The Mundane Horror of American Slavery
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 лис 2019
- Countless atrocities were committed during America's slaveholding past, but by and large these weren't day-to-day occurrences. The daily struggles of American slaves weren't quite so dramatic, but they were still horrifying, precisely because they were so frequent and so casual.
Ron Maxwell's defense of Gods and Generals: historynewsnetwork.org/articl...
Support Atun-Shei Films on Patreon ► / atunsheifilms
Leave a Tip via Paypal ► www.paypal.me/atunsheifilms
Buy Merch ► teespring.com/stores/atun-she...
Official Website ► www.atunsheifilms.com/
The "good" or "nice" slavemasters treated the slaves like a good dog owner would treat a dog. They don't want to hurt them and may even be fond of them, but there's no doubt in their mind that they're still better than the dog.
And they both know who is in charge, and the dynamic never changes.
@@lolitabubbles26 if you were born in the south and wanted to help these people, a way you could have helped someone’s lives is buying whole slave families to keep them together.
They whipped them
I was thinking the same thing but I might say mule or draft horse - a tool (which hurts to even think) - as opposed to a dog which one _might_ consider part of one's pack or family.
In fairness, most dog owners I know would also protect their pets from harm, whereas most slave owners would only go so far as to provide shelter and maybe food if they were lucky
I always found it supremely ironic that the most vociferous propagators of the 'slavery wasn't so bad' meme are the very same people who swear they'd fight to the death at the slightest infringement of their freedoms.
A lot of them also say that it was the slaves fault for allowing themselves to be enslaved.
krishna murthy jeeeeeeeeeeesus
Yet now they out here saying we should lick police boots and thank them for putting rubber bullets into our eye sockets
@@piedpiper1172 for the love of God no! Nice name btw. I think if you voluntarily take the oath you(meaning cops) should be held to a higher standard. Had a cop say he doesn't like being lumped in with the bad cops, said "you 2a guys don't want to be lumped in with mass shooters". I replied " the difference is we go after mass shooters how many bad cops you go after?" The moral of the story is no one should paint with such a broad brush.
Joe Jackson I am often reminded of a German saying:
“What do you call ten people having dinner with a Nazi?
11 Nazis.”
To knowingly tolerate unjust people is the same as being unjust. This is why we say all cops are bastards. They have allowed the bad cops to go unpublished so long we no longer trust the police. It is the fault of the “good cops” for letting it go on so long.
Another thing to remember about slavery in the US is that the primary method of control wasn't the whip, it was hunger. The owner fed his slaves as he saw fit, and a slave is easily corrected, and weakened, by prolonged underfeeding. It doesn't have the same cinematic cruelty as physical punishment, but the pain and need are with the sufferer all day, every day, and the only escape from it is submitting and begging.
Yes, you can easily run away to avoid the whip for a short time. But food is difficult to come by unless you steal it, as everyone who is your friend is next door to hungry already. And stealing food is probably going to precipitate an even worse punishment than whatever infraction was already hanging over your head. Slaves sometimes ran away to hide in the woods for a day or three, but they usually ended up walking back on their own, driven by hunger.
@@ComradeOgilvy1984 Fredrick Douglass tells some awful stories about being hungry all the time when he was a slave.
@Glinkling Smearnops It is true. Read the accounts. www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/10/514385071/frederick-douglass-on-how-slave-owners-used-food-as-a-weapon-of-control
@Glinkling Smearnops Hunger and starvation are not the same thing.
The purpose of owning a slave is to consistently get a large amount of menial labor completed in a timely fashion. A slave who has bigger muscles but is less compliant does not necessarily get more work done, in fact it could easily be the opposite. Having many big muscled slaves who are less compliant hanging out together has a huge potential downside.
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 Mr. Weems used the word "hunger". Apparently people who disagree with him are *provably* too stupid to know the difference between hunger and starvation. Not really a surprise...
5:40
This reminds me of those experiments where a journalist lives like a homeless person for a month and talks about his troubles and thoughts, but never once grasps or even hints at the fact, that it is very very different when you know that after that months you can just go home.
Jakob Schulze Jack London’s “People of the Abyss” (a book where the author does just that but in late-Victorian London) there’s a scene where he flees the filth of a homeless shelter back to his fancy hotel and Turkish bath
or the annoying one where a reporter spends 24 hours in a solitary confinement cell. like dude...you will never understand the mental torture it does to you when you know you are genuinely locked in there forreal. And do 10 years of it.
Exactly. There's a reason why psychologists have examined those states of being and realized that they're akin to actual torture.
I think it depends on how you are treated. In the film “Black like Me”. the protagonist has his skin darkened by chemical treatment so its will take many months for his skill to return to his normal color. He never gets over the shock of being treated by whites they way he has been treated. Even people he has known do not see past the color. I think it is very hard really to change one’s appearance that much if you are pretending to be a homeless person. Even a talented actor would find it hard to stay in character long enough.
Exactly, especially with those people in the social experiments who "grasp" the reality of poverty. They could never understand
Reminds me of the quote from the Ken Burns documentary, "No day ever dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. For the slave, it is all night, all night forever."
@Glinkling Smearnops prideful ignorance is a special American quality,you wear it well.
@Glinkling Smearnops You just made my top five list of the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Glinkling Smearnops
“Derp. Derp. Derp”
“Them Coloreds was better off as slaves than they was in Africa. Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk!”
And I’m sure you think that this was an original and profound statement.
@@archer1949 Right? Id rather be free as a hunter gatherer in the forest than a slave in a technological utopia.
Glinkling Smearnops, you’re very special. Just like the school you used to attend.
One of the saddest things I found researching my roots was a bill of sale for a slave named "Moses" age 16 between my 4G grandfather and my 3G grandfather. My 2G grandfather later fought and died for the South leaving two orphans and a young wife who soon died afterward. Where is the honor and heritage in that?
Wow, that really knocked the wind outta me...
@@thundy9124 I think he knows that. He’s disappointed not ashamed. Huge difference.
Thundy
Iike you give a shit
Trundy, only if the current generation, use agency to eliminate ALL vestiges of barriers to FULL freedom and equality. But, they refuses to take action, instead, settling for the status quo. And, at the same time, we find that there are groups that espouses white supremacy, neo nazis, proud boys, oath keepers, and so on.
@@chrisper94 you must put freedom over equality. Only then every man and woman will be equal. We must prioritize liberty to allow men and women to work and rise to great heights.
You can’t be kind to a person and own them at the same time.
You can, but slavery is still pretty f”d up.
@Glinkling Smearnops well, of course because they are dogs, you can't treat a human like a dog and think that that's love.
Pimpin ain't easy.
@@gortrobot578 I'd argue that the love shown to dogs can have a dark undertone of control and contempt. Few owners focus on the dog's needs for their own sakes, or develop a partnership of equals. Instead, they train the dog to fulfill their own need for unconditional devotion and obedience.
Anyone in the ancient world would think you were crazy for saying something like that.
If a slave owner truly treated their slaves with kindness, they would set them free.
or hire them and pay them as servants, provide housing for them as well. I don't think just freeing them is enough, let alone a safe idea since even with freedom, they'll pretty much end up homeless, starving, or worse. Either way, being a slave and being free at that time are not great choices.
If American slave owners were really following scripture by owning humans, they'd see Hebraic slavery was nothing like the way they treated those they so called owed.
@@juanpauloarcillas7600 Of course, that would take a lot more effort and when you don't even consider them human, why do that? After all, you wouldn't pay a dog or a cow, they should be thankful for being fed by you "for free", when all you ask of them is to permanently be under your complete control.
Manumission was often illegal or heavily restricted.
They were often not allowed so mute point
It’s probably the most horrific part of slavery in my opinion. Not only dose the master delude themselves into believing that there exists a sort of familial relationship between slave and master. The master forces the slaves to play along with this delusion. Forced to swallow all of the hatred and resentment they feel towards their owner and pretend that their owner is a parental figure.
A great example of this in more modern times is (BREAKING BAD SEASON 5 SPOILERS!!!!!!)
the relationship between Tod and Jesse once he's captured
Like something straight out of a skin crawling exploitation horror story.
Jackson sounds exactly like the insufferable boss who never yells, just intentionally makes life harder in a million little ways to teach his employees "lessons". At some point, I imagine his slaves probably thought, "I'd be glad to take a dozen whippings just to never have to hear again that sanctimonious assholes call out, "oh Tobias, you forgot to shut the door."
Get the context but these little inconveniencies and benign examples like it sound more like a paternal approach you might get from a parent or grandparent and less like that of a someone who does it just to lord power over you. That said if their biggest accomplishment is your existence you might be inclined to be rebellious but if they claim their progeny to be their greatest accomplishment yet got a long list of accolades that your society recognizes as far greater then the inclination might be the opposite of rebellious.
Completely understand what was meant by the example and how it applied to the particular institution but the very example seems like one of the softest and most benign aspects of a stern upbringing approach.
Thomas Jefferson...went a considerable step further. To read his writings...you'd get the impression that he intended for himself to be the Father of a new race of people chosen from slaves. It seems...eerily familiar to someting else I'd read earlier in life.
@@wj3186 jefferson was next level on that approach but that wasn’t too odd in the extreme wing of the abolitionists John Brown and the like. Southern gentry had a stern paternalistic approach at their best nature, while at the same time seeing people as property. Yet the approach of northern gentry was not truly benign towards those outside their class and any approach that showed concern for workers was about as rare as those of extreme abolitionists. Not seeking to equate anything by no means but these were competing approaches to basic manual labor here a couple centuries ago.
He should have spent more of that anal retentive energy teaching his soldiers to not shoot at the guys wearing grey instead. Might have saved him some bother down the road, lol.
Mental death 'by a thousand cuts'
I am eternally grateful that I have never experienced, or dealt, such an incomprehensible evil onto my fellow man
Actually that's the messed up part.
If you where born and raised in that environment you would see slavery as no big issue because your friends neighbors and family at that era would not
@@almalone3282 so the people conducting the Underground Railroad saw slavery as no big deal?
@@gorehammer1 those where a minority compared to the average southerner at the time just like flat earthers in our time
@@almalone3282 what a bad comparison, flat earth had been disproven for centuries, and it's like saying that abolitionists are as dumb as flat earthers, or that flat earthers are noble on any way alternatively.
@@operationd--msday that's not the comparison
The comparison is the population difference between abolitionists vs pro-slavary in the south, yes if you took all the abolitionists and put them in a room it would look like a lot, but spread them among the general southern population at the time it would be around the same size as flat eathers in modern time
I'm reminded of a section of Frederick Douglass' autobiography where he said, in his opinion, one of the most insidious elements of slavery were the holidays, or more specifically the holiday celebrations, and how all the slaves looked forward to it. Douglass felt that this "scrap" (my word not his) was enough to keep slaves docile for the entire year.
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 I'm sorry I don't know what point you're trying to make
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 I'm just asking you to clarify. I mean, if you have perspective that is true then I wanna know about it. Marketplace of ideas and whatnot.
Just sounds like public holidays and accrued leave here.
@@PapaSmurf11182nd his argument boils down to "slavery was good for dem negro yeee haw" by saying that Africa was a worse alternative
@@balanced2482 it was
"You want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. Slavery for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous, but the individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you'd imagine: benevolent, friendly, nice to their children, even nice to their slaves, caring about other people. As individuals they may be anything, in their institutional roll they're monsters, because the institution is monstrous." - Noam Chomsky.
@Scott Johnston In a modern perspective yes. If you look at it through the lens of time I actually think Chomsky is more right.
@Jonathan Norway I know and the US was stupid enough to elect a vice president that abused that loophole and even used innocent people to fill that loophole...
But srsly you guys should get that loophole fixed asap
@MultiBagram yh it means that your country should remove the possibility for slavery.
@MultiBagram you’re stupid the 13th amendment was written when the civil war ended,… and still they could remove it now… that under no circumstances slavery would be allowed
@@chainmail5886 No, they are all as bad as each other.
One southern mansion exhibit I went to described the routine of slave food service, where the master's orsers were for the slaves to whistle as they carried food from one room to another. The reason for this was to prevent them from snacking as they carried the tray of food. This sort of thing is part of the deprivation of basic dignity that went along with slavery. Corporal punishment may have been rare, but being treated as a child for a whole life is odious enough.
on the surface it doesn't look too bad but when you look at it like that... god, how horrifying
It's so refreshing to encounter quality critical thinking, including the ability to make nuanced arguments/distinctions. It's not a lost art, just one of diminished exposure in places like youtube or tv where bomb-throwing gets likes, clicks, etc... Keep up the great work. I miss your film reviews. I loved both Parasite and The Lighthouse and would love to see your take on them. Or maybe your take on the the Joker.
YER FOND OF ME LOBSTER, AIN'T YE?
...who is this addressed to?
The Lighthouse is a masterpiece. One of the true great critiques of toxic masculinity. One that doesn't come across as preachy or subtly misandrist.
@@mycaleb8 There is no such thing as toxic masculinity, only irresponsible use of ones own leverage over other people.
Amazing videos subscribed and liked.
The best depiction of this mundane horror I have seen was in 12 years a slave, when Ford says to Solomon that he hoped the gift of a violin would bring them both happy memories for "years to come." To Ford if was just a nice thing and a nice sentiment, to Solomon it was a reminder that he would be kept from his freedom.
Thank you for this. Too often we have heard apologists use the logic that because a human being that was 'owned' by another wasn't brutally hurt by a whip, or beaten, or in the process of being sold every day... that that means they were better off then in Africa, or that slavery wasn't all that bad for most slaves. Slavery by it's definition was a condition that all human beings, who have an inkling of feeling for there fellow human, find detestable. It brutally, and often casually, crushed the hopes and dreams of millions during every second of it's existence.
To be a slave was to live a life of mostly mundane sadnesses and continual mental torture, a dark tunnel from which the only escape was eventual death, and for many, they died horrific, unsung lives of obscurity, many not even properly buried.
It is not an attempt to make any white person today feel guilty, only important to remember what it truly was, and to work hard to ensure that we never let our society accept such callousness towards human suffering happen ever again. As a black man who lives in a town where a black man could be lynched after sundown some 60-70 years ago, the legacy of the evil of slavery lives on when we look at others as lesser because of how they look, or where they come from, or when we judge someone's worth by the stereotypes we have learned from media, or from anecdotes from unreliable and biased human beings. It's legacy is still with us in our prison system that is far too large, far too ungoverned, and far to destructive to human lives and needs total reform if not abolishment.
To quote a scene from one of my favorite movies: The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit
I always love the argument that it's "better than Africa" when Africa was actually a pretty great place to live in during the 16th century before slavers ruined it. People forget that Europeans originally went to Africa to trade for gold, not people. The Mali were the richest people in the world, and most of the gold in the world had come from them. Timbuktu was the cultural center of the world. Where as the grandest libraries in Europe could boast hundreds of books, Timbuktu had thousands of books. They had public education (mostly for religious reasons), with one of the highest, if not the highest, rates of literacy. Europeans burnt (figuratively, they didn't personally do the burning) the whole region to the ground. Africa was the only continent to not increase in population in the 17th century. To say slavery is "better than Africa" is like burning down someone's house, letting them sleep on your floor, and telling them the floor is better than their house.
@@thewest8630 I'm interested in your statement where did you get that info o.o?
@@TheRoyalKnightPain19 my college class on the history of Africa.
@@TheRoyalKnightPain19 If you're still interested, what happened during the height of the Atlantic slave trade (17th-18th century) and of the Islamic slave trade (19th century), was that Africa was deprived of its population. Numbers vary, but the estimates are that about 12.5 million people were deported to the Americas from the 1500s onward (the Islamic slave trade had gone on since the 7th century, so maybe up to 17 million to the Middle East and Asia). A great deal of African states fell apart as their population was depleted from slaver raids and wars by other states eager to get European weapons and goods.
The result was that by the time of the Scramble for Africa (1885-1900s), there weren't any strong, centralized states to oppose European expansion. Africa was riddled by civil and slaver wars, its population hollowed out, and greatly impoverished overall (gold mines in the Mali Empire, which had made up 50% of gold production in the Old World, had dried up).
That second paragraph just sounds like life. NOT DISAGREEING BTW
Imagine waking up on a Monday morning when you have to go to work, and for the thousandth time you get that horrifying pit in your gut, that utter feeling of dread in your stomach that this can't be your life and you can't believe how shitty your pay is and how crappy your company treats you. That accumulated feeling of fear, anxiety, stress, panic, and economic uncertainty that your future is in the hands of someone who barely gives a shit about your happiness or financial well being or even that you're human, if at all.
And it's 8:50 am, and you're about to go through yet another five days of something you absolutely hate with every fiber of your being, and there's nothing you can do about it because you need the money. Take THAT pit, THAT feeling of utter dread in your stomach and now imagine going to that same shitty job, except the hours are twice as long, your wages are ZERO, your boss beats you if you work too slowly, and at the end of the week there is no weekend. Every day is Monday morning. Forever.
Now you have at least a partial hint at what being a slave in America was like for the African American in the 18th and 19th Century.
On top of everything you mentioned, your shitty boss OWNS your wife and children, and could sell them off if he wanted, and there's absolutely nothing you can do because you're still stuck in that pit.
If you even attempt to escape, you could be beaten or executed, including your family too. All because of the _color_ of your SKIN.
Seriously, the day the Confederacy was defeated and the day that slavery was outlawed deserve to be celebrated.
Slavery is like a soft mitten glove crushing an ant
@SuperSaiyanJohnCenaTrappedInADeathStarPokeball thank you
Strangely I see lots of apologist from your types whenever the subject of the Arab slave trade comes up.
@Lex Bright Raven And?
EDIT
"and youre a piece of shit for it."
You seem to be confusing yourself with other people.
@@CuckHunt and youre a piece of shit for it.
Your channel is honestly incredible man. I’m a 19-year-old super interested in history and your videos are super informative and fascinating. Thx for making these videos.
@MaxSt Arlyn shut the hell up, you racist neo-confederate arsehole
@@electronworld4996 Looks like his comment got deleted, whatever it was :)
I work for a paycheck. A slave works for the privilege of not being punished. Take away my paycheck and I quit working. Take away the threat of punishment and the slave stops working.
Pretty much what is was like when I was drafted into the army in 1969.
@@Gwaithmir hell is the epitome of reason
@@evanv7420 Did you mean "epitome"? Would you mind explaining that statement?
@@Gwaithmir I shouldn’t have assumed, but I thought you implied that you might have gone into Vietnam. If you are a Vietnam vet, i hope you are doing well, if you aren’t, i still hope you are doing well.
The phrase I said was coined during Vietnam. That hell means senseless destruction. That the worst horrors of war for you to see are the ones that you can’t fully understand why they happen or what you are fighting for
@@evanv7420 I served three Vietnam tours in the 101st Airborne and one tour in the 1st Armored Cavalry.
This video is short but a very unique take on american slavery I have never heard or thought about before, so it was super interesting.
Agreed.
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 What makes him a charlatan?
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 Like what, for example?
Carnivorus perhaps it has something to do with the Constitution that says all men are created equal, you only find that in The United States.
I've heard of colonialism being justified as means to civilize peoples. I've heard of mass kiIIings being used a way to purge evil. I didn't think there would be more awful apologetics in store, to surprise me. well, now I've heard of slavery, being justified as a tool to civilize supposed "savages"
“I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.”
-Frederick Douglass on John Brown after his death
Truly slavery is the most evil institution ever devised by mankind.
Only people with depraved minds could ever be part of chattel slavery and sleep at night
My mom: What about indentured servants? Wasn't that just as bad?
Me: Mom, indentured servants didn't have their children stolen and sold, it's different and you know it.
To be fair, they had a life expectancy of three years; they weren't likely to get to settle down and have kids in such short time.
@@ahmedamine24 That depends very much on when and where you're talking about.
It wasn't as bad, and it also didn't exist side-by-side with chattel slavery for all that long, and to a large extent in different areas (Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were the only places you found large numbers of both; south of that there were fewer indentured servants and north of that fewer slaves, even when slavery was still legal) so the comparison isn't terribly relevant.
@@brucetucker4847 I think it is, if only because it highlights how horrible slavery was.
For the life of me, I can't see why the South would ever cling to chattel slavery when indentured servitude is so much more economical. For example, since slaves would be your property: it was in your interest to provide medical care to them on your dime. Indentured servants, on the other hand, have to provide their own and usually need to go further into debt to get medical care. However, it cannot be understated that the advantage of both is that you don't need to provide a PPO or HMO to retain them as employees so they'll both save you a bundle in the long run.
The history of slavery is a topic brushed over in southern schools. It was barely mentioned in K-12, and when I took American History (A, until 1861, and B, 1861-Now) We spent more time discussing the CSS Alabama than the horrors and impact of slavery.
Yes, the story of the CSS Alabama was badass, but twenty minutes of a lecture was on the subject. Any mention of slavery was short, and under the table. I never understood how truly terrible the system of slavery was until I looked into the subject myself. I still live in Florida, specifically Orlando, and months ago a black man was found hung from a tree.
I don't know where in Florida you're living but my entire childhood education was focused on two subjects - slavery in America and essentially WW2.
I'm going to specifically call you a liar and one with malicious intent- the case of the man hanging from the tree was a suicide and either you didn't take the time to look that up or your purposefully trying to muddy the waters.
I would say that our education system focused too much on slavery, the sins of americas interactions with natives, and the civil war.
Comparing this to the lack of knowledge people have of many worldwide atrocities with far higher death tolls (there were literally around 3500 black people hung in America in total. Like, ever.) Such as the killing Fields of cambodia, the Holodomor, the Great leap Forward, Stalin's purges, and the Islamic slave trade, among others, I would say that we grossly overly emphasize the education of the impact of the horrors of slavery.
Don't know you but I got to be real my dude I don't believe a single thing you're saying. You've lied about the suicide and either you went to school back in 1948 or you're lying sack of shit
That's not my experience. I remember learning about slavery every year after entering high school and my first year of college.
@@makinbacon3124 lol, holy shit the balls on you to just straight up lie like that. Wow, man, I know you far right idiots have smooth brains.. but, man, it’s one thing to spew your nonsense, but to tell a bold face lie like that? I’m sure you have citations to back these claims, but I’m more interested in those sources..
“Around 3500 black ppl lynched” lmao dude.. holy shit.. you’re so pathetic.. than this anecdotal nonsense you’re spewing too, “slavery & WW2 all I was ever taught in school” gibberish, is just equally pathetic..
@@DarkSideOfTheBrightSide huh. Seems like UA-cam deleted my reply to you. Pretty par for the course.
How does the NAACP rank as a source?
naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america
What's funny is the one single day with the most lynchings was actually eleven italian-americans
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14,_1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
There are some estimates that put lynched blocks in America all the way as high as 4,000, and some that list them less than 3,000.
Pretty interesting body count for a subject that has dominated American guilt and justified the horrors of reconstruction. In comparison, 1,862 Japanese Americans died while in and possibly because of internment camps in world war II.
As for my personal experience, yeah no s*** I'm being a little hyperbolic but the focus of American and world history from middle school all the way through high school was hilariously focused on only a few historical periods. Most of this having to do with "disenfranchised" people. I went to a lot of school so it was most telling in the inner city schools that I went to that were predominantly black in which most of our history and geography classes where Afrocentric. It literally became a running joke.
I learned more about world war II (specifically Japanese internment and Jewish Holocaust), American slavery, Stonewall riots and the modern gay rights movement, and the civil war (while leaving out reconstruction which I found interesting as an adult) then almost any other subject.
Of course there was general skimming on other historical subjects but surprisingly lacking was any real focus on the holodomor, Pol Pots killing fields, the Great leap Forward and the horrors of Mao Zedong, the Spanish civil war and the atrocities committed by the Republicans (they always found a way to mention Guernica though), the massacres and genocidal psychopathy of the Japanese Army during world war II (I would argue was worse than the Germans), Stalin's purges, the list goes on and on.
But yeah sure, let me give you proof about my childhood experience lol. Go look up the lynchings for yourself dude. Challenge your held belief. No one is saying that lynchings arent horrible, but there is a reason why we focus so much on them.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Or go back to believing what you want to believe it's cool.
Also, my voting record would imply different, but go ahead and assume everyone who disagrees with you is far-right. Seems more like you just went off the deep end.
@@DarkSideOfTheBrightSide no response? Just shit talking and running away like a bitch. Word. Sounds like some low level content for sure lol
"Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin is the best book I have ever read on the subject of racism in the United States. He goes into detail about the twisted racism of so called "progressive" whites of the antebellum era (Stowe for instance), and even today. This type of racism, while less blunt than the racism of white conservatives, is no less disturbing. The film "Get Out" is a great illustration of this type of racism.
The sexual abuse was beyond comprehension
slavery had no HR dept.
Really? You have no idea how much happens every day in the richest country in the world, in the best families in your city.
@@JRobbySh The existence of rape now doesn't make the raping of slaves then null.
@Joseph S "sexual advances were just not common with puritan slavemasters" Yeah no. Modern geneology pretty much dismisses this myth. The average African-American genome, for example, is nearly a quarter European, and almost 4% of European Americans carry African ancestry. That simply doesn't happen if slave/slave master relations were rare.
How do we know if it was or wasn’t consensual?
My great uncles, landowners in the Portuguese province, treated their tenants and servants that "good" way. Those tenants could well be slaves, because, before the 1974 revolution, they could well starve if they lost their jobs. Not to death, but enough to "behave" the next time. Mind, when the revolution came, those uncles of mine were incredible shocked with the "ingratitude" of some of their former tenants and servants when they turned against them. Never understanding that the servants felt as blows that paternalistic attitude.
I'm English and as an 18 year old travelled to Portugal to witness the revolution. I have never seen such a happy people. I will always have a soft spot and respect for the Portuguese.
If you want a picture of Slavery simply imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
The real problem socialists seem to have with slavery is brand loyalty.
@@DrCruel what?!
@@BrentWalker999 Socialists don't like anyone else but them enslaving people.
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 Okay but he never remotely said that Confederates were Socialists, calm your tits. Lol
@@cliffordpearsonjr.9748 hey genius, 'Stomped' on the Slaves Face Forever" was not meant to be taken literally, understand?
I once shown how much a rich lady loved her housekeeper. 'We love Maria, she's like a member of our family." Well intentioned, a warm hug. Maria had a look of utter contempt on her face. The rich lady had no clue. She just assumed Maria wanted her imposed hug, as an employee she wasn't in a position to speak her mind. Between two friends, during a period the hugged is angry with the hugger? No problem. But this stepped over the line. It's impossible to fully fathom how false and toxic a situation between owner and owned would be. It's terrific you making these videos. This history has never been fully resolved and accepted by all Americans, it's the most serious historical issue facing the United States.
@@dvforever Um, they did. Not the reparations part, but resettlement in Africa. That actually happened and it didn't really work out. This was due in no small part that the then current generation had never even known thing one about their ancestors' homeland and those who could have told them anything had long since passed away and the knowledge of such things went with them. Combined with the fact that the land that had been chosen for them for resettlement was very less than habitable and you have a well and truly nightmarish clusterfuck in the making.
dvforever Black Americans have just as much of a right to this country as White Americans. Just because it’s hard to heal doesn’t mean sending us away will solve the problem.
@@zandaroos553 Absolutely. (I didn't want to engage in a pointless argument) The thing about American history is sure it was all white guys at the top, none of my ancestors were at the top of anything, doesn't mean all that history doesn't belong to all of us. I'm glad that who built the Whitehouse and similar history is finally being openly discussed. In South Carolina I toured Drayton Plantation, it was a rice plantation; I was hoping to see some signs of that. The tour guide was showing some plaster form work on the ceiling, "Artists from Italy were brought over just to make these plaster moldings on the ceilings." The moldings were uneven- you will never see amateurish work like that anywhere in Italy. It was obvious that an enslaved person had seen this done, or was told about it and then figured it out. It looked like the first attempt of an intelligent person who was good at figuring things out. The history of rice plantations used to be told that Bob Englishman came over from Portsmouth and set up a rice plantation. Well Bob Englishman didn't know squat about rice, Africans from the Niger River had cultivated rice at the same time the Chinese had. They were the people who established the biggest money crop, after tobacco, before cotton. My take on American culture up to about 1900 was it was 1/3rd Euro, 1/3rd African and 1/3rd Amer-Indian. Throughout North America, especially the arctic, when Europeans first came over, they either adopted native ways or they died. The Pilgrims, those fussy uptight jihadists left the Netherlands because their kids started learning Dutch. Plymouth had been a Wampanoag village, crops had already been planted (Jack Weatherford wrote a book on this whole topic), they grew corn, squash - Amerindian. Disease had wiped out the village, the few survivors moved to another village, the Pilgrims basically just moved in. Then they fought with them and stole their land... The Protestant New Englanders also made several really violent raids on the French Catholics in Quebec. They wanted to defend God and steal whatever they could. And if you wore a hat when you entered a house they figured you were a Quaker - - subject to immediate execution. Bigotry seems to have been a favorite hobby for a lot of people. My grandmother told me once that if you put three people in a room two of them would figure out what's different about the third and then give that person a hard time.
dvforever So how is it going to be better to send us to a continent we have little connection to the culture, economy and people of where we would be seen as outside colonizers? We would lose everything we built here. You can’t just ship away you’re problems plus why does it have to be the black people that gotta leave, why not the whites? Most of them have been here for less time then us, they should go back to Europe before we “go back” to Africa!
dvforever I said “the whites should go back to Europe” to point out the ridiculousness. Not as an argument for fucking segregation. The American identity is deeply interwoven with both black and white history, all we’ve wanted historically was acknowledgement of this and full integration into America society. Because, and I can’t believe I have to quote basic civil rights legislation, SEPARATE IS NOT EQUAL
I don’t know what’s more horrifying that this was titled “the mundane horror of American slavery” or that this WAS the mundane horror of American slavery
Jefferson Davis, taking after his brother and longtime host Joseph, who followed Robert Owen (although his workers were free), treated his slaves mildly enough. He dismissed overseers who used the whip and educated them. Nonetheless, when war broke out, and as the authority of the CSA crumbled, nearly all, bar one I think, departed. A man wants to be free. Better a free and wretched, than cossetted and servile.
@Betty Better not much you can do with your freedom if you're still being constantly restricted on where you go, what you do and even if you can vote.
Betty Better The conditions that people are in today are a result of the conditions of the past. Go tell a black person in real life that they want to be servile, how would any normal person react to that? Don’t be ignorant, what you’re saying is stupid
@@mojave5664 indeed. When you look back at the past, many of the problems in black communities aren't necessarily their fault, for example lack of quality education because of funding gaps dating back over a century, and even drugs being funneled in by the CIA. I can't say the problems aren't there, but I can say black people don't deserve all the blame and that we need to take responsibility to fix it. I gotta say this is a pretty good paragraph.
@Betty Better "Go to the inner city and look what they did with their freedom....nothing." I don't even know where to begin on this comment. I could literally write a book in response explaining it, but I am pretty sure it would go in one ear and out the other.
@Betty Better " no one restricts blacks from going where they please no one restricts what can do, and no one restricts them from voting" NOW, being the key word. Can you seriously not comprehend that generations of racism, being pushed into poverty, bad education, violent hostility WELL AFTER slavery can have a permanent effect on a population? Are you really that dense?
Scarily, employers now monitor employee social media, and can and will fire people for complaining about their job or voicing concern about job specifics that could make the job look bad; as they see it. Not the same as slavery, but still a disturbing blurring of the lines between on the job and off.
Social media is the biggest reason people fail back ground checks these days.
"not the same as slavery" wow a semi-honest socialist, keep up the good work cumrag.
@@GayvonFartin no socialist literally considers wage slavery comparable to chattel slavery. It's a metaphor because both systems feature exploitation of another's labor for profit. It's not meant to be taken as a literal comparison.
Besides, how does pointing out a rather creepy thing companies do constitute socialism? The comment you were replying to was, in no way, talking about capitalism or socialism. Maybe that particular user has repeated socialist talking points in other places or advocated for socialism/against capitalism but that isn't displayed here.
This might be the worst strawman I've seen considering it not only insinuates that the commenter you were replying to was a socialist, despite no evidence existing for that either way in this comment thread, but also gives an impressively poor understanding of the concept of wage slavery, so impressive that it implies that the commenter lacks basic reading comprehension. A reactionary strawmanning people because they lack reading comprehension? Clearly I jest for no one has ever heard of such a thing...
@@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat What a spergy butthurt wall of drivel. "But but that's not what socialists mean!" Then take up that beef with your stupid comrades and their buzzword slogans. Just look at his subscription box for god's sake instead of typing more useless BS.
@@GayvonFartin aw, did someone wet their pants this morning? Gee, I'm sorry but maybe you should go ask your mommy to change your diapey.
No, but seriously, I figured from your "cumrag" remark that you were going to reply with nothing but insults. I forgot to note how childish the "cumrag" remark sounded in my original comment and I was not disappointed in how juvenile you managed to make yourself in your reply. Kudos, now go play while the adults talk.
I don't mean to trivialise slavery, but your description to it is remarkably similar to my experience of parental abuse. I feel a much deeper understanding of slavery now that I've connected those dots. Of course, parental abuse typically ends or lessens after leaving the household you share with the abuser, but I must say that at least up until this point (19 years old) that feeling is still deeply entrentched in me.
yeah holy shit. i know im 2 years late but i randomly stumbled acrosd this video and when i heard "imagine you have no agency and no control over your life 24/7 with no breaks" and i was like god tjat sounds so much like my life with my abusive parent. i dunno why but tjats like the best descriptor of how i feel and even mow that theyre gone i still have that feeling entrenched deeply inside of me
"Men who live by robbing their fellow men of their labor and liberty have forfeited their right to know anything of the thoughts, feelings, or purposes of those whom they rob and plunder. They have by the single act of slaveholding voluntarily placed themselves beyond the laws of justice and honor, and have become only fitted for companionship with thieves and pirates - the common enemies of God and of all mankind."
Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
Where were men like you when I was growing up...would have saved me a LOT of un-learning. Thank-you for taking the time and effort to make this content.
What amazes me is the extent slave owners went to to justify slavery. If you look at slavery in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, there was no underlying philosophy to it. The Melian Dialogue perfectly summarizes the antiquity era's view on slavery. "You're weak and I'm strong so I get to make you my slave, don't like it? Tough shit"
There's no notion of religious mandate or great civilizing mission. It's quite simply, we fought these people, we beat them, they have to be our slaves.
But in America, slave owners provide layers upon layers of rationalization for their actions. The Bible says we have to, its part of our burden to "civilize" black people, it's for the good of the slaves, our economy depends on it, our founding fathers said we could"
It's like even the slave owners knew, on a subconscious level, that this shit is wrong, that it's not okay and is contradictory to their talk of Liberty. But they still needed those sweet profits so they fabricated all these bullshit excuses to put their own conscience to rest.
America began with the bizarre paradox of being a slave nation founded with Enlightenment language and principles. I think you're onto something about them knowing they were wrong on the subconscious level and feeling like they had to justify themselves with convoluted logic and mythology. And I think it still goes on. It's today's conservatives always qualifying their racism with, " I'm no racist but.."
Servitude was fading out in europe and just then the rich wanted cheap labor for brutal work in the colonies. they had to double down and work hard on the double think. They could not kidnap their own poor or start wars in Europe to enslave the citizens of other countries. They also were "Christians" - and later the ideas of the enlightenment were read and discussed by the affluent. Even monarchs read them (they were often impressed, not that they intended to apply them right here and there. No giving up on power, that was seen as interesting in a distant future).
Chattel slavery faded out with the end of the Roman empire, although they had servitude after that. But chattel slavery became a no, no. In those days children were left to die (newborns) if the family had too many children or the child did not seem healthy and strong. That practice also ended when they became Christians.
"If you look at slavery in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, there was no underlying philosophy to it." There was underlying philosophy to it. Aristotle covers slavery in Politics; he says some people are naturally free and some people are naturally servile (with Hellenes like himself naturally free and barbarians naturally servile, leaving aside the issue of Hellenes enslaving each other in war, which Aristotle called slaves by law and not by nature). In Book I he writes, "But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?
There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule, and others be ruled is a thing, not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." He does acknowledge that "Others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is therefore unjust." but lays out why he thinks this is not the case.
@@Uyarasuk Aristotle was a truly disgusting individual.
@@Uyarasuk But that is my point. The argument is not moral in nature. Aristotle isn't saying "oh this is for their own good". He's saying "they are too weak to be anything else". Thucydides says essentially the same thing. His argument is rationalist in nature, not moral. He isn't tugging at heart strings. He is stating what he believes to simply be a point of fact. And it further speaks to how the Ancient world viewed slavery. It wasn't some God given mandate, nor was it a great civilizing mission, nor was it a right laid down by the founding fathers of whatever polity.
It was simply a state of nature. The strong dominated the weak. It was a byproduct of the never ending clash of classes, polities and civilizations of the ancient world. It was an acknowledgement that either the Athenians enslaved others, or they would be enslaved themselves. The argument is entirely secular, and entirely based on a rudimentary basis of natural law. There's no larger ethical, religious, or philosophical component. No attempt to justify it on anything other than the cold hard reality of the era. No appeal to any greater good or moral standard. And admittedly... its not wrong. The Athenians did keep themselves out slavery so long as they kept those around them in slavery. Because that was the reality at the time.
I think Noam chomsky put it very well when he said that the individual engaging in the system of slavery could be benevolent, but engaging with a monstrous system like slavery makes him a lot monster unequivocally
If only chomsky was not a bosnian genocide denier...
But all other statements, he's pretty damn wrong.
American Slavery: An eternity of an annoying teacher making you redo your homework because you “didn’t do it right”.
Simply Horrifying
bonus points if they starve, beat, whip and... assault.. you and the people around you
I am glad that I discovered this channel. This commentary here is one of the best that I have heard on this subject.
New viewer here. I gave this video a thumbs up ONLY because no one can hear me clapping. Even today, in the 21st century you almost never hear the truth about the horrors of American slavery. Americans are not accustomed to hearing thoughtful analysis. In fact, in many ways I think we've developed an aversion to it. Well done!
This is quickly becoming one of my favorite UA-cam channel.
i wonder what would happen if someone asked a modern believer of the "lost cause" this question: "would you support the continuation of slavery to the present day, or would you advise the confederacy to abolish slavery, had the confederacy continued to exist? " if the discussion has ANY moral aspect to it, that aspect also extends to the significance of slavery in the present.
Some Northern States has slaves and did so throughout the war. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate Territory.
With a 21st century mind and experience, it’s also hard to grasp just how many North and South were gradualists (including Lincoln) and not abolitionists.
The South would’ve done better economically without slave labor. Especially considering the conditions and hours per week, of their factory/mill workers.
This is an interesting thought exercise. Most folk assert it would have died away very soon. Perhaps. But in that case why send hundreads of thousands to their death in war, wreak your economy for generations and ruien your reputation. Why not say, ok, free the slaves. And in four years there will be a new election and well kick that fella out.
Just maybe they wanted to keep slavery for ever?
Russell Miles Why not just pay their workers in company script? Like for the White miners? Slave labor, without purely working men to death like in South America and the Middle East wasn’t cost effective back then.
@@andrewcart8117 I think that's actually how things became after the war ... constantly kept people indebted and trapped.
@@p.cowart7286 it is what they did. That is exactly what share cropping is.
History teacher here. I am going to use this in my class. Just thought you should know. Well done.
Good kids need to.know how awful it really was i hate it when people erase the horrors of history
@@atheistechoes9594 Agreed. And sometimes those horrors are especially awful in their mundane nature.
Eichmann didn’t actually maintain his calm demeanor till the end, the prosecution finally broke him after a few days and he admitted to hating jews and that he’d play the same role in the Holocaust again if given the chance. Arendt didn’t actually witness the full trial and apparently was unaware on Eichmann’s confession
A pattern in holocaust accounts seens to be that practising oppression turned German soldiers and officials hateful to compensate for the cognitive dissonance, rather than the hatred motivating the constant gratuitous evil deeds on a personal level. Perhaps this monster started off as just a callous bureaucrat and then developed his hatred as he executed one monstrosity after another and had to face himself in the mirror.
@@ahmedamine24 What you just said is related to what I mentioned in a different response to someone else. When they were just subjects of the British crown, it was no big deal to be a lord over others - but once the plantation owners began speaking of freedom and rights, they needed to come up with excuses to deny freedom and rights to their slaves.
You look at the writings from people before and after the Revolution, you'll see how the bigotry was rather mild in the 18th century, by comparison to the venomous, vicious, hateful racism it became in the 19th century.
Source?
I am not sure whether that qualifies as "breaking" him. Towards the end of the trial,he probably knew he was getting hanged anyway and decided to drop the act.
Ehm... sorry, but source? When the balls did that happen? The best they got out of him was admitting that during the war he regarded Jews as the Reich's enemies, and at the time his conscience was calm with it. That's it, the best they got out of him. There was no "breaking" and no dramatic confession of grand evil to my knowledge.
And after a few days? I'm sorry, but WHAT THE BALLS ARE YOU ON ABOUT? Eichmann was interrogated prior to the trial for NINE MONTHS. His confession totaled over 3 thousand pages. Presenting the case to the court alone took the prosecution the better part of 2 months. The trial in its full length, between its official beginning and the verdict being read, lasted 8 months. What did the prosecution do in "a few days?" Spoiler alert: real-life trials take a ton of time. You sure you didn't mix up the case with the newest episode of Law & Order?
Have you actually read Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem? Followed the trial, or read up on it after the fact? Eichmann wasn't this big evil mastermind, he was a grey mouse behind an office desk, not a grand schemer but a boring bureaucrat keeping the machine of death running, the sort of man who would ask his momma to pack him clean undies when he went off to work at the concentration camp. That's Arendt's conclusion, mind you, though she put it less colourfully. This notion that he had this grand "mwhahaha, I was evil all along!" moment is a disgraceful, moronic lie, turning the memory of one of humanity's worst crimes against itself into that of a cheap cartoon. And the sight of people above eating it up without doing even a simple Wikipedia search to realise how disgraceful a lie it is truly horrifies me.
I once read Kindred by Octavia Butler for a book club and it is spot on what you describe here. There are whippings and rapes, but there’s also this overwhelming sense of dread. One of the major slave characters had three children sold away, and her master let her keep the fourth as a warning. It’s just so casually cruel and violating.
Before I clicked on this video I was going to complain that it was so short, but by the end of it... Absolutely grounded. Superbly well done!
I was looking for videos of casual horrors like that of channel 58. I didn’t expect to see this. Thank you for the teachings and viewpoints that are sadly to seldom talked about
"How does it feel to have an itch you cannot scratch?!"
I would love to play this video for the Confederate apologists and those who would paint slavery in any light other than the vile practice that it was.
@@jimmycakes7158 Really? That's your argument? "Other people did it too so we weren't the only bad ones"?
Other than being a weak argument, it's bullshit. The Emancipation Proclamation made Slavery unconstitutional but all of the Northern States had abolished slavery on the state level between 1774 and 1804.
Slavery was (And still is) a vile and indefensible atrocity that was (and is) practiced by people not fit to live among civilized people. People who seek to justify it are even worse.
@@n3Cr0ManCeD The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT make slavery unconstitutional, it merely confiscated the human chattel of rebels in areas then not under Union control. Slavery continued until 1865 in DC, the border states, and parts of southern states. The 13th Amendment was what made slavery unconstitutional in December, 1865.
Also, there were still legal slaves in some northern states up until 1865 because most of the northern states didn't free their slaves, they merely banned acquiring or importing new ones. Most of the slaves in those states were never freed, they were sold to southern states, mostly to cotton plantations in the Deep South.
(I'm not trying to defend slavery with this, merely to poke holes in the high horse many northerners like to pretend to on this issue. The South fought to keep slavery, but for the most part the North did NOT fight to abolish it, and in fact many northerners became very irate when they felt Lincoln was hijacking the war for abolitionism.)
@@brucetucker4847 I think your last paragraph is probably the most honest and realistic statement in this argument (on a grander scale not just this comment thread) there is no morale high ground here, just the recognition that it was really fucked up things that America was doing.
@@brucetucker4847 Not to be mean here, but have you lost your mind? If there is a war between 2 sides, the one that rebelled, and attacked the other one to KEEP slaves, thats the asshole side. You can look down on the asshole side and if you wanne argue that doesnt mean plp from the north can look down on the plp in the south today I will happily agree.
Now If I argue that everyone in the world can look down on assholes today that say retarted things like "the south should have won" or "there were slaves in the north too, so what the confederates did wasnt that bad" you surley can agree with me.
@@alexandermarquardt597 I thought I explicitly said I wasn't defending the Confederacy. But the historical facts are that there was still slavery in some northern states and the Emancipation proclamation didn't end slavery. Calling people assholes doesn't change those facts.
The banality of evil has always terrified me once I truly came to understand it.
I don't think I ever really began to understand what slavery was until I read "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs in high school, a book that should absolutely be required reading in every southern state. I grew up in Franklin TN and still live in the Tennessee Valley, so confederate apologists were all around. I remember playing "Battle of Franklin" with my brothers, and obviously it never occurred to us that what the "Gray Coats" were really any different than the "Blue Coats" morally speaking. We pretended to be rebels and yanks in the backyard just like we pretended to be Texans and Mexicans when we played Alamo. I especially remember the idea that, even if mostly a joke, the "Yankees" were the bad guys, or at the very least the confederate army was "our side". "The boys who died in Franklin weren't really fighting for slavery" was a constant refrain until I was a teenager. And often the adults telling us these lies didn't themselves know they were lies, because they had been raise on the Lost Cause myth too.
Thanks for posting, I sadly realize that those moments are still with us, I worked in rural wi where a manager grabbed me by the neck and shoved food in my mouth when I reported it I was written up, I went thru a lot on that job and even at home the mistreatment still bothered me..so trying that exercise u just did was hard bc blacks feel this way all the time, maybe not like our for fathers, yet it still hurts within the context of today’s standards
Jesus... never really thought of it in that way. I mean yes, the lack of agency, the lack of control. But the shear day to day indignity and disrespect that thousands, hundreds of thousands, of slaves had to live through without any means of escape.
I don't understand why you have so few subscribers with how great all your videos are. Entertaining and informative and great production
Your channel should be much, much bigger. Your insights and perspective are so unique and eye-opening, and yet they seem like things Ive known all along, just didnt understand fully. Keep up the good work homie.
A slave is even worse: your boss nowadays does not have the right to sell you, to kill you, to sell your children or your wife or you.
The ingrained terror of always being a piece of property, like a dog or a pig, to be disposed of when you are no longer convenient, was the daily reality, the constant known threat.
It would be interesting to see an economic analysis of the viability of slavery during this period. I don't know much about it, however after reading The Wages of Destruction and Hitlers Beneficiaries I can confirm that Nazis Slave Labour and Forced Labour programs were counter intuitive to their production goals. Because they were only viable for 'non skilled' labour they were paid very little or nothing at all, so the productivity per unit was atrocious next to waged workers. On top of this they would have to at least clothe them, house and feed them, unlike with wage workers who would of course take care of that themselves. This would divert more resources away from where they were needed. I remember one passage where Tooze talks about how 'productive' workers would get higher food rations while 'unproductive' workers would get less rations - of course the logic here is insane, if you feed someone less they are going to be less productive, but if you feed someone more (than they need) that wont really improve productivity. On top of this because more and more engineers, scientists and there highly skilled labour was being drained by the war effort by around 1944 they were stuck with loads and loads of these slaves but no skilled people to direct them, which decreased their productivity even further. This shows in this case that slave labour really was not viable, it was simply driven by the Nazis racist values which ironically contributed somewhat to their downfall. I am sure this must also be applicable to other similar Historical situations.
Hello, good sir. I see you're still producing quality content. Glad to see it!
Remember, kids, the best slaveowner is worse than the worst boss. And lord, there are some SHITTY bosses out there.
This is a perfect description of domestic violence.
Are you ok by the way ?
Slavery was much worse than many would like to recall.
Really well done and informative. I'm really glad I came across your channel, friend. Subbed.
What a fantastic video Atun-Shei. Me as an traditionalist and by having a deep love for the past I cannot help but realize the horrors of our history. I want to tell you that we must look back to our past as a series of lessons to learn and things to change to make our future better for everybody. Your video really can only paint somewhat of a picture of the horrors of slavery. I have much respect for your channel. God bless.
I think you miss another point that is rather important. No matter how well you treat somebody it is all in vain as long as you give them the impression (and this was the general conviction even of some abolitionists of the time) that they are not your equal. That they are not your fellow man but some other creature, treated nice, and maybe with respect even but always ever so slightly less than human. No matter their intelligence or actions.
This very assumption of inequality was actually the whole base for slavery at all.
The normalization of evil of human being owned by another in both master and the slave through the justification of racism is the biggest crime of slavery in my opinion. It is something that hurts humanity and morality even after so many years.
i cant believe i just found your channel but im so happy i did!
i was skeptical opening this video. I am a bit of a history buff and I've seen so many wrong interpretations of how this system actually played out on a day to day basis. I believe you have a healthy grasp on how things were and an excellent description about it. Thumbs up, well done sir!!
The quote about Stonewall reminded me of USMC recruit training. Making recruits go back and forth between two spots is a common aspect of punishment. It's creepy how the same psychology is used to make people into both troops and slaves.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a great illustration of the ingrained horror of slavery and how easy it is for the "masters"to justify their terror of slaves by the most benign actions.
Who in their right mind dislikes content like this. This is the most uplifting and educational thing I've seen in ages. If anything seeing that people dislike this means that our work in the United States is clearly not done and it may never be done.
Thanks for your videos. Keep up the great work.
Oh man. This reminds me of a toxic WWII buffs Facebook group where someone was going like "they were just work camps"... I mean, what?? Ok, first like the millions of deaths, thousands of survivors and evidence gathered by the allies mean nothing to you? But why would they being "just work camps" make it any better? Like, isn't that still a horrendous crime to have human beings in bondage working in terrible conditions?
I read a comment said by someone that had slaveowner ancestors that was pretty bizzare. They said some of their current relatives still hung out with descendants of their ancestors' slaves as if they're visiting relatives and vice versa. Makes me think how many weird situations like that still exist, probably not many
Very well done, like all your Civil-War and slavery-related content.
Great stuff. Just found your channel and really like it a lot.
What I have read about slavery is that the main torture was not the physical violence in it self. To work hard almost nonstop from morning to bed time is the actual worst part.
The slaves who escaped knowing well enough the risks of being detained and the punishment an escaped slave would get still escaped.
Slavery was hell even without punishments. The punishments just made it far worse.
A very interesting way of looking at slayery. Reminds me of the time, when I was working for my father. His workshop was within our house. When my shift ended, walked past his office. I realised, that I hated working for him, it really tired me out. And I hated, that I hated it so much. I wondered, if it was the extra hours, the physical labour or the fact, that my father was very strict with me (and my coworkers, but especially with me). It was the fact that, by working for him, I kind of lost my caring and loving father and he was replaced with my very strict boss, who became my roommate and supervised the way I spended my spare time and even my sleeping schedule. I would have had no problem with sharing my spare time with my father or with him knowing, which hours of the day I spended sleeping. But since my dad was now my boss, I didn't feel the ability to relax in my sparetime, because, it felt like procrastinating during work. And the worst thing was, I couldn't just quit, because that meant, telling the man, in whose house i lived, who worked 80 hours per week (and more), that I did not want to give him the help anymore, that he so desperately needed. It really sucked and deeply hurt the relationship between my father and me.
I don't know at all, what being a slave feels like. I just know, that the dilemma, that I experienced, was a very miserable time to me. So I can only imagine, that being a slave, who is denied the feeling of not owing their living time to their master for the rest of their live, must be a truly cruel fate.
Just want to say that i love your videos. I know you’ll prob never read this or that it might not matter, but wanted you to hear the positivity deserving of all the work and knowledge and effort you put into these videos. You’ve taught me much and I love your stance that would make Thaddeus Stevens proud with your unrelenting truth. Thank you!
wow, wo, my guy, this was brilliant, you just helped me unlock a theme in my novel.
naturally i got a prager u ad on this video, where candance owens is explaining the history of slavery to me...
Dear lord, Candace Owens is not equipped to explain anything to anyone lol
Would love to see you address the Irish Myth sometime. Haven't been through all your videos so I'm not sure if you already have. It pains me when I hear this myth spread, as terribly as my ancestors were treated and the amount of pain all the Irish went through is not at all the same as the horrors of slavery.
But I’ve also heard some super super liberal people downplay the plight of the Irish in the United States and the racism and pain they faced, calling us just another White colonizer and that indentured servitude wasn’t that bad. So both sides of the aisle have really left us down when it comes to Irish treatment in the United States, I try to raise awareness for it when I can. Really hope you see these two comments and discuss it sometime. Love the channel.🙂🇮🇪🇺🇸
The fact that one group was treated horribly while another was treated twice as horribly doesn't mean the first group didn't suffer...we Irish were fortunate that after a generation or two in another country we were able to "pass".
@@retriever19golden55 this phenomenon of downplaying one groups hardships because "they don't have it as bad as this other group" is known in some circles (I have encountered it in the LGBTQ+ community) as "playing oppression Olympics". It can be used as a tactic to divide and conquer by people who doesn't want us to have rights, sometimes goes hand in hand with respectability politics.
@@connorplankey5392 Straw man
The Irish were sold into slavery by Cromwell and “transported “ to the Caribbean . The Irish Slavery myth isn’t false as much as it is suffers from a lack of understanding of the different periods of history . Ironically many of the Irish who were sold to the Caribbean would run away and get caught up in the Golden Age of Piracy , they would make a lot of money and settle in some place Georgia or the Carolinas . I think you see how the vicious cycle is repeated ... Expect their slaves didn’t get to taste freedom for around 200 years .
Bravo!!! great presentation ..and to sum it up and make your point(successfully imo) in video that does take 30 plus minutes ...in a twitter world this is the kind of concise to the point info we need
Powerful stuff, well said!
I'd rather be hungry and homeless than the best-treated slave. I'm not sure how ppl don't understand this. Especially women, we've been fighting against the system for more rights since forever, yet some women think slavery "wasn't all that bad"?
Well said. But I said this in a graduate school classroom twenty years ago and got mocked for it. Lack of agency is WAY bigger than most people understand.
New fan of your work! 🙌🏽
Very nicely articulated.
Well done.
And now it illegal in some southern areas to make whites 'feel uncomfortable' about these matters. (I'm white and from Tennessee and disgusted with the 'New South')
New south, old south, same south.
wtf other tennesseans are real
How dumb. It's like making it illegal to teach black kids about their overrepresentation in violent crime, HIV infection and single mother households
Very insightful. It's like being locked up at your workplace unable to leave, get paid, or protect yourself from potential cruelties by your employer.
EDIT: Actually these videos give me an idea. Slavery sadly still exists underground in many places and industries (including mundane industries such as hospitality, farming and construction). We should take some of the energy taking on the past injustices and use them to take it on. NOT to say "forget it" in a whataboutism, but rather to widen the struggle to say: 'American/European slavery was an appalling crime against humanity, let's prevent it from happening to more people while also taking on the effects of those past injustices.
Loved that video. Absolute banger
This reminds me of a part of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". At the beginning of the book Tom is owned by a more gentle master in Kentucky (Shelby) who has gotten into some finacial difficulty and is talking with a slave trader (Haley) about selling slave to pay his debts. Harry, the 4-5 year old son of another slave, Eliza comes in and Mr. Shelby has him perfome little skits for Haley and rewards him with rasins that he throws to him. Shelby didn't really mean ill toward Harry but was treating him like a pet dog doing tricks for his master.
Well said
Thoroughly enjoyed this.
This guy is great. Clear knowledge of the history and a different spin. The passion comes through. Will he be shadow banned or censored by YT?
I give you another thumbs up for this video, Atun. Either you have matured, or else I have. 😊.
by focusing on the less spectacular aspects of slavery, the day to day 'banality', i think you are more likely to get us lost-causers' attention.
As a black man, it still blows my mind that my ancestors survived the horrors of slavery.
Great video
Dude,u a real goat 🐐 I was sceptical at first way back with the lincolnite video but after watching u.I mean all ur videos I'm locked in and subscribe