#white lies about american enslavement of Black people

[reasoningdaily]

The portraits of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass hang on the walls of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on September 24, 2016, in Washington, DC

In August 1619, the first ship with “20 and odd” enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia. Four hundred years later, we look back at this moment as the start of an enduring relationship between the founding of the United States and the unconscionable exploitation of the enslaved.

In a sweeping project published by the New York Times Magazine in August 2019 exploring the legacy of slavery, Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote, “[The enslaved] and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. ... But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom.”

Yet centuries later, the lasting impact of slavery continues to be minimized and myths continue to flourish. For instance, there’s the erasure of the many slave revolts and rebellions that happened throughout the nation, perpetuating the lie that the enslaved were docile or satisfied with their conditions. There’s also the persistent idea that black labor exploitation is over, when mass incarceration still keeps millions of black Americans behind bars and often working for “wages” that amount to less than $1 an hour. Then there’s the idea that our understanding of slavery is accurate based on what we learned in history textbooks, when in reality, misinformation continues to be taught in our public schools about slavery’s legacy.

To unpack what often gets mistold or misunderstood, we asked five historians to debunk the biggest myths about slavery. Here’s what they said, in their own words.

1) The myth that slaves never rebelled

Miseducation surrounding slavery in the US has led to an elaborate mythology of half truths and missing information. One key piece of missing history concerns slave revolts: Few history books or popular media portrayals of the trans-Atlantic slave trade discuss the many slave rebellions that occurred throughout America’s early history.

C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan African Revolt describes many small rebellions such as the Stono Plantation insurgence of September 1739 in the South Carolina colony, where a small group of enslaved Africans first killed two guards. Others joined them as they moved to nearby plantations, setting them afire and killing about two dozen enslavers, especially violent overseers. Nat Turner’s August 1831 uprising in Southampton, Virginia, where some 55 to 65 enslavers were killed and their plantations burned, serves as another example.

 A country road follows the trail of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion in rural southeastern Virginia, June 5, 2010. On either side, farms were burned and slavers murdered as Nat Turner and his followers marched toward the town of Jerusalem, now renamed Courtland. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images 

Enslaved Africans resisted and rebelled against individual slave holders and the system of slavery as a whole. Some slipped away secretly to learn to read. Many simply escaped. Others joined the abolitionist movements, wrote books, and gave lectures to the public about their experiences in captivity. And others led or participated in open combat against their captors.

Omitting or minimizing these stories of rebellion helps hide the violent and traumatic experiences enslaved Africans endured at the hands of enslavers, which prompted such revolts. If we are unaware of resistance, it is easier for us to believe the enslaved were happy, docile, or that their conditions were not inhumane. It then becomes easier to dismiss economic and epigenetic legacies of the transatlantic slave system.

Dale Allender is an associate professor at California State University, Sacramento.

2) The myth that house slaves had it better than field slaves

While physical labor in the fields was excruciating for the enslaved — clearing land, planting, and harvesting that often destroyed their bodies — that didn’t negate the physical and emotional violence enslaved women, and sometimes men and children, suffered at the hands of enslavers in their homes.

In fact, rape of black women by white enslavers was so prevalent that a 2016 study revealed 16.7 percent of African Americans’ ancestors can be traced back to Europe. One of the study’s authors concludes that the first African Americans to leave the South were those genetically related to the men who raped their mothers, grandmothers, and/or great-grandmothers. These were the enslaved African Americans within the closest proximity to and who spent the longest durations with white men: the ones who toiled in the houses of slave owners.

 An unidentified woman poses with a book in her hands, circa 1850. The original caption identifies her only as a “freed slave.” Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images 

A 2015 study determined that 50 percent of rape survivors develop PTSD. It is hard to imagine that enslaved and freedom-seeking African American survivors of rape — female, male, old, young, no matter their physical or mental abilities — did not experience further anxiety, fear, and shame associated with a condition they could not control in a situation out of control. Those African Americans with the most European ancestry, those tormented mentally, physically, emotionally, and genetically in the house, knew they had to get out. In fact, they fled the farthest — Southern whites are more closely related to blacks now living in the North than the South.

Jason Allen is a public historian and dialogue facilitator working at nonprofits, hospitals, and businesses in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

3) The myth that abolition was the end of racism

A common myth about American slavery is that when it ended, white supremacy or racism in America also ended.

Recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar variant of this myth when he said he opposed reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago.” To the Kentucky Republican, a descendant of enslavers, slavery simply was, and then it just wasn’t, as though the battlefield had leveled the playing field when it came to race.

But the truth is that long after the Civil War, white Americans continue to carry the same set of white supremacist beliefs that governed their thoughts and actions during slavery and into the post-emancipation era.

In the South, especially, whites retained an enslaver’s mentality. They embraced sharecropping and convict leasing to control black labor in late 19th century, enacted Jim Crow laws to regulate black behavior in the early 20th century, and use racial terror to police the color line to this day.

 In this undated photo, two men use segregated drinking fountains in the American South. Getty Images 

In the North, whites also rejected racial equality. After emancipation, they refused to make abandoned and confiscated land available to freedmen because they believed that African Americans would not work without white supervision. And when African Americans began fleeing Dixie during the Great Migration, white Northerners instituted their own brand of Jim Crow, segregating neighborhoods and refusing to hire black workers on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Slavery’s legacy is white supremacy. The ideology, which rationalized bondage for 250 years, has justified the discriminatory treatment of African Americans for the 150 years since the war ended. The belief that black people are less than white people has made segregated schools acceptable, mass incarceration possible, and police violence permissible.

This makes the myth that slavery had no lasting impact extremely consequential — denying the persistence and existence of white supremacy obscures the root causes of the problems that continue to plague African Americans. As a result, policymakers fixate on fixing black people instead of trying to undo the discriminatory systems and structures that have resulted in separate and unequal education, voter suppression, health disparities, and a wealth gap.

Something did “happen” 150 years ago: Slavery ended. But the institution’s influence on American racism and its continued impact on African Americans is still felt today.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor at Ohio State University.

4) The myth that history class taught us everything we needed to know about slavery

Many of us first learned about slavery in our middle or high school history classes, but some of us learned much earlier — in elementary school, through children’s books, or even Black History Month curriculum and programs. Unfortunately, we don’t always learn the entire story.

Most of us only learned partial truths about slavery in the United States. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, many in the North and South wanted to put an end to continuing tensions. But this wasn’t done just through the Compromise of 1877, when the federal government pulled the last troops out of the South; it was also done by suppressing the rights of black Americans and elevating the so-called “Lost Cause” of the enslavers.

 The Tennessee-based group “New Confederate State of America” held a protest in support of retaining a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee located on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, September 16, 2017. Win McNamee/Getty Images 

The Lost Cause is a distorted version of Civil War history. In the decades after the war, a number of Southern historians began to write that slaveholders were noble and had the right to secede from the Union when the North wished to interfere with their way of life. Due to efforts by a group of Southern socialites known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Lost Cause ideology influenced history textbooks as well as books for children and adults. The accomplishments of black Americans involved in the abolition movement, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria W. Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Still, were downplayed. Union generals like Ulysses S. Grant were denigrated, as were anti-racist whites from John Brown to William Lloyd Garrison. Generations later, there are still many people around the country who believe the Civil War was about states’ rights and that slaves who had good masters were treated well.

Even an accurate historical curriculum emphasizes progress, triumph, and optimism for the country as a whole, without taking into account how slavery continues to affect black Americans and influence present-day domestic policy from urban planning to health care. It does not emphasize that 12 of the first 18 presidents were enslavers, that enslaved Africans from particular cultures were prized for their skills from rice cultivation to metallurgy, and that enslaved people used every tool at their disposal to resist bondage and seek freedom. From slavery to Jim Crow to civil rights to the first black president, the black American story is forced into the story of the unassailable American dream — even when the truth is more complicated.

Given what we learn about slavery, when we learn it, and how, it is clear that everyone still has much more to learn. Teaching Tolerance and Teaching for Change are two organizations that have been wrestling with how we introduce this topic to our young. And what they’re learning is that the way forward is to unlearn.

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

5) The myth that slavery doesn’t exist today

One of the greatest myths about slavery is that it ended. In fact, it evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration.

The United States has the highest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the general population. But black men, women, and youth have outsize representation in the criminal justice system, where they make up 34 percent of the 6.8 million people who are under its control. Their labor is used to produce goods and services for businesses that profit from prison labor.

 Prisoners at the Ferguson Unit, a large prison along the Trinity River in Texas, actively work the farm the prison runs, which includes planting and harvesting an annual cotton crop, 1997. The prison is located on a former cotton slave plantation. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images 

For those of us who study the early history of mass incarceration in America, these statistics are not surprising. From the late 1860s through the 1920s, over 90 percent of the prison and jail populations of the South were black. Thousands of incarcerated men, women, and children were hired out by the state to private factories and farms for a fee. From sunup to sundown, they worked under the watchful eye of brutal “whipping bosses” who flogged, mauled, and murdered them. They earned nothing for their toil. Today, labor exploitation, the denial of human dignity and the right to citizenship, family separation, and violent punishment define our criminal justice system in ways that mirror slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work. According to a 2017 report published by the Prison Policy Initiative, “the average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 86 cents.” Those assigned to work for state-owned businesses (correctional industries) earn between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour. In 2018, incarcerated Americans held a nationwide strike to end “prison slavery.” In a list of demands, striking individuals called for “all persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction” to be “paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor.”

This is a year to remember slavery’s origins. It is also an opportunity to critique its legacies. Let’s not get so caught up in our efforts to commemorate slavery’s beginning that we fail to advocate for its end.

Talitha LeFlouria is the Lisa Smith Discovery Associate Professor at the University of Virginia.

Correction: An earlier version misstated the range of presidents who were enslavers. It was 12 of the first 18 presidents, not 12 of the first 16.

[emmafreakecreations]

When ever I think about Rhys saying "Both sides did bad things." It just reminds me so much of Americans who like to wave away that the confederates in the Civil War were fighting to keep slavery and/or spew The Lost cause Mythology.

For those of you who are not American or maybe never learned this but the Lost Cause mythology is basically lies and rewriting of history that confederates did themselves starting soon after the end of the war to mask their true intentions of the war. Things like, "it was all about slave rights and taxes! The north was being aggressive; during Sherman's march they burned, pillaged, and raped! Slavery wasn't actually that bad and if anything black people needed it!" All of it lies. The real reason they succeeded from the Union was slavery; they wanted to keep slavery and expand it into future states. They wanted to keep it so bad they written it into the confederacy constitution. The fight over slavery started very soon after the revolution ended and then built and built with every compromise on which new states would be free states and which would be slave, the rise in abolitionism, and more laws making it harder for slaves to escape. It exploded when Lincoln was elected President. He wasn't even inaugurated and states had already succeeded. The founding fathers didn't do anything about it because a) some owned slaves b) they believed it would die out because it was expensive, it became super profitable once the cotton gin was invented.

And while the Union initially wasn't fighting for the end of slavery but to keep the union, it only turned to ending slavery because Lincoln recognized as the only way to keep the US together and the Union soldiers who marched through the South who had never been there before saw how awful slavery was and wanted to end it. Yes General Sherman lead a campaign in the South and burned things but the things he burned (from my understanding) were the plantations and a few cities. Slaves who had escaped followed the union army as they moved through the south. I even learned that some point some union soldiers killed the dogs of a plantation that the owner used to hunt down escaped slaves and let his slaves beat him. I'm not going to deny that there probably was stealing and rape happening but there was also reports of confederates stealing too.

The point I'm trying to make is that while the Union wasn't perfect you also can't ignore the fact that the other side was fighting for slavery. That's why it feels similar, both Rhys and some people say, "that side did bad things too." while completely ignoring the fact the other side was fighting to keep the right of enslaving human beings and keeping them like cattle. And in the case of the humans of ACOTAR they were fighting for their freedom as some black union soldiers were fighting for theirs and the rest who were still enslaved.

Feel free to correct me on my facts about the Civil War, it's really only in recent years that historians are trying to fight against the years of lies the Lost Cause created in the American public's conscience. Like it is so pervasive that in the 21st century media has 3 vampire characters that fought on the side of the confederacy and paint them as not that bad. Vampire Diaries in a later season had an episode explaining that Damon didn't want to fight in the confederacy he only did it because his dad forced him. And the only one who questions and confronts Bill in True Blood is Tera and her white friend tells her to stop being rude. Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter is the only one I have seen making wealthy plantation owners vampires and the bad guys. If you want know more about the American Civil war check out Atun-Shei Films and his series called checkmate, Lincolnists on YouTube. He goes through a lot of misconceptions and lies about the civil war while being very honest, down to earth, level headed, and not show favor towards the union or confederacy because he does also talk about each of their faults.

[frithwontdie]

that slave kidnappers home meme is not even accurate its literally all lies.

How is it literally all lies, exactly? If you're gonna tell me a meme I posted is not true, then you should explain what's inaccurate about it, instead of saying it's just lies and leave it at that.

The meme points out how some pro-blacks say they were kidnapped by the white man from the homeland in Africa. But yet their slave ancestors took up the surnames of slave owners the "so called" kidnappers and refuse to leave. Where's the lie?

First of all, blacks were kidnapped by others black africans. Sold to Arabs merchants and jews. Which in turn sold to the whites in the new world (also to Amerindians, free blacks and jews in the new world).

Second: Most enslaved blacks did not have surnames. Only given to slaves. Some freed blacks never change their surnames. Some after being freed some had to pick one on the spot, when joining the military. Choosing the surname of a former slave owner appears to have been a common practice. Though not a universal practice, but still a common practice.

p. 68:

Despite historians' tendency to point toward the opposite, many former slaves assumed the surname of their last master. The WPA narratives are full of examples like that of Clayton Holbert, who explained: “We didn’t have a name. The slaves were always known by the master’s last name, and after we were, freed we just took the last name of our masters and used it."

P. 59:

Some freed people took the name of an original owner or an owner from their distant past to recognize ties to family members also owned by them.

Another example from Voices of Emancipation: Excerpt from the Deposition of William Ballinger, Oct. 10, 1901 "When I was first brought here as a boy my first master was Jesse Ballinger and I took the name of Ballinger then and have never changed it."

Third: when the ACS (American Colonized Society) tried to relocate free blacks to Liberia. Between 1820 - 1864 only 11,000 Blacks emigrated from America to Liberia. Which out of a population of 4,441,830 free and recently emancipated slaves. That would be 0.24% of blacks relocated.

So basically, America was such an unbearable hell for black people at that time. That literally 99.76% of blacks literally refused to leave it and go to a country all to themselves. Hmmm...

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jake Mackey

Published: Aug 2023

“Live not by lies.” —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A “virtuous lie” is a false, misleading, or highly contestable claim that is promulgated without qualification as flatly true in order to serve a purportedly emancipatory end, despite the fact that evidence of its falsehood, deceptiveness, or contestability is readily available. We live by these lies. They underlie a great many communications in the media, in academic journals, in government, and at elite educational institutions like my college.

For example, a recent announcement for a talk read: “In this lecture, [the guest] asks, what can we do about unkindness? How can [we] grap­ple with this messy, borderless concept, which has influenced so much of our post-1492 era?” The announcement does not so much assert as simply presuppose, and ask readers to accept, that “unkindness” is a distinctive characteristic of the post-Columbian world. Readers are invited to draw the inference that “unkindness” had less “influence” in the world before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Like much of the messaging on elite campuses, this one implies that the West in general and perhaps the United States in particular are uniquely culpable in history’s evils.

Another example: I attended a talk by a prominent author, a journal­ist, at a super-elite private high school. He took pains to paint North American slavery in the most gruesome of colors, as well one might for the edification of young people, who are inevitably ignorant of its true toll. In so doing, however, he told two virtuous lies: first, that slave-farmed cotton drove the expansion of the antebellum U.S. economy and, second, that increases in cotton productivity resulted from increases in the torture of enslaved people.

These two claims, both of which come straight out of the “New History of Capitalism” and, via Matthew Desmond’s contribution, are central to the 1619 Project, have been debunked.1 And yet these lies are virtuous. North American slavery was a moral abyss. One can never overstate its horror or overdo one’s condemnation of it . . . even if one lies. The lies of the “New History of Capitalism” are virtuous, serving purportedly noble goals, such as reparations, as the speaker took care to make explicit in his talk.

A third example: on May 21, 2020, as if to foreshadow the murder of George Floyd that was to come four days later, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at both UCLA and Columbia and coiner of the concept of intersectionality, wrote in the New Republic that anti-black police and vigilante violence represented “modern embodiments of racial terror dating back to . . . the reign of white impunity rooted in slavery and Jim Crow” and opined that such violence was part of a pattern that amounts to “a kind of genocide.”2 In a similar vein, star attorney Ben Crump ti­tled his 2019 book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People. Chapter two is titled “Police Don’t Shoot White Men in the Back.” Note that this was the tone of the discourse before George Floyd.

What we see in this catastrophizing rhetoric about genocide is the product of the virtuous lie that black people, and black men in particular, are being murdered by racist police with wild abandon. As Derecka Purnell put it in the Guardian: “We know how we die—the police.”3 This perception is the result of a virtuous lie. The lie promotes a distort­ed view of reality. It is a well-meaning distortion but a distortion none­theless, designed to bring attention to the cause, worthy in itself, of police brutality against black people.

The reality, of course, easily accessible to all online, is that while there are indeed disturbing anti-black disparities in the police use of nonlethal force,4 there do not appear to be racial differences in the way police deploy lethal force. In other words, police are, overall, no more disposed to kill a black person than a white person. This basic finding has been discovered and rediscovered again,5 and again,6 and again,7 and again,8 and again,9 and again,10 and again.11 And yet so taboo is this finding, and so sacred is the lie, that people have been fired for noting the former in order to correct the latter. Such was the fate of Zac Krieg­man, a director of data science at the news and information company Thomson Reuters. When he pointed out that Black Lives Matter, whatever the organization’s salutary contributions to our political life, was promoting a virtuous lie,12 he was fired.13

Indeed, Kriegman was not the only casualty of the virtuous lie that lethal police violence specifically targets black people. In 2019, a paper was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that found “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic dispari­ties across shootings.”14 Due to an unusual set of circumstances, includ­ing a congressional hearing about policing, the article quickly became a flashpoint. First, it was officially “corrected,” though its findings were not altered. A few weeks later, George Floyd was murdered. Soon after, as the article began to be cited and contested in the ensuing debate about policing, PNAS asked two independent researchers to look into the article’s data and methods. They found that the article “does not contain fabricated data or serious statistical errors warranting a retraction.” Nevertheless, the article’s authors themselves retracted it, citing as their reason “continued use of our work in the public debate” about policing. PNAS chimed in, too, saying that “partisan political use” of the article warranted retraction.15 The virtuous lie and the political program it serves must be protected at all costs.

Virtuous lies are not confined to high schools, colleges, major media companies, and scholarly journals. Our government and medical estab­lishment increasingly run on virtuous lies as well. For example, in 2019, California passed a bill, AB 241, that requires “implicit bias” training as part of routine continuing education for physicians, nurses, and physi­cian assistants.16 The bill asserts the following: “Implicit bias, meaning the attitudes or internalized stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other characteristics.” And in case you missed the causal chain running from implicit bias through behavior to health outcomes: “Implicit bias contributes to health disparities by affecting the behavior of physicians and surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, and other healing arts licensees.”

AB 241 is wholly based on a string of interconnected virtuous lies about implicit bias. The first virtuous lie is that researchers have settled on a coherent and consistent understanding of what the term “implicit bias” means.17 The second lie is that whatever implicit bias may be, we know that it influences behavior.18 The third falsehood is that we know that disparities in health outcomes are caused by the behavior of implic­itly biased medical personnel.

The truth about implicit bias is easy to state: “[I]t is not clear precisely what is being measured on implicit attitude tests; implicit attitudes do not effectively predict actual discriminatory behavior.”19 Moreover, with respect to disparate racial outcomes, it is important to note that measures that attempt to use implicit bias “to predict behavior find little or no anti-Black discrimination specifically.”20 This is good news! It means that racial health disparities are likely not wholly or even significantly attributable to the implicit bias of medical personnel.

What discrimination there is in medicine—and there surely has been and is discrimination—is based on entirely explicit attitudes supported by pseudoscientific theories. For example, it used to be a common prac­tice among medical laboratories to adjust the renal values of black patients to take into account black people’s supposedly greater muscle mass relative to white people.21 Such adjustments might, however, have caused doctors to overlook kidney failure in black patients. Again, some white physicians are said to believe that black patients are less suscep­tible to pain than white patients because, the theory goes, they have longer nerve endings and thicker skin.22 These are not “implicit biases.” These are wholly conscious false beliefs that can be dispelled by acquaintance with the truth.

Nevertheless, California’s medical personnel now must pay the opportunity cost of submitting to training for implicit biases, training that we know to be useless. In a sense, the mandating of implicit bias training is a fourth virtuous lie, for the fact is, “most interventions to attempt to change implicit attitudes are ineffective.”23 What we have, then, is an entire government-mandated regime of healthcare education built atop the foundational virtuous lie of implicit bias.24 Articles appear regularly to bolster the lie in journals that could once be trusted. If everything you knew about implicit bias in medicine came from the latest article about it in Science,25 for example, you’d know very little indeed.26

We live by lies like implicit bias because we suppose that doing so makes us good people. To question them is to align oneself with all that is oppressive. Our moral credentials are burnished if we condemn European contact with the Americas as the moment at which “unkind­ness” became a force in human affairs. We signal our ethical seriousness with respect to American slavery and continuing black socioeconomic inequality if we applaud rather than quibble when debunked theories are presented as plain facts to high school students. We stand ostentatiously on “the right side of history” if we endorse BLM’s narrative that black people are “intentionally targeted for demise” by police.27 Similarly, medical personnel in California now attest their racial innocence by submitting, ironically enough, to the proposition that their implicit bias is causing them to mistreat racial minorities and to a highly profitable training industry that purports to remedy it.

As in the case of the narrative about police killings, to question any of the claims built upon the virtuous lie of implicit bias is to court personal and professional disaster. Edward Livingston, then a deputy editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), discovered this in early 2021 when he went on a JAMA podcast and made the mistake of suggesting that accusing doctors of racism was perhaps not the best way to resolve inequities in health outcomes and that the solution might instead lie in addressing socioeconomic disparities.28 This marked him for destruction. A petition against JAMA gar­nered nine thousand signatures, the podcast episode was scrubbed from the web,29 an investigation was announced, he was asked to resign his editorship, which he did,30 and he was made the subject of a “restorative justice session” at UCLA medical school, where he teaches.31 Yet the spread of the miasma was not stopped by these expiations. JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Howard Bauchner, who had had nothing to do with the ill-fated podcast episode, fell over himself apologizing for the incident but was investigated by an AMA committee and soon had to resign his editorship.32

The fates of Kriegman, Livingston, and Bauchner, as well as my own reticence to push back on the high school speaker, reveal a central feature of the logic of the virtuous lie: to correct these lies is tantamount to opposing noble goals. Nobody wants to be the one who points out that a virtuous lie is not true. In the case of the high school speaker, any pushback would have come across as a defense of American slavery. In the case of “our post-1492 era,” to ask for evidence would be to mini­mize the enormity of the post-Columbian devastation of Native Ameri­cans and of the transatlantic slave trade, just for starters. Regarding claims of a state-sanctioned genocide of black people, to gesture toward research to the contrary would be to affirm the status quo and to oppose much-needed reforms.

The Epistemology of the Virtuous Lie

Let us distinguish the virtuous lie from two adjacent phenomena—Plato’s “noble lie” and Rob Henderson’s “luxury belief”—and then consider the choice of the term “lie.”

The noble lie. Plato introduces the noble lie in Book 3 of his Republic. Socrates, the lead character in the dialogue, urges that in order to found his proposed ideal city, they would need to craft “one noble lie which may deceive” the city’s three social classes, that is, the ruler class, the soldier class, and the producer class:

“Citizens,” we shall say to them in our tale, “you are brothers, yet god has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron.”

The point of Plato’s noble lie is to reconcile people to inequality and their place in the social hierarchy, in order to create the ideal city, with a place for everyone and everyone in their place. The mechanism of reconciliation is a naturalization of the hierarchy not by analogy or comparison to metals but through the assertion that people of differing stations are quite literally made of different metals. The rulers are gold­en, the soldiers silver, and the workers brass and iron.

Luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson defines luxury beliefs as follows: “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”33 People crave status symbols and signs of distinction. Some such signs are expensive clothing or tastes that can only be cultivated by those with surplus time and material resources. Beliefs can function as another status symbol, however. Henderson uses the example of “defund the police,” which is endorsed disproportionately by those of high socioeconomic status, who, as a result of living in places relatively invulnerable to crime, would suffer the least from defunding. This belief is a luxury for them. It has no material impact on them, but it signals their high status to their peers, who are equally safe from crime. Yet this belief is often unaffordable for poorer people, who tend to live in places that make them vulnerable to crime. “Defund” is a luxury beyond their means. If the elites, who dominate the media discourse and exert control in government, get their way and succeed in defunding the police, the costs of the policy will be borne disproportionately by the poor.

Virtuous lies versus noble lies and luxury beliefs. Virtuous lies differ from both Plato’s noble lies and Henderson’s luxury beliefs. Plato’s noble lie promotes acceptance of an inequitable social order, depicting it as natural, inevitable, and just. In contrast, the virtuous lie invariably produces dissatisfaction with the social order, which it depicts as illegitimate or unjust. The noble lie reconciles us to social inequality whereas the virtuous lie is intended to serve a project of dismantling inequality. Finally, the noble lie is ultimately metaphysical. That is, it purports to offer an account of the underlying nature of reality that can be adduced to explain social arrangements. The virtuous lie, in contrast, is concerned with the social arrangements themselves in their historical, sociological, economic, and psychological dimensions, as the examples above show.

Virtuous lies share with luxury beliefs both a commitment to emancipatory political programs and a concern to signal moral goodness. As Henderson’s example of “defund” suggests, however, luxury beliefs are inherently normative. They depict a prescribed course of action. Virtuous lies, in contrast, are purely descriptive. They purport to represent states of affairs as they exist in the world, for example, “police hunt and kill black people,”34 or “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”35 Virtuous lies like these provide the “factual” basis for normative luxury beliefs like “defund the police.”

Why call virtuous lies “lies”? A lie is, by definition, a false claim that is asserted despite its known falsity. A lie involves intent to deceive. I would not pretend to know that everyone who utters what I have called a virtuous lie knows that it is false (or at least highly questionable) and intends to deceive. Surely some do, but I imagine that many or even most who repeat virtuous lies do so sincerely, because they know no better.

Why might so many know no better? The term “lie” seems especially fitting here. Unlike the unwitting laypeople who repeat them, those who invent and promulgate these untruths, including activists, media compa­nies, and law professors, are in a good position to know better and have an epistemic obligation to the truth that should give them pause.

There is something gratuitous about virtuous lies, not only when they are uttered cynically by knowledge-economy elites but even when they are uttered unwittingly and sincerely. Respected professors of law who specialize in racial issues and major media companies whose own data scientists have alerted them to the truth have no excuse. But neither do laypeople, really. The information that problematizes or even de­bunks virtuous lies is not kept locked away. Anyone who even halfway cares about what the world was like before 1492, whether slavery was central to the economic surge of the early United States, whether there is an epidemic of racist cops murdering black people, or whether implic­it bias is a well-defined construct that has a clear effect on behavior can find the truth with the click of a mouse, or at least a vigorous debate, that should cause one to back off of strong claims.

Those given to whataboutery will have been champing at the bit to utter one word in response to my theory: Trump. The man is, after all, a liar of world-historic proportions. One of his most vicious lies is that the 2020 election was stolen. Indeed, according to a recent CNN poll, 63 percent of Republicans still believe that Biden “did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.”36 But Trumpian lies, and right-wing lies more generally, are manifestly not “virtuous” insofar as they are outwardly self-serving, even if the teller believes in the ultimate truth of the cause. They make no pretense of serving an emancipatory project. They serve a project of acquiring political power and they do so nakedly. In a sense, this nakedness is refreshing. After all, virtuous lies, too, are promulgated in pursuit of political power, but under cover of the pretense of fighting it.

Vicious Consequences of Virtuous Lies

Why not just embrace the most emancipatory virtuous lies? After all, they promise to inspire the activism and political will needed to address some of our most urgent problems. The answer is that virtuous lies offer only a false promise. Let me say why.

First, the internet has put any citizen with even a modicum of curiosity and a free Sunday afternoon in a position to adjudicate these claims for herself. We are in an era in which you simply cannot keep information from people anymore, and you cannot lie to them.

Second, the lies will alienate at least as many people as they inspire. The virtuous lie is not a reliable formula for any political change apart from greater polarization. In other words, a commitment to these lies on the part of the media and our knowledge-producing class more broadly means that there will always be a number of Americans who embrace the lies out of ignorance or tribal loyalty. There will also, however, be a growing number of Americans who, as I have already suggested, will figure out that they are being lied to. This will create, or is already creating, a division in which a side consisting of tribally committed virtuous liars faces off against a side consisting of people who resent being lied to. This division is and will be toxic to our politics and hence to our democracy. It will only promote the rise of more Trump-like figures, who feed on and exacerbate the resentment of voters who dislike being lied to.

Let’s take just one of the virtuous lies discussed above, the lie about racist murders by police, and follow it through. Some might say, sure, perhaps it is not quite true that the police go out hunting for black people. But this fib is innocent because it has beneficial effects. The proof is right before us: after all, it has spurred a massive nationwide and even worldwide movement for change. What could be bad about such a lie?

I would answer that the lie is not worth it. The cost of the lie is paid as a psychological toll on all Americans, but on black Americans especially: the needless psychological suffering that results from hearing that you are being “hunted” by agents of the state in your own country. As Musa al-Gharbi put it in these pages, speaking of such narratives more broadly:

For people of color, getting “educated” in America is to be cud­geled relentlessly with messages about how oppressed, exploited, and powerless we are, and how white people need to “get it together” to change this (but probably never will). Narratives like these grew especially pronounced during the post-2011 “Great Awokening.” The internalization of these messages may contribute to the observed ideological gaps in psychic distress among women and people of color.37

The cost of the lie is paid as damage to our perceptions of black and white race relations. Gallup has polled Americans on this almost every year since 2001.38 In 2001, 70 percent of black Americans said race relations were good. In 2021, not even half as many, 33 percent, could make that affirmation. The drop-off began in earnest in 2013, right around when use of terms like “racism” began to rise spectacularly in the media,39 and the newly formed Black Lives Matter began its messaging campaign.

The cost of the lie is not only ill-conceived campaigns to “defund,”40 but also damage to (already strained) trust between communities and police, especially black communities, whose disproportionate victimization by criminals shows they need policing, good policing, the most.41 The cost of the lie is black Americans’ sense of alienation within their own country. The cost of the lie is the creation of preconditions for destructive rioting the next time a cop is caught on camera killing a black person,42 whether under legally justifiable circumstances (such as to save lives) or not.

There is a final cost to be reckoned with. Police killings do not ultimately constitute a distinctly “black” issue, and a narrative that casts it as such has inherent limitations. First, the narrative’s framing is divi­sive: there are “black” issues and there are “white” issues, but there are no “American” issues that affect us all. This framing requires activists to leverage enough guilt or empathy among Americans who are not black to enact a “black” agenda of reform. Moreover, the “hunting black people” narrative is impotent to make common cause with those seeking justice for unjustified police killings of people of other races. (Almost half of the people killed by police are white.43) This impotence undermines the possibility of a broad-based, nonpartisan movement for reform.

For example, when police (both, as it happens, Latino) in Fresno, California, killed an unarmed white teenager, Dylan Noble, in 2016, and the killing was caught on video,44 Noble’s friends, family, and sympathizers initiated months of protests. But when protesters displayed “White Lives Matter” placards, perhaps inspired by Black Lives Matter, they were predictably decried as “racist.”45 What if there had been a movement for police reform not based on identity politics with which Dylan Noble’s family and supporters could have made common cause? Later, a young black man, a rapper, Justice Medina, organized a protest in Fresno for all the lives lost to police violence, including that of Dylan Noble. He named Dylan Noble in one of his songs, and he sought to distance himself from BLM: “I’m out here for the human race,” he said.46

Medina is precisely right: police reform is not well addressed through identity politics, in which one group’s grievances are pitted against another group’s perceived sins, biases, and privileges. The issue of police violence falls instead within the broader purview of American identity, which emphasizes our mutual bond and shared interests as citizens. Writing of the killing of a white woman, Hannah Fizer, by a police officer in June 2020, Adam Rothman and Barbara Fields point out that “a successful national political movement must appeal to the self-interest of white Americans” and advise that “those seeking genuine democracy must fight like hell to convince white Americans that what is good for black people is also good for them.” Only in this way will we find “the basis for a successful political coalition rooted in the real conditions of American life.”47

The upshot is that virtuous lies, whether about the police or about any other matter of concern, will get us nowhere. Only if the media and knowledge-producing classes eschew such lies and hew closer to the truth can we hope to depolarize our discourse, restore faith in our information-generating institutions, and bring together a broad swath of the country in solidarity to confront the challenges that face all of us as American citizens.

-

[ Sources: see Notes. ]

[scottguy]

Sigh...help me to get *yet another* mutually exclusive set of paranoid right-wing conspiracy theories straight...

The LEGAL.. invited Hatian immigrants that "took all the jobs" (that Springfield couldn't fill otherwise) now have a great income because they're smart, sophisticated, and clever enough to be employed skilled factory labor and "replace" whites.

But... those SAME Hatians are ALSO so primitive, so backward, and so hungry (despite earning a lot of money) that they will lower themselves to eat "the dogs" and "the cats" when they could afford to eat filet mignon or at least pork, chicken, and hamburger?

Please make up your mind.

Do you hate them because they're SO NORMAL that they hold jobs and you resent it? Or do you hate them because they are so low-functioning, beastly, and inhuman that they couldn't possibly hold a job?

You can't have it both ways!

People are just people. But racists think, "only white people are moral."

Oh yeah?

White German people sat idely by while Germany murdered six million Jews! White Americans enslaved, murdered, beat, and separated black family members while treating them like cattle.

So, BEFORE you IMPLY how awful brown people ....

look in the fucking mirror and consider the utter inhumanity of Caucasians in recent history.

White people have NO high moral ground regarding their history of moral purity and behavior. We white people have a lot to atone for before we DARE to cast aspersions on other ethnicities for being "inhuman." We white people have set the bar impossibly low what constitutes "civilized" behavior.

Think about THAT REALITY before you believe LIES about decent people who NEVER HURT ANYONE just because those people have a naturally darker and better tan than you.

[realjaysumlin]

Confronting Indigenous enslavement, one story at a time | Brown University

The Black Indigenous People who were transported to other parts of the world is something that no one ever talks about because the liars of history who invented races to cover up the truth about Black Indigenous People globally being transported to other places such as Native Americans.

Turtle Rock is now called America which is something that most everyone believes. Christopher Columbus abducted innocent Native People from Turtle Rock to bring back to Spain based on his own admission in his journal.

Nothing upsets me more than Black Indigenous People globally repeating the many lies told by the invaders of our lands. Black Indigenous People are natives and Indigenous people of earth however are being replaced by colorism to separate our people as if we are not the same people who migrated out of Africa long before slavery occurred.

Why do we believe in what people say about who we are when they steal our lands and our identity? We would be better off not listening and believing from people who have a great reason to lie about everything that happened in our lives.

What makes these people believe that they are better than all humans who are not considered as being white? Even these people didn't treat people who came from the same regions as they did but this symbol of whiteness kept being an evolving door for humans who had light skin.

The divide and conquer rules only exist if the people allow this sinister and wicked plot to work by keeping the narrative of their oppressors to reign, to kill it, is to reject this ideology and focus on the people who are guilty of causing harm to all humanity.

European supremacy must be stopped before it wipes out the entire human race and these people will benefit only a short period of time before they become extinct themselves due to the lack of diversity.

Please remember these people are not the original modern day species of humans only dark skin humans are and our sun is the best indicator for this irrefutable reality, due to them needing sun protection.

If you are the original people? Why do you need protection from the sun's deadly UV-RADIATIONS? Our human species originated in Africa and there are no other species living on earth today.

The Black Aboriginals People globally have traces of Neanderthals DNA and other parts of other species of humans who died out as well. Aboriginals still have traces of having large brow bones over their eyes which the shit white people call ugly and none humans; but yet embracing the idea that they are neanderthals as if neanderthals never died out.

Facial features and other parts of the human anatomy such as skin colors are associated with melanin and frolic acids with other chemicals that make us humans and adaptation or mutation due to photosynthesis.

[ausetkmt]

https://x.com/AfricanArchives/status/1701984154777182241?t=SxHWO2u10UP8NxoHZY8kBw&s=09

The story and journey of the Black people in America’s history can never be told with a joyful face. There is always sorrow and sadness in the mix. The treatment of Black people in America after slavery can be said to be just as gruesome as the atrocities of slavery.

After slavery, Black people started to organize themselves into productive and prosperous communities. They built schools, owned businesses and even had a middle and sometimes upper class. This was a problem, as their white neighbors who were once masters of black slaves, found themselves in a competition of dominance with their former slaves.

This caused great resentment and envy among the white people, and oftentimes, this resentment led to confrontations and violence against the black community. Below are some of the successful Black communities that were burnt down and destroyed by White people

Atlanta Race Riot of 1906

After the American civil war had been fought and ended, former African enslaved people began venturing into politics, setting up their own business and getting recognition as a social class. This led to increased tensions between Black wage-workers and the white elites.

These tensions led to hate and ill-feelings from the whites, as the Blacks acquired more civil rights. This included the right to vote. It was hard for racist Americans who had killed and subjugated blacks for hundreds of years to accept that the blacks would have equal rights as they do. It seemed like their ‘world of hate’ was crashing on them.

In 1906, the gubernatorial election between M. Hoke Smith and Clark Howell brought the existing tensions to a boiling point. Both candidates were competing for Democratic nominations and were searching for ways to deprive African-America voters of voting.

Both men felt that the population of black voters could throw the election to the other candidate. Both men were influential in the press, and they used their positions in the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution respectively to incite white voters against Black people. They spread the fear that if whites allowed Blacks to vote, they may not be able to sustain the current social order which subjugated blacks.

To further reinforce the tensions, papers such as the Atlanta Georgian and Atlanta News started to publish stories on how white women were raped and molested by Black men. These allegations which were solely lies were reported multiple times by white people.

Atlanta Newspaper, on September 22, 1906, reported four alleged assaults on local white women. This caused outraged amongst the white people, and soon about 10,000 while men and boys gathered. They went into town beating, stabbing and killing Blacks. The estimated number of Blacks who died from that onslaught was around 40, but personal accounts by blacks put it at way above that number. In self-defense, only two white people were killed.

Greenwood , Tulsa, Oklahoma “Black Wall Street” (May 31 – June 1, 1921)

During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished, including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as “the Black Wall Street.” The area was home to several lawyers, realtors, doctors, and prominent black Businessmen, many of them multimillionaires.

Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses such as grocery stores, clothing stores, barbershops, banks, hotels, cafes, movie theaters, two newspapers, and many contemporary homes. Greenwood residents enjoyed many luxuries that their white neighbors did not, including indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system. The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community.

The neighborhood was destroyed during a riot that broke out after a group men from Greenwood attempted to protect a young Black man from a lynch mob. On the night of May 31, 1921, a  mob called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, a Black man who shined shoes, after reports spread that on the previous day he had assaulted Sarah Page, a white woman, in the elevator she operated in a downtown building.

In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Black Tulsa was looted, firebombed from the air and burned down by white rioters. The governor declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, removed abducted African-Americans from the hands of white vigilantes, and imprisoned all Black Tulsans, not already confined, into a prison camp at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.

In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, over 800 people were treated for injuries and estimated 300 deaths occurred.

Chicago Race Riots:

During World War I, a great number of Blacks migrated from the rural South to the cities of the North. This caused great tensions, and the tensions reached its peak in the “Red Summer” of 1919. The tensions led to violent racial abuse of Black people, which were also called riots, to remove the heinous nature and intents of the events.

During the war, the city’s railway companies, meatpacking houses and steel mills needed people to work in them. And since a good number of the white folks had gone to fight, the black people who moved down from the South occupied the job positions. The population of black people in Chicago rose from 44,000 in 1910 to 235,000 at about 1930. After the war ended in 1918, thousands of white servicemen came home to find their positions at their jobs occupied by the blacks.

These caused more tensions in the city. And on 27 July 1919, a young African-American boy was stoned and drowned by white youths in Lake Michigan. His offense was challenging the unofficial segregation of the beaches in Chicago.

After his death, the police refused to make arrests of those who killed him. That caused one week of race rioting between white and blacks in Chicago. But as usual Black neighbourhoods were badly hit, since they had no law to protect them.

On the 13th of August, after the riots, 15 whites and 23 Blacks had died, with over 500 people injured. Among the damages done to the Black community was the loss of over 1,000 homes, that were burnt down by white rioters. Even the then-President Wilson blamed the white people for the riots calling them the “aggressor” in the riots and uprising.

The Rosewood Massacre of 1923

Rosewood was a calm and progressive self-sufficient town in Florida. Just like some other African-American neighborhoods at the time in America. The population of Rosewood was mainly Blacks, with their people farming, worked for local businesses, which included a sawmill in a nearby town of Sumner, which was mainly a white town.

By 1920, the Black community of Rosewood boasted of a baseball team, a large Masonic Hall, a school, three churches, a turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, and two general stores. One of the stores was owned by blacks while the other was owned by whites. The Rosewood community had a couple of homes, which ranged from two dozen plank two-story homes to other small houses.

Trouble came knocking when the white people falsely accused a black man of beating and raping a white woman in Sumner. White men matched out from other nearby towns and lynched a Black resident of Rosewood. The Black residents, been surrounded by a white mob, chose to defend themselves.

Several hundreds of white people attacked the black community and burnt down almost all the structures, businesses, and homes in Rosewood. Those who survived the onslaught hid in the nearby swamps for many days, before being evacuated by train and cars to other bigger towns. It was recorded that six black people were killed. The authorities and law enforcement knew about the violence, but no arrests were made. The Blacks left and never returned.

Washington DC race Riots

Washington DC, after the war, with about 75% white population was a very racial sensitive place to live in. There were low accommodation and jobs. But even with the tight economic situation, the black community thrived. Their community was then the largest and most prosperous in America at the time.

They had a remarkable upper class which consisted of ministers, lawyers, teachers, and businessmen, all living and working around the LeDroit Park neighborhood, near Howard University.

By the “Red Summer” the progress of the Black community brought so much envy from the unemployed white folk. The whites were not happy with the influx of Black people into neighborhoods that were previously segregated. Such neighborhoods were Capitol Hill, Foggy Bottom, and the old downtown.

As usual, a false report of a black man raping a white woman was spread, and in July of 1919, a large group of white men in military uniforms attacked the Black community and for four days there was violence in the town. The riot was intense and the white mob randomly beat black people and pulled them off streetcars. The riots and molesting of black people continued without police intervention, and so the Blacks decided to retaliate and defend themselves.

American troops had to move in to restore the peace – they did that by closing stores and theaters to discourage gatherings. After the violence ended, 10 whites and 5 Blacks died, including two police officers. Around 150 people were injured. It was recorded that this was the first time the white casualties outnumbered the blacks.

Knoxville, Tennessee Race Riots of 1919

Just like others before it, the Knoxville riot was inspired by another rumor that a Black man murdered a white woman. A mob of about 5000 men stormed the county jail where the Black man was supposedly held. In the process. they released 16 white prisoners, with some of them being suspected murderers.

After the white mob looted the jail and the sheriff’s home, they attacked the businesses belonging to black people in the area.

The other race riots across America that summer had made the Black residents prepared. They armed themselves and put a barricade at the intersection of Vine and central to protect their community and businesses.

The chaos was out of hand, and two platoons from the Tennessee National Guard 4th Infantry tried to stop it, but it was not possible. The white mob could not be contained – they broke into gun stores and stole firearms, with which they marched towards the Black business area. When they arrived, they opened fire on the Black people, while the Black people returned fire in defense.

The gunshots also hit the Tennessee National Guards. The national Guards then pointed two machine guns and shot without caution into the neighborhood, and dispersed the rioters. Gunfire continued for a few more hours. Out-gunned by the white mob and National guard, the Black people who defended their businesses retreated.

After the entire incident, eyewitnesses said that a great number of dead people were buried in mass graves, and others dumped in the Tennessee River. But the Newspaper lied and said that only two people had died.

The New York City Draft Riot of 1863

This was a four-day violent riot that happened during the civil war. It was caused because workers were not happy with the first federally mandated conscription laws.

The movement of the emancipated Black people from the deep South caused a swell in a number of people who were willing to the jobs of striking white people. Most of the black people were used as strike-breakers during that period.

This led to fears and hate from the white people, eventually resulted in the white mob turning their rage on black people. They were envious of black business, homes, and their growing political, social and economic power.

This led to an organized opposition protest on the 31st of July, 1863, all across New York. The protest went out of controlled and the white mob attacked the city’s elites and the Black residents.

The riot lasted for four days and was stopped by the police with the help of the 7th New York Regiment. There were varying estimates of people who died in the riots. It was reported by historians that around 115 people lost their lives, including over 12 Black men, who were tortured and beaten to death.

The rioters burnt down hundreds of buildings that were worth millions of dollars. Another 50 buildings belonging to black people were burnt to the ground, including the Colored Orphan Asylum, where more than 230 Black children lived.

The East St Louis Massacre of 1917

There was a great influx of Black people into St. Louis in the spring of 1917. Every week, an average of 2000 Blacks came in, and a good number was employed at the Aluminum Ore Company and also the American Steel Company which was in East St. Louis.

In May of that year, over 3,000 white men formed a mob and started to attack Black people and burn their buildings. The governor of Illinois got the National Guard to stop the rioting – this reduced the tensions for a few weeks.

White men, driving a car through a Black neighborhood, on July 1, opened fire into houses, stores, and a church. The Black people organized resistance to defend themselves, and in the process shot two police officers who were driving by in the same type of car.

The killing of the white detectives angered the white people and they formed a mob that spent two days hunting down black people and destroying their properties. The National Guard was sent in again, but this time, they joined the white mob in killing Black people.

There were various reports of the casualties by various news agencies and papers. But it estimated that over 200 Black people lost their lives, while 6,000 of the Black people of East St. Louis were left homeless after their houses were burnt.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Points to the Sunshine State for teaching kids that slavery was an unpaid internship that helped build useful skills. [The Daily Don]

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 22, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 23, 2023

The Florida Board of Education approved new state social studies standards on Wednesday, including standards for African American history, civics and government, American history, and economics. Critics immediately called out the middle school instruction in African American history that includes “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” (p. 6). They noted that describing enslavement as offering personal benefits to enslaved people is outrageous.

But that specific piece of instruction in the 216-page document is only a part of a much larger political project. 

Taken as a whole, the Florida social studies curriculum describes a world in which the white male Founders of the United States embraced ideals of liberty and equality—ideals it falsely attributes primarily to Christianity rather than the Enlightenment—and indicates the country’s leaders never faltered from those ideals. Students will, the guidelines say, learn “how the principles contained in foundational documents contributed to the expansion of civil rights and liberties over time” (p. 148) and “analyze how liberty and economic freedom generate broad-based opportunity and prosperity in the United States” (p. 154).

The new guidelines reject the idea that human enslavement belied American principles; to the contrary, they note, enslavement was common around the globe, and they credit white abolitionists in the United States with ending it (although in reality the U.S. was actually a late holdout). Florida students should learn to base the history of U.S. enslavement in “Afro-Eurasian trade routes” and should be instructed in “how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,” as well as how European explorers discovered “systematic slave trading in Africa.” Then the students move on to compare “indentured servants of European and African extraction” (p. 70) before learning about overwhelmingly white abolitionist movements to end the system.

In this account, once slavery arrived in the U.S., it was much like any other kind of service work: slaves performed “various duties and trades…(agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” (p. 6) (This is where the sentence about personal benefit comes in.) And in the end, it was white reformers who ended it.

This information lies by omission and lack of context. The idea of Black Americans who “developed skills” thanks to enslavement, for example, erases at the most basic level that the history of cattle farming, river navigation, rice and indigo cultivation, southern architecture, music, and so on in this country depended on the skills and traditions of African people.

Lack of context papers over that while African tribes did practice enslavement, for example, it was an entirely different system from the hereditary and unequal one that developed in the U.S. Black enslavement was not the same as indentured servitude except perhaps in the earliest years of the Chesapeake settlements when both were brutal—historians argue about this— and Indigenous enslavement was distinct from servitude from the very beginning of European contact. Some enslaved Americans did in fact work in the trades, but far more worked in the fields (and suggesting that enslavement was a sort of training program is, indeed, outrageous). And not just white abolitionists but also Black abolitionists and revolutionaries helped to end enslavement.

Taken together, this curriculum presents human enslavement as simply one of a number of labor systems, a system that does not, in this telling, involve racism or violence.

Indeed, racism is presented only as “the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms.” This is the language of right-wing protesters who say acknowledging white violence against others hurts their children, and racial violence is presented here as coming from both Black and white Americans, a trope straight out of accounts of white supremacists during Reconstruction (p. 17). To the degree Black Americans faced racial restrictions in that era, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans did, too (pp. 117–118).

It’s hard to see how the extraordinary violence of Reconstruction, especially, fits into this whitewashed version of U.S. history, but the answer is that it doesn’t. In a single entry an instructor is called to: “Explain and evaluate the policies, practices, and consequences of Reconstruction (presidential and congressional reconstruction, Johnson's impeachment, Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, opposition of Southern whites to Reconstruction, accomplishments and failures of Radical Reconstruction, presidential election of 1876, end of Reconstruction, rise of Jim Crow laws, rise of Ku Klux Klan)” (p. 104). 

That’s quite a tall order. 

But that’s not the end of Reconstruction in the curriculum. Another unit calls for students to “distinguish the freedoms guaranteed to African Americans and other groups with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution…. Assess how Jim Crow Laws influenced life for African Americans and other racial/ethnic minority groups…. Compare the effects of the Black Codes…on freed people, and analyze the sharecropping system and debt peonage as practiced in the United States…. Review the Native American experience”  (pp. 116–117).

Apparently, Reconstruction was not a period that singled out the Black population, and in any case, Reconstruction was quick and successful. White Floridians promptly extended rights to Black people: another learning outcome calls for students to “explain how the 1868 Florida Constitution conformed with the Reconstruction Era amendments to the U.S. Constitution (e.g., citizenship, equal protection, suffrage)” (p. 109).

All in all, racism didn’t matter to U.S. history, apparently, because “different groups of people ([for example] African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, women) had their civil rights expanded through legislative action…executive action…and the courts.” 

The use of passive voice in that passage identifies how the standards replace our dynamic and powerful history with political fantasy. In this telling, centuries of civil rights demands and ceaseless activism of committed people disappear. Marginalized Americans did not work to expand their own rights; those rights “were expanded.” The actors, presumably the white men who changed oppressive laws, are offstage. 

And that is the fundamental story of this curriculum: nonwhite Americans and women “contribute” to a country established and controlled by white men, but they do not shape it themselves. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[frostyreturns]

Frosty Ruins The Neighborhood

One of the benefits from unplugging from most pop culture is hearing about all the dumb shit people are watching that I've never seen. Eventually you get to a point where a show you've never even heard of has five seasons by the time it reaches your awareness. Every new show gets one of two reactions from me "no I haven't seen it" or "what the hell is that?" This show falls into the latter category.

Sometimes it's interesting though to dive into the middle of a show that's totally escaped your notice. I've not experienced an ounce of the shows marketting, I've not seen so much as a second of a commercial for it, I've not seen a clip of it online and I have not even come across a gif or image set of it on social media. This means my impression of it is completely my own.

My first impression is that it's going to be a terrible sitcom. Sitcoms can be bad in a good way and there are some sitcoms that are bad that I'll still enjoy as something mindless you put on in the background while I do other shit. But then there are bad sitcoms that hurt to watch. Right off the bat I notice two actors from different tv comedies, one is the blonde chick from two broke girls…which is a bad sign because that show was fucking terrible. However I also notice the extremely jewish gay but not really gay dude from New Girl which was the good kind of bad tv comedy.

A minute into the show I think I understand the premise of the show I think it's a reaction to percieved tokenism. I think they wanted to make a black show with token white people. It's the racial equivalent of the female ghostbusters, ignore all the positive black representation on tv and get mad about a fake problem and solve it by doing the thing you accuse others of doing. No wonder they picked the bland basic white chick from 2 broke girls and the persnickety magoo dude from new girl.

And like female ghostbusters it's full of horseshit libtard socjus political propaganda pretending that it's funny and entertaining. It delves very quickly into complete and utter cringe with lines like "set your alarm it's time for me to get woke." And of course like any show that follows this formula the men are also all dumb or jerks or dumb jerks.

The point of the episode I'm reviewing seems to be to create a strawman justification of regressive racial politics being pushed onto kids. They act like all they're doing is teaching kids about history and telling the truth…and any resitance to racial politics in schools is just trying to deny history…when in the real world these "diversity" classes are full of lies hatred and insane cultist marxist ideas designed to breed social conflict and societal upheaval.

The characters say things like "I just think its important for kids to get the whole picture." when what they meant to say was "I just want to ignore all of human history except for what a small number of people of a certain group did at a certain point in one specific place so I can paint one race as being victims and another as being perpetrators so that the murderous pedophiles who wrote this curriculum can turn people of different races against each other so none of us notice that it's always just the government committing atrocities and trying to rule all of us like tyrants."

For some reason I don't think teaching kids that slavery means 'that time when white people enslaved black people' is "giving them the whole picture." Treating slavery like it's this thing that happened once in American history rather than something that every group of people has engaged in and been victim to is retarded and evil. Evil because it's being done specifically for the racist and malevolent purpose of demonizing white people. Nevermind that the word slavery is named after slavic (white people) because of how those people were viewed. The retards who wrote this will say things like "it wasn't that long ago" to try to place collective blame on white people but will ignore slavery happening today…currently in Africa.

The other angle the propaganda here takes is one not everyone might notice. They pretend these kind of divisive racial politics is a new thing…it's a new curriculum that they are fighting to add and that most except a few are in favour of. In reality they've been teaching this shit virtually forever and almost everyone hates it. It's just gotten progressively worse and boomers and gen x have been mostly unaware of how batshit insane the stuff being taught to their kids in public schools is. It's insane as someone who's been out of the system for a long time watching tv shows like this pretend like this is a new thing being introduced when I had to listen to it daily. They don't want anyone to make the connection between how retarded people have become and the things they've been teaching. By pretending it's new they can act like the consequences are an unknown but we've been seeing the consequences for a long time and they're very real…and they're fucking intentional.

The other thing about jumping into a comedy like this in the middle is you really notice whenever it lacks comedy. Shows like this rely on character gimmicks and self referencing to generate the appearance of funny. I keep hearing the laugh track going…and genuinely have no idea why what was said was supposed to be a joke. The dialogue is stilted unnatural, the acting is terrible, the characters are wooden and pointless and everything just seems so empty and soulless. I'm really starting to believe that conspiracy about everything being written by AI. Sitcoms have always kind of been like that…but there's just something so alien about the way this show is put together. Like it was written by someone who's watched a lot of tv but has never talked to a person before. I think every character in the show would fail a turing test.

This hurt to watch, everybody who was involved in it should be ashamed and embarassed. If you like this show you have a cultural gutter palate. I refuse to believe that anyone watches this earnestly. I will believe that there are men who enjoy getting kicked in the balls, that makes more sense to me than there being a single viewer for this show. Once again I'm proved right that you should never watch anything made after 2017 if you want to have a good time.

F- late stage cancer

[rockislandadultreads]

Black History Month: Fiction Recommendations

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. 

Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man - a fellow slave - seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.

[lyledebeast]

Three Tokens

The point has been made many times that The Patriot misrepresents several populations that played key roles in the American Revolution.  To be honest, it misrepresents all populations involved.  The British did not make a habit of targeting civilians (at least no more than the Patriots did), and wealthy South Carolina landowners farmed their lands using slave labor.  Apart from these outright lies, though, there is a more insidious misrepresentation involved with three populations not centered by the movie: the French, American Loyalists, and enslaved Black Americans.  Each of these groups is represented by one character that is written specifically to present the Patriot cause in a favorable light, or at least deflect criticism away from it.

Major Villeneuve 

When we first meet him, Villeneuve has it in for Benjamin Martin.  “It is such an honor to meet the hero of Fort Wilderness” he sneers in reference to Martin’s brutal executions of French soldiers during the French and Indian War.  It is entirely believable that French soldiers could have held on to such animosities; the war in which they had fought the Americans as enemies only ended thirteen years prior to the start of the American Revolution.  Villeneuve’s dialogue with Martin becomes suspicious as he shifts from anger at Martin’s past war crimes to anger with Martin for forbidding his execution of surrendering British soldiers.  The British had sunk the ship on which his wife and children were passengers.  Just as the French and their Cherokee allies had murdered and raped Colonial civilians just prior to the Fort Wilderness incident.  Villeneuve’s judgement of Martin is superseded by his hypocrisy. This becomes a theme wherein characters’ personal experiences are presented as more important than their political beliefs, particularly when those beliefs are critical of Patriot ideas and practices.

James Wilkins

To get the pesky historical facts out of the way first, the idea of using one man to represent Loyalism in a colony characterized by particularly fierce fighting between Loyalists and Patriots is laughable. The audience is given no explanation for why Wilkins would join the Green Dragoons (historically, a Loyalist regiment formed in New York, though apparently not the in the movie given Tavington’s “another Colonial?” comment). Wilkins is the single American Loyalist present in the movie after the Charlestown assembly of 1776, and we are told that he had been part of a Loyalist militia prior to joining the dragoons.  What happened to the other Loyalists at the assembly?  What happened to the militia? 🤷‍♀️

We do learn that Wilkins’ Loyalism has a motivation, sort of.  It is not revenge, which motivates every single other non-British White man in the movie in spite of South Carolinian Loyalists having ample cause to seek vengeance against Patriots.  To Mr. Howard at the assembly he cites the lack of an American nation, and to Tavington he says “Those who make a stand against England deserve to die a traitor’s death.” Frankly, this sounds like the straw man reasoning a Patriot polemist would ascribe to Loyalists, and I suppose that is exactly what it is.  He is not loyal to cultural and/political institution of which he is part but to a country across an ocean from his home.  Okay, Wilkins.  The movie does provide us with a Loyalist perspective; it just happens to be one completely divorced from accurate historical context. 

Occam

I’ll confess to falling down a rabbit hole of research about Black Americans’ involvement in the American Revolution for this section, and it was eye-opening.  I knew that more Black people supported the British than the Patriots, but I had no idea how enormous the disparity was. The number of enslaved people who took up the Continental Army’s offer of freedom at the end of military service was dwarfed by the numbers of those who directly aided the British or took the chaos of war as an opportunity to escape the plantations.  Both of these larger groups are erased in The Patriot. Of the enslaved characters, Occam is the only one to speak, and some on Charlotte’s plantation die for their silence about her whereabouts.  The longest speech from a free Black character exists to inform the audience and Tavington that he is free and is almost completely ignored by Tavington.

All this means that Occam is the only character to actually articulate a Black experience of the American Revolution, but he prefers to express himself through his actions.  These include staring into middle distance while pensive music plays every time the topic of freedom is raised, risking his life to save the one militia man who treats him as poorly as his enslaver did, fighting for the militia that enslaver gave him to even after he is free, and helping his comrades surprise Benjamin Martin by building him a new house after the war ends.  It is hard to imagine that he is going to surprise him again with a bill for his services.  In short, Occam celebrates his liberation from slavery by doing volitionally the exact same things he would have been compelled to do as a slave.  Freedom, baby!

As egregiously limited as each of these characters are as representations of their respective groups, each contains a grain of truth.  There was some held over mistrust between French and American veterans of the previous war.  There were Loyalists who partook in atrocities against Patriot civilians.  There were Black people, both enslaved and free, who aided the Patriot cause.  However, by presenting only one person from each of these populations, the filmmakers use these characters’ individual choices to downplay or silence those populations’ justified grievances with Patriots.  There is, however, one South Carolina population from the American Revolution era that is not represented by so much as a single token: the Cherokees.  We know they were there; people keep referencing Martin’s victory over them.  The tomahawk prominently featured from the opening shot of the movie to Martin’s final fight with Tavington is a trophy from Martin’s Indian fighting days.  But the only Cherokee people who appear are the scouts in one blink-and-you-miss-it shot after they deliver the single survivor of Martin’s massacre in the woods to the British camp.  That they appear at all begs the question: why is Tavington not using their help to find the militia?  They likely know about the mission; their ancestors were there long before the Spanish built it.  For once, the movie is accurate; Banastre Tarleton did not receive Cherokee aid either.  This was not because the Cherokees chose to forgive and forget with regards to the previous war, as Villeneuve ultimately does, but because they had been driven from the colony by Patriot atrocities that might even have raised Colonel Tavington’s eyebrows.

[reasoningdaily]

Florida's controversial new African American history standards have stirred up strong reactions among political leaders, even leading to splinters within the Republican party in Florida.

On July 19, the Florida Board of Education unanimously approved a new social studies standard for African American history. In doing so, the board pushed pushed through criticism of the standards. Some critics said the curriculum downplays Florida's role in the historic oppression of Black people and others said the standards blame the African-American community for some of the crime they suffered, Ana Goñi-Lessan of the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

Vice President Kamala Harris slammed the new standards at an speech in Jacksonville days after it passed, prompting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to challenge her to a debate in a letter Monday. Harris fervently rejected his invitation Tuesday while speaking in Orlando, Florida at the African Methodist Episcopal 20th Women's Missionary Society Quadrennial Convention.

"I'm here in Florida, and I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact. There were no were redeeming qualities of slavery," she passionately told the crowd.

Here is what to know about Florida's new education standards that led to the Harris and DeSantis feud:

What is in the new Florida African American history curriculum?

Florida is required by state law to include history, culture, and experience of the African American community in K-12 curriculums. The same statute also created the African American History Task Force that reviews the standards for the curriculum. Despite it's nearly 20-year history, this is the first time that the state has created separate standards for the subject, chancellor of public schools Paul Burns told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Here are some controversial parts of the new curriculum standards:

"Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

"Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to ...1920 Ocoee Massacre" (The Orange County Regional History Center called the Ocoee Massacre the "largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history." A white mob lynched a Black man after he attempted to vote and then went on to kill an unknown number of other African American citizens and burn down their homes.)

The curriculum does not include Florida's role in upholding slavery and segregation by seceding from the Union during the Civil War or by passing a resolution that opposed the Supreme Court's decision, Brown v. Board of Education, according to Genesis Robinson, political director for advocacy group Equal Ground, and other critics according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Critics also say that the new curriculum does not use person-first language by using the term "slave" instead of "enslaved people."

Kamala Harris: 'They want to replace history with lies.'

Vice President Harris spoke at the Ritz Theatre and Museum in Jacksonville, Florida two days after the new African American history standards were passed by the FBOE.

She criticized the new standards for indicating that enslaved people benefited from slavery and victims of violence were also perpetrators.

"Adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worse examples of depriving people of humanity in our world," Harris said. "So in the context of that, how is it that someone could suggest that in amidst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?"

She called the revised history curriculum "propaganda," that intended to mislead children.

"They want to replace history with lies," she told the packed room in a historically Black neighborhood in Jacksonville. "They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not have it."

Ron DeSantis, Byron Donalds and William B. Allen react

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis penned a letter to Harris defending the state's policy and inviting her to Florida to debate the issue. "You have instead attempted to score cheap political points and label Florida parents 'extremists.' It's past time to set the record straight," the letter states.

The letter also mentions William B. Allen, a conservative politician who sits on Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, which spearheaded writing the new standards. Allen criticized Harris for promoting false criticisms of the curriculum. "It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans,” he said in an interview posted by ABC News. Allen also went on to say, "It is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient, and adaptive, and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslaved."

As reported by the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida GOP Congressman Byron Donalds, a prominent Black supporter for Donald Trump, supported the majority of the curriculum. He still found himself in a Republican fire storm for criticizing the part of the standard that suggests enslaved people benefited from slavery.

[huseyintr24]

Demonization as a Weapon in the Anti-Cult Information War

Studying the destructive actions of anti-cultists, I am truly shocked by the scale of their activities in Austria and around the world. The information available to me clearly indicates that under the guise of fighting "sects", forces are operating that are pursuing goals of enslaving all of humanity.

One striking example is the activities of the organization FECRIS (Federation of European Centres of Research and Information on Cults) and its Austrian branch - the Society for Combating the Dangers of Sects and Cults (GSK). In May 2005, they organized an international conference in Vienna, which received funding from the French government.

Anti-cultists' Action Patterns:

It is important to note that anti-cultists never give the organizations or people they criticize the opportunity to speak out and express their point of view. That is, anti-cultists present information one-sidedly, based on rumors, suspicions, but not on facts. Descriptions of such groups abound in generalizations that have no factual basis, which calls into question the objectivity and impartiality of the proposed analysis.

Also, the actions and statements of anti-cultists often seem serious. Their opinions are used and spread by the media, while the corresponding religious communities are often not given a chance to express their point of view. This is one of the main reasons why the general public has a negative opinion about religious communities that do not belong to the main religions, which excites hostility towards religious minorities in society and leads to their discrimination.

Anti-cultists rely on the testimony of former members and apostates without verifying them. This approach leads to bias and creates a false picture of religious groups. Moreover, the right to freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, is not taken into account.

Here is a concrete example:

The publication of journalist Günther Zoeyner "Poison for the Brain and Murder of the Soul. The Shadow Economy of Sects and Other Faith Markets" (2009). It baselessly accuses members of small religious groups, which has led to discrimination and professional difficulties. This publication is biased, not based on facts and names some members of small religious groups. As a result, after the publication of this article, these people faced difficulties in career advancement because they belonged to groups that were labeled "sects".

Respected Egon Cholakian analytical video report,, a professor of American intelligence, emphasizes that anti-cultists are pawns in the game of shadow forces: “Another classic method of information distortion, which can affect your perception and create a completely opposite image in your mind about a target organization or individual, is “selective use of information taken out of context”. For example, when phrases, words, and reactions of a person are intentionally taken out of the initial meaning-forming context and deliberately interpreted in a completely absurd way. Such manipulation of information so radically distorts perception that white turns black and black turns white.”

At the heart of all information attacks by the shadow side, lies one fundamental element - lies, the more absurd they are, the more effective. This is not just delusion or distortion of facts, it is deliberate lies about the activities of organizations, disliked political or social figures who become targets of such attacks. The main tool used in these operations is demonization.

We must be aware and critical of the information provided by anti-cultists. Each of us is in danger of becoming a victim of their destructive activities. Don't let yourself be manipulated, take care of yourself.

Support the article by applauding, liking, reposting and commenting

#AntiCult #FreedomOfReligion #Democracy #HumanRights #Disinformation #FreedomOfSpeech #Truth #Justice #Accountability

[imspardagus]

Orwell that ends well?

An opinion piece

In the past few months we have seen apologists for Zionism telling us that you can’t accuse the Jewish people of genocide because they have already been the victims of one.

In recent years, we have had the unseemly fight between trans people who, perhaps misled into thinking that gender is the same thing as sex (a category error encouraged by, but sadly no longer limited to, stupid, squeamish, partially educated Americans) appear to think that there is no difference between feeling you are a woman and being a woman and women who, perhaps misled into thinking that being a man or a woman is entirely about the erroneous binary question “which of only two sexes you must belong to biologically”, appear to believe that unless you have suffered all the physical and mental afflictions of being a woman and have all, and only, the working parts to match you are not a woman (a category error steeped in long and unforgivable victimisation, but horribly close to the espousing of victimhood as a way of life) .

We have had black people saying that only white people can be racist (which is racist) and white people saying that they are being discriminated against because their age-old white privilege is under challenge (which is not just racist but stupid).

We have had people who have prospered from their ancestors’ enslavement claim to be entitled to financial reparation for this appropriated suffering and we have had people who have benefitted from their ancestors’ exploitation of slaves claiming that we should not be so indiscreet as to amend the narrative to mention where their handed-down wealth came from.

We have had billionaires impose censorship in the name of free speech and libertarians determined to lock up anyone who dissents from their selfish world view.

Over in the States, we have self-identifying “Christians” espousing a lecherous, lying, cheating petty mobster as the New Messiah, convincing themselves along the way that this most indefatigable elitist is on their side against “the elite”; that this unrelenting underminer of decency to serve his whiny self-interest is with them against “the deep state”.

Here we have the man who presided over the highest level of taxation the country has known since World War II warning that the opposition is the “party of high taxation: a near billionaire who has pandered to the worst xenophobes and corrupt parasites using our money to do so asserting that he is “on your side”.

Now we have the sponsors of the “Enhanced Games” insisting that words such as “doping” and “cheating” are “discriminatory” – presumably against dopeheads and cheats.

As examples of “words meaning what I want them to mean” (Humpty Dumpty), this is all pretty impressive stuff. As examples of George Orwell’s Newspeak (sometimes misquoted as “doublespeak”) it is rather more disturbing, not to say insidious.

Back in the 1980s, I recall a Wages Inspector’s report on a hotel owner down on Dartmoor. The owner had been persistently underpaying his staff and falsifying his accounts to disguise the fact. Inteviewed, he descended into such a fog-bound trench of lies, prevarications and deceptions that the Inspector, an experienced hand at dealing with dishonesty, was moved to record –

“After some time in Mr L***’s company, one is forced to conclude that the truth and he are strangers.”

A turn of phrase that has stuck with me ever since. When that sick political joke, Boris Johnson, lied his way into being Prime Minister I thought of it. When that sad cabbage, Liz Truss, took over I thought of it again. When the Roland Rat of politics, Rishi Sunak said he would be different – honest and decent – I was tempted to believe him. Then he started lying through his rodent teeth. And I thought of it again.

It didn’t start as recently as that, of course. Back in 1971, John Lennon was already snarling

“I’ve had enough of reading things

By neurotic, psychotic pig-headed politicians

All I want is the truth, just gimme some truth”

(“Gimme some truth” on the Imagine album)

But little did we know then that the downward spiral had hardly begun its journey. Even in the Eighties, it seemed as if it was mostly business spivs and advertising executives who, to serve their own ends, were prepared to lie without a moment’s regret. The limits of their engagement with politics then seemed mostly to be corruption at a local level (now, of course, many of them are the nation’s politicians). Generally, however, in the higher public realm, until Robert Armstrong sanctioned Ministerial dissembling (in his words, “being economical with the truth”), people expected public servants to display a degree of commitment to integrity and truthfulness.

Heavens, I remember a time when a Minister would resign if it turned out that someone in their department had got something wrong, even when they had been unaware of the error. Then, all of a sudden, in the Nineties, it became okay for the same Ministers to blame their departments for things their departments in fact had warned them against saying; and from that time onwards truth was, as they say, elsewhere. Nobody expected it any more.

This was the fertile ground into which the unholy Devil’s spawn, Trump, Farage, Johnson and their kind planted their moronic, satanic seed. And boy did it take, like Japanese knotweed in an untended garden. In their version of reality, truth now became “fake news” and their lies became truth. Whatever served the interest of their moment was asserted as unassailably so. Whatever dared to challenge that immediate self-interest, be it science or demonstrable fact, was dismissed as the fabrication of the wrong kind of people, “dissolutes”, “activists”, “the wokerati”, “lefty liberals”: all dreamt-up entities, modern Golems if you like, supposedly with an axe to grind against decency or against that most specious of political commodities, the “will of the people”, set up like coconuts at a fair to scare the populace .

And sadly it worked. People are not good with the truth. That’s at the heart of this problem. Which is to say that we all want to believe we can tell the truth from a lie, but, actually, we can’t. If there is one lesson to come out of the TV show “The Traitors” – and if there is more than one lesson, I must have missed it – it is that those who most believe in their ability to discern dishonesty are the worst at it. And again this is nothing new. Any conjuror will tell you how much easier it is to dupe a man who thinks he is smart because he will do the work of deceiving himself for you. His ego will insist.

No, people would rather accept something that plays to their already formed prejudices than allow the thought that they may be wrong. And at that point they are on the hook. Mark Twain remarked that

“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Give them a spade and they will continue digging.

And this is what we have seen. I have already mentioned the millions of poor people in America who contrive to believe that Trump is something like the second coming of Jesus, rather than the two-bit crook and profane narcissist that all the evidence, even from his own pretty little pursed lips, reveals.

Remember that it is only 60 years since John Lennon (again) only had to suggest that “We are bigger than Jesus now” – an entirely justifiable, if undiplomatic, claim - and the God-bothering hoardes of the US proceeded to burn all the Beatles’ merchandise in protest (good result for the merchandisers). Whereas today, people (probably the sons and daughters of the same bigots) would rather tear up the US Constitution than admit that Trump is a philandering, posturing, lying, third-rate gang boss hell-bent on surviving his own iniquity, and profiting into the bargain.

Those who care about the truth, mostly scientists and a few writers, know firstly that their acquaintance with it is necessarily accidental and, secondly, that they can all to easily be misled into thinking they have found it by their own assumptions about what it is. This is why, perhaps, truth is now on the backfoot in an age of too readily available “opinion” masquerading as fact. The honesty of such people leads to uncertainty and their uncertainty, which should, if we were rational, be held up as a thing in their favour, becomes a stick to beat them with in the hands of those whose own certainty is born of blind ignorance feeding arrogance.

This is why we do not have a meritocracy in human society. Intelligence brings doubt. Ignorance fosters certainty. Who is going to vote for acknowledged doubt over proclaimed certainty? Who is going to say, “Well, if I am going to be led by someone I’d rather it was by the guy who admits he doesn’t know?”

Gore Vidal, himself a hugely intelligent man, nonetheless managed to fool himself into saying (and presumably believing),

“You’d have to be mad to want to be President. And who in the world is going to vote for a madman?”

The answer, it would appear, is just about anybody. They voted for Hitler, they voted for Orban, they voted for Erdogan, they voted for Modi, they voted for Trump, they voted for Johnson. Maybe Trump and Johnson are not your conventionally qualified “madmen” but their utter contempt for the mores of normal life, their weddedness to their own depraved dysfunctional appetites would, by any objective standards, entitle them to stand among the deranged. And indicate that the truth means next to nothing to them when ranged against the world of self-fulfilment that they need to believe in.

Our problem with reality is not helped, of course, by our current fixation with the virtual world (not just computers but TV and films, too) and AI. We are people disposed to accept the simplistic, the expedient, sooner than admit that nuance exists and makes life complicated. We have among us people who seem to believe that if you die you just get taken back a level and start again. We have among us people who believe that killing people is just a way to enhance your rating. We have people who do not understand how much accommodation is required to engage in the actual world with real people. We have people who believe that their unevidenced belief is the actual equivalent of, if not actually superior to, the hard-won opinion of an expert. We have people who think it’s okay to lie to get your way as long as you apologise before the credits roll. That, when you think about it, has been the message of Disney for decades. “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less. The question is which is to be master - that is all.”

So is there any way back? There is no reason why there should be. Time and the Universe are pretty well indifferent to our survival or how we make our end. It would be comforting to look back at the Tudors, the Stuarts, colonialism, slavery, the First and Second World Wars, The Cold War, and to conclude “we survived all that”. But actually there’s another narrative playing out: a narrative of forgetfulness. A narrative in which, after only a few years the lessons learned about how to be better, kinder, more thoughtful people become inconvenient and eventually have to be re-learned, the hard way.

That is what it feels like just now. Bigotry, intolerance, self-interest, stupidity (masquerading as conspiratorial “wisdom”) seem to be winning again. We have forgotten how hard it was to put them in their place not so long ago and how much better it became when we did.

We are reaching out in search of “solutions” towards people who, for their own selfish purposes, want to persuade us that kindness is weakness, that tolerance is submission, that hatred of difference is strength, and that nothing and no-one can be trusted, except, of course, them. It is understandable, just irredeemably undesirable and wrong. What will it take for us to see that what they are offering is fool’s gold and that, as Robert Graves suggested,

“Every citizen needs to preserve his sense of smell.”

What will it take for us to realise that not just cream, but also scum rises to the top of the barrel and that we must know how to distinguish between the two?

What will it take for us to see that there is no guarantee that all‘s well that ends well, that it is down to us to ensure that outcome?

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

@disclaymore

Lol, no. I can tell you didn't do well in history.

Abortion has been around for millenia. Condoms have been around since at least the 15th century. Various forms if contraception have been used for as long as humans have been on the planet because surprise, surprise, not everyone wants to get pregnant.

As for Margaret Sanger, yes, she was a racist cunt. So your theory is no woman or other person with a uterus should ever be allowed to have bodily autonomy because a racist woman once supported birth control?

Bull, fucking, shit!

By your logic, since most of America's Founding Fathers owned slaves, men shouldn't have any of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights.

Now it's interesting you mention Black women, because it either shows how uneducated you are about the history...or shows that you side with the racists.

Black women, and really all women of color, have always had their bodily autonomy violated:

When enslaved people were brought over on ships, chained up and crowded as close together as possible, they were often forced to make the voyage naked.

Enslaved women could not say no to white people who raped them. They had no say in pregnancy either. As a matter of fact, women were often bought specifically so they could be forcibly impregnated and their children either used as other forced labor on the plantation or sold to someone else.

Women of color of any race were fetishized. Asian women were almost always barred from entering the U.S. because there was an assumption they were all sex workers. Those who did get into America were often harrassed and sometimes even assaulted. Native American women were often forced into prostitution by white captors.

But, you see, that wasn't enough for the government. The government created a plan. They would commit genocide.

With Native Americans, they kidnapped kids and put them in schools or with white families. They would cut the kids' hair, beat them for speaking their native tongues, and even rape them.

Native American women, African American women, Hispanic American women, and other women of color were forcibly sterilized at a massive scale. Sometimes doctors lied and said it was reversible. Sometimes doctors told them that if they didn't go through with it, the women would have their children taken away. Other times they wouldn't even be told the procedure had taken place. They even did it to children, you ignorant ass! This went into the late 1900s.

Now, you post here and you say that all that wasn't enough trauma. You say that because Margaret Sanger was racist, women of color should never be allowed bodily autonomy.

Oh, and if you force them to give birth to a girl, I you'll care so much about her that you'd force her to give birth to?

Well, I say go fuck yourself. I hope that you and every single forced birther go through what you force on others.

One year on from Dobbs, please remember the victims of abortion bans in America. These are just the ones that made it to the news:

Marlena Stell

Amanda Zurawski

Mylissa Farmer

The 10-year-old from Ohio

The 16-year-old from Florida

The 15-year-old from Florida

Nancy Davis

Elizabeth Weller

Anya Cook

Kelly Shannon

Jessica Bernardo

Kierstan Hogan

Taylor Edwards

Kylie Beaton

Gabriella Gonzalez

Samantha Casiano

Lauren Van Vleet

Austin Dennard

Lauren Miller

Jaci Statton

Kristina Cruickshank

Tara George

Kailee DeSpain

Deborah Dorbert

Mayron Hollis

Kristen Anya

Heather Maberry

Melissa Novak

Kayla Smith

Lauren Christensen

Beth Long

Anabely Lopes

Christina Zielke

Kaitlyn Joshua

Lauren Hall

Carmen Broesder

Jill Hartle

Brittany Vidrine

Jane Doe from Massachusetts, who had an ectopic pregnancy rupture because a pregnancy crisis center told her it was viable

The Jane Doe had an ectopic pregnancy rupture after an anti-abortion pregnancy center told her she had a normal pregnancy

Emily Doe, whose fetus had lungs that wouldn’t develop and had no kidneys. The pregnancy had the potential to endanger her health…but it wasn’t endangering it yet. So she had to flee Missouri for an abortion.

Victoria Doe from Louisiana, who had to go to Oregon

When we do win back our right to bodily autonomy, forced birthers will forget these people. Some have absolutely no idea who these people are. But when you tell them you hope what they force on others gets forced on them, they gasp and say you're evil. Because they recognize that what they force on others is wrong, and they think they deserve better than their victims.

If you think the "abortion debate" is merely a difference of opinion, you haven't been payinh attention.

[realjaysumlin]

I'm so tired of hearing the repeated falsehood of people who call themselves white explaining their racist ideologies in regards to our Black Indigenous People History even though there's irrefutable evidence to prove that the ideas of scientific racism is a dangerous myth.

The perpetuation of behavior projections and deflection will always be linked to whiteness when it comes to blaming Black people for their heinous acts of genocide against innocent individuals by Christian colonizers.

We often hear the same false narratives about Black Africans selling other enslaved Black Africans, as if colonization and slavery were exclusive to the African continent. These lies are told to evade responsibility for the atrocities committed against Black Indigenous People worldwide.

Genocidal acts against Black Indigenous People globally are often downplayed, with the use of scientific racist ideologies to suggest that humans are a separate species. This is done to create the illusion that Native Americans, Aboriginals, Filipinos, Malaysians, and others are distinct peoples, despite all originating from the same African migration 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Many individuals lack scientific literacy and believe in the impossibility of different species producing viable offspring. The suppression of Black Indigenous People's history stems from the unfounded belief in their inferiority to whiteness, perpetuated by racist scientific ideologies.

Racist beliefs serve to boost individuals' self-esteem at the expense of dehumanizing innocent people who have made significant contributions to world history but are not given the recognition they deserve.

This is the dumbest and most stupid post by a man who truly believes that what he's saying is true even though everything he's saying is completely unaware that everything from his post is inaccurate and filled with racial prejudice and dehumanization of Black Indigenous People.