The New York Times magazine this week is completely The 1619 Project,
The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.
It’s long and will take some time to read and digest. But it’s something we need to do. We have never, as a country, come to terms with slavery and how interwoven it is in our history. There have been moments when we almost woke up – the Civil War and then, 100 years later, the Civil Rights Movement – but we have quickly buried what understanding we had gained. We’ve got to do better this time.
And yes, it’s possible that the New York Times can do a brilliant job on this and still screw up on its political reporting.
A copy of the entire magazine here, outside the paywall. The Pulitzer Center also has study materials and curricula for teachers.
Open thread!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Thank you Cheryl for posting about this and providing us a pdf of the magazine issue. On the one hand this is a great and important thing to focus on. The US needs to come to grips with it’s racist past once and for all to reach our true potential and live up to our ideals.
On the other, this is still a NYT project. I’d like to be able to financially support this, if it’s done right. But I also don’t want to support the same organization that thought Clinton Cash was a great idea, still employs Haberman and Glen Thrush, or published the infamous “FBI Clears Trump of All Russian Connections” in October of 2016.
It’s a real conundrum for me personally.
Jay
Twitter thread,
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Got the dead tree edition of that magazine and opened to that article.
Stopped dead on the opening paragraph. In 1619 a ship docked in Virginia with 20 Africans to sell. I can’t comprehend any part of that. Somebody brought people to America as a commodity. Somebody landed and said, hey, anybody want to buy these people? Somebody bought them. Lots of other somebodies thought that was a good idea and brought over more humans to enslave and lots of other somebodies thought it was a good idea to buy them.
There is something so fundamentally evil about that and yet it was a commonplace thing. And I fully believe now, in a way I wouldn’t have when I was younger, that the urges to enslave and to profit off slavery are not dead in Americans, and there are plenty of people who would happily bring back the “peculiar institution” and only the law prevents them.
Raven
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Just now figuring that out huh?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Raven: I’m fundamentally an optimist. Just coming to grips with the overwhelming evidence I’ve been trying to ignore.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The desire to enslave other sapient beings is fundamentally evil, as you say. That’s what happens when you don’t see certain kinds of people as human. Dehumanization is what often allows people to commit atrocities
Joy in FL
I got Sunday home delivery just to have the 1619 Project. I’m also reading How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
Right now I’m thinking we Americans have so many worthy ideals built on a foundation and structure of lies and cruelty.
I can’t change the culture or the past, but I am stocking my knowledge base and my passion for supporting justice whenever I can.
cmorenc
Having grown up in eastern North Carolina in the 1950s, I can still vividly remember what Jim-Crow de jure segregation was like from the perspective of a white child to whom (at the time) the unashamed blatant racism of white society around me seemed as natural in the correct order of things as swimming in water seems to a fish. In short, eastern North Carolina society in the 1950s and early 60s had not yet much changed from what it was like in the years immediately post-slavery following the Civil War and Reconstruction. I attended schools totally segregated by race up, until my small town surprisingly decided to get out ahead of the potential for a court-ordered process by incrementally beginning to integrate my high school in a manner that would likely have not passed muster under Civil Rights laws and Courts, and which would rightly be condemned today in retrospect as of itself a racist technique – but it worked to achieve integration in a totally peaceful fashion that was quickly accepted by whites !
What they did was to initiate integrating our local white school by first bringing some of the better black athletes over into our formerly all-white high school, whose football and basketball teams had frankly rather sucked for the previous few year. Whaddya know, we started winning lots more games, but more importantly , we white kids found the black kids thus brought in to be rather cool to hang out with and eat lunch with at school! Next year, they brought black kids over who were among the stronger academically, until a year or so later, they fully integrated the high school. Another unique factor that greatly helped with the practical implementation of integrating our high school was the coincidence that both the old white high school and the old black high school in town were hopelessly antiquated, and building a new white high school in the white part of town and a new black high school in the black part of town were already well underway when the powers that be conceived our unique desegregation plan – and the initial (only black to white) desegregation already described happened when the new “white” high school initially opened my junior year. What they were able to do within a couple of years was turn the would-be “black” high school into the junior high school (then grades 7-9) for the entire city, and the would-be “white” high school into the senior high school (then grades 10-12) for the whole city.
Took me a long time until I was somewhere well along as a college student at UNC-Chapel Hill to finish coming around from the racist attitudes I grew up with, but the transition is so long ago, far away, and relatively complete now that it shocks me to realize what my natural mindset about race was back when I was e.g. 8 to 12 years old. If I had a dollar for every ‘N’ word I spoke up through age about 14, I would have been very wealthy, and so would the vast majority of white southerners who grew up in those times.
Alas, some whites in the south still don’t seem to have truly been able to grow past it.
geg6
They had a big, prominent Stephen Miller story, basically sucking his dick, the same day they launched this. Dean Baquet is the biggest, most powerful Uncle Tom who ever walked the earth. I despise him.
opiejeanne
@geg6: Is Baquet black? If not I’m not sure Uncle Tom is the right term
Brachiator
@opiejeanne:
He’s black, but Uncle Tom is still probably not the right term.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@opiejeanne:
Here’s his wiki page with his picture. Commenters here described his heritage as Creole.
From wiki:
Mathguy
The one piece that struck me as a perfect example of the ” Happy that the black family next to our cardboard box doesn’t have a sparrow on their curtain rod to roast, but we do” was Kevin Kruse’s essay on transportation in Atlanta. The bigots still vote against mass transit even though they desperately need it.
HumboldtBlue
Resistance does continue.
Ohio Mom
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: There’s all kinds of things I know, or think I know, and then something happens and I know on a whole different, deeper level. I’m not talking about learning mere facts, it has to do with understanding truths.
I don’t how to describe it any better than that. It’s one of those feelings that are beyond words. This is how I am interpreting your comment.
Mesmer a la carte
I feel compelled to speak up about this landmark project. It goes far beyond the horrors of chattel African slavery and right to the corrupt, virulent heart of capitalism. The article that stands out to me is how slavery and king cotton begat so many of the ills we suffer from today from a capital vs labor standpoint. What is reported is the basic dehumanization of anyone who is caught in a master/slave relationship. Masters seek any an all methods to maximize return on investments and advocated for a worldview that places them in the driver’s seat. The very idea that any of us who work for a living are expected to show up at an office and lend our skills, under supervision, for a set period of the day and then compensated poorly derives directly from the management techinques developed by plantation managers. To me the most telling aside of this particular article mentions that Thomas Jefferson mortgaged his slaves, ie sold their value to speculators while still enslaving them, to finance and build Monticello.
Ohio Mom
@geg6: Stephen Miller and Dean Baquet, what a pair. Both of them have huge blind spots about their heritages.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Yeah, that’s what I said. Black.
Ruckus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Not in any way condoning it but history has taught us that most people lived in relatively small areas and were abused by people with more in the quest to have even more. Without paying a reasonable wage or having a lot of people working for others, the amount of money floating around wasn’t anything like it is today. And it wasn’t that long ago because no one else’s money was good in anyone else’s country. Gold was the standard, the one common thing that not a lot had and that a lot wanted some of. But without industrial abilities to find and mine it there really wasn’t a lot of it around. And we weren’t officially off the gold standard till 1971, although effectively in the 1930s. Until now the dollar has been the standard, but trump is ruining that like everything else he does.
My point is that people have taken advantage of others for as long as there were two or more of us. It’s only in the last few decades that a lot of that has fallen away or started to fall away and there are many who want and feel the need to not let that happen. This country is one of the ones that has fought that change harder than most. This story, 1619, is a way to help that. How anything involved with the NYT had anything to do with this is amazing. The NYT is maybe not the most racist paper in the land but modern thought seems to be severely lacking within it’s walls. This just might change that. Or it could be that their income is falling and they pulled this out in desperation. Only time might tell.
frosty
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
The Guardian is doing the same thing. Three or four good articles so far. Check it out and if you like it send them a check.
Cameron
Francis Pastorius authored a petition against slavery in 1688. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot of his fellow whites were paying attention, does it?
frosty
@frosty: Guardian series
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
And to the surprise of no one: Conservatives rail against New York Times project on America’s sordid slave past
It’s worth a read to see Newt Gingrich get owned
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
I wasn’t correcting you or anything, just answering opiejeannie. I didn’t see your response until after I posted mine.
HRA
This three-tiered society included white Creoles; a prosperous, educated group of mixed-race Creoles of European and African descent; and the far larger class of African and Black Creole slaves. The status of mixed-race Creoles of color (Gens de Couleur Libres) was one they guarded carefully.
Ruckus
I’ve read a little of it so far it’s going to stay up in the browser for quite a while. Thank you Cheryl for posting this. A very valuable post.
Quinerly
@cmorenc: I’m curious. What part of Eastern NC are you originally from? I’m originally from Pitt County, small town of Grifton. Went to undergrad at ECU. I’m a little younger, so wasn’t a teenager until the ’70’s. You are pretty much on target with your memories.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Sooo funny. This reminds me of recent conversations I’ve had with friends about movies and books with non-white protagonists and how some white people get sullen and angry when they are not the center of a narrative.
I also give credit to Toni Morrison, who had been quoted making remarks which inspired this train of thought.
Ohio Mom
@Ruckus: I only rarely buy the Sunday Times though (full disclosure) we do have the other six days delivered, along with the Cincinnati daily. It was a budget move: six days or Sundays. I wish I had been paying attention, I would have gone out and bought today’s for this section.
I’ve long thought that The Times’ strength is not its news (there are so many other sources for the events of the day), and certainly not (with minor exceptions) its columnists (Friedman? Bobo?) but its essays and long form journalism. Which this issue of the magazine might be the perfect example of.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Point noted.
Mike J
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: If Newt doesn’t think slavery is bad I wonder how he feels about being owned?
Kay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
They should read it. I’ve only read 10 or so pages and I wasn’t even aware of half of the events on the timeline in just the fiction section. It’s really just perfect that they’re somehow offended by a concept when they haven’t read a word of it.
Let’s see how many words they can write and speak “about” this without reading it– 5000? 10,000? An unlimited number. What are they writing about, really? Themselves. How vital it is that everyone adopt their personal view of the country.
Can we just consider another one? No. Absolutely not. They forbid it.
Gelfling 545
@Raven: Sometimes you can know something for a long time but then one day you really feel it. I had a similar experience reading a post on TNC’s blog at The Atlantic a few years back in which he posted the image of a poster advertising a sale – of people. I had grown up knowing that slavery was a great evil but this day it hit me viscerally & I became physically ill. There are degrees of knowing.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: If you skip ahead to the comments at the end of each for the articles (I just briefly sampled a few), you will see that the point of this project continues to escape too many.
Readers ask WhyBlack people aren’t over this already, Didn’t Black musicians also borrow from white music, and so on.
It could make you pull your hair out.
randy khan
One of the most striking things at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture is that you start – underground – with the origins of chattel slavery in the U.S. and how far you have to go before emancipation. The time I was there I think even some of the black people were taken aback.
Contextually, it’s important to understand that slavery, if not common, was more common in Europe in the late 16th and early 17th century than a lot of people think, and probably most of the slaves were white or even from the culture of the place where they were enslaved. (I’ve seen a source that actually talks about the global slave trade starting with the sale of Europeans to Middle Eastern nations.) As the exhibition at MAAHC describes, probably the principal innovations – if you can call them that – of Western Hemisphere slavery was that there were very few ways to get out of it and that all of the slaves came from Africa. While slavery always was terrible, it was much worse on this side of the Atlantic.
AThornton
There was a labor shortage in the Virginia colony and so the Africans were imported to raise the addictive cash crop that made the colony possible: tobacco. The wealth of Virginia was squarely based on slavery and the drug trade.
Ohio Mom
@Gelfling 545: You said what I tried to say at Comment 15, much better than I did.
I’ll add that the viseral understanding can also sometimes be related to discovering great joy. Though for me, I do remember the gut-punching ones more clearly.
cmorenc
@Quinerly:
Lumberton, down in Robeson County. What was unique about Robeson County in eastern NC is that it was/still is a tri-racial county with a quite-substantial proportion of Lumbee Indians in the mix, and whites have always actually been a minority, though for many decades the dominant minority who actually owned and controlled the vast majority of things. Even back in the rigidly segregated era, a handful of kids with mixed Lumbee/white ancestry could acceptably pass as “white-enough” for purposes of the school system, provided they didn’t have obviously Lumbee surnames (which “obvious” Lumbee Indian names are ironically, quintessentially English in origin, such as Oxendine, Locklear, and Sampson, with no hint whatsoever of native american overtones.
I’ve long since been expatriated from Lumberton – I only very rarely even go through there, and the people from there I still see are all expats.
Another eastern NC town I spent much time in much nearer to you was in the much smaller town of Fremont, NC, about halfway between Wilson and Goldsboro. If anything, the racist attitudes of white society there were even more deeply ingrained than in Lumberton. My dear maternal grandmother considered herself part of “polite” respectable society, and considered the use of the overt ‘N’ word to be a coarse indicator of less cultured, more trashy “white” society….and so instead called them “nigrahs”, thinking that was distinctly different (which perversely, it was so considered by many upper-middle class whites at the time). Of course, the only real difference that made was that she was more superficially polite toward blacks she encountered, but the underlying attitude was still deeply racist. I still have a bit of a hard time reconciling this fact about her with my memory of her as otherwise one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’ve known in my lifetime.
Jay
@randy khan:
Yup, and sadly, it was never let go.
Other Nations had to deal. Others did not. Some still employ slavery, from Amazon Warehouses and Meatpacking Plants, to Gulf States, Lybia, Sudan, Thailand, etc
opiejeanne
@Brachiator: Thanks. I did not know. Either way, I think there’s a more fitting term than Uncle Tom for him, but damned if I can think of it right now. It’s been a long day.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
I used to read a lot of the major papers and financial journals because I thought it might help my business. But it soon became obvious that most things written were not all that well researched, not all that well thought out and often only reflected the viewpoint of the writer or even worse the publisher. And now we’ve arrived at the internet, with everyone trying to make an extra buck or twenty off of it, from the people who bring it into our homes (spectrum anyone) and from the providers. We are, as I was 3 or 4 decades ago just a wallet to be picked from, nothing more. That’s not to say everything is like this, money in front of everything else, but those big papers, TV companies didn’t get that way doing good, they did it by producing what sells. And what sells to many is the concept that a mirror is a perfect device for showing the perfect human. I 100% guarantee that isn’t true, because there is no perfect human. It’s part of the gig, it hasn’t changed it eons it’s just that as we live closer and closer to each other we still have the need deep inside us to be best, at least at something. For some that best is whiteness, a particular whiteness in many cases. But as I said the other day here, we are all mutts. There is no one left and hasn’t been for a long time that doesn’t have some strain of humanity that they think is impossible for them to have. My great grandfather was supposed to be a Sicilian mafia hit man, who was told to go to the US with his family and stay out of trouble. I have no idea if there is 0% or 100% truth to this family story, and no way to find out. The only way I’m relatively sure of my siblings all having the same father is that our birthdays all fall about 9 months after some event of my parents lives. One of their birthdays, wedding anniversary, etc. I’m not knocking my parents, I’m saying they were human and many, many humans have at the very least foibles, or I think, more common actual faults in their relationships with other humans. We are after all animals and we have only relatively recently started to build a social structure that has as it’s basis, equality of being. There is a long history of this not being true, like almost all of it, only starting to actually change in the last 100 yrs and it’s been a rocky road.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
That’s going to be more difficult than you might imagine for me. I’d have to grow some and that ship has sailed what seems like a few light years ago.
PJ
@Cameron: Opponents of slavery always face harsh opposition because abolishing it means slaveholders lose a lot of money, now and in the future. He is a complicated figure from our standpoint, but Bartolome de las Casas argued against the exploitation and slavery of Native Americans (and, eventually, against the slavery of Africans) in the early 16th century. Needless to say, he was not popular among his fellow Spaniards in the New World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas
Jay
@Ruckus:
I’ve got Chinese cousins. Yup, we are all mutts.
In the Americas, we are either the ancestors of:
Indiginous,
Slaves,
Immigrants,
Refugees,
Or a mixed breed of all of the above.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
Oh, I can’t. And this:
Over what? History? So the people who are insisting that the exact history they learned and believe is the only possible way of understanding the country are demanding that other people “get over it”? They’re not “over it”. History. Obviously.
On good days I think we’re in a period of growth and those are always difficult because you have to let some things go, and on bad days I think it’s hopeless and no one wants to learn anything, ever again.
PJ
@AThornton: Early capitalism was fueled by drugs – coffee and tobacco – and still is fueled by drugs – cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, etc.
debbie
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
There’s been slavery as long as there’s been people. We suck.
(Thanks for the link, Cheryl.)
PJ
@debbie: Slavery has been around as long as there’s been agriculture. Hunter-gatherers don’t have slavery, as far as I know.
Duane
@Ohio Mom: Before reading the 1619 Project, I’ve got to get past the FNYT front-paging Miller and calling him a “firebrand” in the headline.
Didn’t know it meant syphlitically inflamed raging rascist hemmoroid on the body of a nation.
lgerard
@Jay:
You forgot criminals, since an easy 20% of the early settlers were transports…..criminals given the choice of jail or relocation.
See also Trump, Frederick
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, particularly The Last Jedi, along with Captain Marvel are perfect examples of this type of shit.
Not a day goes by that loser right-wingers harass Rian Johnson for TLJ. Or describe the asian actress who played Rose as ugly (oh but character not actress, wink wink). Or call increased diversity in film and TV “white male genocide”.
Nerd culture has some very toxic currents running through it.
Raoul
I have not started reading it yet, but I will. And, for now, this sort of thing is why I still pay (though I absolutely understand why others have cancelled or never subscribed).
Also, it is flushing out the bushes.
debbie
@PJ:
Actually, I don’t think it started with agriculture. I believe I’ve read that members of other tribes who were captured often served as slaves.
Jay
@PJ:
Hunter gathers have had/have slaves.
@lgerard:
Criminals, formally came over as “identured servants” or “state labour”, so slaves,
Being white, they could run away and blend in.
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Like Marvel banning Maus.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Kay:
They’re very fragile people, despite the machismo they often put on. The slightest change to the status quo frightens them. White male American conservatives are the most pathetic people on the face of the Earth. They’re practically afraid of their own shadows despite living in the most powerful nation in the history of the world with a society that still caters to them
Raoul
These guys (not just York). Jebus. Anything that even briefly topples the notion that there is only one view of history, and that the eyes are in the head of a white guy, just makes them go bananas. It’s a ‘racialized’ look, they say. People with axes to grind! (As if EWE, Newt, York and plenty of others don’t have finely honed blades).
As if the white gaze, the male hot take is race (and gender)-free. That is the core of white supremacy, isn’t it? That whiteness is so pure and special that it is invisible, but all other races are front-and-center in ‘identity politics’.
Raoul
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They know that the catering is about to become both harder to receive, and more expensive. And that pisses them off. Shallow, greedy bastards.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mike J:
You assume Newty Boy thinks at all. He’s a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Yup,
@Raoul:
Yup.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@frosty:
I’ll try and check that out. Thanks : )
PJ
@debbie: @Jay: I stand corrected. From a brief googling, it appears that it happens among hunter/gatherers where there is a surplus that needs workers.
Jay
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/crwju5/maus_author_removed_from_marvel_collection_for/
Marvel strips the best anti-Nazi comic from it’s inventory, (and all his other works) because it’s author criticised Wussollini.
https://www.out.com/news/2019/8/09/marvels-chairman-also-donald-trumps-largest-donor
Jay
@PJ:
It’s not just that. There are skills, (PNW Indiginous) and to forstall inbreeding.
rikyrah
I don’t get bothered by reparations, because this is America. Not because, in a just society we would have gotten them already, but this is America. I have been grateful to those who pushed reparations (before the ADOS Grifte rs), because this is where I, a person who considers herself well educated, especially about Black American history, learned the true extent of the financial foundation of America that is slavery. I thought far too small about the economic context of slavery, and what it meant to the ENTIRE country, not just the South.
smike
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Agreed, and well put. There are c.250 million white people in this country (me included) and c.7.9 million Jewish people. Yet we see armed, angry white men (boys?) marching the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Snowflake much, boys?
AThornton
@PJ:
Check out the history of the Spice Trade: British East India Company & etc. Fundamental to the Early Capitalist system. Profits during the early years could go as high as 2,500% from one voyage.
@rikyrah:
The economic rise of New England was squarely based on the Triangular Trade. When you read the whining from Boston and the other New England ports about Britain’s dastardly interference in trade, that’s what they were talking about.
Brachiator
@Jay:
Indentured servants were not slaves. Nor were indentured servants necessarily criminals. A term of service is not the same thing as perpetual slavery. And the children of indentured servants were not chattel slaves for life.
Kent
@PJ:
Not true. Many of the hunter-gatherer Indian tribes in North America had slaves from other tribes. It was common. Even in pre-Columbian times. Among some Pacific Northwest tibes like the Tlingit and Haida, over 1/4 of the population were slaves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
Of course the industrial chattel slavery practiced in the American south was uniquely terrible for a whole lot of reasons.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Descendants, not ancestors. Or are you your father’s parent?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
He’s from Canada, who knows.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
For ll we know, maybe Jay’s family history does include some time-machine use.
Annamal
@Kent:
Terrible in comparsion with the kind of slavery which had come before it but not unique terrible in the world at the time, my partner’s been helping to get some Caribbean slavery documentation on-line and all of it is appalling.
Mel
@Brachiator: Scottish prisoners of war were also sold by the British government into indenture in the colonies.
Some Highland Scottish children were kidnapped and sold into indenture by the British as well. Some of these children were captured during the Highland clearances, and many were very, very young. A group of Quakers in Pennsylvania pooled their resources to purchase the indenture contracts of as many of these children as they could, and then immediately legally forgave the indenture and found adoptive families for the children in the Quaker community. Many of the children could not read or write, and some were young enough and from such isolated areas that they did not know how to contact their families. One of my ancestors on my father’s side of the family was one of the stolen children. My Quaker grandmother was able to locate all of that ancestor’s info back to the ship on which he arrived, but despite his adoptive Quaker parents’ attempts to find any information about his home village or his family, and efforts generations later by my grt. grandma, my grandma, and myself, his origins in Scotland remain a mystery. He was estimated as between 5 and 8 years of age when he arrived, and was too young or too traumatized to provide any clear info about his background.
sm*t cl*de
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Slavery (and atrocities) are pretty common in human history. Usually the slavery involved an element of “Well, we bet them in a battle so now we make them work for us.” So the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. etc. didn’t see their slaves as dehumanised, if they thought about it at all. It was all “Shrug, we’d be working for them if we lost the battle”.
The special thing about slavery in American colonies was the Caribbean plantation system for industrial production of sugar, and indigo. They were, literally, death camps. The system relied on a constant influx of new ‘labour units’ because the old ones didn’t survive more than a few years. That’s when the colonists decided that slaves were inferior creatures, lower than donkeys, so their deaths didn’t matter.
sm*t cl*de
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
And don’t forget that Newtie’s PhD thesis was a defense of Belgian industrial genocide in the Congo. Attacks on institutional slavery threaten his credentials.
PST
@smike:
I believe that the particular form of meshugas at issue here is not that the Jews plan to themselves increase in number so as to replace “white” people, but that Jews in their role as controlling masterminds plan to replace white people with non-white immigrants.
Ruviana
@PJ: If it’s happening NOW other factors are at play. Hunter-gatherers in the past were far less likely to enalave others. Nativ American groups with “slacery” had very different inherited rank systems
Ohio Mom
A little late getting back here. For me, one of the interesting take-aways from the Time’s 1619 Project is how much our history of slavery serves as a grand unifying theory of so much that is ugly and harmful to us all in US culture.
It explains why we don’t have universal health coverage, why our brand of capitalism is so brutal, why our penal system emphasizes torture instead of rehabilitation, why our poverty rates are so high and our social safety nets so meager,
why we are car-centric and without robust public transportation systems…the list goes on.
Betty
Sorry this is so late, but thanks so much,Cheryl, for making this avaialble. So valuable.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Jay: Indentured service was a contract situation; you served your time and were thereupon no longer a servant. Some people were forced into it by circumstance (like debt), but many entered into it willingly – particularly as a way to get to the Colonies if you couldn’t afford the passage. Wikipedia article: “Between one-half and two-thirds of white immigrants to the American colonies between the 1630s and American Revolution had come under indenture.” Wow, had no idea it was so prevalent.