Althouse: "We could never talk negatively about America in front of my father... He did not have much but he really, really loved America. Isn’t that funny?"

October 21, 2022

"We could never talk negatively about America in front of my father... He did not have much but he really, really loved America. Isn’t that funny?"

Said Daniel Smith, quoted in "Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90/He grew up hearing stories from his father, who was born into bondage during the Civil War. Decades later, he marched in Washington and Selma with fellow civil rights activists" (WaPo).

26 comments:

John Borell said...: It’s not funny at all. While America has flaws, as do all countries, there is much to love about America.; 10/21/22, 5:51 AM
mikee said...: I, too, would love the country that removed the shackles of my bondage, and I'd point out to his kids that they were free because of the US, too.; 10/21/22, 6:16 AM
Aught Severn said...: Trying to do the math here. Died at 90, so he was born in 1932. His father was born in the Civil War, call it 1865, so he was about 70. Checks with the story. Father died in a car accident when he was 6...1938. Father was 76.

How many stories or memories stick out in your mind from when you were 6 and younger? I doubt the veracity that he remembers his father telling those stories, more likely it was family telling him the stories that they say his father told. Same thing with the quote he gave. Is it that he, a child of 3-6 got in trouble for talking bad about the US, or that he was told about it later by his family as he got older?; 10/21/22, 6:49 AM
rwnutjob said...: Not funny that over 400,000 people died fighting to stop slavery.; 10/21/22, 7:06 AM
Critter said...: Not hard to love a country that not only allowed you to become free but supported you in pushing for full equality under the law. A rare country in the history of the world. Only those who don’t think deeply about such things can remain angry or bitter.; 10/21/22, 7:24 AM
gilbar said...: WHY wouldn't he Love America?
It was the American Army that rescued his father from captivity.
If it wasn't for America, his father, himself; and his children would still be Confederate Slaves; 10/21/22, 7:27 AM
Humperdink said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/21/22, 7:29 AM
Big Mike said...: I assume he was using “funny” as a synonym for “weird,” but it isn’t really weird or strange if you think about it. According to the estimates most commonly accepted, over 360,000 Union soldiers died during the Civil War, roughly 320,000 of them white. Daniel Smith’s father knew who fought — and died — to give him his freedom.

Did Daniel Smith have anything to say about Raphael Warnock turning Martin Luther King’s church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, into a slumlord before he died? Or is it Martin Luther who??? these days?; 10/21/22, 7:38 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Daniel your father had wisdom you should respect because of his life story. Why would his love for America endure like that? He knows how precious freedom is.; 10/21/22, 7:47 AM
tim maguire said...: Daniel's father was wiser than Daniel. And so it goes--just because someone has less to complain about doesn't mean he'll complain less.; 10/21/22, 7:48 AM
Jersey Fled said...: What's funny is that so few of the critics actually want to leave.; 10/21/22, 7:50 AM
Odysseus said...: Perhaps he remembered Africa, where he was enslaved and sold to traders.; 10/21/22, 8:19 AM
cassandra lite said...: This is the Frederick Douglass view of a country aspiring to be the one where all men are created equal. The least angry--indeed, happiest--African Americans I know and have known are those who remember what it was like under Jim Crow. The angriest ones I know are much younger. De Tocqueville was prescient about that.; 10/21/22, 8:32 AM
Humperdink said...: Couldn't get past the WaPoo paywall, but I found this gem in the Yahoo news obit: "Smith told AFP he was "petrified" that then-president Donald Trump would undo decades of racial progress, and urged the public to support the Black Lives Matter movement."

This poor guy was in denial. Recall Trump asking the black community what have you got to lose? Trump received a higher percentage of the black vote than any R in history. The black family remains on track for total disintegration.; 10/21/22, 8:44 AM
Humperdink said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/21/22, 8:44 AM
Kevin said...: But what about the slaves who were transgender and refused reassignment surgery by the plantation owners?

Don’t they have a gripe?; 10/21/22, 8:54 AM
Amadeus 48 said...: For the contemporary media, we are always in Alabama in 1963 and George Wallace is always governor.

But wait, you say, that was sixty years ago, before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Today, most major cities in the country have black mayors. BHO has been (and maybe still be) POTUS and a black woman is VPOTUS. Black Americans are 13% of the population but 22% of the current members of SCOTUS. Everyone except the most loyal Democrats judges people by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skins.

The media say: RACISTS!

I think that our race relations problems are mostly localized in certain bastions of reactionary thinking, ironically labeled "liberal" by the media. In the real world, things are pretty good.; 10/21/22, 9:06 AM
Joe Smith said...: Because the father knew the alternative was being born in 19th-century Africa.

And it's 'slave' not 'enslaved person.'

Don't let lefty assholes change common language...that's how they win...; 10/21/22, 9:17 AM
Amadeus 48 said...: "Don't let lefty assholes change common language...that's how they win..."

Ken Khachigian in today's WSJ:

"On the right, however, Republicans have allowed the looniest Democrats to get away with calling themselves 'progressives.' The root of that word is also positive. Bernie Sanders is an avowed socialist and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an unabashed radical. To call them 'progressive' is a perversion of political rhetoric...

"For Republican candidates now in tight races, your opponents aren’t 'progressives' caught up in 'woke' agendas. They are power-seeking lovers of big government tied to the extremist views of Joe Biden, who has wrought inflation and economic chaos, adopted a divisive, leftist agenda, and given us a laughingstock vice president who believes the border is secure."

It is important to say what you intend to say. Shortcuts, buzzwords, and euphemisms have a cost.; 10/21/22, 9:32 AM
Jersey Fled said...: Millions lined up at the border to come in.

A few dozen a-hole actors threatening to leave but never do.; 10/21/22, 10:18 AM
Lurker21 said...: AB Smith may have been hopeful about America because he moved to Connecticut. He was one of the few African-Americans, and apparently he didn't get much trouble up there, certainly not compared to slavery days in Virginia. Daniel Smith had quite a life, and an admirable one. He said one of his friends called him "the Black Forrest Gump."

Yes, "enslaved persons" or "enslaved Americans" is wokespeak, but it's reminiscent of the ancient discussions about whether people are slaves by nature or slaves by convention, so possibly the adoption of the phrase is forgivable. Smith's father had been enslaved, his mother hadn't (and was much, much younger than her husband, and not Black). Once "son of a slave" had a potent ring to it. Now it's apparently forbidden.; 10/21/22, 11:02 AM
Josephbleau said...: If a person remembers much about being a slave ( other than what they were told later) they would have been born around 1855. If they had a child at 60 that child would be 100 by 2015. So if they remembered stories from their father ( mother would not have been 60 at birth) personally they would be 108 today. So no one alive would remember a slave story from a parent, or perhaps there may be a 108 year old somewhere. So we are at or approaching a point where no one alive has heard a directly experienced slave story directly from a parent.

I do remember seeing old films of ex slaves telling stories.; 10/21/22, 11:06 AM
Michael K said...: If it wasn't for America, his father, himself; and his children would still be Confederate Slaves

Don't you mean "Democrat slaves?" Some still are. They just don't know it.; 10/21/22, 11:30 AM
Joe Smith said...: 'Don't you mean "Democrat slaves?" Some still are. They just don't know it.'

Yes...we need to keep making that distinction.

Slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK were purely and solely the manifestations of the Democrat party.

You want reparations? Call the DNC...; 10/21/22, 12:54 PM
The Godfather said...: About a decade ago I read a history of the antebellum Gulf South, and the author explained in the Introduction that he didn't refer to "slaves" but to "enslaved" people. I thought that distinction was just PC BS. But I was wrong. When you read about a "slave" you're inclined to think that's what this person IS, but when you read about an "enslaved" person you think about what was DONE to him/her. It makes a difference, or at least it does to me.; 10/21/22, 9:01 PM
The Godfather said...: About a decade ago I read a history of the antebellum Gulf South, and the author explained in the Introduction that he didn't refer to "slaves" but to "enslaved" people. I thought that distinction was just PC BS. But I was wrong. When you read about a "slave" you're inclined to think that's what this person IS, but when you read about an "enslaved" person you think about what was DONE to him/her. It makes a difference, or at least it does to me.; 10/21/22, 9:01 PM