Bennies
Thanks for all the help, slavery!
Kamala Harris was due to visit Florida on Friday, to respond to the state board of education’s controversial new standards for Black history education which include the contention that some Black people benefited from being enslaved.
I wonder if the members of the state board of education wish they could be enslaved so that they too could get some of those sweet sweet benefits.
On Wednesday, the Florida board of education approved new standards for how public schools should teach Black history.
According to a 216-page document, public school students will now be taught that some Black people received “personal benefit” from slavery – because it taught them useful skills.
Well of course it taught them some useful skills, so that they could use those skills to enrich the people who held them in slavery. That’s not an actual “benefit.” That’s exploitation, not benefit.
The changes to the state curriculum came a year after the Republican Florida governor, the presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, enacted the Stop Woke Act, Time reported.
The law prohibits teaching students or employees about anything that could cause them to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” because of their race, color, national origin or sex.
What about the distress felt by descendants of enslaved people? What about the strong likelihood that those descendants will feel flaming hot distress and anguish on being told their great-grandparents derived “personal benefit” from being enslaved?
There was a twitter thread started by some Tom Clancy wannabe international intrigue author who was a retired intelligence officer with one of the military branches. A white guy, obviously. He compared slave descendants seekig reparations to the Vikings who saw what they wanted and pilliaged and looted. Apparently he’s unaware that the Vikings, among their many faults, were slavers. The entire country benefited from the free labor that slavery provided, not only in the South but in the Caribbean. And, no, the 1619 project is not my only source on that. One of his acolytes tried to claim that the only ones who benefited from the labor were the slavers, and that it’s the “Race Peddlers” who claim otherwise.
Tell me, am I so deep in my bubble that I am susceptible to “race propaganda?” I don’t think so.
As for feelings, the only parents whose feelings matter are white parents.
After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the resulting US Civil War of 1861-65 there were I understand some former slaves who were distressed by what they saw as their poor future prospects, and asked their former white owners if they could stay on the plantations doing what they always did. But Slave States policy had always been to keep slaves illiterate, and liberated slaves under the emerging Jim Crow reality were no doubt in some cases worse off as ex-slaves than they had been as slaves.
But there is a difference between education and indoctrination, and the Florida board of education appears to have a lot of trouble distinguishing between the two.
Well no, actually, it doesn’t. The law doesn’t prohibit teaching anything that “could” cause students to feel those things, it prevents instructing students that they must feel those things.
Click on the “prohibits” link, click again on “prohibits” and you get:
“A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex”.
That is a very big difference. Argue against Republicans and their policies and laws by all means — and surely there is abundantly ample reason to do so? — but doesn’t the truth still matter? Doesn’t The Guardian care about accuracy?
And, for a real example of a school instructing children that they must feel those things, see the Gabrielle and William Clark law suit, where the school failed William Clark because he refused to comply.
@Omar,
“If you think slavery was bad, wait till you try Jim Crow” always struck me as more of an indictment of the people in charge than a defense of slavery.
Coel: Do you really think a Florida Bible Belt school board will have your…nuanced….reading of the bill? Especially given the readily available revisionist history texts? I am skeptical. The Guardian may be sloppy here but I bet they are accurate in the real world sense.
But if the precise language of the bill was as really at stake here, then I agree with you actually. But then, the modern social justice left seems to be all about thought control and policing personal beliefs. Should it be against the law to believe racist things? We may all be guilty then. So I partly agree with you!
@Omar #2
After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the resulting US Civil War of 1861-65
You have the order reversed. The US Civil War started before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Colin @ #7: Noted.
From the Guardian, which may upset some, but the information is available in many places – it is about Florida:
‘According to a 216-page document, public school students will now be taught that some Black people received “personal benefit” from slavery – because it taught them useful skills.
‘“Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” one curriculum benchmark said.
‘The new curriculum also says Black people perpetrated violence during some race massacres, including the 1906 Atlanta race riot and the 1921 Tulsa massacre.’
*
I imagine some black people did perpetrate violence during these massacres – in order to defend themselves.
But this is all ancient history with no bearing on the present — except that attempts at gerrymandering in, for example, Alabama are on-going, and interstate highways still cut off black communities from white communities. In Georgia, there has been the strategic closing down of polling places in black areas in order to make voting difficult for Black Americans, and after the 2020 election, the GOP passed legislation to drastically limit voting by mail, since too many Black American voters had voted by mail. After Katrina, with the hysteria that caused about Black ‘looters’ and Black people invading white communities, there were these charming remarks from people in positions of power:
“These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested, and under my orders to restore order in the streets. They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and skill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.”
– Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, quoted in ABC News, Sept. 2, 2005 (three days after Hurricane Katrina struck the state of Louisiana)
[In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina], “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”
– U.S. Cabinet Secretary Alphonso Jackson, Department of Housing and Urban Development, quoted in The Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2005
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
– U.S. Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA), quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2005
***
In Britain, there is much unfinished business regarding the recent, and thoroughly racist, ‘Windrush scandal’, caused by the (Tory) government dragging its feet; the London Metropolitan police have been damned for their racism in the Casey Report; and it turns out that in the case of the sub-postmasters victimised by the Post Office when it knew well the problem was caused by faulty computers, Post Office investigators were ordered to group suspected sub-postmasters in racial categories such as “negroid types” and “dark-skinned European types”. This advice was still in use in 2011.
No, there is nothing to see.
Tim: Thank you. it’s worse than I feared. I would note that the Concentration Camps provided useful opportunities for employment during difficult economic times /sarc
It’s like when men state that women benefit from being men’s property. The men feed and clothe them, hunt the mammoth for them if you will, while the women gain pretty clothes and hairdos, and men work while women stay home all day.
No form of slavery – including the form in the last nineteenth century when labor couldn’t really do much because the only place their money worked was in the company store – has failed to “teach useful skills”. The only problem is, most of those skills aren’t useful in any other place…and even if they are, if you can’t take them and move on to a new, better employer, so what?
Thank you, Brian & iknklast. Yes, truth does matter.
And to respond to Brian M’s point at #5, this occurred recently in South Carolina, in connexion with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, ‘Between the World and Me’, a memoir written about growing up as black in the US:
‘(A)fter getting approval from higher-ups, an AP Language teacher at Chapin High School conducted a lesson involving Between the World and Me. The book, written as an essay to Coates’ son to prepare him for the life he will live as a Black man, details personal accounts of Coates’ life and his first-hand experiences with racism. However, the lesson was shut down and the book was removed from the course after students filed a complaint claiming the book made them feel “guilty for being white,” local news outlet CBS 19 Columbia reported.’ (from the Daily Beast) The book has also upset reactionaries on school-boards in many other places.
We learn from The Atlantic that ‘Matt Krause, a Republican in the Texas House of Representatives, has gone hunting in public-school libraries for any books that might generate “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of [a student’s] race or sex.” In October, he distributed a watch list of 850 books.’
Oh, and I forgot to mention Charlie Kirk, who clearly has a great interest in genetics as well as a large & enthusiastic audience among white thickos:
‘Charlie Kirk’s most recent embarrassing racist rant against affirmative action…devolved into an attack against Michelle Obama, Joy-Ann Reid, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. He said they were too stupid to process information and were only admitted to their respective schools because they were Black. He then said they each STOLE A WHITE PERSON’S SPOT in their school.’ (From a Youtube discussion of the matter.)
Kirk himself, it seems, didn’t even finish community college.
Wokery alert! (from the website Politicus USA)
President Joe Biden is establishing a monument to 14-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till on the anniversary of Till’s birth this Tuesday.
July 25th will be the 82nd anniversary of Emmett Till’s birth.
Till’s murder was so brutal, his body so disfigured by the torture he endured, that his great-uncle whom he had been visiting, Mose Wright, could only identify him by an initialed ring on his finger. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son and so she had his body sent home and held an open-casket funeral.
A photo of Till’s mangled, tortured body helped propel the Civil Rights movement in the United States. On July 25th, President Biden will sign a proclamation to establish a monument to the innocent, murdered boy who was lynched on a lie.
I used to participate on a few bulletin boards. I remember a bit of a discussion, on one of the boards, about the plight of blacks in the US. One participant commented to the effect of what are they (blacks) complaining about? It’s worse in Africa, so they should be greatful their ancestors were brought here. Several initial responses were WTF?! Several responses pointed out that the plight in Africa is a result of the slave trade and colonialism and ongoing imperialism and exploitation. I don’t remember much else of the discussion. It got heated, but stayed rather civil.
From MSNBC:
‘I didn’t do it!’
‘Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., (has been criticised) over Florida’s overhaul to Florida’s African American history standards, and … now seems to be distancing himself from those standards, some of which instruct middle schoolers to be instructed that slavery taught beneficial skills.’
He of course signed the bill on these ‘standards’, or lack of them.
Nice try, Ron.
Kevin Drum read the standards and had some observations:
Mark Twain is probably too ‘woke’ for some, but I do recommend reading ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’, a flawed novel since it was written at pace, perhaps, but a harrowing one. Twain originally gave it the ironic title of ‘The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy of The Extraordinary Twins’. It concerns slavery, and there is little comic about it.
I notice that the Dutch have recently apologised for the role the Netherlands played in enslaving people in various parts of the world. Not much from the British, who congratulate themselves on ending slavery and assume that was the end of the story, when it wasn’t. The ‘freed’ slaves had to continue to work for their masters for some years after being ‘freed’ before they could do anything else, and then they really couldn’t do much else since there wasn’t much else to do, so their position within slavery and without it was precarious. With the collapse of Empire, Caribbean islands became part of the Commonwealth, but the wealth wasn’t common, since Britain made sure to tie up their economies in such a way that those who profited most were the British, as they were before: the Industrial Revolution was too a great degree funded from slave-owner’s profits, and assisted by the immiseration of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh working people.
The National Trust was, and still is, in disfavour among reactionaries and, naturally, the Tory party, since it started pointing out, in its histories of some of the country houses it now owns, that their builders or owners were in many cases people who had made their money out of their plantations in the West Indies. An acquaintance of mine, who studied history at Oxford and subsequently taught it at universities in East Asia, was appalled that the National Trust had done this, and told me that a history of British colonialism was the only important thing – slavery was a side issue. As though slavery were not an integral part of colonialism. It interested me that the facts of slavery and the profits gained from it by British people and the British state were so hard to admit even by someone who is basically fair-minded.
The German side of my family almost certainly profited from slavery. Their earliest known ancestor was a master-dyer in Bremen in the 16th century. The family became traders, throughout the German-speaking lands and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in other places, including Russia. In the first half of the 19th century, some settled in England as well as in New Orleans and became involved in the cotton trade. I suspect – though I do not know – that they would have supported the Confederacy. Not that any of their money came down to their descendants: any money there was was squandered away and my mother was brought up in genteel poverty. I certainly feel no ‘white guilt’ about being descended from people who almost certainly profited from slavery, but I certainly think it proper to admit that slavery was a terrible thing whose ill effects are still with us today, and that its history and its economic importance to European powers as well as to the USA should be honestly recognised. But too many people, whether out of some foolish embarrassment or out of ingrained prejudice, prefer not to be honest.
By the way, it was only in 2015 that the British Government finished paying off compensation to slave-owners for the loss of their ‘property’ — at the expense of British taxpayers, many of whom of course are the descendants of slaves. A considerable amount of inherited wealth (which is to say, property & financial holdings) in Britain derives from slave-owning and the sugar & cotton trade. The Tory MP Sir Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, for example, ‘lives in his family’s ancestral seat, Charborough House – a Grade I listed manor house in rural Dorset. He is the largest individual landowner in Dorset, owning approximately 13,870 acres (5,610 ha), equivalent to 2% of the land in Dorset. He also owns the 2,200-acre (890 ha) Ellerton Abbey farming estate in Swaledale, North Yorkshire, and the nearby 520-acre (210 ha) Copperthwaite Allotment grouse moor’. And he ‘still owns and grows sugar on the same Drax Hall Estate in Barbados that made the family’s fortune.’
According again to Wikpipedia: ‘Over 200 years, 30,000 slaves died at this and the other Drax plantations, according to Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chair of CARICOM’s Reparations Commission. “The Drax family has done more harm and violence to the black people of Barbados than any other”, he said.”
“The Barbados Government is seeking reparations from Drax for his ancestors’ involvement in slavery. The Reparations Commission wants Drax Hall to be returned to Barbados, to be made into a museum. If this request is refused, the government intends to take the matter to an international arbitration court.”
It’s not all ancient history, is it?
I recommend the following website regarding the ‘reparations’ paid to slave-owners: Tax Justice Network; as well as the following article from the Guardian from some months ago: “Beware the ‘ghostliners’: people who mask Britain’s slavery shame and mute calls for justice”, by the historian Kris Manjapra.
I also note that the GOP in Louisiana has very recently refused to comply with a court order that found its maps of voting districts illegal and mandated a 2nd majority Black congressional district.
No, we don’t live in a world where society and its institutions, practices and prejudices do not exist, where the past has no bearing on the present, and where success in life is a purely individual affair, whatever stratum of society you come from. And we never shall.
Here in Alabama as well. SCOTUS upheld a lower-court ruling that is supposed to force the state to form a second majority or near majority Black district. The Republicans in the state ignored any input from Democrats and created a district with a somewhat higher Black population, while reducing the Black proportion of the existing majority-Black district to barely 50%. Not that the dysfunctional Democratic Party in this state did much of anything, but individuals tried. The governor essentially thumbed her nose at the federal judiciary.
It’s not like it would have been difficult. Several people provided candidate maps that met the appropriate criteria. But no. Governor Ivey’s statement “The Legislature knows our state, our people, and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups” translated means “We don’t wanna”.
I haven’t kept up with the Louisiana situation, but it doesn’t appear that they’ve decided on maps yet, so it’s possible that the “refuse to comply” news referred to is about the similar situation in Alabama that just had a decision handed down in the last few days.
Thank you, Sackbut. But it is Louisiana as well as Alabama. There is also a great deal of disputing going on in Texas (and, I suspect, some other states), but so far as I know this hasn’t yet led to the involvement of the courts.
To turn to another matter, the New York Times writes that the Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard’s tradition of ‘legacy admissions’. Lawyers representing three organisations — Chica Project, ACEDONE and the Greater Boston Latino Network — argue that legacy admissions have “illegally discriminated against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants in favor of wealthy students who were less qualified.”
I recommend reading the factual takedown on Twitter of the misrepresentation, in those Florida ‘standards’ on teaching Black history, of Frederick Douglass, as well as of the falsehoods perpetrated concerning the ‘slaves’ (they appear mostly not to have been slaves at all) who ‘benefitted’ from the skills they supposedly learned as slaves:
‘Jesse Watters spoke with William Allen, one of the authors of Florida’s revised Black History curriculum, about Vice President Harris’s representation that one of the standards outlined implies teaching that slavery in some ways benefitted Black Americans.
‘Twitter user @Etotheipie responded to the clip of William Allen, specifically the part where he references Frederick Douglass’s autobiography to support the claim that slaves’ (gained) ‘some benefits from their time in bondage. Quoting directly from his autobiography, they outline specifically how Allen Is lying about what he is referencing on Fox News.’
https://twitter.com/etotheipie/status…
If you can’t get get twitter, then you can find a discussion of the matter on ‘The Majority Report’ on Youtube: ‘Fox News BUSTED Using White Nationalist Propaganda To Rewrite History Of US Slavery.’
Yes, truth does matter – and not only the truths you find to be convenient because they can be forced into supporting your ideological prejudices.
Here’s the thread reader version –
https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1683987332951687168
Thank you, Ophelia! I am very bad at this sort of thing.
No you’re not! You gave us the source. I read it so I saw the threadreader version so thought I might as well share that too, but the source by itself is fine.
It does seem to me that much of the coverage of these standards focuses a lot on the purported “benefits” of being enslaved, and not so much on the erasure of the actual conditions of slavery, the horrible treatment, the actual labor, and the fact that the states were not all working harmoniously toward ending the institution. Even if they removed the point about slaves learning useful skills, these standards would still be terrible.
Quoting again from Kevin Drum:
It’s an error of omission, a deliberate lack of talking about how bad slavery was, a failure to impress that large numbers of Americans strongly supported slavery and wanted it to continue, that the country wasn’t made up of abolitionists.
Lincoln Project, Youtube:
DeSantis Slave Trade Trade School
I just saw this; CNN from a few days ago. A pretty good summary of the Alabama redistricting situation and the SCOTUS decision.
US Supreme Court faces ‘outright defiance’ from Alabama