoke of chattel servitude in a method representing something other than a chattel rebellion (like Spartacus).
It is yet another gift from American civilization to a world that has yet millions of people left in bondage.
I mean, if you don't have any traumatic experiences yourself, everybody's going to be bossing you around all day. Trivialization is the counter, along with mockery.
Howard said...
"The price of being born in the richest, most powerful nation that still serves as a beacon of freedom for the entire planet is having to live up to higher standards. So yes, American slavery, the aftermath and the remaining wounds are much more damning than slavery in the ancient world and in modern shithole countries.
American exceptionalism is a high standard. "
You should try and live up to it then.
The price of being born in the richest, most powerful nation that still serves as a beacon of freedom for the entire planet is having to live up to higher standards. So yes, American slavery, the aftermath and the remaining wounds are much more damning than slavery in the ancient world and in modern shithole countries.
The problem with your thesis is that we didn't become the richest , most powerful nation until slavery was over.
You make the same fundamental mistake that most Lefties make today: Judging history by the standards of today.
The Caribbean sugar islands had discovered that Africans had immunity to the disease (childhood) while European workers had a 80% fatality rate - so guess what workers they imported.
Yes, slavery was not motivated by diversity [dogma], but rather immunity to particular environmental and climate factors. A form of physiological privilege as it were. However, affirmative discrimination persists under the diversity yoke. In Europe, the concept of Jew Privilege was a social-based policy of affirmative discrimination of a class of people motivated by their general performance in education, work ethic, and community standards, mainly, and as focal points a la white masculine male in our contemporary society.
North American slavery is unique in the fact that a giant war was fought and hundreds of thousands died to free people under the yoke of chattel servitude
Reparations.
I'm not sure why people keep saying things like this. The centrality of slavery to understanding American history remains true regardless of the role slavery has played in other times and places.. What claim or argument are these statements supposed to refute?
That slavery was a uniquely American evil and uniquely committed by White people. There are large segments of the American population that believe this to be true.
American exceptionalism is a high standard
Thus emigration reform to mitigate progress of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform and collateral damage at both ends of the bridge and throughout. People... persons need to forsake their Twilight faith, lose their Pro-Choice quasi-religion, dump their liberal ideology, and evolve. Principles ("fitness function") matter.
Did the ancient Babylonians keep African slaves?
@GSpencer
16-Surah An-Nahl 75 - "Allah presents an example: a slave [who is] owned and unable to do a thing and he to whom We have provided from Us good provision, so he spends from it secretly and publicly. Can they be equal? Praise to Allah! But most of them do not know."
2-Surah Al-Baqarah 178 - "O you who have believed, prescribed for you is legal retribution for those murdered – the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female. But whoever overlooks from his brother anything, then there should be a suitable follow-up and payment to him with good conduct. This is an alleviation from your Lord and a mercy. But whoever transgresses after that will have a painful punishment."
4-Surah An-Nisa 92 - "And never is it for a believer to kill a believer except by mistake. And whoever kills a believer by mistake – then the freeing of a believing slave and a compensation payment presented to the deceased’s family [is required] unless they give [up their right as] charity. But if the deceased was from a people at war with you and he was a believer – then [only] the freeing of a believing slave; and if he was from a people with whom you have a treaty – then a compensation payment presented to his family and the freeing of a believing slave. And whoever does not find [one or cannot afford to buy one] – then [instead], a fast for two months consecutively, [seeking] acceptance of repentance from Allah. And Allah is ever Knowing and Wise."
What's so funny is you can get your immunity passport, buy a ticket on Air France RIGHT FUCKING NOW, head to Dammam or King Khalid City and see for yourself in the marketplaces and the back alleys the above practiced daily in front of your very eyes.
Half the American populace have one thing right about the other half...half of America know nothing about how the rest of the world operates and are fucking rubes.
It is depressing to me to see that so far a lot of half-right and half-wrong (at best) things have been said here about slavery, about American slavery, etc. and yet we still do not know (from any of the links Ann provided) what this lesson really even was. Shouldn't some of you stop pontificating until at least that much is known. From the news reports, there appears to be a studious effort to AVOID any explanation of what the overall nature of the lesson was or its real purpose.
Hence, my interest is only in that. Why? Because I believe it is possible to and indeed necessary to ask students at some point to imagine the experience of the master in relation to the slave, not just the slave in relation to the master, if you want them to understand the nature of slavery from the inside. "How would you (as a slave master) punish a disobedient slave"? Is a perfectly appropriate, indeed perhaps essential, imaginative exercise to ask kids to perform mentally. It would bring them up against the central paradox and mystery of chattel slavery such as existed in America especially. Which is how can you treat the slave as a thing, a chattel, a horse or a plow, and yet recognize his humanity to the degree of having to punish him at all? If the harridans of Sun Prairie and all involved in this cannot see the central educational validity of this sort of exercise, that is very much too damn bad.
I say, whether my remarks are relevant depends on what this lesson really was up to in its apparently ham-fisted way. So far NO ONE has even hinted at knowing this.
The teaching of history is apparently now illegal.
Jon Burack said...
It is depressing to me to see that so far a lot of half-right and half-wrong (at best) things have been said here about slavery, about American slavery, etc. and yet we still do not know (from any of the links Ann provided) what this lesson really even was. Shouldn't some of you stop pontificating until at least that much is known.
My God, sir! Are you suggesting we deviate from the tried at true 20th Century practice of reducing a complex situation down to "me good, you bad"?! I've never heard such in all my born days!!!
/sarc
Sorry, that should be "tried and true", not "tried at true".
Serious Question (really, this is a Serious Question)
do any school kids in america know what it means to be a slave?
If so, how did they learn? If not, shouldn't we teach them; so they can see it's Horrible?
For Example, do many (any?) school kids realize that in (some) slave holding societies,
a slave owner could cut the ear off of a slave, just because the slave didn't want to state that the slave owner was his master?
Heck, in (some) slave holding societies; if you injured a slave, your obligations would be Only to the owner of that slave, NONE to the person you injured
It seems like maybe we should be educating people to realize that being a slave was a LOT different that being on welfare.
Nah!
The correct answer is "I'd tell his master to cut off his ear." It's Code of Hammurabi, Law 282.
They could've made it a combination history & math lesson.
If man puts out the eye of a freed man, and buys a slave from the slave of another man without witnesses or a contract, and lets in water that overflows the 18 gan plantation of his neighbor, cuts down a tree without permission, and finally returns another man's escaped slave, how much would he earn or pay in total?
Trick question, ha ha!
I think I am going to partner up with Crack Emcee to form a consulting company (Crack will naturally be the titular CEO and face of the company) while I am merely the COO...though major shareholder.
We will simply use about 35% of all Crack's previous Althouse posts as our marketing materials not just for getting certified as a preferred Govt contractor but also as our "pitches" for democratical-dominated school systems while simultaneously we will use about 25% of the remaining Crack Emcee's Althouse posts for marketing to less democratical-controlled school systems.
The best possible outcome from all this is we both make millions and Crack starts chaneling Thomas Sowell when the Marxists show up to confiscate Crack's new found wealth.
Why didn't they ask "What would happen to this person under the Code of Hammurabi?"
That's not the question. The question is why they focused on this narrow, arcane part of the Code?
Isn't "disrespected" more appropriately used to describe stepping on someone's Jordans?
" The centrality of slavery to understanding American history remains true regardless of the role slavery has played in other times and places."
"The centrality of slavery to understanding A FRACTION of American history remains true regardless..." FIFY
Slavery was a quaint and (to some) embarrassing economic system until the Atlantic slave trade was eliminated early in the 19th century. Then it became central to a slightly larger part of American history until the 1850s as settlement of the cotton uplands proceeded and the internal slave trade grew. Then it became central to a large part of American history from 1850 thru about 1870 as it became the presenting cause of a fight about the form of government. Then it became central to smaller and smaller and smaller parts of American history until about 1960. And now people are artificially trying to make a historical mountain out of a historical molehill.
Believe it or not, one can gain a full understanding of vast swathes of American history without ever considering the existence of slavery. That, of course, is unconscionable to elites seeking to weaken the country and drag it into some Soviet Socialist* future.
*Marx was a racist and is now an Official Dead White Man. Why are his philosophy and its bastard children not yet condemned by the Left?
Who didn't feel "unwelcome" in school?
The fact remains that very few Americans owned slaves.
The Civil War was fought, in part, to free slaves, not blacks. Not all blacks were slaves. Not all blacks suffered from affirmative discrimination. The sociopolitical myths are diverse and forward-looking.
"The centrality of slavery to understanding American history remains true regardless of the role slavery has played in other times and places."
Americans were, from their conception, anti-slavery, and anti-diversity, too.
The conservative (i.e. American) philosophy is Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, which did not, does not deny rights by diversty, sex, or even gender. Furthermore, witch hunts, warlock trials, re-education camps, JournoLism, and abortion rites (e.g. selective-child) are liberal (i.e. divergent) enterprises.
From colored people... persons (i.e. physical attribute) to people of color (i.e. blocs, identity), progress is an unqualified monotonic process: one step forward, two steps backward. @PrinciplesMatter @HateLovesAbortion @BabyLivesMatter(BLM)
What would progressives have to feel guilty about if all the African-descended slaves had been returned to Africa in 1865 or simply exterminated?
"Marx was a racist and is now an Official Dead White Man. Why are his philosophy and its bastard children not yet condemned by the Left?"
Because they're useful to the left, I would suppose.
"Nothing that makes anyone uncomfortable, ever" trivializes the human experience.
It points out the inherent inconsistencies with wokeism. You can't promote unity by using division as your base argument. The knots will get more and more tangled if we keep on this path. Trump wasn't Alexander.
n.n. said:
North American slavery is unique in the fact that a giant war was fought and hundreds of thousands died to free people under the yoke of chattel servitude
Reparations.
***********************
So the deaths of a couple hundred thousands of Americans who "didn't* own slaves yet fought for the North to abolish slavery are not "reparations" enough?
Spare us. "reparations" is another grift, pushed by people who think the frickin' world owes them, for historical wrings THEY never experienced.
So the deaths of a couple hundred thousands of Americans who "didn't* own slaves yet fought for the North to abolish slavery...
... was reparations in blood and treasure, an extraordinary, unprecedented sacrifice. On a forward-looking basis, there is assimilation and integration.
the inherent inconsistencies with wokeism
Woke and drowsy at the Twilight Fringe.
"Why are [Marx] philosophy and its bastard children not yet condemned by the Left?"
Because they're useful to the left
Exactly. Left-wing ideology is founded with the hope and dream of consolidating capital and control under a minority dominion (e.g. democratic/dictatorial duality). Sometimes, too often, a few millions lives must be sacrificed and suppressed for social progress.
I hate 2021.
If the slave had run away, and when caught said, 'You are not my Master', I would do what Democrats do. I would make the slave an overseer of my plantation. I would treat that slave very well, I would corrupt them with money, privilege, and position, and instruct my overseer slave to convey to the other slaves how horrible and evil the master was, and they better not run away. I would rename the slave overseer:
Maxine Waters, or
Sheila Jackson Lee, or
Hank Johnson, or
Raishida Tlaib, or
Ilhan Omar.
If the slave had not runaway, but simply said, 'You are not my Master", I would simply have my overseers call them Uncle Toms, or Oreos. They would tell the slaves to just wait, the overseers were 'fighting for them'. Just wait. Didn't we get you an extra $1.50 on your EBT card? Be patient. We're fighting for you.
"Spare us. "reparations" is another grift, pushed by people who think the frickin' world owes them, for historical wrings THEY never experienced."
To be sure, reparations (read: cut me a check) won't right any wrongs and every grievance that exists before the checks are mailed out will continue to exist afterwards. Not to mention- once the checks are distributed, more of the "repressed" will be born- none of which will have received their check. Yet each will have just as valid a claim to one as those who received them.
Bottom line- it never ends.
@TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed:
"The centrality of slavery to understanding A FRACTION of American history remains true regardless..." FIFY
From the Constitutional Convention to the actual document ratified to the sectionalism and expansion of free states versus slave states throughout the first half of the 19th century to the Civil War to Reconstruction to post-Reconstruction racial terror to the establishment of the Jim Crow system to the Great Migration of blacks from the Deep South to northern industrialist towns to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s to the complete political and social reorientation of the American South to the Reagan Revolution and right to today.
Believe it or not, one can gain a full understanding of vast swathes of American history without ever considering the existence of slavery.
Please provide an example.
What is racist is assuming that black Americans are the only people who were ever slaves. We are doomed.
"Spare us. "reparations" is another grift, pushed by people who think the frickin' world owes them, for historical wrings THEY never experienced."
I used to think this way, but I have changed my mind. I have been convinced that Black Americans are owed reparations. The problem is, they're going after the wrong people. They should be trying to get reparations from the African tribes that enslaved their ancestors and sold them to White people.
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