Florida Democrat Introduces Bill To Prevent Teaching That Black People 'Benefited From Slavery'
Florida Democrat Introduces Bill To Prevent Teaching That Black People 'Benefited From Slavery'
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101 comments
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It's depressing that something like that is needed in the first place.
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Yeah it is. I've actually heard people make this argument too. How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
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How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
stupid enough to re-elect DeSantis
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Ol' Pudding Fingers, himself, king of the Go-Go boots! The meatball-iest of Rons!
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At the Atlanta History museum there's a whole "both sides" exhibit on the civil war that makes this argument (and makes me vomit).
They put it in just in time for the '96 Atlanta Olympics and it's been there ever since.
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Atlanta has a bunch of traitors carved into a big rock on the side of a mountain too.
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It’s annoying that the confederacy is viewed so closely to slavery that the only people that support them are people that want slaves (I mean there’s no other reason to support it now but it’s because of how they are viewed by dumb people)
The war wasn’t about slavery, the union had slave states but people without high school educations don’t know that
No one talks about Egypt taking over the cotton market or the parallels to today
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Great, another slavery denier. Just totally ignore the actual declarations by the states themselves that they are leaving the union because they want slavery.
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When did I say slavery didn’t exist?
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"the war wasnt about slavery"
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That doesn’t say slavery doesn’t exist, I know the American school system sucks but learn to read
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The war wasn’t about slavery
The confederate states themselves said otherwise at the time.
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The war wasn’t about slavery
This is both the most ignorant thing I've read today, and also ironic considering it's followed by complaining about ignorant people
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Way to show your ignorance and inability to learn from history. It’s about voting power and the same thing is happening today
Let’s take a group of states and for this example we will call them “red states” now imagine their policies lack broad appeal but they keep winning. Hard to imagine right? Hopefully you can fathom it
Now let’s come to an obstacle where they think it can either destroy their ensure they always win. Let’s say that obstacle is voting maps. Technically if the voting maps are fair then they always lose so what should they do? Rig the maps of course
Now let’s pretend another part of the country is blue, they have popular opinions and stand to benefit from fair voting. Let’s pretend they pass a law requiring voting be fair, well what can the red states do at that point? They have to rebel, it’s the only way to stay in power. Maybe they will attempt to avoid certifying an election or maybe they will storm that capital. If all else fails then they might attempt to form their own union
Now that you’ve seen a hypothetical, imagine if instead of red states and blue states it was slave states and non-slaves states. Now imagine if the blue/non-slave states wanted to bring in a bunch more states but they could only be blue (non-slave). Well then you would never have a red government
And that is what happened, the slave states were worried that they wouldn’t be able to control the country so they rebelled
I hope this entry level civil war education showed you how saying it was about slavery is dangerous and it fails to teach people the lessons from it that we are currently going through again
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It was about the southern states wanting to own slaves. They said so themselves in their secession letters.
The northern states, not being complete monsters or wanting to treat fellow human beings like property, refused to let anyone join their side who wanted slaves.
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Like come on
I know you’re wrong but you don’t have to lie
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Yes, and laws had been passed in (nearly) all that either slavery was outlawed or no NEW slaves could be imported. Slavery was being gradually eliminated and that's what the rebel states were upset about. And the potential economic impact.
In March 1861, Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, gave his view on the issue:
The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of . . . the equality of races. This was an error . . .
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.
It's not accurate to say it was "only" about slavery, but it's the best one-point answer you could give, and the biggest issue.
The issue is that there has been a giant movement to minimize the "we really wanted slavery" part are reframe it was a "state's rights" thing which is highly inaccurate way to frame things and stupid.
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Slavery was being gradually eliminated and that’s what the rebel states were upset about.
I talked about this in another comment
But thank you for having an actual comment
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… You haven’t actually read any of those letters, have you.
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The northern states, not being complete monsters or wanting to treat fellow human beings like property, refused to let anyone join their side who wanted slaves.
So obviously they are wrong because the Union already existed with the confederate states in it but let’s give this person the benefit of the doubt and say they meant after some of the slave states left (hard when they are dumb enough to think it was over slavery) as you can see from the image. You have grey states for Union states with slavery at the same time as the confederacy existed. Even if you want to ignore my explanation for why the Confederacy left the Union (not kicked out, not unable to join because the Union was moral) they are straight up lying by saying there wasn’t slavery in the Union
Again the only people that say it was about slavery are racists who want slavery to return . Everyone else is smarter than that
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Should probably change your name to ILikeDownvotes
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I think it's more like not explaining it in terms of the economic conditions for which slavery really provided the basis for. Like the northern merchant economy vs the south planter class. When anyone could essentially get free real estate, convincing people to work the land to generate profit required coercion. Indentured servants since colonization were used, "white" slaves even preferred, but the existing trade networks like the Dutch were really instrumental in providing the means to extract profit from the land. Racism and white supremacy didn't cause this, they developed out of this arrangement, the purpose of which was to produce cotton, corn, etc.
Slavery was crucial though because the public campaign against chattel slavery in the north was very real and a major contributor to the public acceptance and motivation for the war. The US as it exists today was essentially built between the Civil War and WW1, and reducing it to just slavery is really not explaining everything, but also it really was "about" slavery in many ways. So I just say yes it was about slavery, but also everything around slavery, and the things that made slavery "necessary" for that economic system to function.
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So I just say yes it was about slavery
This leads to history repeating itself as people never learn past that
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Having read the standards, possibly the worst part about them is that it's not written such that you have to teach that racist bs, but it's obviously written to give cover to those who do. So it's not so much that it's supporting a bullshit way of looking at slavery as an institution in the past. It's really supporting the horrible people who continue to think that way today, and enabling them to pass it on to a new generation.
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They're not stupid, but they're trying to ensure the next generation is.
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Ugh... yeah you're probably right
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Alright I'll bite. Why did it help?
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IIRC, the common argument is that modern Black Americans have great opportunities by virtue of being in America. Without slavery, they would have been born in Africa.
This is ludicrous for a variety of reasons. It's the same kind of thinking that leads to people saying your relative died "because of God's plan", as if suffering always has a good reason to it.
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They overlook the destabilization of Africa that went on during colonialism that led to its current state
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The lesson Florida is teaching is that slaves learned 'useful skills.' They don't say who those skills were useful to though.
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Yeah this argument fails because it subverts the context slavery existed in with a modern notion of American exceptionalism, and applies it in a transhistorical fashion to events in the past.
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I could make a half hearted Devil's advocate argument about it, but ultimately it's a major detriment to the people living under slavery. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evi_i7R0SFQ& just listen to the words of this letter and tell me that it was a benefit.
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Even with the Devil's Advocate argument, sure they may have learned skills that could have benefit them after they were freed, BUT THEY WERE SLAVES.
Also, it ignores the fact that society exists in Africa, so its not like they'd all be in loincloths or w/e the racist caricature of Africans they have is.
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Also, how about all the slaves that were never freed because they died before emancipation? How did they benefit?
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It's like suggesting the holocaust benefitted Jews because they got Israel. How do you even apply this logic... that it's okay to do evil because eventually something good is determined to happen that makes up for it? Do future generations getting a good thing justify the system that perpetrates oppression in the present day? Something good happening isn't determined, and calling the post-war existence of freed slaves "good" is also a stretch.
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They don't. It's just bullshit they made up to distract and confuse you. It's a congress of baboons throwing shit at the wall to see what will stick.
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101 comments