Racism - Always and Forever

It's something of a sweeping generalisation but, when canvassing for the labour party, if someone says 'Well, I don't really follow politics' we usually just put 'tory'. It usually saves time.

But, y'know, maybe he was just having a bad day?

What can I say... I'm a very understanding person, (not gullible as my other half claims).

 

It is symbolic, with maybe one tooth behind it.

Ya gotta pull them- or knock them out-- one at a time.

But every little bit helps...

 

We do something similar in the US. If they came out brandishing a weapon we used to put libertarian but post-Trump we're not so sure.

 

Gotta love this comment from the communications officer of Virginia's governor

1436687706512298002 is not a valid tweet id

 

It IS a moldy Confederate box, yes. But it's as big a part of America as the decent. I think the search was a great idea, but what's done with the box afterward is what can keep it one ir turn it into a bad idea. You treat it like a view into the minds of rapists and enslavers, see if there's some clues that can lead to a better understanding of what turns a human being into a centrist or conservative to begin with. Not for curators, but for psychologists.

 

I’m reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Because it’s so old it’s in the public domain so it’s free on any reading app. I suggest you read the Wikipedia entry first, which tells an interesting story about the book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_the_Life_of_a_Slave_Girl

Now, I’ve always known rape happened. But I wondered how common it was. Like, if a man is married, it’s still adultery. And if he’s not, it’s fornication. So it wasn’t clear to me that it was pervasive. It was the 1830s after all, not the 1970s. I figured that level of morality, based around sex and religion rather than consent, might have limited the amount of rape.

If this account is anything close to typical, man oh man was it pervasive. Like, shockingly, at least for domestics and/or mixed slaves. In the book it seems that field hands were not subject to rape as much, but that’s because domestics were basically deemed, I don’t know the word, concubines. Like, it was just part of the job. So there was no need to rape field hands.

I would also add that in this book, “rape” is not nuanced enough. Another thing I’d wondered about was if there was any negotiation over sex, any ability to resist. In this book, it’s like nothing any of us have experienced, it’s beyond my ability to describe without writing multiple paragraphs.

If this account is anything close to typical, then the moral corruption of the antebellum South is worse than you’ve imagined.

HINT: it took me a while to figure out what “grasp” means. It’s the person who had authority over the slave, but it wasn’t always the owner. Every year between Christmas and New Year, city slaves who had been given as gifts, but had no economic function in a household, would be rented out for the year. So a city household with say 5 slaves but only enough work around the house for 3, would rent out the other two. The renter was the grasp.

 

Well,I always figured that was why there are light skinned African Americans ...

 

I'm not sure the word is ever nuanced enough.

You use the term "Concubines" in a way that may not accurately describe the feeling a woman of color probably gets when she's helpless under the grunting and sweating of a White male. The slime, the stench... "Concubine" describes something close to a more willing ********piece, not a woman or child who gets a dick stuck in her at the White male's will. In this case, I'm thinking "Victims" is a better choice.

I can't imagine why there would be any "rules" that the slaveowner couldn't dismiss at his whim.

No, it isn't. My parents did the job my K-12 teachers left somewhat undone until I reached college age, where my profs were on point.

I've known since age 8 or 9 that the South (and the nation as a whole) was morally bankrupt. Additionally, I've never thought there was anything moral about the states where fighting to free the slaves was open to debate.

I appreciate the link.

 

On your first point, I was trying to describe the sociology of it, particularly from the perspective of the rapist. I was trying to explain the difference in peril between field hands and domestics. Now, this account might have been atypical because the writer lived in the town of New Bern. Maybe if she had been a domestic on a large plantation in Alabama or Mississippi it would be different.

As to your second point, read the book and you’ll see what I mean. Like I wrote, I could explain it, but I wouldn’t do a great job plus it would be a really long post, and probably tedious.

the other really cool thing about this book is, if you’re like me, what’s fascinating about history isn’t who won which battle, or what the tax policy of the Whigs was. It’s, what was the lived experience of people from the past. This book tells us that.

 

Have you read the book?

If not, you really should shut up. Seriously.

Im leaving this one sentence which asserts that every slave owner over two centuries had the exact same ideology toward every slave, just to highlight your unseriousness. Your belief in a monolithic viewpoint is babyish.

 

Indeed. It's like the women under the Japanese occupation of Asia. Raped at will by the "masters". In Korea the Japs used the euphemistic term "comfort girls".
In the Dutch Indies many Jap officers had European and Dutch-Indo women as "concubines", while the correct word should be sex slaves.

 

Don't leave out German-occupied Europe!

 

No. It's not. Again, read the book. For one thing, Dr. Flint (that's his pseudonym in the book) never had sex with her.

Here's a short wikipedia entry about the father of her children. I literally can't describe their relationship without going into great detail explaining their viewpoint, and boring the hell out of everyone. I'll go one step further...I think it is impossible for me, as a male, to explain what Harriet Jacobs' motivations were.

Samuel Tredwell Sawyer - Wikipedia

Frankly, we don't have the emotional and psychological and sociological vocabulary to discuss what it was like. At least, not simply. The book is like reading The Hobbit or Dune, in which the reader has to have the world explained to him. But in the case of this book, she had a definite purpose; she was writing to Northern women. So she didn't have to explain mid-19th century sexual mores. She just had to explain the impact of the Peculiar Institution on sexual relations in the South. And even for that intended readership, I'll bet it was a difficult read. Jacobs certainly goes over numerous points multiple times, and I'm guessing that's because she knew her readership needed reminding, or fuller explanations.

 

Having a slave for sex was a perverse win-win for the slave owner. Any children produced would become slaves as well. It's mind-boggling that this was the norm in half the country.

 

And literally took a Civil War for it to stop being the norm in half the country.

 

It was just another day at the Pentagon Office:
US drone strike mistakenly targeted Afghan aid worker ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...argeted-afghan-aid-worker-investigation-finds
7 dagen geledenThe US mistakenly targeted and killed an innocent aid worker for an American company in a drone strike in Afghanistan, the New York Times suggested in an investigation into the country's final ...

 

https://www.theroot.com/white-footb...Al8JPUjtCL1hz91jOKx0tXLCrEtAWhCPLgfTLElORpaIs

Bama State played a money game at Auburn last weekend and got a dose of Plains conservatism... Whites chanting "******** Joe Biden"

...op-ed warning

 

Joe Biden is white.

Yes, I read it.

Doesn’t change the fact that he’s white.

 

Do they chant that at every game, or only when playing against traditionally black schools?

 

Biden is White. So were Schwerner and Goodman. So are you. There's a connection here (as seen by conservatives), but I'm not sure you'll find it because you probably separate one from the other two by kind, instead of by degree.

Every game. We already know one of the reasons they do. And it didn't occur to them to consider that in THIS game, they were playing an HBCU- an institution generally associated with victims of conservatism.

It's a bit like telling an off-color joke to your golfing buddies versus telling it to the people who are the subject of your humor. Better the one you know, yes, but I'm not going to fail to call you out.

This doesn't have to be the only reason they chant, y'know. All that's required is for it to be among them.

 

I guess Auburn fans didn't respond with **** 'Bama.

 

They couldn't. Coach James Franklin's men handled business. Franklin's already been in the SEC, taking Vandy to a bowl game his last two seasons there. That's what got him the Penn State gig.

 

Nope. That’s in th article. That’s why it’s strange for this topic to be in this thread.

 

This part explained it well enough for me:

“Yelling ‘******** Joe Biden’ might not be explicitly racial, but who do you think most of the Black people in the stands voted for?” Scott told The Root. ​

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YMMV