Tag: Slavery

A Different Look At The DoI

I waited awhile after the 4th for I did not want this post to crap on the celebrations taking place for our country….some more important than others.

First there was an important clause in the original writing of the DoI….it is called the “Slavery Clause”…….I wrote about the “Clause” several years ago…..https://lobotero.com/2010/02/26/the-slavery-clause-black-history-month/

More on this “Clause”…..

As a tribute to the great events that occurred 241 years ago, I wanted to recognize the importance of the unity of purpose behind supporting liberty in all of its forms. While an unequivocal statement of natural rights and the virtues of liberty, the Declaration of Independence also came close to bringing another vital aspect of liberty to the forefront of public attention. As has been addressed in multiple fascinating podcasts (Joe Janes, Robert Olwell), a censure of slavery and George III’s connection to the slave trade was in the first draft of the Declaration.

The Deleted Clause of the Declaration of Independence

There are some (I admit that I am one as well) that feel that the DoI is not a document that should be revered ……basically because it is a racist, sexist and bigoted document…..it is an important one that should be taught in its entirety.

It is painful to write about the shortcomings of the Declaration of Independence. The historic document was officially approved by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 — a mere two days after the Lee Resolution formally declared the American colonies to be independent of the British Empire. Because the American colonists ultimately prevailed in their revolution against King George III, the document has been immortalized as one of the opening salvos in the ongoing fight for human freedom that continues to this very day. Without this seminal text, every social justice movement that has followed would never have come to pass.

Yet despite its overwhelmingly positive impact on history, the Declaration of Independence was also a product of its time — and bears some of the shortcomings of its era, including sexism, racism and prejudice against Native Americans. Here is a look at the events leading up to the creation of that document, as well as involved in its actual signing, which one must inspect for a more rounded look at this period in history:

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/04/fourth-of-julys-ugly-truth-exposed-the-declaration-of-independence-is-sexist-racist-and-prejudice/

Again I would like to stress that this is a great nation with great people and that the entire history should be taught not just the glowing items that are cherry picked…..when this is done it becomes revisionist and finally a LIE.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Lincoln And The Emancipation

As a history buff I am always looking for stuff that the normal person may not be aware of or did not learn while in school…..the major event in American history that gets a lot of attention is the “emancipation” but is it all that we think we know about it?

John Brown was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the national government. It was the national government which, while weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew Jackson’s administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.

Such a national government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism. He would keep the abolition of slavery not at the top of his list of priorities, but close enough to the top so it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage.

Lincoln could skillfully blend the interests of the very rich and the interests of the black at a moment in history when these interests met. And he could link these two with a growing section of Americans, the white, up-and-coming, economically ambitious, politically active middle class. As Richard Hofstadter puts it:

https://libcom.org/history/lincoln-emancipation-howard-zinn

I like Zinn and may I suggest that his book “A People’s History Of The United States”….. a long read but well worth the time to do so.

Learn Stuff!

The more you learn the more you know……how’s that for a profound statement?

Class Dismissed!

“Making America Great Again”–Part 16

The series written by historian Maj. Sjursen has taken the reader through the early day, the revolution, the convention and the days as the country come to terms with itself……and now he touches on the decade before the outbreak of hostilities that led to what was to be called the American Civil War…….

Part 16 of “American History for Truthdiggers.”

“Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators … mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.” —Sen. William Seward of New York (1858)

“It is difficult to achieve a full realization of how Lincoln’s generation stumbled into a ghastly war. … To suppose that the Union could not have been continued or slavery outmoded without the war … is hardly an enlightened assumption. If one questions the term ‘blundering generation,’ let him inquire how many measures of the time he would wish copied or repeated if the period were to be approached with a clean slate and to be lived again.”—Historian J.G. Randall (1940)

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-a-broken-union-1851-1861/

The war is coming……Abe( a name he hated) Lincoln is coming, so much history and so much change is coming…..

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

“Make America Great Again”–Part One

My regular visitors know that I am a history nut….I enjoy all aspects of history and subject that some in our society turn their back on….I have found that many of my regulars also like history especially when I post something that they may not be aware of……

I have found a good historian…….. a man that was a professor at West Point, Major Danny Sjursen…..he has written a series foe Truthdig.org….I will be posting each article…I would post all at once but I know bloggers and he would be ignored after about 2 or 3 parts….Maj. Sjursen takes a look at our history and the roots of “Make America Great Again” (which is not unique to the Trump era)…….

Part One in our American History series……..

American Slavery, American Freedom (Colonial Virginia 1607-1676)

Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth, a comforting tale of trials, tribulations and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America—a self-proclaimed “indispensable nation”—is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: Our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a “new world”—a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.

The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story, that of a chosen, comforting narrative (the legend of the Pilgrims), and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-truthdiggers-original-sin/

I hope my readers enjoy this series….I found it interesting and informative….I hope you do so as well.

Human Trafficking Or Slavery?

Today is Anti-Slavery Day!  18Oct18!

A few years back I went to a seminar on human trafficking as part of a certificate that I wanted….the subject is fascinating and a topic that needs more attention in the news.

But first we need to understand just what is human trafficking…..

Slavery is a product of human trafficking…..and there has been a study made on Modern Slavery…..

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

https://www.cfr.org/interactives/modern-slavery/

Then there are the countries where slavery is a part of life….a sad indictment of the world today…..after all it is the 21st century and we should be better than this…..

As you can see that slavery is not some aspect of life from the past…it is real and people are suffering from its practices today.

I hope the shirt vids that are provided here was of help in understanding what is happening in the world….virtually under the noses of our leaders.  Maybe my post will help generate interest in the subject….and help generate a concern that leads to action to help the world move beyond this barbarous act.

If you can please do whatever it takes to help fight this subject….if you are not sure how to fight this ….then maybe this vid will help…..

Thanx for your time and attention on this subject……please help if you can.

Closing Thought-06Aug18

Slavery is alive and well!

The US does more to support modern day slavery than most Americans know……support may be the worse word to use but it still tells the story.

A new survey on modern slavery around the world pegs the number of people in the US who fall into that category at about 400,000, reports the Guardian. The new Global Slavery Index also puts the number worldwide at 40.3 million and rising. While modern slaves in the US make up just a fraction of that figure, the group behind the survey—the Walk Free Foundation—says America plays a deeper role in the problem as the biggest importer of goods produced by suspected slave labor. The 2016 estimate was $144 billion worth of such goods. Other report highlights:

  • Worst offenders: North Korea has the highest concentration of modern slaves, who account for 1 in 10 of the population, or 2.6 million people, reports CNN. Then comes Eritrea, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Mauritania, South Sudan, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Iran.
  • Women hit hardest: The vast majority of modern slaves, 71%, are women, reports Axios. The usual route is through forced marriages.
  • Solutions: The foundation calls for outlawing forced marriages, setting a minimum marriage age of 18, setting up a database of human trafficking cases, and bringing greater transparency to the world’s supply chain.
  • One victim: “Over 40 million people … they are not numbers,” says North Korean defector Yeon-mi Park, who escaped to China only to be forced into a marriage, per the AP. “It could be anyone. It was me. It was my mother. It was my sister. Even now, there are 300,000 North Korean defectors in China, and 90% of them are being trafficked. They are being sold by Chinese men for a few hundred dollars.”

Human trafficking is a blight on this world…..every civilized nation should be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

My week begins and Monday comes to an end….at least my posting…..be well, be safe….chuq

Closing Thought–23Apr18

In the past I have written many articles about the crap around what is called “Charter Schools”…..these are the way that the Uber-Right has hijacked the education of our children…..I have called it education by lotto.

My friend Xena of “We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident” turn me on to a new aspect of charter schools………

It seems that a teacher in Texas gave a homework assignment of giving positive aspects of slavery……

A Texas charter school is apologizing after a teacher gave an assignment to an eighth grade American History class, asking students to list the positive aspects of slavery.

“When I first read it, I thought, this was b.s.,” said Great Hearts Monte Vista eighth-grade student Manu Livar.

Continue reading:  Homework assignment asks students to list positive aspects of slavery

I know there are many that actually think there is positive aspects to slavery….but somehow I think that are deluded or just plain racist.

This is why our educational system sucks……..revisionists teaching our children.

Ignorance About Slavery

When it comes to the subject of American slavery the student is woefully misinformed for the most part.

Every American knows though some do not want to acknowledge that the American South was a hot bed of slavery…….too many make too many excuses for the   situation and our educational system is no help in teaching the real story of slavery……

Just eight percent of American high school seniors can identify the cause of the Civil War; less than a third (32 percent) know which amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.; and fewer than half (46 percent) know that the “Middle Passage” refers to the harrowing voyage across the Atlantic undertaken by Africans kidnapped for the slave trade. These are only a few of the more unnerving findings from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which concludes that in classrooms across the country, the subject of slavery is as mistaught as it is misunderstood.

Drawing from online surveys of 1,000 12th-graders and more than 1,700 social studies teachers, along with an exhaustive analysis of the 10 most widely read U.S. history textbooks, the SPLC’s latest report attempts to assess how well the country understands its original sin. In a word, the results are “abysmal.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/wont-believe-american-high-schools-teaching-students-slavery/

More on the study made on the subject of slavery as taught in our high schools……

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/04/582468315/why-schools-fail-to-teach-slaverys-hard-history

I am old and I live in the South……I have heard just about every  excuse possible for the act of slavery….none of them are acceptable…..at least to me.  Ignoring the institution will not make it go away……teaching falsehoods will not make it more acceptable.

Check For Runaway Slaves

Since 1865 the US has been slave free….and you would think that in the 21st century that slavery would be a thing of the past, right?

You would be greatly mistaken as I was when I first read an article about this situation……

Trafficked people passing through Libya have previously reported violence, extortion and slave labour. But the new testimony from the International Organization for Migration suggests that the trade in human beings has become so normalised that people are being traded in public.

“The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM’s head of operation and emergencies. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”

The north African nation is a major exit point for refugees from Africa trying to take boats to Europe. But since the overthrow of autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi, the vast, sparsely populated country has slid into violent chaos and migrants with little cash and usually no papers are particularly vulnerable.

http://www.therealafrican.com/2017/11/arab-slave-trade-re-surfaces-in-libya/

CNN brought this story to light…..they should be commended for finding this story and digging for the facts…..

CNN recently released an exclusive report detailing slave auctions occurring across Libya. Migrants and refugees, comprised of people who have travelled to Libya with the hopes of a better future, are being auctioned off. Instead of providing them with a better future, the smugglers sold them to labourers for under one thousand U.S. dollars. After seeing footage of such an auction taking place, CNN travelled to Libya to investigate further and to verify the information. The journalists witnessed one auction outside Tripoli and were told of at least eight others across the country – and there is believed to be more.

While CNN’s report may be bringing this issue to the attention of the mainstream media, this is not a new development. Mohammed Abdiker, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Director of Operation and Emergencies, called the slave market in Libya “dire” after visiting earlier this year. In April, the Independent talked to migrants in a rehabilitation centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Sicily. Here they heard stories from Nigerian men who had spent time in Libya on their journey to Europe. While there, they were made to do hard labour, threatened with guns if they refused to work or asked for pay. This is not an isolated incident. IOM estimated almost half of the migrants arriving in Italy had been forced into work, 90% of this taking place in Libya.

http://theowp.org/libyas-modern-day-slave-trade/

The world and most media outlets do not want to report on such stories…..for no one cares about Africa…..so they ignore an important story as slave trade in Libya.

I have lost some respect for CNN over the last couple of decades…..but they have gained my respect for this story.

Frederick Douglass on Capitalism, Slavery, and the ‘Arrant Nonsense’ of Socialism

Yes I know…I am a history nerd and I am proud of it.

One of my favorite people from around the Civil War time was the abolitionist Frederick Douglass…..I recent did a press of an article in slavery and capitalism and I saw another related article in Reason ….I thought I would pass it along….

Understanding the political philosophy of the abolitionist leader.

In November 1848 a socialist activist gave a speech at the 13th annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. “Mr. Ingliss” began his remarks well enough, reported the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, who was present to give a speech of his own that day, “but strangely enough went on in an effort to show that wages slavery is as bad as chattel slavery.”

Douglass soon became infuriated with the socialist speaker. “The attempts to place holding property in the soil—on the same footing as holding property in man, was most lame and impotent,” Douglass declared. “And the wonder is that anyone could listen with patience to such arrant nonsense.”

Frederick Douglass heard a lot of arrant nonsense from American socialists in those days. That’s because most socialists thought the anti-slavery movement had its priorities all wrong. As the left-wing historian Carl Guarneri once put it, most antebellum socialists “were hostile or at least indifferent to the abolitionist appeal because they believed that it diverted attention from the serious problems facing northern workers with the onset of industrial capitalism.” The true path to social reform, the socialists said, was the path of anti-capitalism.

Source: Frederick Douglass on Capitalism, Slavery, and the ‘Arrant Nonsense’ of Socialism – Reason.com

Douglass is a fascinating individual that does not get the attention he should in our educational system….read an learn about a true American hero….a hero that some would just as soon forget…..but that will not happen as long as I breath….period.

You may thank me later…..