White House says slavery is being taught wrong, should not be so negative
https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-says-slavery-being-taught-wrong-should-not-so-negative-2117100Open linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com758
Comments129https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-says-slavery-being-taught-wrong-should-not-so-negative-2117100Open linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com
Should not be so negative?
No no no. My Good'ole'Boy high school curriculum told me the slaves were forced off the Plantation by the mean Union thugs in their War Of Northern Aggression.
Clearly, this picture is just out of context or propaganda or idk he was clearly doing drugs and the police were just trying to help him out but he wouldn't stop resisting.
Slavery was such an ingrained institution that there was for sure some disruption brought by ending it - even some disruption for the enslaved.
People can mine this for evidence that the Union harmed people by ending slavery, but that’s a bad faith outlet for slavery apologists, and nothing more.
Good change can be disruptive. I guess we can always count on Conservatives to place “no change” above all other priorities though. It’s kind of right there in their name.
Unless the changes are hiking tariffs, gutting regulations, and embarking on a new generation of wars.
That’s the terrifying thing: Republicans are no longer conservative and we don’t know what the hell they are.
Republicans have been fascist since McKinley. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Conservatives were never a "no change" party, anywhere. The thing they were conserving was the unearned privilige and prerogatives of the elite. Conservatism was started as a reaction against Englightment ideas of rule of law, meritocracy and accountability.
Conservativism has always represented the interests of the elite, whether those interests were precedented (like neoptism) or not (like, say, the enclosure of the commons in the UK).
Robert E. Lee, the hero of the south, tortured his slaves so savagely that his own slave overseer was disgusted and refused to participate. Which leads me to believe that the scars seen in this photo should be considered "within reason."
See? Bright side to everything if you're enough of a monster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
and that's not even getting into lynching picnics for the whole family, or community, cannibalism, using hair and other body parts of slaves to make medical devices, furniture, or decoration, and who can forget sexual slavery, raping slaves and selling the resulting children into slavery, many first hand accounts from slaves talk about constant sexual abuse. so it's not ALL just torture and mutilation of living people, or dehumanizing them in every way imaginable.
and one of the big fat myths of slavery, the docile happy slave. Never happened, slaves were very frequently rebelling, trying to organize to over throw their masters, and creating a whole systems of escape. There was no happiness in slavery, it a daily power struggle to suppress slave revolts and uprisings, and keep slaves in a constant state of fear and terror.
That's what the "well-regulated militias" were for in the Second Amendment.
Slavery is negative for a reason.
Are you forgetting how good it was for all those slave owners though? They liked it a whole lot.
Most slave owners in the US South weren't doing all that well. They typically had large debts and widely variable cashflow (not that they deserved sympathy for that). The ones who really made big money on slavery were the slave traders (and their investors) and the banks.
Epstein files
Epstein Files
after 200 years, the house finally lives up to its name.
Priceless
It should be renamed the Shite House to be more reflective of its current occupant.
Idk if you seen prageru, basically had a cartoon where Christopher Columbus said how "being slave was better than being dead"
(this ignores the thousands of taihno who committed suicide, choosing death over servitude, and how much work Colombus' men put into preventing others from choosing the same path)
How bout we enslave this fucking nazi turd. Drag his fat fucking ass around, go full mussolini.
If anyone deserves to be tortured and dismembered, it’s Trump.
While I'm not at all disagreeing, it's pretty wild this comment is still up 😅
After he loses all limbs, then lather him up with gasoline and turn his Jabba the Hutt ass into ash.
I can only get so erect.
I feel like the only way to teach them that slavery is wrong is to enslave them. I will personally volunteer to recreate the whipping scene from Roots for everyone who thinks slavery wasn't so bad. Starting with the orange.
Exposure therapy one crack at a time
Don’t forget the rape.
Pass
Oh I think they're familiar with that one, they're just always on the other end
That's why Trump likes it so much. Well, that and the fact that he's the racist son of a Klansman slumlord.
They would just claim your form of slavery is not what slavery was actually like back then. These people don’t want to learn or improve themselves. They want to be able to say “I win” without having to actually do anything.
I still think I would have a good time whipping them to death.
Whitehouse is not sane and should not be given any credence
Can we just start revolting yet?
We can but pulling logistics online leaves us open to plan spying by the enemy. Even using Signal is not secure enough if the govt military can be outed on it
To be fair to Signal, they kinda outed themselves by including that journalist in the chat. That's not really a fault of signal. But they also shouldn't have been using signal in the first place, so there's that.
Failure to observe basic principles of communication security led to them being outed.
The people rising up would include most of the military. If not literally all
If they were rising up on our side, we could have the legislature and the whitehouse cleaned out in no time. They would more likely rise up on the govts side
Absolutely nobody in the military enjoys especially his global politics
museums should start showcasing trumps epstein and russian collusions in thier exhibits.
Conservative idiots like Trump want to white (heh) wash slavery because they want to bring slavery back. Not just for black people, but of course especially for black people first, but also for all the other poors they think they can exploit to make themselves richer. Somehow they think everyone should be on board with this, and alas probably some subset of idiots will be even after they're already wearing the manacles themselves.
Stupid racist white people would be slaves and be saying, "I may be a slave, but at least I'm not a black slave."
Slavery still exists in the US, it just now only mostly focused on African Americans. The Prison Industrial Complex is an abomination.
Yes, it still exists as the "except as punishment for a crime" loophole in the 13th amendment. And when fascists are in power, they love to make any arbitrary thing a crime so they have a justification to imprison anybody.
Once they run out of farm workers due to having deported them all, expect Trump and his cronies to be super keen to staff those same farms using slave labor -- for profit, of course -- via just rounding up whoever else they don't like on phony charges.
It’s almost as if racism is a core value among American conservatives.
Don't forget pedophilia.
Trump feuding with a history museum. You'd think that would sound the 'fascist' alarm to his supporters, but seems like nothing will.
That's not an alarm to them, it's a theme tune.
They don’t care as long as the fascist is “their” guy.
When I was in middle school, we had to make a list of pros and cons of slavery for classwork. I remember it being homework but I can't see that bullshit flying if the parents knew.
Pros and cons from who's perspective?
That, detective, is the right question.
Skip, tldr; the god perspective, it wasn't the right question and wasted time. Obviously the perspective of the reader which if mentally stable understand the god perspective and thereby learn from it.
I feel like there are two ways that list could go.
The first is trying to whitewash slavery. The second is trying to help students understand why horrible things like this happen; why did entire economic systems get built for such a horrific practice.
Lol we are still under oppressive economic systems meant to strip us of our identities and leave us as worker slaves barely making ends meet but still deciding between medication or food. We live in the greatest country in the world /s
So don't teach about slavery?
And you know something? Chattel slavery was far, far worse.
Pros: Removes any ambiguity about who the shitbags are.
Cons: Now good people have to kill the shitbags to free the slaves.
The JohnBrowncoats vs the Brownshirts
I like it honestly. Remove the idiocratic "Because it's bad, duh".
No. Make your research. Understand the problem. Feel the problem. See how far it gone, and why people used that, and what was the price to pay.
wtf ?
Pro: Less work for me
Con: More work for them
Southern state?
So, teaching the horrors of slavery is woke now? They are just telling on themselves now.
People sang more back then. There were hardly any workers comp claims. And it kept kids off their dang iPhones.
And their great great grandchildren will get 40 acres and a mule.
Compensation should be the value of 40 acres and a mule, compounded at the going interest rate for 160 years. That bill shoud be paid by the states of the former Confederacy.
Also, black people in those states should be given 5/3 of a vote for 100 years, to compensate for the 3/5 rule.
The logic:
400 years of slavery but your great great grand grand kids have been taught 1 or 2 farming skills a piece.
Oh, and we will be generous and only charge half price for those 400 years of your food and lodging.
You owe us really...
Did you even say thank you?
There we go.
Oh no!! Maybe he should go back in time and prevent the developement of chatel slavery, if he's so worked up about the historical representation of slavery in-general.
That said, chatel slavery seems alive and well in the US Prison system. Maybe some of us really are too distracted by the history to bother fixing things in the present. Mr. Mangione allegedly might have something to say about it. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention at that cookout, back on December 4th.
You think so, and you're right, but ask yourself why TACO want would want to reframe slavery as "not that bad."
Its because they're going to start renting out the detainees of the concentration camps for labor.
Considering the thirteenth amendment literally enshrined slavery into our Constitution... Yeah, it's alive and well.
Y’all know he’s demented as fuck, right?
It's amazing how all these dumbasses look exactly the same. I knew exactly what she'd look like even before watching the video.
Fun fact I overheard! This is a thing in cults. It's something about a uniform appearance plus appearance policing (either overt or to fit in).
https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-plastic-surgery-trend
So this article talks about extensive surgery and over the top procedures, and then the only actual person it mentions apparently hasn't had much work done, just dental work and styling. And no photos. Am I taking crazy pills?
"Just dental work and styling"
Yeah ok fair, but I was talking more about the writing. They still framed it that way. But she does look terrifying. Do people really think this is what Ivanka looks like because...it's uh, not.
I think the author's are being cautious about calling out someone's appearance. It can be hard to determine if a plastic surgery did happen, and if it was purely cosmetic.
Like if you look at her now, she clearly has a difference nose (more noticeable in more recent photos), but writing "Kristi had a nose job to look more like Ivanka" lands the wrong way if you can't prove that she actually had a nose job, and that it was for that reason. Imagine how bad your ass would get sued if she actually had a cyst or melanoma on her nose, and had to have it removed and then get reconstructive surgery?
Ok, so I just watched the Kristi Noem South Park episode last night, and it was pretty much about this, lol.
i just googled maralago face and this was the first thing that popped up. theres better sources for sure
Bruh
I am so ready to go home and throw it in much trash Mormon mother's face. I hate that she buys into this shit.
We have to keep drilling in that slavery is bad because there are still so many fucking racists in this country.
Black people loved slavery. There. I cut out all the euphemisms and just got us to the end goal to save us some time.
You need to take the bad with the good, otherwise you'll never understand how far we've come. We hold on to slavery to remind us what it took, how efforts were not in vain, and to continue work on pushing for the things we believe in. We are here today because of the hardships we have endured yesterday. It's not "white guilt", it's to remind the world that slavery is bad no matter who does it, to teach us what it looks like, and that we all benefit from eliminating slavery, no matter the form it takes.
When we forget those things, we have things like the anti-vacc movement. People who have their own beliefs that fly in the face of reality, who've never had the experiences first hand, and to bend the notion of what is good. It rewrites the legacy of people's efforts, obscures the lessons used to fight, and trivializes the problems of the time. It manipulates both people and purpose and turns it against each.
My own opinion: Nobody feels guilty about slavery. There are only those that feel regret it's not still around.
time to stomp some Nazi Republicans? please?
I thought they were all about facts not caring about their feelings
No, they were about facts not caring about your feelings. Where their feelings are involved, it's the opposite; their feelings don't care about facts.
Reminds of the video with the confederate idiot that talks about how his family was so poor and couldn't even afford slaves.
Would no one think of the crackers??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QJgTVvEkVg
Gotta think of the crackers.
They’re the foundation to any meat and cheese platter.
They're very delicate, please refer to them as Porcelain Americans.
Like crackers!
Is it just me or is whitewashing slavery the first step in reinstituting slavery?
just a reminder that Newsweek is a conspiracy-peddling, right-wing rag that we should not be driving traffic to
lol
The word "negative" doesn't appear once outside the title
And yet the title is still an accurate summary.
Focusing on the "progress" and "hope" while teaching slavery is indeed a form of white washing of history.
Convicted felon says museums are woke and out of control.
The world's largest museum, education and research complex says they are grounded in accurate presentation of history.
It's pretty clear that the US government is targeting the Smithsonian and other historical archives to rewrite history.
Considering the other articles linked which talk about the removal of trump's impeachments and other pressures on historical facts and accuracy, I'd be worried about the following quote:
So, yeh the Nazis killed a bunch of people. But they also developed the Volkswagen, Porsche and Hugo Boss. And we have all come to appreciate fancy cars and fly shirts. So, let's not focus on what the Nazis did, but instead let's concentrate on the hope that cars bring!
And even if you argue that "things are better now". Sure, somewhat. But, imo, it's not really something to celebrate. Black people can vote, but shitty racist people in power still suppress the fuck out of them.
Germany recognises it's history. It teaches it in school, it's made memorials & museums of historically abhorrent places, and it's outlawed everything related.
US still celebrates Thanksgiving.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maiahoskin/2022/11/24/the-real-history-behind-thanksgiving/
So yeh, here is the directive:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/
So, eliminate some history.
But - depending on how carefully that scalpel is wielded - it could cut away the bad parts and leave the "good" parts. Cherry picking, if you will.
Leaves a generally positive vibe of slavery.
Divisive and anti-american to whip/hang/rape slaves. So, leave that part out.
But provide the American dream for a slave by impregnating them and giving them a less crowded room and easier slave labour, or elevating them to a house position, or whatever... THATS the American dream!
Slaves that behaved were treated well.
But, just leave out the thousands of slaves that were beaten for sensless reasons because they were considered barbaric and sub-human.
Just... Ignore the fact that they were kidnapped from their home, transported for weeks in horrendous conditions, then auctioned off to rich white men.
The lack of quotation marks around any part of the title indicates it’s not a direct quote.
Is there something you feel is inaccurate about it?
'Bad' and 'negative' are synonyms here.
You can't understand progress without an understanding of historical reality.
Jfc. If this administration rewrites anymore history the US is going to just up and disappear. First it's oh slavery wasn't that bad, then its what slaves? We didn't have slaves. Then we go full circle and have slaves again
Well, yes? The US has this strange fixation on slavery. It is a horrible practice that is believed to traumatize people for generations. While in reality the slavery was almost everywhere these times (if we don't focus on Europe). Maybe it's time to ask yourself, has the slavery really left this deep wound or maybe it was something else?
The problem is, this country is filled with slavery apologists like you. The only reason we have to keep reminding people how terrible slavery was is because people like you keep trying to normalize it, and it's fucking gross.
I am not from the US and have never been there. Sorry for not making this clear, but it's my impression as a bystander. Also slavery is horrible, we should never return to it, as if it wasn't that straightforward from the message.
In no way do I try to normalize it for today's reality. It used to be normal back then and we should never return there.
US slavery wasn't the same as slavery from other regions for that time period.
While other imperialist nations had slaves (although many had ended it at some point earlier than the US did by a significant amount of time), they still viewed said slaves as humans, even if in some cases still lesser. They also had slaves from different nations and empires (this is relevant to the "viewed as humans" part).
In the US however, slavery was limited to only those considered of the "black race", and those people weren't considered humans. It's why the 1 drop rule existed too - basically, if you were any percent "black", you were considered "black" because you were essentially now seen as not fully human, but a hybrid.
This dehumanization meant that US slaves were treated far worse than any other slaves for the time period (in non war-time). To the point that slave owners even forcibly bred slaves for specific characteristics as if they were cattle - something that was never done in history as far as I'm aware by violent force, the closest being that one king in Europe who enslaved tall people and made them part of an elite "giants" army, where they got special treatment but could only have tall wives as well. This breeding program the US had was even one of Hitler's inspirations for his eugenics programs many years into the future.
This also meant that owners could kill slaves without repercussion in absolute - and that was a big distinction to other imperialist nations at the time as well. Yes, other empires would overwork and kill their slaves (the Spanish in the Caribbean especially), but they also couldn't just start killing wantonly without some type of repercussions from their monarchy, as some authority always still belonged to the crown state.
That was not the case in the USA. Killing your slave would be seen no different as killing your pigs or chickens. They were property in the absolute.
Another difference to most slavery in history is that you couldn't really escape slavery. In other empires or nations, you could escape by either literally escaping a province or because there was a year limit to how long you could be a slave. In some cases you could even buy your way out.
That also wasn't the case in the USA for the longest time, with the only methods of escape being making it to Canada or Southern Mexico / Central America. And if you did make it to Canada, getting kidnapped back to the USA wasn't unheard of.
But in all, the biggest effect was that slaves were 100% dehumanized in the US - something that was not the case anywhere else. US slavery wasn't just awful, but arguably the worst institutionalized forms of slavery in human history, especially including it's duration.
Now, as to why slavery is at the root of why there's still effects to this day, consider that slaves went from legally not being considered humans, to suddenly being humans by law. Do you think the millions who didn't see them as humans would change their views just as fast? Even after hundreds of years, there's still some that don't view them as humans, but many many more that think of them as lesser. Essentially, the mentality is of imperial Europeans 250+ years ago.
To downplay that, would be the equivalent of Germany deciding to downplay the Nazi regime.
Thank you for painting this vivid picture. Now I understand where I was utterly wrong and where I completely missed the tone.
The worst form of institutionalized slavery is clear to me and probably that's why I get attacked here (rightfully).
I did not change my view on why the slavery still affects US society, but it looks like the conversation should be approached from a different angle as what I have written was inappropriate and ignorant.
Again, thank you, kind person 🙏
I didn't even cover the after effects, such as when the US military bombed a Black town or secretly infected Blacks with Syphilis, these things being less than 100 years ago, to name a few.
The Tuskegee experiment was horrible, but the researchers didn’t infect those men with syphilis. They “just” didn’t inform them that they were infected, treat them, or encourage them to seek treatment.
There are different forms of slavery. The US was unique in that it was a system of race based chattel slavery, and really, the idea of “race” was invented alongside it.
Slavery in west Africa would often mean that the person would end up being integrated into the tribe over a long period of time (varies immensely group by group, but still the general trend). In the Middle East, Muslims were not allowed to hold other Muslims as slaves, so sometimes conversion could be a ticket out (there’s some funny complexities there).
Slavery in the US was a uniquely barbarous institution. It was industrialized, it treated people as resources. Perhaps an especially brutal Roman latifunda could compare in an individual’s experience, but even then, a freeman in Roman society would still be about equivalent to most every one else.
Slavery didn’t stop in the US after it ended. Tons of masters chose not to tell their slaves that the Emancipation Proclamation had freed them until sometimes decades after the fact. After the Civil War, the KKK ran a campaign to terrorize Black communities. Communities also immediately passed things like vagrancy laws, which started the system of slavery as punishment for a crime that we still have today.
There have been forces in the US attempting to minimize slavery since before the ink was even dry on the peace treaty. Please do not join them.
That doesn't mean you're not an apologist.
The things you're saying say otherwise but sure and no it was never normal and no most of the world wasn't involved in chattel slavery, slavery to some level of another sure but that isn't at all same thing.
So maybe we should show people how horrible it was, so no one decides it could be normal again?
I said this country is filled with slavery apologists like you, not that you, yourself, were here. It hardly matters where you, personally, are.
And for someone who thinks slavery is horrible, you're sure trying very hard to carry water for someone trying to insist it wasn't. I'm going to be very generous and assume you don't fully know who or what you're white knighting here, but if that's the case, you really should butt out now.
what on earth ? get lost bro
Or rather, learn some history, meet some people... rectify this awful stance, please
OK so, willful ignorance ( or fundamental misunderstandings ) and false dichotomies aside.
I'm interested in hearing what you mean by "something else".
Economy
That's.....not as helpful as it could be.
Some elaboration, perhaps?
Let's not trivialize slavery by saying that everyone else was doing it.
As far as the deeper cuts go, it was about overt racism as well. Slavery in the US was justified by saying that the slaves were less than people (or even human) because they weren't white. Slavery may have been abolished, but that justification is still strong if you go to the wrong parts of the US today.
Yikes.