White people don't want to hear about slavery...on a slave plantation

Of course they don't. It's called guilt.

It's called " Trump."

And people wonder how so much knowledge was lost during the so-called "dark ages" after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Even I f it wasn’t intended that way

This will turn into a Troll Thread

People here these days are itching to say “stuff”

Russians promised a campaign of division this election round. Taking everyday conversations and tossing gasoline in them. Plus we have the Provoker-in-Chief always typing his veiled triggers.

The Russians are given way to much credit. America is racist to it's fucking bones. We can't blame everything on the Russians, at some point America has to take responsibility for it's own racist bigoted bullshit.

Everything is not russia.

Thank you, Boris Jefferson

I went to Monticello two years ago and the tour guide talked at length about how the sale of slaves after Jefferson’s death. He had wanted some slaves freed on his death but the estate was so encumbered by debt that some slaved were sold. There was an elderly slave that the auctioneers determined that she had no value. I hate Jefferson now.

It's not guilt. I wasn't even here when it happened. Get your fucking narrative straight.

Exactly r5. Did the Russians make 70,000 voters in those 3 states swing the vote to Trump? I don't think so. Those Dumpster voters voted for Trump for their own reasons; racism likely among them. That doesn't excuse the Russians for what they did to the election in 2016, but they can't always be blamed for everything, and it's simply lazy to do so.

It's not like those slaves had anywhere to go. There was no NFL or Popeye's Chicken back then.

you're right I don't want to hear about slavery but it's because I can't deal with the fact that any human was ever treated the way black people were. I watched a fair amount when I was younger but now it just nauseates me. There is nothing I can do to help those in the past that suffered terribly under the way things were. I have never understood what it is about the color of ones skin that makes others not of the same color hate them so much. It's just a color.

I know most people need someone to be inferior because it makes them feel superior but why is it that it never ends for black people and you find it all over the world. When you think about it it so ridiculous to think people don't like other people simply because of a color.

r10 is a racist.

Shun him gals!

I'm sorry slavery happened, but I'm not gonna take the rap for it.

[quote]The Russians are given way to much credit. America is racist to it's fucking bones.

tens of thousands are employed in "trolls farms" in russia to spread division in the society at large. is there a lot of fuel for division in the US today? Guns? Race? economic inequality? totally. but are russians doing their very best to stoke those divisions, abso-fucking-lutely

She thinks that's bad? I visited Auschwitz and the tour guide kept talking about all the people who were murdered there. Not a word about the architecture! It was such a downer.

Like Auschwitz it is time we in the United States come to grips with what started in 1619. We can learn and move forward.

Ruskies do a fine job of playing us against each other. This is NOT about that. This is about everybody learning the complete history of our country.

Thanks for starting this thread, OP. I had thought about starting something similar but shied away from it because I did not want to attract the wrong type of people. Those unwanted could be the racists AND that LSA crowd.

I think that this is an important discussion to have and if nothing else we, who are minorities, want to get this history out and at least make sure that it is known among our own people. Too many of our own people don't know the history of slavery and reconstruction in this country.

Of course whites don't want to hear it! The truth hurts!

I’ll never forget when I first started learning about slavery in elementary school. Completely changed everything. I couldn’t believe something like that was possible in America. It’s like your first glimpse into the low, dark depths of humanity.

[quote]I’ll never forget when I first started learning about slavery in elementary school too. It was always a happy ending. "Lincoln freed the slaves! AMEN!" Looking back now, I am wondering who chose the only 4-5 blacks that we were allowed to learn about and how were they chosen? Also, when I was growing up it was only a black history week. We learned about;

George Washington Carver

Marion Anderson

Martin Luther King

Booker T Washington

and that was pretty much about it. Every year it was basically the same people. Maybe Frederick Douglas was thrown in there a few years later.

Imagine my surprise, and constant surprises, as I became older and then learned for myself?

If they don't want to hear about slavery, an easy solution is to not visit plantations.

LOL, R20! I think that one of the points that the piece was making a note of is that it is white dollars that keep these museums open, etc. These people want to hear about Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy! They don't want nuthin' to do with no whuppin and a brandin'

[quote]I'm sorry slavery happened, but I'm not gonna take the rap for it.

But, you'll take the benefits of it?

Americans tend to think of America's role in the world solely in WWII terms, where the US saved the world from Hitler and the Japanese.

Slavery, the genocide of millions of indigenous people and the expropriation of their lands are inconvenient truths most American don't want to deal with.

[quote]I'm sorry slavery happened,

But, here's the thing and why "slavery" is relevant even to this very minute! Ever since the ending of the civil war in 1865, there has been a faction of the white population that has desperately tried to resuscitate the institution ever since. After slavery, there was peonage, sharecropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow, etc. Just look at the "for profit" prison system here in the USA. All of this are remnants of slavery.

"If they don't want to hear about slavery, an easy solution is to not visit plantations."

Emphasizing the history of slavery certainly overpowers the presentation of other aspects of Jefferson's life and career. But re the lady who wanted to know about "the plants" - she was referring to the plants that black people planted for Jefferson without getting paid for their work. The pretty architecture that Jefferson was renowned for was embodied in buildings that were built by black people, who weren't paid for their labor; food cooked by black people for white people, the cooks weren't paid; all the work done on that plantation was done by black people, without pay. It really underlies EVERYTHING that happened in the plantation "system". To express disdain for such an overwhelming set of circumstances strikes me as a kind of cultural insanity. It is self-induced moral blindness.

Jefferson had several children by a slave named Sally Hemmings, who were all born into slavery as his personal property. He took Sally Hemmings as his concubine after the death of his wife Martha. I don't use the term "mistress" as that implies volition on Sally's part and as a fourteen year old slave, she had no choice. Sally Hemmings was Martha Jefferson's half-sister and was given to her as a wedding gift by their father, plantation owner Hemmings. The practice of white masters raping their female slaves was accepted in this elite and twisted society. If Jefferson wanted to free some of his slaves this would have been impossible as he borrowed money against them and they were sold after his death to satisfy his debts. During his lifetime, Jefferson enjoyed the unpaid labor of 400 slaves and still spent it all.

And, let us not forget how Wall Street started....

[quote]I'm sorry slavery happened, but I'm not gonna take the rap for it.

And you shouldn’t have to. But at the very least acknowledge that it happened, that it wasn’t good, and that those people helped build this country without any acknowledgement, reward, or basic civil rights. And, that their ancestors never got the opportunity to benefit from the fruits of their labor in the same ways as other groups.

[quote]And you shouldn’t have to.

Hmm... I don't know about that, R28. I'm a big supporter of reparations. But, let me say this; I have no idea of what that would/could look like. Anyway, people need to know how much GENERATIONAL WEALTH was literally robbed and taken away from future generations. AND, it is still happening!

I'm a descendant of the person in the link. Read what happened to our money.... (wry smile)

[quote] Sally Hemmings was Martha Jefferson's half-sister and was given to her as a wedding gift by their father, plantation owner Hemmings.

I'd heard of Sally Hemmings, but I didn't realise her own father was the one who "gave" her to Jefferson! That is horrifying.

The article discusses how the focus of Monticello tours has been changed to more appropriately reflect the relative importance of slavery in the context of the history of Monticello. Some people want to hear more about plants and some visitors leaving comments have been disappointed. But the focus of the tours HAS changed. That’s not going backwards, it’s going forwards. I was there around ten years ago and slavery was discussed, but it wasn't the primary focus. My recollection is that the tour was pretty cursory in general.

I believe the only slaves Jefferson freed were of the Hemings family -- Sally's two brothers and the three children she bore by Jefferson who were still living at Monticello. Sally herself was not freed, but Jefferson's daughter informally freed her after Jefferson's death by allowing Hemings to live with her children on their own.

There is an excellent book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, that is well worth reading for insight into slavery at Monticello.

I remember when some people got upset Michelle Obama had the line about being in a house built by slaves.

Idiots, it was a powerful line.

My mother was from Virginia and her family lost everything in the war. Now people can’t even tour the lovely homes that are still standing without hearing about the poor blacks. It wasn’t even that bad. My mother’s family lost their whole way of life, but that means nothing.

And I don’t care what any of you say about me anymore. I’m going to KILL myself! I want to see my mother again. I won’t suffer this world one more day.

But tell me more about all the wealth the blacks missed out on! We all know they’d be in the same shape they’re in now. We should’ve sent them all back!

When we went to visit Monticello a few years ago, one of the tourists asked the guide if Jefferson was a good slave owner. The guide gave him major side eye and said there’s no such thing. Thought that was pretty awesome.

R34, If "the war" means the civil war, they should have lost everything.

Shame on you. I am not proud that part of my family were slave owner. I am ashamed!

R35, I have some grease for your fire.

Of course they should teach abkut slavery.

But why do the tribal Africans and North African Muslims who sold the original salves IN Africa to Europeans never get any attention? If not for them there would Jaime been so flavors in America for the whites to exploit.

^^^ “if not for them there would HAVE been no SLAVES....”

Yes, shame on me! Such a horrible person! Since everyone but me thinks so, I’ve just taken every pill in this house. I’ll see my dear mother and father again in just a little while.

Will future generations ever see "Song of the South" ever?

[ R 29] raises an important point about generational wealth. After WW2, veterans were offered the GI Bill to subsidize education and Veterans' home loans. College education and home ownership are fundamentals of economic stability and generational wealth. Most African American veterans were unable to take advantage of these benefits because of discrimination in education and in housing. The benefits were available but could not be used. The nation needs to have a serious conversation about reparations.

We covered that in my school r39, I don't think that is unusual. Of course those African societies did not practice chattel slavery in which you were enslaved for life and your kids were automatically born as slaves and enslaved for life and so on.

[39] we ignore it because there’s already too much tension between western culture and the Middle East/North Africa

[quote] The Russians are given way to much credit. America is racist to it's fucking bones. We can't blame everything on the Russians, at some point America has to take responsibility for it's own racist bigoted bullshit.

[quote] Everything is not russia.

There is a difference between an existing issue and exploiting said existing issue for your own gain. You know why it is so difficult to deal with US racism or gun violence? Because the GOP benefits from these hot button issues and exploits them to rile up their (Deplorable) demographic. And now Russia jumped on that bandwagon to further Putin's own world chaos agenda.

Christ, who ignores it? In every discussion even close to race some lackwit proudly hitches up his pants and shits out "blacks sold us the blacks!" We bought them. We created entire industries and changed the world by buying them and abusing them

[quote]The nation needs to have a serious conversation about reparations.

Of course it does! Again, I have no idea of what any type of reparations would or could look like but most people--even black people, have no idea about how many successful black communities were burned to the ground out of pure jealousy by whites. These communities has their own businesses, professionals, tax base, etc. THE NIG... NEG... COL.. the painted people were living TOO well and therefore any reason was found to fully destroy a community. This wasn't something that was unique.

The Black race was literally terrorized in this country. Sure! You could vote, (if you survived the beatings to the voting facility), but would you have a family when you returned home?

My sixth great grandfather was a Rev War veteran (as were 3 of his brothers). After 1800 as the US was expanding, the US government gave land grants in several of the new states to Revolutionary War veterans. 2 of the brothers ended up in KY, and owned slaves by 1810. The two brothers who took land in Ohio ended up as farmers and coal/salt miners. There are African-Americans with my family name, and I am sure they can be traced to the KY descendants.

I'm part of the Ohio, coal-mining wing of the family tree.

Those po' lil' chilluns that will never learn about Lil' Black Sambo....

Fucking stupid white people are going to be the end of us.

[quote]Fucking stupid white people are going to be the end of us.

I disagree. Although, maybe in this country. This is just the dynamics of the "haves versus the have nots" and the rich and powerful. Look at the atrocities Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, etc.

Only owning a few slaves is like only molesting a few children or only murdering a few people, r32.

The USA can do WAY more damage to the world than those leaders, r52. Besides, I was talking about stupidity not evil.

Those who are forced to live in the past want to repeat it. Or something like that.

I'm black and the only type of reparations that I would be in favor of is free education vouchers (for private grade & high schools and private and public universities and colleges and trade schools so that the next generations are not burdened by staggering student loan debt. I have always believed that the great equalizer is and will always be access to a good education.

But even that gets murky. American bloodlines have been mixed, remixed, and mixed again. Any black person who has tried to do their family tree will tell you that at some point the records just stop. I've done Ancestry and 23 & Me and have learned that I'm 61% European even though I present (more or less) as a black man.

None of this stuff is easy. I don't go around blaming people for the bullshit their ancestors did, but I do expect them to acknowledge that the past was fucked up and not glorify it. If you are are a member of the Sons or Daughters of the Confederacy here in 2019, maybe you should rethink that. You're celebrating treason and traitors., not some noble lost cause.

[quote]Those who are forced to live in the past want to repeat it. Or something like that.

How about this, R55

[quote]Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.--George Santayana/Philosopher

It is a pity that American citizens are not generally taught in schools that the majority of the older infrastructure and architecture on the east coast was built by unpaid black slaves. Even the northern states had slavery, although they ended the practice much earlier than the southern states, so we can't just blame the south. It's kind of a collective amnesia. As a white person, I didn't think about this much until the last 20 years. White people whose families immigrated after the civil war have still benefited from the economic system and the infrastructure built before the civil war, and also from the inequality built into the system. As someone mentioned above, it was white people who benefited from the GI bill after WWII. That post war expansion, probably the biggest boom our country has ever experienced,with the huge increase in the general prosperity of the middle class, didn't benefit black people much at all.

A plantation tour that tells history primarily through the POV of the slaves. I’m going next week! It is supposed to be very well done and a powerful experience.

[quote]Even the northern states had slavery, although they ended the practice much earlier than the southern states, so we can't just blame the south.

Oh, but let's not do this. Of course, there will be exceptions. "And, there were blacks who owned slaves too"--check out Antoine Dubuclet as an example. But, make no mistake slavery was a southern, white, thang...

Also, it wasn't just slavery. I think it would shock MANY people--especially many black people, the quick advancements that blacks were able to make directly after slavery and during the reconstruction period which was only about 10 years. But, a determined ratchet was taken to that by the white folks!

But, here's an example of how that opportunity worked and I'll use my own family. With one leg of my family tree we were able to track it all the way back to a slave named Phoebe (highly unusual and we were lucky). Now, Phoebe sent her daughter to college. Let that resonate for you a bit.... The former slave sent her daughter to college!

Anyway, she married a mulatto, (my great grandfather), who was a carpenter. To make a long story short, they educated their children, (built their own school on their property and hired their own teachers) and passed the carpentry skills,trades and businesses down to their children. That part of the family is one of the larger construction firms in Florida and Michigan to this day. And, that's how generational wealth works.

But, when a people is terrorized out of voting, education, and owning property....

Constant flagellation over historical slavery diverts us from the real modern slavery that goes on every day. Jobs with terrible hours and no benefits with wages so low you can't live on them; workplace injuries and deaths; and the financial entrapment inherent in nearly all consumer economic activity, including things like high interest rates, lack of payment of interest on savings, onerous contractual requirements for rentals and even things like gym memberships and cable TV. But let's ignore all that and beat ourselves up over shit that happened well over a century ago.

^^ Because we are still living with the things that happened way before 1865, dumbass!

we have to fix it.

[quote]Yes, shame on me! Such a horrible person! Since everyone but me thinks so, I’ve just taken every pill in this house. I’ll see my dear mother and father again in just a little while.

Well, go on to glory, honey chile. I'm sure that Miss Margaret Mitchell is just a waitin' on you before she starts her reading of her next chapter of "Gone With The Wind"

Sounds about white.

R29 😞

[quote] “Why are you talking about that?” she demanded, according to Gary Sandling, vice president of Monticello’s visitor programs and services. “You should be talking about the plants."

I'm taking a guess that it's white woman

This does and does not surprise me. It surprises me, because as an historian the story of the popular orders, whether the stories of slaves, the peasantry, and the working classes, always interested me more than the stories of the slave owners, the aristocrats, or the new plutocrats did. The vast majority of us have more in common with the former than with the latter.

It also doesn't surprise me. Some months ago, a neighbor approached me to relate a story about a friend of hers who attended a lecture given by a colleague of mine. The colleague was an African-American professor who spoke about white privilege. My neighbor and her friend rejected any notion that they were privileged, because they too had struggled in their lifetimes to overcome economic and social obstacles to succeed. In response, I tried to explain it through the experience of two adult students I taught some years ago. They were African-American women. We got to know each other over the course of the semester. Upon learning what town I lived in (an overwhelmingly white-populated town), they told me that every time they drove through the town, the police followed them. This was close to 20 years ago. I was shocked. But I've since learned that their experience was not a unique one. After telling this to my neighbor, I still wasn't sure she (75-80 yrs old) understood it.

A lot of white people (I suspect) roll their eyes when hearing about the black experience. It's resentment, guilt, and being just fed up. But I think it really boils down to the fact that a great many white people still do not know a lot of black people as neighbors, colleagues, or friends.

[quote] I'm black and the only type of reparations that I would be in favor of is free education vouchers (for private grade & high schools and private and public universities and colleges and trade schools so that the next generations are not burdened by staggering student loan debt.

Most reparations suggestions involve mainly educational benefits.

Conservatives, looking to spin the reparations debate, pretend that liberals are asking for blacks to get trillions of dollars directly. No one of any prominence is actually asking for that.

R31 is right; I recently visited Monticello & the discussion of slavery is more integral to the tour where before it mentioned, but not highlighted. I don't think it's about white guilt or the pain of slavery that upsets people - I think they just can't deal with complexity. The article quotes some woman who equates Monticello to Graceland - gosh, they don't say bad things about Elvis, why does Monticello have to bad mouth Jefferson!

Like most people, Jefferson was a complex guy; he said one thing & did another. He wrote a timeless document about the rights of men but hey, that farm aint going to pay for itself, so he used the tool of the day (slavery) to if not get ahead, maintain his extravagant lifestyle. When he died, those slaves were the only thing of that they had of much value. I actually think it makes it more interesting and inclusive for all people but I think some people can't deal with the idea that the world isn't divided into goodies & bad guys.

I agree with R56 more or less. I think educational reparations are the most sensible thing that would actually benefit people in the long-run; simply passing out money would be a disaster. The problem with something like reparations is that it would require extensive research on every individual's bloodline—the U.S. is a literal melting pot, and I think it would end up becoming a process of splitting hairs. Everything is just so entangled at this point. You couldn't simply give people reparations because they are black; you'd have to prove that they descended from slavery, which is incredibly difficult to do for those who did as there is often little adequate historical record of those ancestors.

I pay my employees with checks every day that they work. They don't go to the bank every day so sometimes they're depositing 5 or more checks at a time. The only time the bank has ever called me to check if it's okay is for black employees.

[quote] But I think it really boils down to the fact that a great many white people still do not know a lot of black people as neighbors, colleagues, or friends.

I kind of see it like the gay situation--work with me here. There are soooo many people who had no idea about the terrible things that gays had to suffer through ie you're not allowed to see your dying partner in the hospital because you are not family, or having property taken away from you, etc. Once many of these tragic stories were able to see sunlight, and people learned the truth, many folks just went; "Hey, wait a minute..."

The truth has to get out about slavery--no matter how much I love "Gone With The Wind"

The Plantation reviews:

“My husband and I were extremely disappointed in this tour,” one two-star review reads. “We didn’t come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves, we came to get this history of a southern plantation and get a tour of the house and grounds. The tour guide was so radical about slave treatment we felt we were being lectured and bashed about the slavery.”

“My ancestors were from Sicily, never owned slaves, and my husbands were German, and none of his ever owned slaves,” the reviewer continues. “I am by far not racist or against all Americans having equal rights but this was my vacation and now we are crossing all plantation tours off our list, it was just not what we expected. I’ll go back to Louisiana and see some real plantations that are so much more enjoyable to tour.”

“There is really nothing good you can say about slavery but I felt Paul took it too far,” another reviewer wrote. “Instead of leaving the tour in the 1800s where it belonged, he went on to transfer it to the KKK, white supremacy, and the horrible killings at Mother Emanuel. [...] There are too many beautiful plantations you can visit without starting out on a bummer.”

“Our tour guide was way too political and editorial in his presentation,” wrote Kari Freeman. “He actually said that slavery was still alive today because we have incarceration. People who are incarcerated today did something wrong.”

“Would not recommend. Tour was all about how hard it was for the slaves and how hard done by they were,” wrote Matthew Cloke. “They forget how hard it was for most poor people in those days anywhere in the world. Go somewhere different if you want to experience a plantation tour.”

“In addition, what I found completely and utterly offensive about Cheryl’s presentation was her very last statement in which she said, ‘America was built on the backbone of slavery,’” wrote Juliana Irene.

“Very racist. If you’re white, don’t go.”

It’s the myth of the old south, R69. That’s why they visit those plantations. Visions of dashing confederates, dainty belles, and happy darkies singing songs in the fields. When you peel back the myth, you have to face some ugly truths. That is difficult for people, especially when you have been raised to believe, and everything around you co-signs the fact, that you and yours are the heroes of the story.

What, R72? The truth has been out about slavery for decades. It was obviously horrible. Also, the gay comparison doesn't pan out—gays have experienced the things you are describing in the last 20–30 years; nobody who has been alive in the U.S. within the last century has had firsthand experience of slavery. These things are apples and oranges. Racism, sure, but not slavery.

Miss Scarlett....

[quote]nobody who has been alive in the U.S. within the last century has had firsthand experience of slavery.

I disagree. I believe that last pre-civil war slave died in 1972. AND, cases of black slavery was found in the USA as late as the mid fifties.

Look.... we're not as far out from that history as you might think. There are many of us who have grandparents that KNEW their grandparents and those grandparents were slaves. I'll use myself as an example; I did not know my great grandmother. She died the year I was born but her mother (my grandmother's mother) knew her and she was a slave.

The point that I was simply making about gays was that once the stories became more known that was when opinion began to change. I believe the same could happen and promote the discussions about reparations

[quote]The truth has been out about slavery for decades.

But, it's just not about slavery. It's about its aftermath too.

That was my point R78—the aftermath has been implicit cultural racism rather than the flagrant dehumanizing racism of slavery. I was just pointing out that "slavery" and "racism" are not interchangeable terms.

Slavery might have been abolished at the end of the Civil War, but I can assure you something very similar persisted on until at least the late 1970's in places like Alabama and Mississippi; I saw it first-hand. It didn't just all disappear like magic, and the inequities still exist throughout society. You have to be pretty dense, as a white person, not to be able to see that.

R39 This is a specious argument. You realize that no one in Africa built ships and sailed to Europe to trade slaves, right? It doesn't matter that slavers made deals with local chieftains or tribal leaders (most likely to avoid being attacked after stepping onshore). The Dutch, the British and others WENT TO AFRICA and took people for the purposes of human trafficking. It matters not if there was betrayal among their own people, the outcome was the same because of the arrival of the Europeans slave traders. Harping on that tired trope does not negate the evils of slavery neither on the African side nor as the institution played itself out in South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Don't minimize the realities of the racism at the heart of African slavery by trying to blame black people (!?) The notion of white supremacy and black inferiority drove the cruelty of the slave trade during that period and no amount of revisionism will change that.

How so, R80? I know there have been social/economic inequities for black people that have persisted everywhere this country, but what are you referring to specifically in the south? I've only ever lived in the northeast and northwest of the U.S. and have never visited the south, so the culture is very unfamiliar to me.

Slavery might have ended on paper after the Civil War, but many white landowners did everything they could to exploit newly freed slaves well into the 20th century. Thousands of black laborers across the South were forced to work against their will as late as the 1960s—a new form of enslavement that went on in the shadows of rural America.

VICE's Akil Gibbons traveled to Louisiana to meet genealogist Antoinette Harrell, the “slavery detective of the South," who tracks down cases of modern-day slavery and abusive labor practices. They talk to a man whose family was held on a plantation against their will into the 1950s, and Antoinette explains how she uses decades-old records to uncover how slavery was perpetuated long after the Civil War ended.

R81 nowhere did I try to minimize anything.

Pointing out and acknowledging the role Africans and North African Muslims played does not negate what white Europeans did or take away their blame.

But you seem to want to negate what the original slave sellers did.

Here’s a concept: the two are not mutually exclusive!

Btw the Muslim slave traders likely did a lot more of the original slave selling f than the actual tribal leaders of sub Sahara but of course no one can talk about that I today’s world can they?

Blacks did build most of the country and have been treated like shit ever since. They also had to endure slave wages long after the civil war, and yet there are more human slaves now than there ever have been. Human trafficking has always gone on and we still have plenty of foreign slaves in this country. Housekeepers and nannies etc.

When I go the The Louvre in Paris, I'm not much interested who manufactured the tubes of oil paint.

R27 How did Wall Street start?

I guess you're culturally deprived, R80. The South was full of farmland where there were still slave houses standing, full of sharecroppers, who were pretty much economically trapped, no other way of life was possible. Many left and moved to Chicago and Ohio, etc., looking for factory jobs. All of those "slave houses" seem to have pretty much disappeared by now. I used to watch those people gleaning cotton when it was 100 degrees outside. Even as a child, I could see it was brutal drudgery. The stuff cuts your fingers up.

[quotes] Thanks for starting this thread, OP. I had thought about starting something similar but shied away from it because I did not want to attract the wrong type of people.

It's inevitable that a thread on a message board will attract fatties. There is not much you can do about it, but move over and give them space.

R81 [quote][R39] This is a specious argument. You realize that no one in Africa built ships and sailed to Europe to trade slaves, right?

Are you for real?

Shitloads of people in Africa built ships and captured and traded slaves. Miguel Cervantes was a galley slave for five years before his family finally found him and bought his freedom.

My grandfather was from Skibbereen, Ireland. Everyone in Skibbereen is related to someone who is a descendant of a seacoast town called Baltimore that was sacked by Barbary pirates. 103 people carried off and the rest fled to Skibbereen. Town stopped existing for over two hundred years. The Muslim slave traders went all the way to Iceland. All along the coast of the Mediterranean are remnants of villages that were abandoned after it became too depopulated by slavers from Africa.

The coast of Africa has been a slave trading haven for millennia. That's what the Portuguese found in the 15th century when they finally built ships big enough to handle the trip. Shit, 25 million Africans were shipped out of the east coast of Africa or carried overland into the middle east. White people didn't have to invent slavery, there's been plenty of teachers through out history.

And it's still happening, There's slave trading going on in Libya right now. Can't find your way onto a migrant boat, tough shit, you're sold in a market place.

Dubai has been built by slave labor. Asian slaves tricked into coming in for jobs, passports confiscated, ten to a room. Never go home again.

R67 Your last sentence has a corollary?

A great many black people still do not know a lot of white people as neighbors, colleagues, or friends.

I sort of agree with some of the comments R73 quotes. If I go to Monticello, I’m partially there to consume the historical knowledge of experts who have studied Monticello, Jefferson, and that period (obviously a huge part of this is the lives of slaves and their impact on that period), as communicated through tour guides. I’m not particularly interested in their take on more removed sociological issues and certainly not current events. It’s a stay in your lane kind of thing. If there is some direct connection or interesting connection, sure. But I don’t think general history / current events that happen to relate to black Americans belong in a tour of Monticello. In fact, it almost trivializes those other issues. To get more info and insight on modern race issues, I’m not going to ask a tour guide at Monticello.

I go to a lot of historical landmarks, battlefields, houses etc. I am mostly curious about slavery and always ask where the cabins were. Usually they don’t know but sometimes there’s been some evidence uncovered. I’ve learned that the cabins were often far away from the main house, in their own little village, and that it’s often been difficult to Locate any remnants. I am the descendent of both slaves and slave owners and have always been very interested in the antebellum and reconstruction eras. A good book to read is “Roll Jordon, Roll: The World the Slaves Made” by Eugene Genovese. We are not even doomed to repeat history, we already are. There’s human trafficking going on right under our noses , as well as exploitation of desperate people in all kinds of situations.

R85 It's not easy having a sensible debate when you come out with unmeasurable hyperbolic assertions like "Blacks did build most of the country".

Prove it.

The Monticello garden grew fruit, vegetables and flowers. It wasn't intended to grow slaves.

I just learned about a year ago that there were white slaves. They were treated better than the black slaves, but they were still slaves. They usually kept the black slaves in line

That puts a lot into perspective. I always knew the real war in this country is between the rich and the poor. Now I know it is and it always has been. The only people who do well with blacks and whites fighting against each other are the rich white 1%

I wish Henry Louis Gates would do some genealogy research on a bunch of rednecks. I bet they'd shit their pants to know their ancestors were slaves. These dumb fuckers are all about how the Confederacy is their "heritage" and their "history"

Get a load of your heritage and your history fellas

R96 Do you really thick there's a 'real war in this country'?

I suggest you go and visit Africa and Asia and you'll see bigger wars.

It is good to understand history and know the history of this country. It's not good to extract and impose those same dynamics of the past on people today who had not one thing to do with that. It is good to understand history and to understand the legacy it left behind, especially on people today. It's not good to act like white people today are a hive mind that are connected to slave masters, and all people agree, know the every thought and intention of enslavers. It's not good to lump all black people into an "enslaved" category. It is good to remember people are all individuals.

[quote]we ignore it because there’s already too much tension between western culture and the Middle East/North Africa

The Barbary Wars (which the US played a major role in) and the Barbary slave trade are also ignored for this reason. At the same time Africans were being enslaved, white Europeans were also being enslaved in North Africa.

Well, Nick Cannon has had it.

Frankly, I think he's right. Star Trek and Cloud Atlas, The President from the 5th Element, what other tv genres can you think of where black people are leaders? It is important for history but I hate that narrative pushed by Hollywood. Why can't black people be portrayed as just... people, man? Sick of the whole baggage of history. Like Nick Cannon says, it almost seems more detrimental to black people to keep portraying them like that when they can be.... anything they want or set their mind to!

Remember that show A Different World?

I loved that show. And In Living Color too! Now that was some real good stuff. Even Tyler Perry's movies and Eddie Murphy's movies are better than the shit that went down by some backwards people who wore powdered wigs and had no electricity.

AND since they are so removed from current time, we may want to rethink a constitution for a present day America, just saying. Just saying.

[quote]I wish Henry Louis Gates would do some genealogy research on a bunch of rednecks. I bet they'd shit their pants to know their ancestors were slaves. These dumb fuckers are all about how the Confederacy is their "heritage" and their "history"

True. Lots of whites were indentured servants in the Old South, which for all intents and purposes was slavery. Those modern Southern whites who think they're so superior would be quite shocked to know that their ancestors were treated with nearly as much disdain by the aristocracy as blacks were.

Michael Moore's first ancestor in America arrived in Boston in 1650 was listed on the ship manifest as 'slave'. Scottish prisoner of war, sold into slavery.

R103 I guess that's a reason why he's perpetually angry. But it's no excuse for him being so grotesquely obese.

When I was in school we were never taught about white slaveowners raping women. That was taboo. (I lived in NY). When I asked about why some black people — especially in history books — were so dark and other black Americans had lighter skin I was told (not in school...I can’t remember by whom) that as white people moved out west there weren’t enough white women so white men took wives who were Indian or black, but they weren’t really legally married because it was illegal. They “lived as man and wife.”

I guess that was the whitewash version that was agreed upon by a lot of white people to avoid the discussing the subject of widespread rape with children.

Moore had a stupid reaction when told his relative who was brought here as a slave was killed by Native Americans.

“It was the Indians’ land and they were being killed ...,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s a past relative but I would say to any white person who came here back then: What made you think you could come here and take these people’s land...?”

Errr.....he was a slave! He didn’t have any thought of coming here to take land. He was unwillingly transported after being captured by the English in war. He was a POW turned into a slave and though he was eventually freed, he couldn’t go back to Scotland. Even if he had the money for the fare it wouldn’t have been allowed. He was still a POW, just no longer an enslaved POW.

The poor guy had no say in his life or his death. There was no volunteering for the army in Scotland - your landowner conscripted you. Zo the poor slob was conscripted, sent to war against England, captured, by the English, transported to yet another country and enslaved, then was stuck in the frontier of England’s colony for life. He didn’t “deserve” to be killed by natives.....he never wanted to come here.

R106 That's right, the battle of Dunbar. The English sold off a lot of Scots.

It's a complicated issue.

[quote] [R67] Your last sentence has a corollary? A great many black people still do not know a lot of white people as neighbors, colleagues, or friends.

The United States is over 70% white and 14% black. Which is why it is possible for many whites to have little to no contact with nonwhites. Which is also why it doesn’t work the other way. Anyone who goes to school is going to have white teachers. Most anyone who works is going to have white co-workers. Public facilities are dominated by whites.

These threads always become annoying when people show up just to post, 'we understand your ancestors had it bad, but let me tell you how bad my ancestors had it'. That's not how it works. We all know that some Africans enslaved other Africans and traded them for food or whatever. It happened and we can't pretend that it didn't exist. But here in this country, the so-called bad white people, just changed their last names or moved away from all the bad stuff because they had the cloak of whiteness to shield them, and that's a mighty powerful cloak, and it wasn't so long ago that people could just move to a different place and start over a completely new life and no one would be the wiser. Yeah, blacks with very light skin did it too, my Grandma's sister moved up north and called herself Italian and never looked back until her Mother died.

I guess my point is, don't be annoying. We get it, everybody had a rough road, but that road has always been much harder when you're carrying extra melanin, at least here in the good ole USA.

Since when did DL become infested by that racist AA forum?

r107 thank you for that link. Most interesting. Here's a little nugget from the article:

[quote]Henry Brown and James Orr,Oar,Ore lived together their entire lives. Neither married. On 10, Nov. 1658 [census?], they lived in Oyster River. They were still there in 1659. They, along with Edward Errin, bought in 1662, a farm at Bradboate harbor in Pischalaq River at Wadering Place, with 59 acres upland. This was near Kitteryand York, Maine. Long afterwards it was called Scotchman's Neck. In 1686 Brown and Orr brought suit against John Bray for carrying away their grass at Brave Boat Harbor.

[quote]June 3, 1675 Henry Brown and James Orr , Scotchmen, residents of Wells bought 200 acres from Henry Sayward, at Moresome. In 1662, Brown and Orr of Sacco Falls belonging to Winter Harbor, for himself and Henry Brown. They sold to James Smith of Oyster River, a tailor, land granted to them at Dover. Brown and Orr lived for many years in Wells, Maine. it was there they ran a sawmill. They learned this trade at Valentine Hill , which is where they had been indentured servants. They associated with Robert Stewart and left everything to him.

Arabs were the first to start slavery on black people in Africa. 13 fucking centuries of slavery. They dont even come from Africa. They just took the lands: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Egypt, Sudan etc...Just like Europeans did in the US.

Not saying that what whites people did was better. To me it's a genocide and a crime against humanity.

BUT seeing Afro-Americans calling them (Arabs),"brothers" makes me deeply furious even more because African-Americans don't seem to give a fuck about the fact that slavery still exists in Mauritania and Libya til now. When you want to talk with arabs about that they call you crazy, they deny everything and they insult you. I mean how can you deny simple facts of history when there are so much scientific evidences ??? they castrated men in a barbarous and inhuman way by leaving them bathed in their blood, to prevent any reproduction between black people. Black Mauritanians are still slaves there in the utmost indifference.

Not to be mean or rude but my questions are:

1. Who the fuck are African-Americans calling bro, when they talk to Arabs exactly??? 2. WHY ARE WE SILENT??! 3. How much u wanna bet that my comment will either be ignored or turned into a joke?

Dude, slavery existed in Africa ever since there were humans in Africa. That's the point. Humans have been enslaving other humans from the get go. It's gotta be the ugliest human behavior right up there with war which of course it's tied to. And it's still fucking happening.

R114 Oh that's right i almost forgot this kind of shitty answer! I knew it, turned into a joke. Thanks for proving me right. America became a disgusting country. You deserve Trump, bye!

[R113], AAs and arabs are both minorities in the US, maybe there is a kind of view of camaraderie two groups have for each other in both being a minority. Christianity was used to justify slavery in the US by certain whites. The rejection of Christianity and embracing of Islam by certain AAs reflects that.

We are silent because it’s better than throwing fuel on the fire. Going tit for tat is only going to make it worse unless we want to have an increasingly violent race/religion war on our hands. Certain groups of people are just itching to riot, kill, burn shit down. The silence seems to be an attempt not give them any more ammo.

I know that R34, or Uncle Rupert is trolling us, because he thinks he’s funny. But he also does it because he likes to use humor to hurt people, in this case, black people. And he would definitely deny it, and he probably believes that he is genuinely “just kidding”, but how can he convince anyone that he is?

When white men and women make light of something that is such a significant and deep wound in the psyche of African Americans, it shows exactly just what “SJWs” mean, when they discuss privilege, specifically white privilege. Because you see, if you can come on a thread where you had the opportunity to add something meaningful, to add what it is that you allege you really feel about blacks, that you feel that they were subjected to hundreds of years of pure brutality by the whites who owned and callously separated husbands and wives and children, in order to sell them, and you believe in your heart, that it was wrong, and you can understand why that wound still exists today, then that is exactly what you would have written. Not a joke, or the creation of “Uncle Rupert”. Only a person who has never felt what it feels like to be treated as a lesser man, as a lesser woman, a lesser child, due to the color of their skin, or the texture of their hair, has the audacity and the cruelty, and especially the privilege, to laugh about something so profoundly painful.

Uncle Rupert will read this, and become indignant, self righteous, & angry, because Uncle Rupert knows that he’s only joking, & he’s not a racist.

R116 I understand, believe me i do. But slavery on black people is still relevant in these countries and not a single black leader to call them out. In Europe the most negrophobic are not even white people but people from the Maghreb countries. Something have to be done, we can't just stay silent forever, it's called cowardice. At least black people shouldn't call arabs brother that's crazy.

Oh I'm pretty sure "Uncle Rupert" is a racist and knew exactly what he was doing r117.

But it hardly matters now, he's been red lined as a troll and put on ignore by me at least.

R113 Just googling "slavery in Mauritania" and you're right. I didn't know... that means that they have never been abolished for very long centuries, my God

R170 In their own land, their own continent.

[quote]And I don’t care what any of you say about me anymore. I’m going to KILL myself!

Promise? Will they serve Chicken a la King at your wake?

Your ungrateful niece will probably tap dance on your grave.

Jefferson was obviously more attached to being rich than he was to being enlightened, but even so I think he'd have been shaken if he'd got to read the reviews at R73. They were so clearly written by people who were NOT like him (or anyway, the way he saw himself).

I sometimes think Miranda might have got Jefferson right in Hamilton, where he is so aware of his cleverness and wokeness that he's essentially patronising to everyone, black or white, friend or foe. Despite - or maybe because of - his famous soaring words, in life he had only inferiors.

Someone above said he freed all his children with Sally, but that's not completely true. He freed a couple of them (after they were grown up), and allowed one to "leave without pursuit", which meant he was still Jefferson's property but Jefferson undertook not to retrieve him when he left Monticello. How this affected his employment prospects in the wider world I'm not sure.

The African American Museum at the Smithsonian is worth a trip by everyone. It traces slavery from the 1400s, showing how it made Europe boom, before moving into the US importation of Africans specifically and then carefully tracing the history all the way through to Obama. If you spend half a day just walking through there and reading all of the plaques beside the exhibits, you can get more education in the subject than most Americans seem to get in their school careers. It's good to know that it's still so popular you have to book ahead to go in summer.

I recently visited Monticello, and they must've been really committed horticulturalists who did the tours BEFORE slavery was emphasised. The topic is particularly hard to avoid: Mulberry Row, the slave area, is really well preserved, including a couple of original slave huts in (or restored to) good condition, a cabin where the slave seamstresses worked, and of course the kitchen gardens, which obviously weren't the weekend hobby of Jefferson and his wife. There is also a giant under-house kitchen. Plants? I'd have thought most people would recognise a lettuce without needing too much instruction, but of course that may not be true of those reviewers, who didn't sound too bright.

R116 The silent perpetuated slavery in these countries you meant to say ??

Jefferson loved the finer things. Art, music, culture, food, writing were his passions. He knew how fucked up slavery was, but all of his passions weren't going to pay for themselves. How many times have you turned a blind eye to bullshit, because you had bills to pay? Yes, he was a slaveholder and nothing excuses that, but he truly was one of the most complicated and fascinating men in history.

It is a beautiful house.

UVA should be shut down immediately!

This is an EST. Look at the names of the people leaving these “reviews”. Kari Freeman, Matthew Cloakman? “Free man”, “Cloak Man”.

Jesus, people are this bored and have nothing going on, huh?

The United Nations' UNESCO describes Monticello as a World Heritage Site. And the Jefferson Foundation describes Monticello as an historic house and plantation, museum, etc , etc.

Whereas the OP describes Monticello as a 'slave plantation'.

Entry tickets cost around $25 (see link below) and the tours are free. The OP went on the free 'Slavery at Monticello Tour' when they obviously meant to go on the 'Gardens & Grounds Tour'.

Sorry to ask but i'm a Norwegian and i have no clue what AA means?

R128 I'm Australian and I've no clue what EST means.

R102 This always comes up but indentured servitude was not "for all intents and purposes slavery". Indentured servitude had a contractual expiration date and the color of indentured servants skin made it easier to blend in, eventually. For example, Jim Crow laws wouldn't have effected descendants of indentured servants. When they were free they were free.

I am not saying, of course, that they didn't have other issues to contend with, once free, but the notion, it was all the same as the enslavement of black people, I think is thrown up to deny the legitimacy of the long term effects of American slavery on American culture. It's a popular what about for supremacists.

As for why we don't talk about the African sellers, what bearing does that have on what it became here in America. Those two hundred years, plus Civil War, plus Jim Crow and apparently the Klan trying to rise again, is what we have to deal with.

In those countries, it should be taught as part of their history as they deal with whatever the lasting effects are on their culture.

Why is this thread gray-lined?

[quote]Sorry to ask but i'm a Norwegian and i have no clue what AA means?

African-American

[quote][R27] How did Wall Street start?

It was a slave market

"Slavery was introduced to Manhattan in 1626, but it was not until December 13, 1711, that the New York City Common Council made Wall Street the city's first official slave market for the sale and rental of enslaved Africans and Indians."

By Abby Phillip April 15, 2015

New York City has a not-so-little secret: About 300 years ago, as the first Dutch settlers docked on the shores of what would later become a metropolis, they brought with them enslaved men and women.

At the foot of the city, in what would later become Wall Street, New York operated its first slave market to buy, sell and trade human beings.

Soon, there will be a permanent reminder of that little-known history.

The New York City Council approved the creation of a historical marker acknowledging for the first time the contributions of slaves to the creation of early New York and its economy. It will be erected later this year, just a block from where the market once stood.

“The slaves of that time and place helped build City Hall,” City Council member Jumaane Williams, the principal sponsor of the bill that established the marker, told WNYC. “Their lives should be celebrated and their deaths should be mourned.”

By 1711, there were hundreds of slaves at work in New York — learning trades, farming crops, working in homes and on the docks, and building the foundation of what would eventually become a great American city. According to Columbia University, about 40 percent of white homes owned slaves at the time.

But if you travel to Lower Manhattan today, you almost wouldn’t know that slavery was ever present in the city.

“In Lower Manhattan, with the exception of the African burial ground memorial, there are no reminders of the slave market and the incredible injustices that happened there and have been unrecognized by our city,” James G. Van Bramer, chair of the City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs, said at a hearing last year. “We must never forget what happened, and it is important that native New Yorkers, tourists and everyone alike be reminded of what happened there. And that we mark the contributions of enslaved Africans who built our city, including our City Hall and the wall that would give the name to Wall Street.”

Initially, the buying, selling and trading of slaves was conducted privately, according to Columbia University. Some slaves were even sent out on their own to find work. But in 1711, in response to anxieties of white, middle-class New Yorkers who feared that the presence of so many black slaves looking for work on the streets might raise the risks of an insurrection, the market was erected.

“All Negro and Indian slaves that are let out to hired” would be “hired at the Market house at the Wall Street Slip…” the City Council declared.

It was more than 50 years later, in 1762, when the market was finally taken down. But historians have noted that New York has a long history of support for the institution of slavery, even though it later became known for its role in helping abolitionists dismantle it.

New York would become an economic and cultural powerhouse. But rarely is slavery or segregation talked about in the re-telling of those events. And the places that played a key role in the events of that time are just as difficult to identify.

R134, Continued

Newsweek’s Alexander Nazaryan went searching for the city’s hidden history of slavery and segregation and found a rich, if somewhat obscured, past:

That era seems almost too complex for us to remember, eluding the easy narratives of triumph and redemption while calling into question New York’s liberal self-image. Kenneth T. Jackson, a Columbia University professor widely regarded as the preeminent historian of New York City, points out that while Southern cities like Charleston, South Carolina, unequivocally supported slavery and New England ones like Boston thoroughly opposed it, New York was probably the most ideologically conflicted urban center in the nation. Jackson surmised that New York’s complicity in the slave trade remains an “unpleasant topic” to this day. It is not the kind of conversation we can conduct with a well-meaning Starbucks barista. But we will have to have it sooner or later. “There is no future,” Jackson warns, “in denying the past.”

According to WNYC, the marker is expected to be finished soon and may be unveiled on June 19 — or Juneteenth, which is commemorated as the day slaves in the South were emancipated.

[quote]The African American Museum at the Smithsonian is worth a trip by everyone.

IT REALLY IS!!!

@R117. You are correct. In my opinion, part of the acknowledgement and healing process is to make jokes and have fun with a subject/topic. Is it hurtful to those intended? Yes. But, eventually the laughter stops and the conversation becomes much more serious.

US slavery is a tough, tough, TOUGH, issue to discuss. The majority of us have no idea of the various atrocities exacted upon another human being--but, that's just it, blacks were not viewed as humans and therefore when we learn of, and see documented evidence of various atrocities, it can be too overwhelming at the moment and so people resort to laughter.

R94 Slaves picked the cotton which was the product that generated $$ which went towards building America.

Which by the way, was made possible by free slave labor etc.

Your welcome!

Memories light the corners of my mind

Misty water-colored memories of the way we were

Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind

Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were....

R138 I've gone and googled to ask "how important is cotton to the US economy" and all it gives me is historical stuff from 150 years ago.

Russians are most certainly trolling all social media to feed binary divisions and outrage in western countries. But home-grown trolls are equally at work. A troll is a troll. Idiots fall for this crap. The far left is as idiotic and triggered and outraged as the outspoken, activist deplorable. IQ declines at the fringes.

R137, thanks for your input. I understand what you’re saying & it is absolutely true, that humor and laughter are great when introducing difficult subjects, and it does work!

I am of mixed race. I am either perceived to be Indian (from India), biracial (black/white), Hispanic, & even Italian, and African American. The reason? My hair. It’s not typical AA hair, because of my mixed ancestry. That being said, I myself have grown up and have navigated in a bubble of privilege, myself, and I’ve been fortunate to live in liberal, progressive areas through out my life, until recently.

I am currently living in the American south, and I now truly appreciate what it is that African Americans experience in societies where they’ve routinely discriminated against, & treated differently, due to a system of inequalities that the south has never quite surpassed.

I am really grateful that I have been able to see this way of perceiving others as less than, directed towards me. It has given me a much deeper empathy as well as the opportunity to listen to black people who did not grow up with the opportunities that I had, or who were not surrounded by the people that I was fortunate enough to have as teachers, friends, etc., and they have been treated unfairly, and like shit, by a bunch of white people who rarely if ever, stopped to ask themselves why the African American communities, especially here, carry in their hearts a pain that they should have overcome long ago.

People, or specifically many whites in the south, do not want to ask themselves tough questions because it makes them vulnerable to a loss of their supremacy, a supremacy that they only exists, because their ancestors treated an entire group of people as subhumans, and passed down that way of thinking to their children, and on and on it goes.

Racism, white supremacy, and apathy towards progress are alive and well down here. And no one fights it, no one questions it, and everyone laughs through their pain, because no one will take them seriously as a people, just because they’re black.

I regret being here a lot, but learning what I’ve learned for myself because I am experiencing it is priceless and therefore worth it.

Fantastic post r117, and yes, it DOES suck to be discriminated against, even today, just because of the way you look.

I meant your post at r143, r117, my mistake, sorry.

I meant your post at r142! Ah fuck it, I'm going to bed.

Evidently R117 is Anna Torv.

Slavery happened to other people a long, long time ago. No one alive need feel like a victim- or a perpetrator.

And no one needs to make reparations for it. Again: other people, other crimes, other sorrows. No one alive ever picked cotton.

Besides, many black people have slave owner DNA in them ("Massa"). I do not.