Clinton honored Confederacy on Arkansas flag

Post Reply New Topic

politicians acting like politicians? say it aint so!

As a Northerner, I find the Confederate flag abhorrent. They represented an army of a republic which wanted to keep slavery intact at all costs, including people dying.

Many Southerners, probably, have an ambivalent feeling about the Confederate flag. It represents, to them, some sort of sovereignty--but most realize the other implications of it.

Not every slave owner treated slaves as badly as some did. My great-grandmother lived as a young girl on a plantation in Georgia during the Reconstruction period. Her parents were essentially sharecroppers who had worked at the plantation aside slaves with little social difference between them. They were white, but they might as well have been slaves. Most sharecroppers were black, and freed former slaves. My great-grandmother attended a makeshift school which was organized by a few of the older black sharecroppers, with financed by the plantation owner, where she and her black friends were educated by them. Apart from school, she was watched over, care for and occasionally scolded by the black sharecropper mothers as if she were their own daughter. I won't pretend that this was all a Disney-fied version of southern slavery, but, for the sharecropper families including my great-grandmother, it was a world away from what some slaves had experienced. They were welcomed, included, taught and care for by their own community of various races.

So, I see American slavery as repugnant but multifaceted, not monolithic.

By the way, cool avatar, kraftiekortie!

There's no doubt that some slaves were treated better than others; some even had prominent positions.

Some were seen as being "members of the family"--now that is a loaded phrase!

However, it was never forgotten that the were SLAVES in the legal sense.

Yes, there were some slaves who would have rather have remained slaves than having to tread the dangerous waters of freedom. It still doesn't lessen the impact of SLAVERY as a concept.

And, especially, as a force in the ECONOMIC life of the country.

Yep. The lawful status of slaves was probably the most damaging to everyone involved with the enterprise. Still, if my great-grandmother's experience wasn't completely unique, it is impressive that both sides of the matter found their collective humanity at a time when most didn't.

Every slave owner owned slaves.

That, in itself, is abhorrent, and something to be ashamed of.

Saying that some slave owners were slightly less abominable than others does not mean that they weren't, regardless, a stain upon humanity, to be regretted.

In the evolution of economic systems, historically serfdom follows slavery, and share cropping was clearly an American version of serfdom.