White conservative says slavery is exaggerated
October 9, 2007
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You have just got to love race deflectors (people who try to put off the issue of racism via numerous means - are what I call race deflectors). The latest race deflector to show his face is Michael Medved over on the conservative site, TownHall.com.
He basically says in his column that when people discuss slavery, they are exaggerating its impact. He also says those people are in effect, ‘America bashers’. He outlines six ‘inconvenient truths about slavery‘. Here I will list each one and then break down why he is wrong.
1. “Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation” - With this one he seeks to say that ‘hey, other civilizations enslaved people why be pissed off at the U.S.?’ It is quite simple actually, Blacks in the U.S. are still effected by the slave trade that occurred in this country AND not all slavery is the same. People always try to bring up the fact that African tribes practiced slavery, well, it is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. African tribes would take slaves in the instance of a battle where prisoners were caught and this was not guaranteed (they could have been released or something else). As a slave, they were able to marry into the owner’s family and even inherit the owner’s wealth. The slaves were not forced to completely let go of their knowledge of self. On the other hand, in the U.S. slaves were forced to mingle with other slaves from different tribes and spoke different languages. This would make it harder to escape bondage. On top of that, they were forced to convert to Christianity and abandon any other cultural traits that defined them. Cultural genocide is a very effective tactic.
2. “Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the Republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today’s Americans” - You have to read between the lines on this one, another quote: “The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic“. He is ONLY counting the time after we formally became the United States of America. Slavery was being practiced in the colonies well before this country won it’s independence from Britain. The African slave trade was practiced for hundreds of years. Also, the “tiny percentage of the ancestors” he is talking about are not blacks, they are whites, he says: “only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% — bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor”. I do not care how many whites owned slaves, because it was those whites that owned the VAST MAJORITY of blacks in this country at the time. His argument is like saying ‘though hundreds of employees at Enron were screwed badly, the screwing was only done by the few executives over the company so it wasn’t that bad’. By the way, he tries to say this: “the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution)“. Again, read between the lines, he specifically said “as provided by the Constitution” because he knows that the importation of slaves CONTINUED after this regardless of what the Constitution said. He is hoping that people go away thinking that the importation actually stopped in 1808.
3. “Though brutal, slavery wasn’t genocidal: live slaves were valuable but dead captives brought no profit” - This one is funny, because he is trying to just use the specific definition of genocide, the deliberate extermination of a group of people, to say it wasn’t that bad. I’m sorry, but estimates are as high as 10-12 million regarding the number of Africans dying as a result of slavery. Slave traders deliberately packed ships to full capacity to ensure that they had a high number of survivors after traveling the Middle Passage. That deliberate act resulted in millions dying which they KNEW would happen because of the conditions of enslavement, thus the reason for packing the ships. If you want to see the conditions of the travel and living as a slave, watch ROOTS. Regardless of whether you call it genocide or not, millions died and suffered as a result of slavery and cultural genocide.
4. “It’s not true that the U.S. became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor: the most prosperous states in the country were those that first freed their slaves” - First off, the word “wealthy” is general, he did not even define it, so based on however he is defining wealthy, he may be right. Hell, to a poor person, someone making $30,000 a year is wealthy (see, you always have to read between the lines). Second, if slave labor was not prosperous, why did the South fight so hard to expand it to new states, and thus, causing the Civil War? People did benefit from slave labor, if they did not, they would not have used it.
5. “While America deserves no unique blame for the existence of slavery, the United States merits special credit for its rapid abolition” - Oh big whoop. That is like praising a father for doing what he is supposed to do - BE A FATHER. The slave trade shouldn’t have happened in the first place. What, is a kid supposed to go up to a school bully and thank him because he stopped bullying the student? He should not have been bullying the student in the first place. By the way, abolishing slavery after hundreds of years of use is by no means “rapid”. But maybe it is in his world.
6. “There is no reason to believe that today’s African-Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa” - Of course not, because of COLONIALISM. However, he tries to counter the colonialism argument with: “Of course, those who seek reparations would also cite the devastating impact of Western colonialism in stunting African progress, but the United States played virtually no role in the colonization of the continent. The British, French, Italians, Portuguese, Germans and others all established brutal colonial rule in Africa; tiny Belgium became a particularly oppressive and bloodthirsty colonial power in the Congo.” The United States DID CONTRIBUTE to colonialism because the U.S. benefited economically from it. The Western colonizers saw the benefits of colonialism - the slave trade to the U.S. was one of those benefits. His entire argument is strictly to try to take blame off of the U.S., sad. On another note, Africa would be an entirely different continent today if colonialism had not happened.
Medved’s column is one of those type of arguments that tries to pick at little details to change your mind. The sad part is, many of his readers will nod in agreement at everything he said.
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[…] White conservative says slavery is exaggerated - Nubian Waves “He basically says in his column that when people discuss slavery, they are exaggerating its impact. He also says those people are in effect, ‘America bashers’. He outlines six ‘inconvenient truths about slavery‘.” (tags: slavery racism history) […]
Round of applause to you for the Spin.
Nice spin indeed.
I break down the stupidity of this post in my own blog.
http://newsandviewsmyway.blogspot.com/
Enjoy.
But it doesn’t surprise me since this is obviously a Republican/Conservative attack blog short on facts heavy on BS.
[…] The person that left that comment is yet another race deflector. […]
No not a race deflector.
Nice way to TRY and label me. But again like this posting it falls far short on facts.
I, for one, loved your post. Thank You for addressing Michael Medved’s post. And I look forward to your response to CPone’s stupidity. I’m tired of people trying to dress up their racism behind labels such as Republican/conservative/socialist/right-wing. You give good, hard-working white people a bad name. If you’re racist, then come from under your sheet and just say it…..I wanted to add a little something to your responses to his six points.
1)Yes, Medved. Slavery is an ancient institution. but here, in america we, as the ancestors of slaves, are dealing with the American institution of slavery. It is a very clear and present reality. South Africa is dealing the peculiarities of its form of slavery, such as the fact that the Dutch chose to populate a country with a black majority that outnumbered them. And to be fair Eastern Europe(white-on-white oppression) dealt with their form of slavery when the communists took over.
2) Medved’s point that Slavery only existed briefly. Well, this country isn’t that old. slavery existed for roughly half of america history, and thats going by his numbers. Plus after the end of the slave trade,as if the shipment of more slaves was the end of the institution, the breeding of slaves became even more important. And because slaves were bred according to farming economics, it was cheeper and more efficient for them to breed their slaves instead of continually buying new ones. It wasn’t cost effective to keep bringing more slaves, the need wasn’t as great. Also check your history books, right before the emancipation of the slaves there was a rise in laws and violence designed to keep the slave on the plantation. Technically, slavery didn’t end until the civil rights movement. In the south, there was all kind of practices that kept black people in servitude- sharecropping, loitering laws, chain gangs, low paying jobs, and indebtness, and good ole jim crow. And he somehow forgot that during slavery half of the nation was barely populated. so based on the U.S. map back then,slavery existed in half of the nation, not a quarter. And after slavery, racism existed, and flourished throughout this whole country, with decriminatory hiring and housing practices. On to his point, about only 5% of whites owned slaves. Yes, that probably is true. I believe it, after all the majority of this country’s present wealth is supposedly concentrated in the hands of the top 10%, a system that has raised the standard of living for all americans. I think Ronald Reagan would call it trickle down economics. Thus there is no denying the fact that with slaves in the fields, it allowed poor whites to seek better employment and social status. And while a limited amount of today’s present white population are the descendents of slave owners, the majority of Ameriaca’s black population are the descendents of actual slaves. 3)like you said that point is laughable. Is he trying to say that Americans aren’t the biggest monsters out there. It doesn’t matter if there was larger wrongs committed in this world. wrong is wrong. And there are consequences and scars to every wrong. We have to deal with our history, the truth of our history, instead of trying to sugar coat it by comparing it to other horrors of the past. We are dealing with slavery. Germany is dealing with the legacy of the Nazis. Russia, communist. Rawanda, their genocide. Bosnia, their ethnic cleansing. India, colonialism and the split from Pakistan. History has a way of biting us all. Deal with it. stop making excuses. 4)Medved calims that the U.S. didn’t become wealthy because of slavery. WOW! Slavery was a huge economic engine in this country. It was the backbone. It provided this nation with cheap food and raw materials which supported America’s rapid growth. It freed up the nation so it could invest in the industrial revolution. In fact, it gave George Wahington and Thomas Jefferson the free time they needed to comtemplate such lofty ideas as freedom, justice, and democracy. It allowed poor white immigrants to escape the back bending farm work they did in Europe, so they could seek a better living in the factories. –When racists, not conservatives, minamize the connection between cheap labor and agriculture, I think about this present immigration debate. I think about the fact that America STILL, to this day, hasn’t filled those vacant farm jobs that the african slave left behind. I think about the fact that we depend on people so desperate and so poor that they are willing to work extremely hard for slave-like wages to pick our food. You know why the immigration reform is stalled? Because our lawmakers realized that if illegal immigrants became legal then they would want a better job, a better slice of the pie. And once again their will be no one to pick America’s crops., which means wages will have to go up, which means prices of basic goods will have to go up, which means the sell of luxery goods will go down, which means our technological advancement will go down. But yet we’re over slavery. Ask the average illegal immigrant if slavery is done with and buried. he’s feeling the effects of American slavery right now. And like our present white population, he wasn’t here back then either. 5) America deserves credit and blame for its slavery. Its called taking responsibilty, which is a very conservative/right wing value. Take responsibility for what happened on theses shores. so let’s get this right, America doesn’t want to accept blame for bringing slavery to this country, but it wants to get credit for ending slavery. Can’t have your cake and eat it to. You get credit for ending slavery here, after a very bloody civil war, and that is it. You did nothing about the continuation of slavery around the world. In fact, we are still doing nothing about slavery around the world because we benefit from it. Lets not forget about imperialism, sweatshops, globialization, CIA involvement in the Congo, Iran, and every other place that tried to shake off their european slave masters. 6) The sad think about Medved’s last point is he absolutely right.. history was violently interrupted for us, the world will never know what could’ve been. –Medved’s argument against the significance of American slavery is about his white guilt. The fact is he shouldn’t feel guilty. he needs to seperate himself from our collective past. Medved, with love you are not the sins of our fore fathers. I am not the sins of our fore fathers. None of us are. It doesn’t define us. I know this sounds cheesy, but seriously he needs to learn how to learn from the past and move on.
[…] White conservative says slavery is exaggerated - none […]
[…] are so many people (race deflectors) that argue that slavery has no effect on today’s society, which is crap of course. However, […]
And Medved should keep in mind a couple of other facts:
1. According to the NY Times, shortly after the Revolutionary War, the population of NY City was 20% slaves. So it was not only the southern “slave states” that benefitted from slavery. they were also providing a substantial proportion of the labor in large parts of the North.
2. The proportion of the population in the southern states that were slaves was much larger. And their contribution toward economic development was even greater, since virtually all of the cash crops were grown by slaves.
3. If slavery wasn’t so bad, then why did George Washington’s will provide that all of his slaves would be freed after his death? That showed that he was aware of the oppressive conditions of slavery and felt it enough to act upon it after his death.
4. As has been noted, after importation of new slaves was outlawed, breeding slaves became a business model, which caused further disruption of the family life of slaves.
5. The Middle Passage aside, our slave economy was based on the harshest oppression. Slaves were exploited and oppressed, and the prevalance of mixed race slaves is evidence that slave women were routinely raped by their owners, overseers, and other whites. The conditions of slavery may have been even harsher in other places, but that is hardly a point of pride.
6. As noted, oppression of blacks and economic exploitation of the black population was fostered and supported by “Jim Crow” laws throughout the South until the Civil Rights movement of the ’60’s and by discrimination elsewhere in the US.
7. The fact that northern states were “wealthier” than southern slave states has more to do with natural resources, geography, international economics, public education, and the availability of skilled immigant labor than with the issue of whether or not slavery was more productive than free labor. However, economic theory suggests that the existence of slavery shows that it was more productive than free labor in the areas of the South where it was common. If it had been cheaper to hire free labor, that would have been the common practice.
8. Never - ever - forget that the whole scheme of oppression and death was in place so that the slave masters, slave breeders, and slave drivers could make money. Sound familiar?
9. I don’t know why or how Medved could ignore these matters, but it certainly shows a reprehensible degree of ignorance and moral blindness.