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Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#151

Post by RuggedPineapple »

peteretep wrote: post #131
marci wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? Most of African Europeans a)know what country their ancestors are from, b) have direct links to their relatives in Africa. > Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. I think this is exactly Africa's main issue: being seen first foremost as a land of resources and economic ventures. You go to the Americas/E…

> Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? I would say — from a European perspective — a baffling number of white Americans cling on to a European cultural identity. It feels to an outsider like many Americans want to be American + something else. Many/most black Americans don’t have this luxury, and my hot take is that Kwanza and other pan-African neo traditions seek to fill this gap? As a counter-exam…

Its not really a hot take, but an express intent. Slaves had their culture and traditions aggressively stamped out in order to further the disconnect and reinforce their place as property. Their original tribes and homelands that they could hold on to as a touchstone were repressed almost totally. This is more or less exactly why there's a 'black' culture instead of Nigerian or Ghanaian or whatever tribes existed before national boundaries were drawn. White Americans can generally point to an Italian or Irish or Swedish heritage or whatever, a luxury that black americans often don't have. At least didn't before modern DNA genealogy.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#152

Post by danans »

TT3351 wrote: post #135

Often in histories of slavery, the slaves don't speak. If you want to hear their voices, read "Slave Testimony," edited by John Blassingame. It's stunning in length and detail. Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. This passage is by an enslaved (interviewed by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission) in Kentucky, 1963, named Charlotte "I belong to Gen. Thos. Strange. I have two boys. I pay a dollar a w…

> Not all suffered the same slavery we know today.

What is the "slavery we know today"?

Do you mean "American slavery as we understand it today", or "Slavery in the current day"? If the former, then how is the passage you quoted different from our understanding of American slavery? Do you mean to say it was better, worse, or in some other way different?

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#153

Post by elefanten »

tptacek wrote: post #133
elefanten wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a huge stretch and reeks of taking a tortured argument one major leap too far. How many people in society 1) were in a position to redline or seriously influence redlining, 2) called for and actively supported it, or 3) even knew about it? Even if someone's ancestors arrived post-slavery and pre-civil rights movement (forget a specific overhanging issue like redlining), would you significantly attribu…

I don't understand the question. The socioeconomic structure of many of our largest cities is defined by redlining. Lawndale and Englewood in Chicago? Entirely the product of redlining. The property values of houses in areas cordoned off for white people? Redlining.

I overinterpreted your response to the previous commenter and jumped the gun a bit. Sorry for the exaggerated rhetoric, it wasn't needed and may not have been correctly aimed (at you).

But, to your points, there are historical forces that bring people good/bad fortune - including racism in America. How do you decide which ones are worthy of ex post facto adjustment on a society-wide level? How do you balance and justify that to the orthogonal part of your population; the part that had no role in the history but would still be impacted by the expenditure of communal resources? Keeping in mind here, the wider the net you cast for who need adjustment, the bigger the impact on the orthogonal population.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#154

Post by alisonkisk »

danans wrote: post #152
TT3351 wrote: post #135

Often in histories of slavery, the slaves don't speak. If you want to hear their voices, read "Slave Testimony," edited by John Blassingame. It's stunning in length and detail. Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. This passage is by an enslaved (interviewed by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission) in Kentucky, 1963, named Charlotte "I belong to Gen. Thos. Strange. I have two boys. I pay a dollar a w…

> Not all suffered the same slavery we know today. What is the "slavery we know today"? Do you mean "American slavery as we understand it today", or "Slavery in the current day"? If the former, then how is the passage you quoted different from our understanding of American slavery? Do you mean to say it was better, worse, or in some other way different?

Charlotte's family weren't the well known field slaves or house slaves. They were tenants, renting their own lives from their legal owner for $2/week.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#155

Post by alisonkisk »

RuggedPineapple wrote: post #137
_iyig wrote: post #3

In a similar vein, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate - today privately owned and operated as a living history museum - has an excellent series of exhibits which puts names and stories to the Washington family’s enslaved servants and laborers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibi... The re-enactors are all fantastic and very knowledgeable. It’s unsettling talking to a black re-enactor who…

Washington is always the one that gets me. His will freed his slaves not when he died but when his wife died. So he knew what was right but intentionally allowed that only after he could be assured it wouldn't cause any hardship to him or his spouse. That feels more evil then just being a creature of the time. That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.

> That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.

The average middle/upper class person today is the same, living on the fruit of foreign slave and subsistence laborers for clothing, food, and toys, and eating from the suffering of factory animals.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#156

Post by BeetleB »

RuggedPineapple wrote: post #137
_iyig wrote: post #3

In a similar vein, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate - today privately owned and operated as a living history museum - has an excellent series of exhibits which puts names and stories to the Washington family’s enslaved servants and laborers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/groundbreaking-exhibi... The re-enactors are all fantastic and very knowledgeable. It’s unsettling talking to a black re-enactor who…

Washington is always the one that gets me. His will freed his slaves not when he died but when his wife died. So he knew what was right but intentionally allowed that only after he could be assured it wouldn't cause any hardship to him or his spouse. That feels more evil then just being a creature of the time. That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.

In my experience, this is the behavior of 98% of the population. You're welcome to judge it as you may, but it is not at all surprising.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#157

Post by throwaway535 »

OptionX wrote: post #113
throwaway535 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great discussion, let's continue. So my dad goes and steals your dad's land. He give me the land as his son. I split it in half and give half to a friend of mine. The investigation occurs and determine this land was stolen and should be returned. I don't think the argument of, "sorry won't return it because I didn't steal it, my dad did" holds much water. Nor the argument of, "nope I won't return it because a friend…

Slavery only counts as stolen good if you still consider black people property :)

Your comment is incorrect. It was their wages that were stolen that we're discussing.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#158

Post by BeetleB »

smt88 wrote: post #38
seph-reed wrote: post #2

This seems like an absolutely indispensable technology for achieving reparations. Most black Americans have ancestors who (slavery) worked a lot of unpaid hours. Having clear metrics on how many slaves there were is a step towards having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be. There are some places in the US which have started, but they're just kind of pulling numbers out of a hat and I don'…

Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery. > having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way. How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for…

> It's nonsensical to come up with a dollar amount for even a single person, so how can we possibly do it at scale?

It's almost as hard to come up with a fair number on how much help a given person should get due to being adversely affected by the pandemic. Yet that's not seen as a barrier to provide money.

> Should African Americans pay reparations to Native Americans for living on land that was stolen from them?

As a collective? Yes.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#159

Post by BeetleB »

D895n9o33436N42 wrote: post #54
smt88 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: my parents are immigrants, and I have absolutely no genealogical connection to American slavery. > having a well founded number for what the cost of reparations should be I just don't understand how someone can talk about a "well-founded number" for reparations in a serious way. How can you calculate a dollar amount, even within 5 orders of magnitude, for something that happened to millions of people for…

I’m an immigrant, and I’ll never stand for any kind of reparations for descendants of former slaves. Invariably this will come out of tax dollars to which I’m contributing by way of income tax. Why should I be charged for wrongs - however horrible - in which neither myself nor my ancestors were involved? When there was still slavery in America, my people were enslaving members of their own ethnic group back in the ol…

> My first decade in the US was all about climbing out of the pit of “you’re not white enough for us because you didn’t go to a top school”.

I likely do not understand what you mean here, because a casual reading of this seems ridiculous. Most white people do not go to top schools either.

On the flip side, if one were to list factors that play a role in becoming decently successful, going to a top school is fairly low on that list (as in most successful people didn't go to one either).

I'm probably not interpreting the comment as you intended, though.

Re: Who Were America’s Enslaved? New Database Humanizes the Names Behind the Numbers

#160

Post by RuggedPineapple »

alisonkisk wrote: post #155
RuggedPineapple wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washington is always the one that gets me. His will freed his slaves not when he died but when his wife died. So he knew what was right but intentionally allowed that only after he could be assured it wouldn't cause any hardship to him or his spouse. That feels more evil then just being a creature of the time. That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier.

> That's knowing better but making a conscious decision to embrace evil because it makes your life easier. The average middle/upper class person today is the same, living on the fruit of foreign slave and subsistence laborers for clothing, food, and toys, and eating from the suffering of factory animals.

wouldn't disagree with that much.
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