4 ms·

The gleeful tone of the article makes me uncomfortable. This is an artifact of a crime against humanity.

emmelaich 9y ago
Yes, the 'quaking with excitement' quote felt a bit wrong.
curtis 9y ago
> The gleeful tone of the article makes me uncomfortable. This is an artifact of a crime against humanity. It's possible to be excited about the discovery of the artifact without being an apologist for the crime it was associated with.
- mainthread 9y ago
  It certainly is. My perspective is that of a victim, not an apologist.
  - ianhawes 9y ago
    Okay, I’ll bite. You are not a victim.
    - kingkawn 9y ago
      I’ll use an alternative historical example to explain why your assertion is not true. My grandmother was held in concentration camps. She was in this time raped regularly, starved, beaten, debased, and so deprived that when her closest friend died all she could think of was taking her shoes. Eventually she was liberated, walked thousands of miles across Europe looking for family to no avail, and finally by chance met my grandfather. Throughout her entire life she was emotionally destroyed, on edge, and nearly a witch in her ability to direct her emotional energy at those around her in order to protect herself when she felt threatened. This hard edge of survival and death migrated into the emotional lives of my mother and aunt. Both of them demonstrated symptoms of severe PTSD even in early childhood despite having no personally experienced events that would be considered traumatic enough to induce such behavior. It was in the air. I in turn have as well, two generations later, demonstrated a tendency toward self-protectiveness, have developed symptoms of PTSD from what would be considered normal life stressors, and have struggled to overcome this emotional inheritance. Now, my personal example is the result of only a few years of war and inhumanity. African Americans who descend from slaves descend from people who for hundreds of years underwent equally debasing, dehumanizing treatment. They were in the struggle so long that they developed broad cultural and interpersonal coping mechanisms to make life bearable beneath the threat of death and the absolute absence of personal control or privacy. It is quite easy to see how, even many generations later, even if there were no more reinforcement from the environment of the trauma, that it can live on and continue to destroy the descendants of its victims. Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples and it becomes impossible to not see that the echoes of these atrocities live on in the minds and hearts of their victim’s descendants.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - perfmode 9y ago
        Thank you for sharing your story.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - rectang 9y ago
        > Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples Such discrimination often (though certainly not exclusively) perpetrated by the same forces who claim that no lingering disadvantages persist and thus each individual who does worse than average represents a failure of motivation, morality or inherent talent.
      - MandieD 9y ago
        Thank you for sharing your painful family history, and with it, helping us better understand what a large percentage of Americans are still dealing with. A lot of us (white Americans) want to believe that slavery's harms ended with the end of the Civil War, and that the Civil Rights movement made right the rest of the damage - I've come to understand over the last few years that the harm didn't end in either 1865 or 1965.
- donarb 9y ago
  Exactly. I would think that someone who dismisses the significance of the discovery could be thought of as being an apologist for the crime it was associated with.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
You didn't read very far, maybe: > With the nation edging closer to civil war over the slavery issue, Alabama steamboat captain and plantation owner Timothy Meaher made an infamous bet that he could sneak slaves into the country, right under the noses of federal troops at the twin forts that guarded the mouth of Mobile Bay. Historian Sylvianne Diouf traced the evolution of the wicked scheme and the resulting journey in her excellent book, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, published in 2007. Attempts to contact Diouf were unsuccessful. The author is clearly excited about the find (and should be, after spending years working on it), but there's nothing in the article to indicate that he's excited about slavery.

Yes, the 'quaking with excitement' quote felt a bit wrong.

> The gleeful tone of the article makes me uncomfortable. This is an artifact of a crime against humanity. It's possible to be excited about the discovery of the artifact without being an apologist for the crime it was associated with.

mainthread 9y ago
It certainly is. My perspective is that of a victim, not an apologist.
- ianhawes 9y ago
  Okay, I’ll bite. You are not a victim.
  - kingkawn 9y ago
    I’ll use an alternative historical example to explain why your assertion is not true. My grandmother was held in concentration camps. She was in this time raped regularly, starved, beaten, debased, and so deprived that when her closest friend died all she could think of was taking her shoes. Eventually she was liberated, walked thousands of miles across Europe looking for family to no avail, and finally by chance met my grandfather. Throughout her entire life she was emotionally destroyed, on edge, and nearly a witch in her ability to direct her emotional energy at those around her in order to protect herself when she felt threatened. This hard edge of survival and death migrated into the emotional lives of my mother and aunt. Both of them demonstrated symptoms of severe PTSD even in early childhood despite having no personally experienced events that would be considered traumatic enough to induce such behavior. It was in the air. I in turn have as well, two generations later, demonstrated a tendency toward self-protectiveness, have developed symptoms of PTSD from what would be considered normal life stressors, and have struggled to overcome this emotional inheritance. Now, my personal example is the result of only a few years of war and inhumanity. African Americans who descend from slaves descend from people who for hundreds of years underwent equally debasing, dehumanizing treatment. They were in the struggle so long that they developed broad cultural and interpersonal coping mechanisms to make life bearable beneath the threat of death and the absolute absence of personal control or privacy. It is quite easy to see how, even many generations later, even if there were no more reinforcement from the environment of the trauma, that it can live on and continue to destroy the descendants of its victims. Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples and it becomes impossible to not see that the echoes of these atrocities live on in the minds and hearts of their victim’s descendants.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - perfmode 9y ago
      Thank you for sharing your story.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - rectang 9y ago
      > Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples Such discrimination often (though certainly not exclusively) perpetrated by the same forces who claim that no lingering disadvantages persist and thus each individual who does worse than average represents a failure of motivation, morality or inherent talent.
    - MandieD 9y ago
      Thank you for sharing your painful family history, and with it, helping us better understand what a large percentage of Americans are still dealing with. A lot of us (white Americans) want to believe that slavery's harms ended with the end of the Civil War, and that the Civil Rights movement made right the rest of the damage - I've come to understand over the last few years that the harm didn't end in either 1865 or 1965.
donarb 9y ago
Exactly. I would think that someone who dismisses the significance of the discovery could be thought of as being an apologist for the crime it was associated with.

thaumaturgy 9y ago

You didn't read very far, maybe: > With the nation edging closer to civil war over the slavery issue, Alabama steamboat captain and plantation owner Timothy Meaher made an infamous bet that he could sneak slaves into the country, right under the noses of federal troops at the twin forts that guarded the mouth of Mobile Bay. Historian Sylvianne Diouf traced the evolution of the wicked scheme and the resulting journey in her excellent book, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, published in 2007. Attempts to contact Diouf were unsuccessful. The author is clearly excited about the find (and should be, after spending years working on it), but there's nothing in the article to indicate that he's excited about slavery.