September 24, 2022

"While these are beautiful objects and tell important stories that need to be known, it's disappointing to see the MET giving legitimacy to Crystal Bridges Museum."

"The museum is open-to the-public storage for the personal art collection of some the Walton heirs of Wal-Mart fame — known for paying their employees so little that as of 2022 they are reported to be the biggest recipients of food stamps and Medicaid in most states."

That's a comment on the NYT article "The Magnificent Poem Jars of David Drake, Center Stage at the Met/Before the Civil War, an enslaved artisan from South Carolina created storage vessels that transcend ceramic traditions." 

 From the article:
At the center of “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,” a revelatory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stands a majestic artifact: a stoneware storage jar that may qualify as one of 19th-century America’s great sculptures.... 
The jar, from the collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., was created by a man now called David Drake, but who was known for decades only as Dave the Potter or Dave. A gifted enslaved artisan, Dave was admired during his lifetime for his skill and strength.... He died in the 1870s.

That commenter sets himself/herself up as an arbiter of morality and insists that Walmart's current pay scale — cashiers make $13 an hour — take precedence over the Metropolitan Museum's elevation of the pottery of an American slave.

I used the word "slave," but I notice that the article never does. It says "David Drake... who was known for decades only as Dave the Potter or Dave." A commenter over there says:

I thought Dave the Potter was originally called Dave the Slave.

That's what I'd always heard. The NYT has censored an epithet as if it had not been used, even as it's pointing out that "David Drake" went by other names.

Never heard of Dave Drake. Even have the book about Dave the Slave, a Potter. When living in Philadelphia, that museum in the early 2000s held an exhibit of Dave the Slave's pottery....

If the potter called himself Dave the Slave and Drake is the surname of the slaveowner, why is David Drake considered the better name? Is the noun "slave" now forbidden in polite speech? I see the NYT article uses the word "enslaved" — so that anywhere the noun might seem to be needed, the slavery is transferred to the adjectival position. Dave the Slave must be David Drake, the "enslaved artisan." There are also references to "enslaved potters" and "enslaved people."

Obviously there are conventions of propriety among present-day elites who want to display themselves in the best light. Whether they are making the right choices is questionable, and we can expect the conventions will change once again. 

Perhaps clear speech or historically authentic speech will become the preference. For now, I'm noticing that the powers that be are suppressing the word "slave." Does that erode white supremacy or preserve it?

36 comments:

Dave Begley said...

I’m a slave. A slave to love.

Love is the Law!

John henry said...

Us minimum wage $7.25

Walmart minimum wage $15

John stop fascism vote republican Henry

John henry said...

Democrat president senate, house for 20 month's

Has there been any attempt to raise the minimum wage?

Why do demmies hate workers?

Bob Boyd said...

The commentor must be a damn Trumpie, worrying about those people.

Bob Boyd said...

Oh geez, Dave. Get ahold of yourself.

iowan2 said...

sets himself/herself up as an arbiter of morality and insists that Walmart's current pay scale — cashiers make $13 an hour —

The Moral arbiter, has not been in a wal mart, or big grocery store.

The actual pay for cashiers is $0.00 for about 80% of the cashiers as compared to 10 years ago.

Because those jobs have been replaced by auto scanners. Never ceases to amaze me the raw ignorance of people, and how they just mindlessly spew out leftist dogma.

Also, pay is a negotiation. Ask for a raise, or find a job that pays you what you believe you are worth. I do contract work. I see what the project requires and the fee. If the fee does not reward me for my ability, I turn down the job.
This is simple stuff.

wildswan said...

While I was working on eugenics I often had write the word "slave" because the Galton family made their money in the slave trade. The word came to seem almost like a justification rather than just a noun. "Slave trade" - as if there were slaves who were a commodity and the Galtons simply traded in the commodity. Rice farmers from the African Bight were needed to keep South Caroline rice plantations going because sickle cell disease kept the population at slightly below replacement level. About 40% of the people brought to the US as slaves went to South Caroline because they were needed as skilled labor and they continued to be brought, as in the case of the Amistad, even when the slave trade was abolished because their skilled labor was still needed to keep the rice plantations viable. The fact that South Carolina's elite, who were the rice planters, were necessarily involved a serious crime, slave-trading, is one of the reasons they became secession leaders. knowing this background has always made me incline toward using the word Gullah to describe the enslaved rice farmers. When you know that the Gullah were skilled labor who, though enslaved, built and ran the rice plantations successfully for over sixty years, it makes sense that among their descendants are achievers such as Michelle Obama and Justice Clarence Thomas. I'm always hoping we'll get past the idea of "slaves" to an understanding that the people brought as "slaves" were African farmers who had a better idea of how to work the red clay soil of the South than any other group and who taught all others how to handle it. Plate tectonic theory explains why this group was better at this kind of farming than all others - they were moving from one part of former Gondwanaland which never experienced the glaciers to another.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

“If the potter called himself Dave the Slave”

Why do you make that assumption about what he called himself? He signed his works “Dave.”

“That’s what I awakes heard.”

You heard he called himself Dave the Slave or you heard him called Dave the Slave? Big difference.

Buckwheathikes said...

Who is running the Food Stamp program? Democrats

Who do all these artsy-fartsies vote for? Democrats

Democrats could make Wal-Mart employees ineligible for food stamps and that would IMMEDIATELY lead to higher wages for Wal-Mart employees. But instead, they cowtow to the billionaire oligarchs.

Paul McCartney wrote about it in 1968: It's going to take a revolution, folks. You can bitch about it all you want. It sucks. But nothing will change until you accept it and start doing it.

Step 1: Vote them all out. Democrats. Republicans. Whoever. Just vote them ALL out.

Step 2: Hang 'em high.

Tom T. said...

The commenter is certainly correct that Walmart employs lots of people who would otherwise be wholly on public assistance, and by doing so, it saves the states a great deal of public money. The commenter's error is failing to wonder why those people aren't able to get better-paying jobs.

Misinforminimalism said...

Politics uber alles.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Outstanding how progressives bully companies into paying a $20 per hour minimum wage and even after they do so progressives sneer and pretend Walmart is the reason people can’t afford everything that doubled in price after the bullying initiated a huge step in the wage-price upward spiral we are in now. Food staples doubling in price has more to do with adding more illegal aliens to the welfare rolls THIS YEAR than the population of our 5th largest city.

rhhardin said...

If Walmart raises its wage, it gentrifies the jobs and they're no longer available to entry-level workers. Target workers begin to fill them.

Roger Sweeny said...

It always annoys me when the closed captioning on a pre-1960s movie has the character saying "Ms." But the word was never used then. You can usually hear that the actor is actually saying "Miss". "Ms." may be more enlightened than "Miss" but approving that closed captioning doesn't make you enlightened. It makes you a liar.

Emilie said...

The condescension toward a fine arts museum in Arkansas - Arkansas, of all places! - is galling. The assumption that everyone knows that art belongs in New York or California is maddening. The idea that the rubes who live in the Midwest don't need to have fine art within easy traveling distance is appalling. The unstated opinion that no one who is anyone would bother to travel to Arkansas to visit a museum is glaringly clear.

The nerve of those Waltons, trying to fool people into thinking that something named the Crystal Bridges Museum (ha ha) is a real museum.

Kevin said...

While these are beautiful objects and tell important stories that need to be known, it's disappointing to see the MET giving legitimacy to Crystal Bridges Museum.

Tolerance. Diversity. Deligitimacy.

William said...

I prefer the term "enslaved people" over slaves. It puts the stigma of slavery on the owners....I wonder who did those Grecian urns. Maybe some enslaved Celts....I didn't read the article, but his pottery looks blunt and fierce. No unravished brides of quietness on display....The people who collect pottery in antiquity and in present times were never enslaved and never made minimum wage. Some are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless night.

mikee said...

The NYTimes is following the irrational demand of woke leftists that slaves not be called slaves, but rather "enslaved." The NYTimes knows this requires self-censorship to an irrational degree. And accepts the boot on its face, pressing down forever, as a reasonable thing, instead of using historical accuracy, to show its allegiance to its masters.

Dude1394 said...

It is so tedious, so tedious to never hear of any black, brown female accomplishment without the obligatory whining about their blackness, brownness or femaleness. ( goes for gayness, trnagenderness, bestialityness, pedophilianess ).

It so turns me completely off, I immediately change the channel.

Owen said...

I noticed the new locution —“enslaved person”— a while ago. It seems to be part of official Woke Speech now. It puts an adjectival distance on the stigmatizing status. Slavery is a mere surface attribute, not the core of one’s being.

My guess is, it’s like “differently abled person” instead of “disabled person” or, God forbid, “cripple.” That is: a forced euphemism to spare the feelings or avoid a sense of denigration in a hypothetical reader.

The point of this linguistic bullying is not add accuracy or precision to our communications, but to make us ever fearful of giving offense, and to make us cede control of our own tongue.

n.n said...

Whether by choice or progressive price where practical slavery hides at the twilight fringe.

Rabel said...

Was anybody actually named "Dave" in 1870?

rcocean said...

America slavery died 150 years ago. It doesn't exist. There's no reason to fight it. Nor is there any reason to fight so-called "White supremacy". I dislike Orwellian tinkering with the language, but libtards and women especially, seem to love it. They're fighting the power, one word at a time! A way to feel you're "making a difference" with zero effort.

The use of the word "enslaved" however, does have it uses. Whenever I read a book on the Civil war, and the author uses the word instead of "slave", I know I'm reading a piece of SJW crap, and I can put it down and move on.

Joe Smith said...

The DoD is now telling soldiers that they need to look into food stamps.

The word games played by the left are nauseting.

'Enslaved.' 'People of color.'

A fucking break give me...

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Jeez, don’t tell this idiot of the hi-jinks of virtually every significant patron and collector of the arts prior to the 20th century.

Joe Smith said...

'I noticed the new locution —“enslaved person”— a while ago. It seems to be part of official Woke Speech now. It puts an adjectival distance on the stigmatizing status. Slavery is a mere surface attribute, not the core of one’s being.'

To be accurate, the official term should be 'Enslaved person by white democrats."

ccscientist said...

Walmart hires a lot of people who would not be employable anywhere else. When they advertise jobs, hundreds apply. They promote from within. It is simply snide for the wealthy and educated to look down on walmart.

Freeman Hunt said...

Crystal Bridges is excellent, but all of the verbiage on the walls has gone super woke in an effort to please people like this writer. Heh. Guess it didn't work!

(Seriously, it looks like a Studies grad student got ahold of a vinyl printing machine in there.)

Mike said...

Ah Walmart--that dastardly villian that pays some of its employees so little that they qualifiy for food stamps! The shame and horror of it all amongst the NYT elike kakistocracy!

Is the commenter aware that another employer of large numbers of people--that also pays some of its employees so little that they qualify for food stamps is--the United States Army?

And I'd suspect that is also true of low ranking enlisted men and women in the Air Force and the Navy.

I don't hear the readers of the New York Times clamoring for higher pay for our Armed Forces.

Bunkypotatohead said...

The nearest Walmart has had a Now Hiring sign out front for as long as I've lived here, just north of Bentonville.
A black guy shows up occasionally begging for money next to his car, and I point to the sign. It doesn't seem to do any good, though.

x said...

"Slave" no longer counts as a word in Wordle.

x said...

"Slave" no longer counts as a word in Wordle.

x said...

"Slave" no longer counts as a word in Wordle.

x said...

"Slave" no longer counts as a word in Wordle.

The Godfather said...

About 10 years ago I read a book about the Gulf Coast colonies that were not yet part of the newly-created US, and the author used the term "enslaved" rather than "slave". My initial reaction was the same as several commenters' -- Oh, shoot, more PC! But in fact, if you open your mind, it DOES make a difference: Refer to someone as "a slave" and it suggests that this is what the person IS -- like saying someone is "short" or "tall". But refer to someone as "enslaved" it highlights that the status has been IMPOSED on him/her, which is the truth.

Caligula said...

No big-box retailer pays well, and many pay less than Walmart.

But, really, it doesn't matter: them meme is set, and the narrative too.

As to where this comes from, it comes from unions who are still sore that Walmart essentially neutered the unions found in all chain-store supermarkets.

For there was a time when practically all larger grocery stores were union. And, in keeping with pattern-negotiating, all had very similar labor contracts.

And so long as that was so, the supermarket chains didn't really worry that the pay and work conditions imposed by the union contract would make the store uncompetitive because it knew that all its competitors had similar contracts.

Then Walmart started selling groceries, and suddenly the supermarket chains cared. Because they had to.

So Walmart cannot be said to have "broken" the union, but it did vastly reduce its bargaining power.

And now many non-union stores are selling groceries, but Walmart was the first large chain to do so and ever-after unions have hated them for it.

Where did you think these "food stamp" stories came from? The stories are in MSM news media, but they were sourced from the grocery-store unions to sympathetic "journalists."