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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsConservative writer upset ’12 Years A Slave’ doesn’t show happy slaves
A Conservative writer is upset that the Oscar-winning movie 12 Years a Slave displays a negative light on slavery, instead of the happy times. Apparently the author of the article believes that being enslaved is a happy time for those who are taken from their country in chains, their families ripped apart, beaten into submission and forced to work grueling hours in the sun for nothing.
Politix reports, But that negativity is merely anti-slavery propaganda, according to James Bowman in conservative magazine The American Spectator.
Via American Spectator:
If ever in slaverys 250-year history in North America there were a kind master or a contented slave, as in the nature of things there must have been, here and there, we may be sure that Mr McQueen does not want us to hear about it. This, in turn, surely means that his view of the history of the American South is as partial and one-sided as that of the hated Gone With the Wind.
Yes, there was much cruelty and hardship in the slave-owning South, as there has been in most of the rest of the world most of the time, and Mr. McQueens camera is all over that. But it strains ordinary credulity to suppose that there was nothing else.
Mary Noble from Politix asks, We are wondering, was Bowman equally aggrieved by the lack of happy Jews in Schindlers List?
http://freakoutnation.com/2014/03/05/conservative-writer-upset-12-years-a-slave-doesnt-show-happy-slaves/
Dirty Socialist
(3,248 posts)And the ignorant inbred slave holders lost. Hey! Get with the human race! You lost 150 years ago! Time to move on and accept the fact that African Americans are men and women, your sisters and brothers!
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)anything published in American Expectorator taken seriously by anyone, anywhere at any time.
Dirty Socialist
(3,248 posts)demigoddess
(6,640 posts)don't allow their children to study in school? I know Rush Limbaugh said years ago that History is not a science. That it only takes good scholarship to know history. Is there a War on History from the republican party?? They definitely have a War on Education.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Are very helpful if one is a conservative. And absolutely required of libertarians.
Mira
(22,378 posts)it's not Steve McQueen's story anyway. He simply made a movie of a book written in the mid 1800's by Salomon Northup - by the man who lived it. I read the book. McQueen followed it just about to the letter.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)bad being a relative term when it comes to slavery of course.
I hven't seen it though.
Bryant
Everyone should. And all schools. Where the kids are 16 and up. The horror of slavery, sanctioned by a society, where people would be walking past hanged bodies and there is no collective outrage and where people are thought of as possessions like your dog or cat, to whom you can do whatever you want if you own them, need to be clearly shown to America's youth.
To me, it's almost worse than the holocaust because of the description I just gave. Plus it lasted 200 years I think.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)Ohio Joe
(21,655 posts)It's the new normal... so very fucked up.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Many plantation owners, after the war, were shocked that their "happy, loyal, contented" slaves left them after the war or, (gasp) demanded payment for doing their light, easy, and joyful work.
csziggy
(34,120 posts)Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.
The letter and links for more information at: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)I've read many books about the antebellum south, many diaries, letters, and interviews with former slaves that the WPA did in the 30's.
I've seen that letter before and enjoyed its delicious irony.
The happy, contented, slave was almost entirely a fiction but believed by many owners who took forced acquiescence and smiles as "happiness". Even after emancipation this absurdity remained in the minds of many of the ex-slavelholers even after their "happy, contented, slaves" left them. Most blamed it on the poor, ignorant, slaves being led astray by the likes of Lincoln and the Freedman's bureaus. If you ever have the chance read, "A Diary from Dixie" by Mary Boykin Chesnut, who was the wife of one of the big-shots in the Confederate government and a plantation owner. She was not an abolitionist but held strong views about how ruinous slavery was on the whites of the south. She didn't "love" the slaves but feared them and saw the smiles and "yassuh's" as the way the not-so-ignorant-after-all slaves got through their lives in the least painful way. She feared them because she saw the obvious, and well earned, resentment beneath the "happiness and contentment" they displayed. Her diaries cover the entirety of the civil war in an almost day by day account. She was quite the socialite and knew just about everybody of importance and was a particular friend of Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina. And, she was a helluva good writer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Boykin_Chesnut
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Remember that line, every time you ever hear a Republican admonishing blacks to "get off the Democrat plantation."
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Samuel L. Jackson said that he believed his character Stephen to have "the same moral compass as Clarence Thomas does.
Loudly
(2,436 posts)Paladin
(28,202 posts)That "Happy slaves singin' on massa's levee" bullshit has been force-fed to southern kids for a long time, particularly since the civil rights struggle kicked into high gear. It's sad that such revisionism is still believed in this day and age.
japple
(9,773 posts)tell you the slaves had it so bad. They had fresh air and sunshine." I have forgotten many things over the years, but this is imprinted in my brain/memory. That mid-Georgia county where I attended junior/senior high school had to be dragged into racial desegregation of the jr/sr high schools. It would be another few years before they would be integrated by sex. Another sad, misguided, ignorant decision by a southern board of education.
Paladin
(28,202 posts)...that I really got free of that "happy slaves" travesty. What a damned shame, that so many still seem to regard "Gone With The Wind" as a documentary film.....
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)We had an Alabama history course, and i think the book was from 1965 - i wish like hell i could remember the name of it. it wasn't this one, but there wasn't a heck of a lot of difference.
I was instilled with the belief that integration during the reconstruction era was a miserable failure, because, you se, the blacks - ahem, "newly freed slaves" - were simply not up to the challenge of running anything! The southern states had to be rescused by the valiant whites, you see, else it would have all gone to pot!
I also learned that the Creeks had to be genocided, because of Fort Mims. oh yes, that book was full of "the redskins got what they deserved!" rhetoric for the Creeks and Chickasaw.
The most unreal thing about "learning" how incompetent blacks were at running things... is that the teacher was a black woman. Half the class was black. Both principal and vice principal were black men. And it was just... rote lessoning. No debate, no "oh well that's bullshit!" from anyone. I can't pretend ot know what goes on in anyone else's head, but looking back, that situation is just bizarre.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Slavery was a Good Thing.
The Founding Fathers were Fundamentalists
The poor are to blame for poverty
This kind of disgraceful crap doesn't even qualify as revisionist history. It's just plain lies. And it needs to be called out as such.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)hunter
(38,264 posts)Awesome.
And he'd better be a darn happy and "contented slave" while he cleans my garage or else I'll sell him to someone who's not so "kind" as I am...
Initech
(99,913 posts)Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)are both contradictions. Unbelievable.
yuiyoshida
(41,759 posts)With Happy Slaves... and they can come up with Zippity new songs to dance too...
etherealtruth
(22,165 posts)that is a level of stupidity I cannot even fathom
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Just another racist "conservative".
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Response to RandySF (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Berlum
(7,044 posts)Squirmy Republicons just do not do much other than whine, go negative, and block America's progress. They almost always take perverse AWOL liberties when it comes to responsibility.