These slavery apologists were less invested in defending slavery per se than in defending slaveowners, and they weren't defending slaveowners so much as themselves.
I wondered if they would also expect prisoners to be loyal to their guards. After all, they get food and clean safe accommodation and so on.
And then I thought, it's mostly blacks who get locked up in America. I wonder if the prison complex in the US is just the new slavery.
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And maybe some of these guests were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America.
It occurs to me that may also be a part of triggers for the MRA shootings of women.
And maybe some of these guests were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America.
Howard Zinn, in A People's History of the United States, argues that U.S. politicians have long fostered distrust between poor and middle-class Whites and Blacks -- to keep them distracted and disunited, so that they don't realize how thoroughly they're all being screwed over by a system that is geared toward protecting the interests of the rich over those of everyone else.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
A summer camp were you may not make it to alive, your camp counselor carried a whip, the activities tested your very survival, the chance of sexual or physical assaulted was pretty high, if you tried to leave or did something similarly wrong (like getting mad and speaking) they might kill you, and your relatives were randomly sold to other camps.
You should be happy you got to go to camp at all.
You don't hear the Jeeewwwssss complaining about camp all the time.
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Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
Or North Carolina -- just the opposite, in fact. As I recall, my teachers tried very hard to convince us that the Civil War had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery.
I think a lot of that depended on the part of the state and especially the teacher. I went to a mostly Black elementary school around the start of integrated busing and had teachers that stressed slavery as the cause. Other teachers in other places and times threw in the State's Rights and Tariff smokescreens though I can't recall any that went so far as to deny Slavery as a cause.
I suspect but cannot prove that in addition to racial geography, some lingering economic geography might have had a role in this in NC, at least until 20-30 years ago. Western NC was not so uniformly gung-ho about secession as the rest of the state, in part because it was poor as shit and nobody had much in the way of property interests, much less a property interest in other people. It's also hard to build plantations in the mountains. Through an excellent family historian, I learned last year that one of my great great [etc. etc.] grandfathers from up there fought in the Confederate army, and that some of his letters survive. They are interesting to read, in part because they are sarcastic in a way that I recognize in myself, but also because he spends most of the time complaining about having to leave his farm tenancy to fight a war for rich people. I wonder if that attitude persisted in the highlands for some time after the war. (I also remember going to visit my great aunt and uncle when I was a kid - probably in the early 90s - and seeing a portrait of FDR on the wall, where it had been since the 30s. I asked who it was and why it was there, and they explained it to me in terms that I still remember.)
These slavery apologists were less invested in defending slavery per se than in defending slaveowners, and they weren't defending slaveowners so much as themselves.
I wondered if they would also expect prisoners to be loyal to their guards. After all, they get food and clean safe accommodation and so on.
And then I thought, it's mostly blacks who get locked up in America. I wonder if the prison complex in the US is just the new slavery.
Quote:
And maybe some of these guests were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America.
It occurs to me that may also be a part of triggers for the MRA shootings of women.
The prison population in the U.S. is about 59% white, and 37.6% black. Even though they are overrepresented compared to the general population, not quite 2 out of five inmates are black. The percentages of people on welfare is similarly out of proportion, but still majority white.
Edit: Those are figures for federal prisons only, and count hispanics as white. Nationally the percentages are almost at 40% each white and black, and 19% hispanic. Asian-Americans are either slacking or not getting caught, they represent less than 1%. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html
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Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
And maybe some of these guests were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America.
Howard Zinn, in A People's History of the United States, argues that U.S. politicians have long fostered distrust between poor and middle-class Whites and Blacks -- to keep them distracted and disunited, so that they don't realize how thoroughly they're all being screwed over by a system that is geared toward protecting the interests of the rich over those of everyone else.
My father-in-law tells a story about citizens rioting and looting in a city in I think the 1950's, and the key point was the city powers were pissed and taking action until they saw rioters and looters were of different ethnicities- a black person and white person working together to take a couch out through a store window- and then the authorities shit their pants and called in the national guard.
Additionally prisons in the US rely on a manageable level of racial tension to keep prisoners busy; there are just not that many guards per prisoner. Prisoners to a degree self-segregate; often chow halls will be zoned by ethnic grouping by the prisoners. But if the chow hall opened and prisoners sat with each table a mix and no discerning ethnic divides, the prison would go into lock-down immediately... of course too much racial tension and the prison also goes into lock down due to violence.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
“I’ve spoken with Native Americans across this great country. Two, in particular, really resonated with me. Their names were Tibia and Fibula from the Snapcreek Nation, and they just shattered me with their enthusiasm for the name. Absolutely cracked me up.”
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hide, witch, hide / the good folks come to burn thee / their keen enjoyment hid behind / a gothic mask of duty - P. Kantner
Someone should re-edit that where he claims he feels a close heritage with the Washington Tar-Babies. But nah that would be like racist or something...
Today was a weird day. In South Carolina they had voted to take down the flag and Governor Haley signed it. They're taking it down tomorrow. But in Congress the House voted to allow the American Swastika to be displayed on federal land.
While I think I've mentioned it here before my school team name is also the Redskins, I feel a slight connection to the heritage of the school and I like some of the rituals they have around school pride, and there's no reason whatsoever they can't go on under some other name. And while they seem to get some Native American or another to say "yeah sure whatever, it doesn't offend me (now could you start treating us better?)" I don't really care, if your mascot isn't some sort of volcano who wears the flayed skins of his enemies on his boiling red hot lava, you can find a new mascot, in fact that's a great one, take it! Perhaps still don't call it Redskins. Or I know, here's an idea, you can keep the name but as acknowledgment of the heritage that you so fondly like to support, you can pay a "sorry we destroyed your culture and then stole it's name and image and wore it as a scalp" tax to Native American Tribes.
Today was a weird day. In South Carolina they had voted to take down the flag and Governor Haley signed it. They're taking it down tomorrow. But in Congress the House voted to allow the American Swastika to be displayed on federal land.
I don't even know anymore.
So are you saying that we should let Nazi Germany dictate our use of symbols that they used only briefly for bad things. That is equivalent to letting the terrorists scare everyone into hiding in their houses or caves in fear of a terrorist attack.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
Today was a weird day. In South Carolina they had voted to take down the flag and Governor Haley signed it. They're taking it down tomorrow. But in Congress the House voted to allow the American Swastika to be displayed on federal land.
I don't even know anymore.
So are you saying that we should let Nazi Germany dictate our use of symbols that they used only briefly for bad things. That is equivalent to letting the terrorists scare everyone into hiding in their houses or caves in fear of a terrorist attack.
No, it's equivalent to letting a manufacturer of rat poison tell us what we can and can't use as an ice cream topping.
Not really. It's not like letting anyone dictate anything. It's what we choose to do, knowing the message that's going to send to some folks. (And, personally, I agree that the Confederate battle flag should be treated the same way we do the Nazi flag. Other cultures may have used the swastika, but only the Nazis had that flag.)
And yes, the Confederate flag absolutely should be treated exactly the same way the Nazi flag is, because they both stand for the same thing - namely, white supremacy.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Oh, ze Nazi flag is banned here but the Confederate thingie is allowed. And last week Amsterdam banned Hamas flags at a demonstration to remember the Gaza horror. So yay, freedom.
Embarrassing confession time. We had a Nazi flag when I was a kid. It was one of my dad's souvenirs he brought back from fighting in WWII, along with a couple German officer's sabers. We certainly didn't own it in the spirit of approval, but we kids used to keep it hanging in the rec room because we thought it was cool. Again, from a capture the flag perspective, not a we are Nazi sympathizers perspectives. Still, this may be the first time I've ever admitted that to someone in my adult life. We were all stupid kids.
My dad sold them all to a collector when we moved house in 1985. I'm sure he got less than they were worth because he was a crap businessman. My sister is mad because she always wanted the sabers, but I'm glad the flag is gone.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Re: More blithe racism
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