DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery
GOP presidential candidate draws renewed criticism after suggesting slavery helped African Americans develop skills such as being a blacksmith
Archive link: https://archive.ph/JX8Gb
I always like to point out that when congress banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, it didn't stop the desire of slaveholders for new slaves.
Enslaved women were used as brood mares until they physically could not produce more children. Then some of those women were subjected to medical experimentation (without painkillers) to repair the damage caused by pregnancies either too frequent or too early.
The population of enslaved black people quadrupled in the 50 years after the transatlantic slave trade was banned. White slave owners would often rape their enslaved women, and then sell off the children for profit. And could get more profit, because the children had lighter skin.
Oh, and that ban on the transatlantic slave trade? That was very easy to get around. Jim Bowie, as an example, used to smuggle slaves from French pirate slaver traders into the US through the swamps of Louisiana. Then he moved to Texas as part of a plan to turn it into a slave holding nation. (Mexico had actually banned slavery)
Jim Bowie, died at the Alamo, likely in bed shitting himself from cholera. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving sort.
I really should try to control my tangents...
Wasn't the Alamo almost entirely about slavery too? As in a blight on our past that has been misconstrued and blatantly lied about to become something we're taught to be proud of?
Yeah, the entire Texas independence movement was white slaver owners wanting to own slaves in Texas. Which was actually part of Mexico, and had banned slavery in Texas a few years prior, and the white colonist slave owners were having none of it.
There were several rebellions against Santa Anna at the time, Texas was the only "success". All because of the white slave owners pumping a lot of money into the fight.
Parents of the uvalde kids benefited too. Their house hold cost of living went down.
Fuck America and those that still support all the fake life rapist bullshit that it builds.
The claim that slaves benefited from slavery is like saying you benefited from getting your arm torn off because you are now ten pounds lighter.
Exactly, there's a sick, twisted sort of truth in there, but dude is forgetting the slavery side, the no freedom side. He can go into slavery himself if he thinks it's such a great way to learn lucrative new skills.
The point of the claim is to diminish the horrors of slavery and to eliminate it as a factor in the current poverty, lack of education, and crime that endemic in black communities.
Once they do that they can just say it’s a “race” thing, and re-employ racist policies to put black people in their “proper place”, whether it be one of servitude, subjugation, or exile depends on the flavor of bigot.
Unbelievable
Some on the right defended DeSantis, including Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“No one is arguing slaves benefited from slavery,” Watters said Friday on his prime time show. “No one is saying that. It’s not true. They are teaching how Black people develop skills during slavery in some instances that can be applied for their own personal benefit.”
Sooo... they did benefit from slavery, and also didn't benefit from slavery? He said both things in the same breath....
Obviously slavery is purely wrong.
Doublethink is a requirement to be a Fox News host.
I guess there's a Tucker Carlson sized hole of hatred that the other anchors are clamoring to fill
That's called adapting to your circumstances.
Funny, that's actually the argument most often heard in Germany when people want to bring back mandatory military/civil service. Yes, it's slavery, but it'll teach you stuff!
The word benefit and slavery should only be used together when talking about slaveowners and the 1700s-1800s US economy.
This shit is literally doublethink straight out of 1984. And I thought the book was hyperbolic.
We also are approaching the point where we will have 'novel-writing machines.' Except ours will also make movies.
What personal benefits do these people think slaves had/have?
Yeah, like cooking the parts of animals their slavers threw out. How beneficial!
If you can only use your skills by being enslaved, you didn't benefit. Fucking racist prick.
Ok, putting aside the disgusting stupidity of this claim for a second...
... what exactly is the political play here? I just can't see how this is a smart argument or a winning strategy.
Desantis is vying for political points that he can use nationally. He and his campaign think it'll score them points that might help them prove to be more "Trumpy" than other candidates.
Honestly, while it wouldn't totally surprise me to have Republicans sink to an even lower low... I'm just not sure that there's a large contingent of national voters for who "actually slavery was pretty great for black people" is an important issues or a winning message.
I feel like it's ultimately suburban voters who tip the scale in a general election, and defending slavery isn't probably the main issue on their mind. And for the GOP primary, there's no chance that he pulls anything meaningful away from the Trump cult with this shit. It just seems so stupid.
It's all about pushing the needle and normalizing this shit. They can do whatever they want in Florida so they test drive their facist ideologies there.
I don't think Desantis is being tooled as a viable candidate, just a useful ton of dead weight to push the scales further right.
I don't think this, in particular, is about the campaign. It's about ideology. I don't think DeSantis is a grifter that only cares about getting elected or getting people to like him (unlike Trump). I think he is an actual pseudo-fascist. He is implementing all these changes to reshape Florida in his image. In this example, his goal is to have kids to grow up thinking all the poor black people are poor because they are not good workers or people, which is probably what he believes, or worse.
Some presidential candidates benefit from being punched repeatedly in the face. Let’s not demonize presidential candidate face punching so quickly either.
It may improve the appearance of some of the presidential candidates. We really need to both sides the presidential face punching issue.
The guy must've been inspired by Django.
He didn't watch it til the end.
You can argue that just about anything has some benefit to someone. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all
But you know having a better quality of life with more opportunities will exponentially benefit you more than any of that shit. On top of you know, having the actual ability to do something that you would actually enjoy doing with your skillset.
All this to say that trying to push the idea that being a slave wasn't all bad has absolutely no beneficial views period.
What servitude would DeSantis need to be forced into, to develop skills such as basic human empathy?
Probably best to just get rid of him entirely.
Let's give him an all-expense-paid trip with OceanGate
Everytime someone suggests this, I'd suggest them to go back a few hundred years in history and live the life of all the people back then.
If they then still have the courage to suggest it,then I'll watch.
I'm pretty sure any "skills" learned under slavery didn't create any amount of net good. When slavery ended the living conditions for former slaves plummeted. As a slave they were property, they had value, and their owners had good reason to keep them alive or maintain their selling value. As a free citizen they became a business cost, and held no value to their bosses. Therefore former slaves would get paid next to nothing to do the same brutal work they were doing as slaves, with a whole tsunami of apathetic racism to deal with too.
Yeah, a black man may have learned blacksmithing, but his life was still shit. The life of his children was still shit. Those "skills" didn't do jack shit, if they could even apply them? Like imagine being an uneducated recently freed slave in a society where an overwhelming amount of cunts hate you for no good reason, now imagine what a job search would be like under those conditions.
Nothing about slavery was fucking good.
Nothing about slavery was fucking good.
Disney got a movie out of it! Zip-a-de-doo-dah!
I'm sure black people couldn't possibly have developed these skills on their own terms if they were free. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Can we get a triple down for the hat trick?
And people said "it can't get more stupid than trump."
Desanctimonius...
If someone is a slave, there is no incentive to learn new skills.
They don't need "incentive". All they need is complete and utter loss of hope and humanity so that they eventually realize they should just "make the best of it".
That or the threat of beatings.
There was a picture of a Congolese man who was forced to work on a Dutch rubber plantation with his entire family. This man was staring at the severed hand of his 5 year old daughter. She lost her hand because she failed to meet her quota. If that man suddenly became the most productive slave on the plantation... was that a good thing? Or was he forced into an inhumane situation that is absolutely inexcusable?
Farm work is a useful skill. The incentive was a whip.
If the GOP candidate is so enthusiastic to extol the benefits of being a slave, why has he not volunteered himself into slavery so that, he too, could gain these benefits he's claiming enslaved people received?