[Slavery] amounts to much more than [Haley Barbour’s] “diddly” that so many Americans try hard to avoid coming to terms with the reality of slavery. It wasn’t just “a bad thing.” Littering is a bad thing. Slavery was this nation’s Original Sin, and yet many people will not look at it except through a gauze of Spanish moss.The Atlantic slave trade was one of the last millennium’s greatest horrors. An estimated 17 million Africans, most of them teenagers, were snatched from their families, stuffed into the holds of ships and brought to the New World. As many as 7 million of them died en route, either on the high seas or at “seasoning” camps in the Caribbean where they were “broken” to the will of their masters.
Haley, Haley, Haley.
If he has never done so, Barbour should hold in his hands some of the leg irons, manacles and other restraints that were used to subdue the Africans. He should visit some of the plantations where slave cabins still stand — there are plenty in his state — to get a sense of how the Africans lived. He should spend a long, hot day picking cotton. He should read the accounts of plantation life written by former slaves, and then he should explain why there is any reason to “honor” soldiers who fought to perpetuate a system that could never have functioned without constant, deliberate, unflinching cruelty.
Amen.
Whoops, here’s Robinson’s link.
2 comments
strategy is so ugly that you would think no person in there right mind would vote for this really overt racist nasty stuff. I am glad to see and hear some righteous push back. Tweedy had Buchanan on and a woman who was the former DNC co-chair? At the end of the segment Tweedy asked her if Pat had made her angry… She responded YES. I’m also sick of the conservadem bs. about states who are the most in need of a real choice instead of these crazy assholes and the this is the best you can get otherwise you get a redo of the good old days of plantations and succession. Good for Gene he’s becoming one of my favorite pundirts. Howard Fineman is also surprising me lately by actually talking some truth.
the reaction around the world if Germany decided to designate a month to honor those who were part of the Third Reich?