#Sorry for the rant OP! I just am very passionate about this and am sick of people (looking at you Desantis) trying to vilify the ancestors

[bookishfeylin]

Not to mention slavery in pre-colonial Africa was noticeably different than what happened in the Americas. Per Johann Gottlieb Christaller in Ashanti Proverbs: The Primitive Ethics of a Savage People (what an amazing title for a book that’s DEFINITELY not dehumanizing in any way—) we know that slaves of the Ashanti, for one infamous instance, were treated well, could be paid wages, often inherited property from their masters, and he specifically states that “so-called ‘slavery’ in Africa as practiced by the Africans themselves, was seldom or never that terrible thing with which later and exotic associations have invested that word.”

Meanwhile chattel slavery of the Americas was unprecedented in both scale (being the largest forced migration in all of human history with 15 million people kidnapped, devastating the economy of an entire continent, destroying and/or weakening the remaining kingdoms and making them much more susceptible to colonization later on) and brutality (I mean it was literally called CHATTEL slavery my ancestors were treated like ANIMALS with everything that involves. Our bodies were skinned. Our hair was used to stuff furniture. There were “breeding farms.” People were branded. There was buck-breaking. Black babies were used as gator bait. Some slaves were eaten). African slavery matches neither that scale nor brutality, and comparing it to American chattel slavery is… asinine at best.

And ofc as OP brought out, there are still the modern day ramifications of American chattel slavery and the oppression afterwards. Africans aren’t responsible for what AMERICANS did in AMERICA. They aren’t responsible for the slavery here, or anything that followed as white peoples attempted to hold onto power: the Jim Crow, the segregation, the lynching, the police brutality, the redlining, or any of the other manifestations of systemic racism and lingering racist attitudes here, and Africans didn’t deserve to be subjected to the colonialism then or the neocolonialism today.

The obsession with whitewashing American slavery is deeply fascinating and horrifying to me. Like yes, there was slavery in pre-colonial Africa! It was also in Asia! And the Americas! And in *gasp* Europe too! White people also enslaved other white people! (Not that we ever hear about it though… gotta vilify people of color as savages!!!) But those forms of slavery haven’t had far reaching ramifications to this day the same way American slavery has, screwing over a continent and the people who were enslaved and left a plethora of racial stereotypes and systemic racism that still harms people today. It’s that simple. Unlike Greek slavery and Roman slavery and even pre-colonial African slavery, the ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and American slavery are STILL ongoing, and I don’t get why it’s so hard for the right wing to understand this.

I mean, I've written a lot of posts about this, but this is the basic essence of it. It's not that they don't understand it, it's just not profitable or useful for them to do so, so they don't. Besides, they don't think it was a) actually that bad or b) that anything should be done to redress the results of that badness in modern-day life, because as far as they're concerned, that was and is what black people deserve and they don't understand why everyone is making such a fuss about it.

And yet there's some tiny withered part of them that does know they need to come up with an excuse that sounds even remotely close to what ordinary people believe. That's why they're going in with DeSantis' "let's teach that slavery was sometimes good for black people actually!" bullshit and followed it up with "the Holocaust was good for Jews actually," because there's no epochal, stain-on-humanity atrocity that cannot be usefully revised in the diseased little minds of White Supremacist Moral Self Righteousness. Alas.

[krash-and-co]

hey krash, i wanted to reach out and say that i'm so sorry that you got such a hurtful reaction from one of the l&co servers for speaking up about something that genuinely needed to be addressed. i won't badmouth anyone in particular but this is not the first time this fandom has dogpiled someone over a misunderstanding, and when it happened to me i had severe anxiety over it for about a week even after it was resolved, and eventually left because of it. it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth for the fandom in general, so i mostly just stick to my small group of mutuals now lol. i wish this fandom truly was different from other fandoms, but this kind of thing is unfortunately inevitable once something reaches a certain level of popularity. but that certainly doesn't make it okay, and you didn't do anything to deserve the reaction you got. i hope you can feel peace about it soon, and i'm sorry again that it happened at all. 🫂

(please don't feel pressured to answer this if you'd rather the matter be left alone, i totally understand. i just wanted to send you an ask because i didn't know if you're comfortable with dms.)

hi im so sorry i forgot to answer!!! thank you so much this means so much to me. 💙💙💙 i read this for the first time when i was feeling pretty attacked and it really cheered me up <3

hmm other people have been telling me about how they got attacked in this fandom too. and maybe this shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. but it's something fans never talk about and claim doesn’t exist, so i thought it didn’t. i was horribly fooled lol. as, uh, i am about to rant about; do you mind? u don’t have to read it, i won’t be offended, but halfway thru answering this ask it turned into a rant i wanted to release into the world lol, so sorry about that 😭😭😭

very important disclaimer!!! this is NOT about everyone. ABSOLUTELY NOT. most of you are absolutely amazing people, and i assure you if ur worried this is about you, it’s prob not lol

ANYWAYS!!!

im kind of feeling i was betrayed?? ig? i rlly believed everyone was so kind, and look what i know now. it genuinely seems like people are gaslighting themselves. how else do they only see our ‘harm?’ yeah, our fandom is known for being passionate, but saying we’re known for kindness is starting to make me sick. maybe we were, i know a lot of us still are, but throwing that out there in the middle of your hypocritical hate post seems like justification for the shit things people have been saying. you can say no wrong so long as you’re here. only people who don’t agree with you. so yeah, fuck krash and ljc and anyone else who doesn't agree!!! that totally shows how kind you are and how much you loved the fandom before we messed it up. nobodys visibly mad, cuz we're too scared to say shit!!!

i’ve seen too many examples of the contrary from the “victims,” wailing about how cruel we are the second they disagree with someone. (in a highly hypocritical manner, at that.) “everyone was so happy before this!” no, they weren’t, that’s why i brought it up. “stop bringing hate to this fandom! now let me fucking berate you!” do you even hear yourself? “nobody even cared before, we were all content!” we weren’t all content, we were just silent. it sometimes looks the same.

someone even declared they were leaving the fandom because ‘one person wanted to stop show saving efforts entirely because it traumatized them, and this is no longer a safe place.’ like, what? where did you even get that? for one, there were at least two of us posting together, and that’s just barely knowing anything about what’s happening. thats not even touching on how one of us (idk who the op of that post was talking about, it’s a 50/50 lol) made the fandom an unsafe place for our personal gain. what?

hella kind. hella safe on their part.

another said they saw only old fans agreeing about this so it’s just us being pissed about change. it’s us hating the show. me and ljc being upset about not being the only “big blogs” any more. our fandom is only for the elite, etc. fuck us. yet ljc is getting blackmailed. we’re getting hate replies. friends that try and help get attacked. misinformation spread. how did that even happen? we never once tried to hurt anyone; thank you to those who understand.

but to some, WE’RE the ones in the wrong.

do they SEE themselves? how hypocritical all of this is? or are their heads that far up in the ass of their petition and beloved fake idea of this fandom that they care about more than all of us?

now, this is where i add another “not everyone” message. not everyone is like this, this is not me saying i hate the petition or people who support it. hell, i signed the petition. twice. and once more from my mothers email.

i don’t regret the i love you posts i made, because i still do love this fandom, i am still absolutely here for the rest of yall. but DAMN if we weren’t hiding something under happy Save The Show, I Love Locknation! messages. perfectly smiling faces until they bite. i was surprised to see how many people did.

as if our previous problems weren’t enough, now it turned into this lol. no, that’s a lie, it didn’t. it already was, and i HATE THAT.

ig im kinda spoiled, i never really experienced hate like this from this fandom before. but now i know it happened BEFORE too, and that just pisses me off. it hurts coming from a group who says they love us. genuinely wacko (not the fun kind) behavior :[

i know this isn’t everyone’s experience, but it is mine, and enough others to make me wanna say this. and this is ofc me and @lucy-j-carlyle 's brand of hate, not yours. but it does happen and the constant chant that IT DOESN'T IT DOESNT IT DOESN'T isn't helping anyone. and now I know.

idk what im even saying anymore lol, sorry for ranting. what i mean to say is, thank you, and i wish things were better. and i love you kind people. im happy it’s most of you.