This hits home for me. I grew up in the American south and the "good slave owner" was essentially an archetype within the narrative of slavery. I don’t think that most people who believe it are...
Did the white visitors, I asked her, experience the space differently from the Black visitors? She told me that the most common question she gets from white visitors is “I know slavery was bad … I don’t mean it this way, but … Were there any good slave owners?”
She took a deep breath, her frustration visible. She had the look of someone professionally committed to patience but personally exhausted by the toll it takes.
“I really give a short but nuanced answer to that,” she said. “Regardless of how these individuals fed the people that they owned, regardless of how they clothed them, regardless of if they never laid a hand on them, they were still sanctioning the system … You can’t say, ‘Hey, this person kidnapped your child, but they fed them well. They were a good person.’ How absurd does that sound?”
But so many Americans simply don’t want to hear this, and if they do hear it, they refuse to accept it.
This hits home for me. I grew up in the American south and the "good slave owner" was essentially an archetype within the narrative of slavery.
I don’t think that most people who believe it are doing so from a place of deliberate, conscious whitewashing. In fact, I think part of its insidiousness is that the role it plays is essentially invisible. It’s a way of softening the unsoftenable — bringing balance to the unbalanceable. The reality of slavery is so horrific that even the slightest positive angle or glimmer of hope acts as a welcome port in a horrible storm. I think many white people, when confronted with the abject face of slavery, seek immediate intellectual comfort from it — hence why so many of us ask the director of a museum of terror about the “good” terrorizers.
I’m currently reading a book about Trumpism, and it featured a “joke” that I thought was particularly illustrative:
There is an old joke about a country lawyer who, when he was hired to defend a man accused of killing a family of four and their dog, produces a dog and denies everything.
I think the "good slave owner" archetype is a psychological equivalent of "producing the dog”. It doesn’t address the other harms done, but it helps us to dismiss them, cast doubt about them, or turn our focus elsewhere. Unlike the “joke” here, where the lawyer is undoubtedly aware of his manipulation, I don’t think the “good slave owner” archetype is a conscious effort at misdirection by most of the people who put stock in it. There are certainly people who are aware that the narrative is essentially a manipulation, but I would wager that the number of “true believers” far exceeds them.
I don’t say this as an excuse, but merely as context. I think it’s incumbent on white people to look at slavery for what it was and to see it in all of its horror, unfairness, and discomfort. Slavery was widespread, institutionalized, racist terror, and there is no softening of that — no spoonful of sugar that can make that legacy taste slightly sweeter. And even if we find something that lets us do so, what have we gained? Even if we can produce the dog, what happened to the family?
Honestly, I think the narrative about how we teach people about historical racism needs to be much more colorful. I think in many cases, people think about the past as only being an issue of...
Honestly, I think the narrative about how we teach people about historical racism needs to be much more colorful. I think in many cases, people think about the past as only being an issue of slavery. That's what let people think that there were good slave owners, and that's why people who claim to not be descended from slave owners think they're off the hook. The fact of the matter was that things were dramatically worse than "just slavery"; even if you were a free man, the color of your skin would still invite people to trample on you..
We need to tell people about the lynching. We need to tell everyone that we live in a society where we actively punished black people for the crimes as simple as loving someone with the wrong skin tone or being financially successful. We left the police behind, formed a mob around them, and murdered them in whatever way the mob saw fit. And then they cut the body to pieces and gave them out as souvenirs. And for years later they would still congratulate themselves for the time they defended their pure white community from the black menace.
We need to teach this harsh lesson because it's something that completely blows away the bullshit stories about how great the antebellum United States was. Because none of the crazy excuses these people have dreamed up can ever match the scale of the sins we have unearthed. And it's not just the South; lynchings happened all over the country.
Reposting since the previous topic didn't have any comments, I have seen some commenters say that quoted article summaries like above are useful, and the other topic is old enough that the quote...
As I traveled, ... I was struck by the many people I met who believe a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods.
For so many of them, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it is just the story they want to believe. It is not a public story we all share, but an intimate one, passed down like an heirloom, that shapes their sense of who they are. Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth.
Reposting since the previous topic didn't have any comments, I have seen some commenters say that quoted article summaries like above are useful, and the other topic is old enough that the quote wouldn't be seen if I left it there. Let me know if reposts like this are unwelcome.
This hits home for me. I grew up in the American south and the "good slave owner" was essentially an archetype within the narrative of slavery.
I don’t think that most people who believe it are doing so from a place of deliberate, conscious whitewashing. In fact, I think part of its insidiousness is that the role it plays is essentially invisible. It’s a way of softening the unsoftenable — bringing balance to the unbalanceable. The reality of slavery is so horrific that even the slightest positive angle or glimmer of hope acts as a welcome port in a horrible storm. I think many white people, when confronted with the abject face of slavery, seek immediate intellectual comfort from it — hence why so many of us ask the director of a museum of terror about the “good” terrorizers.
I’m currently reading a book about Trumpism, and it featured a “joke” that I thought was particularly illustrative:
I think the "good slave owner" archetype is a psychological equivalent of "producing the dog”. It doesn’t address the other harms done, but it helps us to dismiss them, cast doubt about them, or turn our focus elsewhere. Unlike the “joke” here, where the lawyer is undoubtedly aware of his manipulation, I don’t think the “good slave owner” archetype is a conscious effort at misdirection by most of the people who put stock in it. There are certainly people who are aware that the narrative is essentially a manipulation, but I would wager that the number of “true believers” far exceeds them.
I don’t say this as an excuse, but merely as context. I think it’s incumbent on white people to look at slavery for what it was and to see it in all of its horror, unfairness, and discomfort. Slavery was widespread, institutionalized, racist terror, and there is no softening of that — no spoonful of sugar that can make that legacy taste slightly sweeter. And even if we find something that lets us do so, what have we gained? Even if we can produce the dog, what happened to the family?
Honestly, I think the narrative about how we teach people about historical racism needs to be much more colorful. I think in many cases, people think about the past as only being an issue of slavery. That's what let people think that there were good slave owners, and that's why people who claim to not be descended from slave owners think they're off the hook. The fact of the matter was that things were dramatically worse than "just slavery"; even if you were a free man, the color of your skin would still invite people to trample on you..
We need to tell people about the lynching. We need to tell everyone that we live in a society where we actively punished black people for the crimes as simple as loving someone with the wrong skin tone or being financially successful. We left the police behind, formed a mob around them, and murdered them in whatever way the mob saw fit. And then they cut the body to pieces and gave them out as souvenirs. And for years later they would still congratulate themselves for the time they defended their pure white community from the black menace.
We need to teach this harsh lesson because it's something that completely blows away the bullshit stories about how great the antebellum United States was. Because none of the crazy excuses these people have dreamed up can ever match the scale of the sins we have unearthed. And it's not just the South; lynchings happened all over the country.
Reposting since the previous topic didn't have any comments, I have seen some commenters say that quoted article summaries like above are useful, and the other topic is old enough that the quote wouldn't be seen if I left it there. Let me know if reposts like this are unwelcome.