75%

[dutch508]

Star Member ancianita (17,222 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213697696

75%

Every man with a red dot on his face who signed the Declaration of Independence OWNED Africans, and enslaved Africans.



Yes, they were the elite of their time, and aware of the debates on slavery.

Over 75% of them.

American mythology has got to go.

Why? Because only children can handle only a story when they can't handle the truth.

Adults expect true history -- history that tells objective truth, not some well intended version of the truth.

True history -- the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth -- is the solid foundation of our patriotism. Not myths.

Myths never help to form a more perfect union. Never.

 

Star Member ancianita (17,222 posts)

1. Their legacy today: All Lives Matter

Perhaps the founders were as innocent and as good as it got for those days. Fine. Now, we need to take it from there.

Even the average white guy with a gun can figure out that civil war isn't worth all the death dealing and murder it takes to keep a people unfree.

We need to either get on with the founders' problem that kept us from a more perfect union, or we ourselves are on the road to unfreedom.

Star Member Freddie (6,390 posts)

2. I always watch 1776 on July 4

Part of the plot is the newlywed Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha who couldn’t stand to be apart. Heartwarming and all.
Martha died young trying to give Thomas a son. She had at least 8 pregnancies, all but 2 ending in miscarriage, stillbirth or a baby that died in infancy. Her body simply wore out from all that childbearing - pretty common back then. Their 2 surviving children were daughters. One of those daughters died in childbirth herself at 21.
Just saying that the Founding Fathers weren’t that great with women.

Star Member ancianita (17,222 posts)

4. Modern eyes see the inaccuracy of history and change it in order to change society toward a better future.

We know these were men of their time, elite men of the Enlightenment who were the "modern eyes" of their time.

If they constituted our nation based on the inaccuracy of their "modern eyes," the truth of our "modern eyes" makes our seeing deserving to be done.

Any fixing of the past deserves to be done.

If the founders were alive today, they'd agree with that.

jaxexpat (411 posts)

13. As Paul, quoting Psalms, said to the Romans, "there is no righteous man, not even one".

Precludes imbuement of saintliness on any fathers, founding or otherwise. One of the gates to wisdom or something.

NNadir (24,831 posts)

7. There is an important caveat about one of those red dots, however.

This would be Benjamin Franklin, who owned two slaves at one point, but freed them, and became an abolitionist, founding and heading the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, and advocated strongly - but was defeated in the effort - at the Constitutional Convention for the abolition of slavery.

However, your point is well taken, and this weekend, I watched, and have been watching this incredibly lucid lecture by Jeff Robinson, usefully produced here: The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States (FULL Version)

The only (extremely minor) flaw in this lecture is its title: It is not really about the Confederacy; but is rather about the undeniable truth that the United States was founded on the principle of White Supremacy and legally sanctioned this principle until 1954.

From my perspective despite being aware of this lecture myself for less than 48 hours, as this lecture exists, any overview course in American History anywhere that does not assure familiarity with this lecture, represents heuristic malpractice.

Arguably, the United States is expiating for its sin by committing suicide, having allowed a virulent racist to assume the office of President of the United States in 2017.

Thank you for the note. I just wanted to clarify, even in the earliest of times, at least one American, arguably the inventor of this country, taught himself that human slavery was a crime against humanity. Franklin was very bitter about the inclusion of slavery in the US Constitution, mused that it would destroy the country - which it almost did in the period between 1861-1865 - and is doing right now.

Star Member Roy Rolling (4,372 posts)

14. Totally Agree With the Premise

They were slaveowners.

Then what?

An ad hominem campaign to erase their names from history, exactly at the point when we should be confronting the ugly past to come up with a better future? Not go back and fight the personalities of 1776, but ignore the substantive issue of a legacy of economic inequality?

The greedy business class that was all-in for slavery in the 1800s would like nothing better than to brand the conflict a cultural war rather than an economic struggle. Then, they can buy public opinion against protestors, rather than earn it in the marketplace of ideas.

Don’t fall for it, it’s a trap. Protest smartly, not for just for the sake of protest, but to keep attention diverted from substantive changes being made. It’s a struggle for peace, not just for dominance.

HotTeaBag (485 posts)

16. And countless white soldiers fought and died so African Americans could be free.

That too is our history.

 

[jukin]

I smell a granite pizza in HotTeaBag's future.

[landofconfusion80]

Star Member ancianita (17,222 posts)

1. Their legacy today: All Lives Matter

Perhaps the founders were as innocent and as good as it got for those days. Fine. Now, we need to take it from there.

Even the average white guy with a gun can figure out that civil war isn't worth all the death dealing and murder it takes to keep a people unfree.

We need to either get on with the founders' problem that kept us from a more perfect union, or we ourselves are on the road to unfreedom.

The title you're looking for is "the road to serfdom." It would bore you to tears with the lack of pictures and melt you into tears from crushing your world view.

[franksolich]

You know, I'm getting pretty bored with all this blah-blah-blah about slavery and racism.  I'm sure that like millions of other Americans, I sort of "shut it out" when the topic comes up, it's been talked about so much.

But I am curious why the issue of Russian slavery, i.e. serfdom, never seems to come up.  As it was not abolished until 1861, there's plenty of documentary evidence about it.

One gets the impression that Russian masters were more cruel to their serfs than Democrat masters to their slaves.  Democrat masters at least cared about keeping their slaves alive and relatively healthy so they could work better, but as the supply of Russian serfs was unlimited, Russian masters didn't give a damn whether their serfs lived or died.

Democrat masters had sometimes used slaves as a means of emotional gratification, usually sexual, but Russian masters were much more voracious in using serfs for such purposes.

[Ptarmigan]

Indentured servants were used in America. They are the poor imported from Europe.

Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/indentured_servants_in_colonial_virginia

Origins
Servitude had a long history in England, dating back to medieval serfdom. The Ordinance of Labourers, passed in June 1349, declared that all men and women under the age of sixty who did not practice a craft must serve anyone requiring their labor. Parliament updated the law in 1495 and 1563, with the latter version, the Statute of Artificers, still being in effect when the English founded Jamestown. Between 1520 and 1630, England's population more than doubled, from 2.3 million to 4.8 million, and Parliament hoped its 1563 statute might "banishe Idleness[,] advance Husbandrye," and so deal with the near-overwhelming number of poor and unemployed citizens. In fact, the founding of Virginia itself was partially in response to this problem. In his Discourse on Western Planting (1584), Richard Hakluyt (the younger) argued to Queen Elizabeth that new American colonies would energize England's "decayed trades" and provide work for the country's "multitudes of loyterers and idle vagabondes."

In England, an indenture, or contract for labor, was known as a "covenant merely personal," and could apply either to farm laborers or apprentices learning a trade. Contracts generally lasted a year, after which terms were renegotiated. As the merchant and adventurer Sir George Peckham noted in 1583, many English men and women willingly became servants "in hope thereby to amend theyr estates," and young children were sometimes bound to service by parents who might not otherwise be able to afford their upbringing. While there was not necessarily a strong stigma attached to indentured servitude, the institution—first in England and then in Virginia—temporarily transformed free men and women into chattel, or property to be bought and sold.

[DumbAss Tanker]

One gets the impression that Russian masters were more cruel to their serfs than Democrat masters to their slaves.  Democrat masters at least cared about keeping their slaves alive and relatively healthy so they could work better, but as the supply of Russian serfs was unlimited, Russian masters didn't give a damn whether their serfs lived or died.

Democrat masters had sometimes used slaves as a means of emotional gratification, usually sexual, but Russian masters were much more voracious in using serfs for such purposes.

Serfdom points also true of factory/industrial workers into the early 20th Century, who were about as disposable as zeks in the Gulags, slaves at least for the most part had some minimal provisions made when they were too old or infirm to work profitably.  Both quite unenviable positions, but often working for the Northern industrialists proved just as bad if not worse.

[Wineslob]

We need to either get on with the founders' problem that kept us from a more perfect union, or we ourselves are on the road to unfreedom.

Where is this "unfreedom" you speak of?

[Delmar]

There is a scandal about this painting with the red dots that's even more fascinating than the dotted up painting itself.

‘Let me teach you something’: Shaun King, with his graduate degree in history, swipes someone else’s research

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/07/04/let-me-teach-you-something-shaun-king-with-his-graduate-degree-in-history-swipes-someone-elses-research/

[ChuckJ]

I’ve got an idea for someone. Get a map of the continent of Africa. Place white dots on the areas where the European whites went into the brush and captured Africans to use for slaves. Place red dots where Africans went into the brush and captured other Africans for themselves and to sale to white Europeans. Finally take blue dots and place them on the areas where slavery is still practiced today. Once the blue dots are placed on the African map, get a map of the USA and place blue dots where slavery is still practiced in the USA.

[franksolich]

I’ve got an idea for someone. Get a map of the continent of Africa. Place white dots on the areas where the European whites went into the brush and captured Africans to use for slaves. Place red dots where Africans went into the brush and captured other Africans for themselves and to sale to white Europeans.

No white dots because it didn't happen; beyond the coasts of western Africa, it was so dark, so unknown, so threatening that evil white Europeans didn't venture into it.  And in fact western Africa was the last part of the continent to be dominated or colonized.

There are still castle-like forts along the coast.  Evil white Europeans used to sail to them, park their boats, and go inside to wait until the African slave-harvesters showed up from the interior with their goods.

[Old n Grumpy]

You know, I'm getting pretty bored with all this blah-blah-blah about slavery and racism.

I am really tired of it as well, the rich and famous blacks complain loudly but don't do anything to help their brothers. The poor ones act like animals, killing each other for kicks, and act like whiter has done nothing for them.

It 's time to tell them to STFU and get your shit together, all this rioting, violence and destruction and pandering is only turning whites against them.

[landofconfusion80]

I am really tired of it as well, the rich and famous blacks complain loudly but don't do anything to help their brothers. The poor ones act like animals, killing each other for kicks, and act like whiter has done nothing for them.

It 's time to tell them to STFU and get your shit together, all this rioting, violence and destruction and pandering is only turning whites against them.

A few years ago one of the rich and famous  ones moved back to the neighborhood.  He decided after a little while that it wasnt going to work out cause his stuff kept getting stolen

[Delmar]

A few years ago one of the rich and famous  ones moved back to the neighborhood.  He decided after a little while that it wasnt going to work out cause his stuff kept getting stolen

That reminded me of a funny story I heard Tracy Morgan of Saturday Night Live tell Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

GROSS: My guest is Tracy Morgan. He stars in the NBC comedy series "30 Rock" and spent seven years on "Saturday Night Live." Morgan's new memoir is called "I Am the New Black."

You describe when you got your first check from "Saturday Night Live," you know, you said you were still living in the ghetto and...

MORGAN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...after you got the check you had enough money to move the family...

MORGAN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and you moved in the middle of the night.

MORGAN: I felt like Noah. I felt like Noah who had built his ark and the first thing I wanted to do was get my family to higher grounds because I knew the floods was going to come.

GROSS: What were the floods?

MORGAN: More gunfire. More violence. And I'm on TV now too. Where I come from, people see you on TV, they think you stashed a million dollars in your house. And you don't want anybody knowing when you're leaving. You don't want nobody looking at your stuff as you put it into the truck. You don't want anyone following you to your new pad where you rest your head. And that was it. I just wanted a fresh start with my family and I wanted to leave my past in my past, so we quietly moved. We quietly moved up to Riverdale.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/114009203

[YupItsMe]

I’ve got an idea for someone. Get a map of the continent of Africa. Place white dots on the areas where the European whites went into the brush and captured Africans to use for slaves. Place red dots where Africans went into the brush and captured other Africans for themselves and to sale to white Europeans. Finally take blue dots and place them on the areas where slavery is still practiced today. Once the blue dots are placed on the African map, get a map of the USA and place blue dots where slavery is still practiced in the USA.

  Nicely said.   My feeling on reparations is this, if they can tell me the African country they  "CLAIM" their ancestors were taken from.  I say we take today's average annual income from the ancestor's country subtract it from what they receive in income/benefits in America today and they can pay me the difference. One way trans-Atlantic boat ride free of charge.