DeSantis ROASTED By Historians For Remarks About Slavery

Page 1 of 2 [ 28 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

cyberdad
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,150

04 Oct 2022, 6:13 am

Mulltiple historians have accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of misconstruing facts due to his recent controversial remarks about early American history.

According to a new analysis from Newsweek, DeSantis' seemingly controversial remarks were made on Tuesday, September 20. At the time, he argued that it was the "American revolution that caused people to question slavery."

He added, "Nobody had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowered by our creator with inalienable rights and that we are all created equal. Then that birthed abolition movements."

After making his speech, DeSantis posted a portion of it via Twitter and it quickly surpassed 900,000 views. However, it also attracted criticism. Speaking to Newsweek, historians weighed in with critical assessments of the Florida governor's remarks.

Professor Karin Wulf, who focuses on the study of eighteenth-century British American history at Brown University, said, "On at least three levels this is wrong. The idea of natural rights didn't originate with the American revolutionaries; they were reflecting ideas that were widespread among political thinkers, perhaps most obviously the 17th-century English political philosopher John Locke.

She added, The United States as a government did not act against slavery in any form until 1807 (prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade) and acted in key ways to protect it right up to the Civil War (the fugitive slave act).

"Most egregiously, the idea that 'no one' questioned slavery erases enslaved people themselves who were active in resisting slavery both as individuals and collectively and in refusing the logic and legality of their enslavement."

Seth Rockman, who also works at Brown University as an associate professor conducting writing and research on slavery economics, suggested that DeSantis' actions Black Americans are part of a greater agenda stemming from white nationalism.

"DeSantis clearly has not done the reading for class, but his error here goes beyond ignorance of the last several decades of research on anti-slavery thinking and organizing over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," Rockman said. "What DeSantis does here is more pernicious because it places Black people outside the category of 'we' and 'Americans'— a move that can only be understood as part of DeSantis's strategy to ride white nationalism to higher office.



DeathFlowerKing
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 9 Sep 2022
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,228
Location: City of Roses

04 Oct 2022, 10:50 am

They call him DeSatan for a reason.



kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

04 Oct 2022, 11:36 am

The Founding Fathers never claimed their ideas originated with them.

They quoted John Locke extensively.

If it wasn’t for slavery, Thomas Jefferson might have been placed in debtor prison. He depended greatly upon the “peculiar institution,” even though he abhorred slavery in theory.



Dox47
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,577
Location: Seattle-ish

04 Oct 2022, 12:56 pm

Those sound like some relatively minor quibbles, and over a single speech, as opposed to say a a giant feature in the NYT that is now being taught to school children as factual despite much more significant historical errors.


_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson


Dox47
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,577
Location: Seattle-ish

04 Oct 2022, 12:57 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
They call him DeSatan for a reason.


Sick burn, bro.


_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson


cyberdad
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,150

04 Oct 2022, 9:35 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
If it wasn’t for slavery, Thomas Jefferson might have been placed in debtor prison. He depended greatly upon the “peculiar institution,” even though he abhorred slavery in theory.


By curious coincidence John Madison also was heavily in debt and was greatly buffered from debtors prison by his 100 slaves. The founding fathers enshrined slavery in the constitution to protect their own personal interests. Every time George Washington smiled at adoring crowds he displayed his slave's teeth which were pulled painfully from their mouths to replace the ones he lost. The founding fathers of the US (Washington, Jefferson and Madison) are on par with modern human traffickers. Me thinks their faces need to be removed from Mount Rushmore.

De Santis trying to outlaw CRT is an attempt to hide all these uncomfortable truths reminds of something a north Korean dictator would do.



DeathFlowerKing
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 9 Sep 2022
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,228
Location: City of Roses

04 Oct 2022, 10:02 pm

One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.



cyberdad
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,150

04 Oct 2022, 10:19 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.


Except their legacies are all long passed.

In contrast the US when a some random white dude turns around at a football or baseball match and sees 30,000 white people cheering their team
Or when a white school kid turns around in their classroom and sees only kids who look like him
Or when some old white man waters his plants in his yard and realises everyone in his housing estate looks like him
Or when new college student attends an Ivy league and sees only white and yellow faces then.....

That's a direct legacy of slavery



Matrix Glitch
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Oct 2021
Age: 62
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,741
Location: US

04 Oct 2022, 10:22 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.

That's correct from what I've read and heard over the years. And in some cases slaves were treated better and being a slave ensured food and shelter for them and their family. But even in those cases it was still bondage of course if they were being held captive. Although I believe in some cases the system was that people would agree to being a slave for a certain number of years to obtain food and shelter etc.



DeathFlowerKing
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 9 Sep 2022
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,228
Location: City of Roses

04 Oct 2022, 10:29 pm

cyberdad wrote:
DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.


Except their legacies are all long passed.

In contrast the US when a some random white dude turns around at a football or baseball match and sees 30,000 white people cheering their team
Or when a white school kid turns around in their classroom and sees only kids who look like him
Or when some old white man waters his plants in his yard and realises everyone in his housing estate looks like him
Or when new college student attends an Ivy league and sees only white and yellow faces then.....

That's a direct legacy of slavery


I guess because people forget the terrible things each of those civilizations did to those they conquered we like to romanticize them.



DeathFlowerKing
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 9 Sep 2022
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,228
Location: City of Roses

04 Oct 2022, 10:45 pm

Matrix Glitch wrote:
DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.

That's correct from what I've read and heard over the years. And in some cases slaves were treated better and being a slave ensured food and shelter for them and their family. But even in those cases it was still bondage of course if they were being held captive. Although I believe in some cases the system was that people would agree to being a slave for a certain number of years to obtain food and shelter etc.


It should also be noted that Africans were not the only people enslaved in this world. There have even been white slaves throughout history like the Irish and Slavic people (in fact the term "slave" most likely comes from the ethnic term "slav" to describe the people from regions that are today known as Russia, Poland, Ukraine, etc).

I'm not defending slavery and racism at all though. I'm just stating historic facts. I think we need to quit looking at the legacy of slavery as though it was purely a racial problem.

And I think that contrary to the myth Americans tell themselves about ending the evil legacy of slavery after defeating the south in the Civil War, America is still very much a slave state. We have human traffickers like those connected to Jeffrey Epstein who kidnap and exploit young girls as sex slaves to the rich and powerful, and our big corporations are exploiting people in these banana republics around the world.

And don't even get me started about our business dealings with China! :|



cyberdad
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,150

05 Oct 2022, 12:40 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
I guess because people forget the terrible things each of those civilizations did to those they conquered we like to romanticize them.


How far back does one need to go though? The Romans are remembered with fondness and awe at their magnificent constructions. The vikings are romanticised despite largely being responsible for enormous suffering across Europe.

The legacy of slavery in the US is completely different because of from 1619-1965 which is 450 years of continuous mistreatment, torture, rape and degradation of 15% of the US population, In my view this worse than anything done by the Nazis, Mongols or Vikings



naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 33,882
Location: temperate zone

05 Oct 2022, 1:13 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.


Pretty much.

Pre industrial societies all practiced slavery. Or something like it (Medeaval Europe had serfdom, and India had the Caste System).

The tsetse fly made raising livestock impossible in subsaharan Africa so Africans had no beasts of burden. So they relied on slavery even more than the rest of the world.



kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

05 Oct 2022, 8:25 am

cyberdad wrote:
DeathFlowerKing wrote:
One thing i have to ask though. Was there any civilization in the history of mankind that was not built on the backs of slaves? The most notable ancient civilizations I can think of all had slavery in some form or another. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Israelites, Vikings, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. All had slaves.

Even in Africa itself you had the Kingdom of Dahomey which was responsible for raiding villages around West Africa and capturing slaves to either sell to the Americas and Europe or to keep for themselves.


Except their legacies are all long passed.

In contrast the US when a some random white dude turns around at a football or baseball match and sees 30,000 white people cheering their team
Or when a white school kid turns around in their classroom and sees only kids who look like him
Or when some old white man waters his plants in his yard and realises everyone in his housing estate looks like him
Or when new college student attends an Ivy league and sees only white and yellow faces then.....

That's a direct legacy of slavery




There still remains discrimination and racism in the US.

But it's not like what is portrayed immediately above, which is an exceedingly simplistic portrayal. This might be true in some parts of the central US----but is not true elsewhere.

The old white guy watering his plants, in my neighborhood, would see mostly Indian and Hispanic people who look differently from him.



kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

05 Oct 2022, 8:30 am

Ideologues frequently don't see the forest for the trees.

i don't follow people who live merely by abstract ideas, without accounting for actual human experience.



Dox47
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,577
Location: Seattle-ish

05 Oct 2022, 1:39 pm

cyberdad wrote:
Every time George Washington smiled at adoring crowds he displayed his slave's teeth which were pulled painfully from their mouths to replace the ones he lost.


Considering that you started a thread to criticize a politician for getting history wrong, you'd really think you'd be more careful yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wa ... %27s_teeth

Quote:
Records at Mount Vernon show that Washington bought teeth from slaves.[9] The poor in the Western world had been selling teeth as a means of making money since the Middle Ages, and these teeth would be sold as dentures or implants to those of financial means. During the Revolution, French dentist Jean Pierre Le Moyer provided services in tooth transplantation. In May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed slaves 122 shillings for a total of nine teeth to be implanted by a French doctor, who became a frequent guest on the plantation over the next few years. While it is unconfirmed that these purchased teeth were for Washington himself, his payment for them suggests that they were in fact for his use, as does a comment from a letter to his wartime clerk Richard Varick: "I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion," he wrote. Washington used teeth sourced from slaves to improve his appearance, a subject of frequent discomfort to him.[10]


That's Washington's teeth came from slaves is not some secret knowledge in the US like you seem to think, it's a well known fact.


cyberdad wrote:
The founding fathers of the US (Washington, Jefferson and Madison) are on par with modern human traffickers. Me thinks their faces need to be removed from Mount Rushmore.


You should think less, or at least confine your thoughts to your own country, where perhaps your ignorance isn't quite so obvious.

cyberdad wrote:
De Santis trying to outlaw CRT is an attempt to hide all these uncomfortable truths reminds of something a north Korean dictator would do.


Yes, a US governor outlawing a fringe racial theory from being taught in state schools is exactly the same thing as the Kim starving his people to death and throwing multiple generations of them into labor camps when they displease him as a form of collective punishment, what an intelligent comparison.


_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson