Think You Know About Slavery?

Years ago, and for a brief period of time, I worked for UPS. Believe me, UPS taught me all that I might ever want or need to know about drudgery in America! They liked me, and wanted me to settle into the job; but, as far as I was concerned, the feeling wasn't anywhere near mutual.

 

It was drudgery that you were free to leave any time you wished, to go anywhere you wished...

UPS couldn't sell you, your wife nor your children to another employer. UPS could not arbitrarily beat you with corporal punishment for any reason they saw fit, nor could UPS deprive you of an education and other basic necessities of life, nor could UPS legally misuse you and abuse you as a sex object for the satisfaction of the management's sexual needs (though undoubtedly, sexual harassment and exploitation does jappen in some corporations, but usually not as a condition of employment). Although drudgery was often an aspect of the antebellum slave's lot (though some were treated better than others), there was so much more to the master / slave dynamic than the tedium of working at a job that was laborious, and unfulfilling beyond keeping oneself alive.

 

Funny how America is the big bad villain when it comes to slavery but we were not alone=== Australia had its share of enslaved peoples as well.

 

America doesn't exculpate it's own history (and the ignomy that it has attracted) by appealing to the 'whataboutism' fallacy Whataboutism - RationalWiki of reasoning.

The tendency for some Americans to white wash America's own slavery history is not unique, and some right wing conservative dipstick Australian politicians who should know better ( or at least should know their Australian history better) have either wittingly, or ignorantly contributed to doing that with Australian colonial history also.

Convict transportation from England to Australia, although the convicts were often treated brutally and exploited as cheap labour, could not be construed as comparable to the North Atlantic slave trade. Australia's 'Blackbirding' of Islanders from Melanesia and other places Blackbirding - Wikipedia agricultural labourers in the mid 1800s however, is a pretty close analogue, and certainly, Australian Aboriginals had at various times and places been coerced into providing cheap labour under exploitive slave like conditions for agriculturalists, with the connivance and cooperation of white politicians: Though Australia's Liberal / National Party Coalition's Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) doesn't seem to understand those historical facts.





It has to be said, that some Americans, back in the day were certainly villainous in their exploitation of chattel slavery for their own economic and social benefit, however Americans of the present day are not required to assume the collective guilt of their forebears' actions concerning chattel slavery...that is the lot of the forebears who were proponents and beneficiaries of that system at that time...that said, those in the post bellum era, including those who live today who handwave away, or whitewash America's slavery past are culpable for their own actions, and in the same way that just as Holocaust deniers must bear the consequences of their denialism, American slavery apologists and equivocators are culpable for their own actions, and bear the consequences of their own apologetics and equivocations.

Chattel slavery is a blight upon human flourishing, and should neither be romanticised, nor be defended wherever it has occurred, or wherever it presently is occurring. As to post bellum statues of Confederate military and civilian luminaries...they should in my opinion, be removed from public spaces (particularly government legislative precincts, libraries, law courts and educational institutions) and placed in Confederacy 'theme parks' similar to Lithuania's Grūto Parkas Grūto parkas – Grūto parkas (aka Stalin's World)

 

Stefan Molyneux - The Story of Your Enslavement

 

Bah! No one here whitewashes slavery nor supports it. It was and is a horrible disease throughout the world that most countries have eradicated.

However, I disagree about slavery and taxes. In fact, I think taxes are a good idea in order to support a military, police and emergency responders. Where I disagree is how they continue to increase taxation and tax anything and everything. For example, I pay State taxes which pays for State Parks but now I also have to purchase a special Park Pass to visit those parks that I already pay for. That's one example in many...Public schools system is another and if we should defund anything it should be public schools. But, I truly think the problem is mankind itself for mankind is inherently bad so its government is inherently bad for if mankind was good then...

 

More slaves now than ever before and in every country. They outlawed the practice but it still exists. Slavery is so 19th century, the 21st century cause is Climate Change!