Are our thoughts on slavery exaggerated?
Were slaves in America treated as unrighteous as our schools teach us?
How did ol Georgie treat his hemp gardeners?
>>893832
No, slaves were looked upon as subhuman and were treated accordingly. You can't revise history to feel better about things.
>>893832
They weren't treated much worse than other slaves in history. A good portion of them weren't even black anyways.
>893832
Asking the wrong questions again, I see.
How were the slaves treated by Muslims during the Arab slave trade?
WE
WUZ
SLAVES
'N Sheeit
Though I can't fully take the argument that slaves were habitually whipped or beaten, it is a well known fact that the conditions slaves were kept in were horrendous conditions. These conditions lead to various infections and diseases amongst the slave populations such as lockjaw, dysentery, cholera and even sexually transmitted disease.
Even if everything is exaggerated, the ownership and impressment of another human being is disgusting enough.
>>893832
I haven't heard of any studies regarding what people's average thoughts and opinions about slavery is, but feel free to share the one you've read.
>>893832
>Are our thoughts on slavery exaggerated?
Of course. Do you think every single slave owner had the same personality?
But more importantly, our ideas of generosity have changed. Back in the day when regular living was a harsher routine in general, people were harsher in general, but their idea of charity was also more refined. Allowing a slave to even have shelter and food on the same plantation of a slave owner could have been considered highly generous of the slave owners at that time. Each generation has been softer than the previous one because the routine of regular living has become softer over time.
Slaves are not truly done with, either. Every worker today is more or less a slave now—they live much better than slaves ever did in the past, but they are still technically subjected to the laws of more powerful individuals. Ideologies are also very much the "slave owners" of today. This has come with both positives and negatives.
>>895160
Slaves can't quit or emigrate. You never had the neighboring plantation offer slaves twice the food and a company mule if they switched masters.
Sure, you can talk about "wage slavery" and so on, but Carlyle was right: if economic forces push up the cost of labour, free workers have the power to demand better pay and conditions, work fewer hours, work for someone else, or go into business for themselves. A slave just knows that the worst punishment is now being sold up the river rather than killed.
>>895215
Hence why I said slaves live much better today than they used to. But unless you're a multimillionaire, you are still more or less of the slave class of today.
What people did in their own homes is what it's always been-- secret and varied.
Ol' Georgie lied about how he treated his hemp gardeners and you'll never get a crystal clear picture of that. I'm sure plenty of good men took out their frustrations on slaves, just because it's the old-fashioned version of yelling at a service worker/telemarketer-- you CAN and you want to let loose all the fury sometimes. Then you have guys like Jefferson who tried their damnedest to be the nicest slave driver ever and lied about it in public to avoid controversy.
There are plenty of stories of black sympathizers, usually house servants or nostalgic old freed slaves, and they are just as unreliable a narrator as whatever famous powdered wig we want to bring in to question.
Now what people did in public is another story. The initial capture/shipment/auctioning is definitely pretty clear cut, well documented, and abominable. The reactions from the public in the form of mobs and lynching is also clearly in the open and pretty evil as far as crowd mentality goes. You can't easily lie and misconstrue a situation involving 50+ people all doing the same thing.
TL;DR: No, but you can't trust individuals to tell a true story.
It is also fair to say that, while everybody tolerated it, very few whites practiced slavery: in 1860 there were 385,000 USA citizens who owned slaves, or about 1.4% of the white population (there were 27 million whites in the USA). That percentage was zero in the states that did not allow slavery (only 8 million of the 27 million whites lived in states that allowed slavery). Incidentally, in 1830 about 25% of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves: that is a much higher percentage (ten times more) than the number of white slave owners. Thus slave owners were a tiny minority (1.4%) and it was not only whites: it was just about anybody who could, including blacks themselves.
Moral opposition to slavery became widespread even before Lincoln, and throughout Europe. On the other hand, opposition to slavery was never particularly strong in Africa itself, where slavery is slowly being eradicated only in our times. One can suspect that slavery would have remained common in most African kingdoms until this day: what crushed slavery in Africa was that all those African kingdoms became colonies of western European countries that (for one reason or another) eventually decided to outlaw slavery. When, in the 1960s, those African colonies regained their independence, numerous cases of slavery resurfaced. And countless African dictators behaved in a way that makes a slave owner look like a saint. Given the evidence that this kind of slavery was practiced by some Africans before it was practiced by some Americans, that it was abolished by all whites and not by some Africans, and that some Africans resumed it the moment they could, why would one keep blaming the USA but never blame, say, Ghana or the Congo?
The more we study it, the less blame we have to put on the USA for the slave trade with black Africa: it was pioneered by the Arabs, its economic mechanism was invented by the Italians and the Portuguese.
>>895259
>tldr
What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery
>>895226
It sounds to me like you're using an idiosyncratic definition so you can sound like you have something interesting to say, when you're really just saying something obvious with attention grabbing words.
How often did the white masters have sex with the female slaves?
>>895232
>Then you have guys like Jefferson who tried their damnedest to be the nicest slave driver ever and lied about it in public to avoid controversy.
I can't remember the guy, but I remember their being a french philosopher who vistied Montecello and being outraged at how Jefferson treated his slaves. Apparently he ran a nail factory where he'd threaten to whip little boys if they didn't work faster. The frenchmen also commented on how many "white" slaves their were as the Jeffersons had generations of interbreeding with their slaves.
>>895291
A lot
Was it only an American practice to outlaw slaves' education or was that done elsewhere? In my cursory research I haven't come across any sources that say that it was banned anywhere else but I probably wasn't looking hard enough
>Were slaves in America treated as unrighteous as our schools teach us?
Every single slave owner was different. Some treated their slaves humanely, others did not. In the end, a well treated slave was still a slave, and even the "best" owners might be resorted to selling their slaves, splitting up families, etc, if economy required it.
But how did it go after the slave sex? Ok you got pussy, and after she gives birth you just sort of made yourself richer because now you have a new slave?
>>895371
By law the kid would still be the master's property. So the treatment would be dependent on the master. He could deny the kid as being his and treat them like the others, or there could be preferential treatment.
>>895278
It's obvious yet no one else is really saying it, the thread was made, and people continue to disagree that there are slaves even today.
What is attention grabbing about what I'm saying anyway, if it's so obvious?
>>894218
>Shit, people are bringing up white people being shit
>Better deflect to other people being shit to preserve my undeserved sense of superiority!
>>893832
>Are our thoughts on slavery exaggerated?
OY VEY
bad goy, you wouldn't go around believing that slavery was not the second most horrible crime in human history would you?
>>893832
My problem is why the Arabs don't get the same shit really. Same with the Crusades in the sense of "DEY WUZ CONKERIN' MUSLIM LAND"; well no shit, how do you think the muslims got it in the first place?
>>895867
Does this shit have to be brought into every thread? Jesus, this is why everyone hates /pol/.
>>895703
"You think you're free, but really we're all slaves!"
"Oh, and by slave I mean anyone who has to follow rules, regulations, or laws."
>>895952
it's the classic case of shitposting until you actually believe what you are shitposting
>>893832
The biggest exaggeration is the thought that every white owned slaves or was to blame for it. At the height of slavery only two percent of whites had them, pretty much the one percenters we have running everything today. Most people could not afford or had use for a slave. It is another mouth to feed after all so unless you owned a plantation you didn't.
As for their treatment, you need to realize that slaves were sent to many areas like South America, the middle East and Asia. These people were pretty much wormed to death in the horrible conditions. Comparatively speaking only American negroes were able to reproduce and enjoyed a lifespan on par with whites.
Look at it this way, you would be hard pressed to find a major country that didn't dabble in slavery but America is the only one that still has a disgruntled population of former slaves demanding reparations and niggering. The Arabs and Asians had the foresight to castrate their slaves. Wish we had thought of that.
I read some book called a south bound view or something, can't remember exactly what is was called. Anyways it was written by an abolitionist preacher from the North, he had to go spend some time in the south for medical reasons. In the book he writes about how he mentally prepared himself to see horrors and what not, but he never did. He said most slaves and owners he saw had this weird symbiotic relationship due to them being so culturally similar. Many anecdotes he mentions, like a slave owner challenge a dude who struck his slave to a duel, or slave owners that assist their slaves in selling crafts, or that they borrow money from slaves.
He sort of muses that southern slaves seem better off and better members of society then northern factory workers he knows He never says he is now for slavery and remains an abolitionist, but it seemed as if he rejected what he was led to believe when he was in the North.
>>894947
>WPA has hundreds of them.
lol this website is a goldmine
>>896574
Yeah you can, they have interviews with former slaves. I have read a couple from my state, it was old man and woman where they asked them what being a slave was like.
>>896418
That's what a slave is, fool. Someone under control of another, which would be all workers who are not multimillionaires today, and anyone who still can't think for themselves.
You're the one who seems to be warping the concept of the slave to just mean something specific, like being literally chained and forced into labor in rags. Those were simply once the conditions of slavery. The conditions changed, but the fundamental element (that you are controlled by others) of the slave remains in today's societies.
>>894968
>niggers
>human beans
>>896511
This isn't /pol/
>>896624
But that's not a "true source" either, because even those recordings have bias and context that have to be taken into account. For the 'Slave Narrative' audio interviews, for example: You have old slaves being interviewed by mostly white people in the 1930s South. How truthful were they willing to be to these interviewers, knowing what their words were going to be used to paint the "real" picture of slavery? How did their past experiences, both as a slave then growing up as a second-class citizen subject to everything from exclusion to threats and/or actual physical violence, influence what they said? How had the decades since their time as a slave affect their memory? What other factors might have affected their memory or how they perceived or specifically portrayed events?
>>893832
Think of slaves as livestock: the owners can't treat them bad all the time.
Read any contemporary account, including from slaves themselves. There are indications that certain owners treated slaves better than others, and vice versa. Some believed rough discipline was necessary from slaves to work hard, others did not. Some took advantage of slaves' position (i.e. sexually), others were satisfied with a profitable cotton harvest.
Slaves were expensive. Breaking them or having them run away because their living conditions were terrible was bad for your investment. Still, to keep human beings subservient to you as property is not easy, hence harsh punishments when slaves were insubordinate.
I think slavery is so demonized because it runs in opposition to our society's conception of human rights and freedom.
>>896511
>yeah I may have stabbed a guy but that guy stabbed AND shot a guy I don't look so bad now huh
>>895291
A lot. You're on 4chan. Look how good people are at resisting the opportunity for consequence free sexual release.
