25 ms·

'Where was the Lord?': Slave testimonies

108 points by diodorus 7y ago

ARandomerDude 7y ago
Q. Where was the Lord? A. Where is the Confederacy now?
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  Can you explain why you think what you said was exculpatory for God's inaction? Even if you somehow just accept that because slavery ended in the US after generations of horrifying cruelty, how do you reconcile your response with the fact that human slavery is still practiced to this very day in many places?
  - the_pwner224 7y ago
    Its still legal in the US for prisoners. Esp. in privately owned and operated prisons (which get govt. contracts requiring a minimum number of cells to remain filled), the slaves are forced to work for American companies and get pennies per hour.
- danesparza 7y ago
  Alive and well, but using other names. The KKK was formed after the Civil War (and the Confederacy). Jim Crow Laws were long after the Confederacy supposedly died. The Civil Rights movement (specifically in Selma Alabama) was long after the Confederacy.
  - gumby 7y ago
    Parchman and Angola. Jim Crow laws were used as the model for the Nuremberg Laws and Mein Kampf calls out the achievements of white supremacy in the USA.
- wmeredith 7y ago
  Oh please. This is beyond naive. There are ~10x more slaves in the world today (30,000,000 [2]) than there were at the height of the Confederacy (3,500,000 [1]). If this is truly your answer to “Where was God?” I ask you, “Where is God?” Sources: [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_Americ... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.036ce1367dc5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17...
  - dang 7y ago
    > Oh please. This is beyond naive Would you please edit snarky bits and name calling out of your comments here? They degrade discussion and invite worse. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
epynonymous 7y ago
that's just an awful part of world history, what allowed that to flourish? total evil in men's hearts, this was only 200 years ago, not that long ago, this isnt something that happened 1000 years ago. and even though the confederacy was based on slaves being unequal to whites, the civil war was not necessarily about slavery only, it was more of a split in government between a pro-agrarian society, which required large swaths of slaves, and states vs federal government. sure there were people strongly against slavery in the north like abraham lincoln and abolishinists, but i imagine a large majority in the north didnt really see that as the largest issue, it was more the south wanting to leave the united states and.form their own government.
- invalidOrTaken 7y ago
  >what allowed that to flourish? total evil in men's hearts To believe this is to be deceived. It leads to the idea that "I'm not 'totally evil,' thus I'm not at risk for doing something like this." But there were kind-hearted Nazis and black-hearted Allies, Stalin was reported to be a doting father, and some slaves struggled terribly after emancipation. If we don't see things clearly, we put ourselves at risk of repeating the mistakes of those we disparage, though perhaps in a different form.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    Agreed. Seeing people as completely "evil" or "not evil" is a big mistake. For example a lot of people think that if someone has nice family and goes to church he is a "good man". But plenty of these people have committed mass murder while being nice at home.
  - thephyber 7y ago
    It's also worth mentioning that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850[1] made it a crime for police and private citizens in slavery-illegal states ("the North") not to arrest and return slaves to the estate that they escaped from. In effect, the "good people" in the entire country were still culpable of the continuing existence of that "Peculiar Institution". I wonder what an average Northern jury person would think of prosecuting another Northerner who was charged with harboring a runaway slave in a Northern state (where slavery was illegal at the time). If the law says that the jury can only consider the facts of the case, not whether the law is just or moral/ethical, what are we to make of our legal system? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
gumby 7y ago
So today I learned that Jefferson Davis's birthday is a state holiday in Alabama, and a declared holiday in Florida and Mississippi. Louisiana has a parish (county) named after him. Confederate Memorial Day is celebrated in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi South Carolina, and Texas. Kentucky crowns a "miss confederacy" each year. There would be worldwide outrage if people tried this kind of crap in Austria or Germany. But this equivalent is apparently mainstream A-OK. We need a variant of Godwin's law for these nazis. They even put their crooked cross on some state flags.
aravindet 7y ago
This should be required reading in American schools.
hi41 7y ago
>never seed her no more in this life I am moved by the stories. The accounts are so raw and visceral. Is there a website where there are audio recordings of the narrations?
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Maybe not these narrations, but there is this: https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering-slavery/about-this-collection https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering-slavery/a...
zdw 7y ago
Slavery is undoubtably beneficial to Capitalism (ex: sea trade via the triangular trade routes), and the almighty dollar frequently overrides morality for the worse.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  I will respond to this only because I've heard it before. That view is impossible to justify because a. Slavery is an evil, repulsive act, and if it's linked to capitalism, then that will (for good reason) lead to opposition to capitalism. b. While it was economically good for some, it was bad for others, and you can't write down a sensible economic model in which ownership of others leads to an efficient outcome. That's all I'm going to say about this crazy claim in an attempt to prevent its misuse.
  - thephyber 7y ago
    This seems like the same "solution aversion"[1] argument that lots of conservatives have when it comes to rejecting the possibility of "global warming" / "climate change". I would argue it's also wrong, especially in the modern USA flavor of capitalism after the Friedman Doctrine[2] said that shareholders are actually immoral for not maximizing profits despite any other social responsibility. This is a "Paperclip Maximizer"[3] utility function where companies eventually figure out how to use legal, financial, and psychological/addictive tools to overwhelm the defenses of all consumers in a society. It's effectively a flavor of social darwinism. Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers), but ours has largely been captured[4] by corporate interests. [1] https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
defterGoose 7y ago
Any time I hear another impassioned plea about some southerner's pride in displaying the Confederate flag as a mark of their "cultural heritage", I roll my eyes. Sure, I'll recognize your freedom of speech as to the display, but you'll never convince me that the display is anything but bald racism. The closest thing I've ever heard to a rationale from a defender is basically "because reasons". Even "states' rights" requires a clear motivation when you're talking about one small part of a federation, and still boils down to racism if you take it to its logical conclusion. As a rebuttal, you need only look at quotes from prominent Confederates to know the truth; that you're going out of your way to defend the acts of some very evil men. Reading these stories made my stomach churn. I'm done with [your] moral equivalencies.
- pluma 7y ago
  The questionability of national pride aside, if Confederate flag brandishing Southerners truly only cared about national pride they'd do what Germans do: not fly the damn flag. It's okay to have a problematic history. You don't have to be proud of everything your ancestors or their peers did. The Confederacy was a lose coalition of states that were defending their right to own slaves. If you were born in the South that doesn't mean you have to make up excuses for this or be sorry about it -- those things happened before you were born. But if you celebrate it, you celebrate slavery. There are a lot of nuances you could argue about (e.g. how much slave owners should have been subsidised to cushion the economic impact of abolishment or whether the US should have allowed states to secede peacefully) but abolishment was the right thing to do and the states that took up arms to stop it were on the wrong side of history. You don't see Germans find it socially acceptable to celebrate the accomplishments of 1930s Germany much. It shouldn't be socially acceptable to celebrate the Confederacy either. Especially if they have ancestors who fought for Germany in WW2. Oh and the most absurd part of that excuse is that the flag in question was only in use for a very short time and specifically in the context of the war. This is like saying the flag of the Nazi Germany Kriegsmarine isn't about anything the Nazis did.
yters 7y ago
Perhaps looking back in history future generations will see abortion the same way. I've heard most of the states passed stringent pro-life laws after emancipation, because it became obvious the similarity of the two human rights issues.
rolltiide 7y ago
States rights [to own slaves]
willvarfar 7y ago
Unfortunately, the website just redirects me to https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/ https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/ which has got to be the least impressive internationalisation website I've ever seen? Anyone post a text-dump?
- neonate 7y ago
  Does https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where-lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montg... work?
  - mellosouls 7y ago
    Yes (I'm not the requester but had the same issue), thank you.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
That was an incredibly powerful set of personal testimony. I just don't get exposed to that visceral reminder of what slavery was very much. And still so much of the south is in denial about it. Setting up gerrymandered districts in Virgina, making it harder for people to vote in ways that clearly make it harder for blacks to vote. So much of that is still here. I'm from a southern state, it's not exactly unknown to me that this has been the way it was for a lot of people. Now that I live in my west coast tech utopia I don't see people who seem to live in that world (sarcastically I kind of say this, look at all the homeless but there is less visible racism, so it must be more hidden). This should be required reading in schools. My own history classes told me a lot about how horrible slavery was, but wow, nothing like this. I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. Look through the editorials in it, search for jefferson davis and read what people say about changing school names. That was a freaking brave editorial decision. - https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/2019/06/03/jefferson-davis-birthday-alabama-holiday-why-three-montgomery-high-schools-named-confederates/2638908002/ https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/20...
- pegasus 7y ago
  It's already gone. WBM archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where-lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.montgomeryadvertis...
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. (...) That was a freaking brave editorial decision. As someone not from the US: what would the controversy here be? (i.e. what reason would someone opposed to publishing this name?) The Netherlands has done pretty awful things in Indonesia after WW2, and while that is unfortunately hardly mentioned in high school, I can't imagine it being controversial for a Dutch newspaper to publish testimonials of it.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Imagine that a large number of people in the Netherlands thought that what the Netherlands did in Indonesia were right and justified, and that the Netherlands should still have colonies and Indonesians should be ruled from the Netherlands to this day. Imagine these people still fly flags celebrating Netherlands rule of Indonesia and name their schools after the officers responsible for committing those atrocities in Indonesia, which they deny actually happened.
Protostome 7y ago
To us, 2 centuries after slavery went extinct in the civilized world, the idea seems incredibly cruel, although it was practiced in various forms throughout human history in most civilizations with little regard to its victims. We must ask ourselves, are there any other malevolent deeds inflicted humans to other humans or living creatures that we overlook? The most obvious answer to this is the treatment of animals in the meat and dairy industries. Those creatures can't and will never be able to voice their suffering. It seems to me that in 2 centuries from now, people will talk about this issue with the same contempt we talk about slavery today.
- akiselev 7y ago
  > To us, 2 centuries after slavery went extinct in the civilized world, the idea seems incredibly cruel, although it was practiced in various forms throughout human history in most civilizations with little regard to its victims. There are more chattel slaves alive today than there were during the 18 or 19th century, by a wide margin so, no, it is not extinct. Unless, of course, you don't consider much of the human world civilized, which is perhaps a more loaded can of worms than animal rights.
- TausAmmer 7y ago
  I exploit poor and weak for monetary gain and I think it is completely normal.
- jmcqk6 7y ago
  2 centuries? You might want to check your math on that. And also language. Illegal is not the same as extinct. So if you're looking for things that have been overlooked, you might start right here.
  - Protostome 7y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your comment. Slavery is illegal, that means that we as a society reject and punish those who practice it. The question of whether it will ever disappear is a question of enforcement/policy and not of moral values.
lsiebert 7y ago
Let me get this straight, the majority of the discussion on this painful look into a horrible institution is about the financial system, and whether it technically constitutes Capitalism? These were real people, with names and faces just like you and I, not some abstract argument about personal liberty or economic systems. It seems really disrespectful to me to reduce people to that. Like people here are making them a kind of chattel again, fodder for arguments, instead of seeing their humanity. Anyway, for those that care, for white people who can see that the legacy of this horror is still with us, built into our institutions: here is a real quick read on dismantling racism in an organization. http://uuwhiteness.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti-Racist_Organizational_Development_WesternStates.pdf http://uuwhiteness.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti-R...

108 points by diodorus 7y ago

ARandomerDude 7y ago

Q. Where was the Lord? A. Where is the Confederacy now?

tasty_freeze 7y ago
Can you explain why you think what you said was exculpatory for God's inaction? Even if you somehow just accept that because slavery ended in the US after generations of horrifying cruelty, how do you reconcile your response with the fact that human slavery is still practiced to this very day in many places?
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  Its still legal in the US for prisoners. Esp. in privately owned and operated prisons (which get govt. contracts requiring a minimum number of cells to remain filled), the slaves are forced to work for American companies and get pennies per hour.
danesparza 7y ago
Alive and well, but using other names. The KKK was formed after the Civil War (and the Confederacy). Jim Crow Laws were long after the Confederacy supposedly died. The Civil Rights movement (specifically in Selma Alabama) was long after the Confederacy.
- gumby 7y ago
  Parchman and Angola. Jim Crow laws were used as the model for the Nuremberg Laws and Mein Kampf calls out the achievements of white supremacy in the USA.
wmeredith 7y ago
Oh please. This is beyond naive. There are ~10x more slaves in the world today (30,000,000 [2]) than there were at the height of the Confederacy (3,500,000 [1]). If this is truly your answer to “Where was God?” I ask you, “Where is God?” Sources: [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_Americ... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.036ce1367dc5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17...
- dang 7y ago
  > Oh please. This is beyond naive Would you please edit snarky bits and name calling out of your comments here? They degrade discussion and invite worse. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

epynonymous 7y ago

that's just an awful part of world history, what allowed that to flourish? total evil in men's hearts, this was only 200 years ago, not that long ago, this isnt something that happened 1000 years ago. and even though the confederacy was based on slaves being unequal to whites, the civil war was not necessarily about slavery only, it was more of a split in government between a pro-agrarian society, which required large swaths of slaves, and states vs federal government. sure there were people strongly against slavery in the north like abraham lincoln and abolishinists, but i imagine a large majority in the north didnt really see that as the largest issue, it was more the south wanting to leave the united states and.form their own government.

invalidOrTaken 7y ago
>what allowed that to flourish? total evil in men's hearts To believe this is to be deceived. It leads to the idea that "I'm not 'totally evil,' thus I'm not at risk for doing something like this." But there were kind-hearted Nazis and black-hearted Allies, Stalin was reported to be a doting father, and some slaves struggled terribly after emancipation. If we don't see things clearly, we put ourselves at risk of repeating the mistakes of those we disparage, though perhaps in a different form.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Agreed. Seeing people as completely "evil" or "not evil" is a big mistake. For example a lot of people think that if someone has nice family and goes to church he is a "good man". But plenty of these people have committed mass murder while being nice at home.
- thephyber 7y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850[1] made it a crime for police and private citizens in slavery-illegal states ("the North") not to arrest and return slaves to the estate that they escaped from. In effect, the "good people" in the entire country were still culpable of the continuing existence of that "Peculiar Institution". I wonder what an average Northern jury person would think of prosecuting another Northerner who was charged with harboring a runaway slave in a Northern state (where slavery was illegal at the time). If the law says that the jury can only consider the facts of the case, not whether the law is just or moral/ethical, what are we to make of our legal system? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850

gumby 7y ago

So today I learned that Jefferson Davis's birthday is a state holiday in Alabama, and a declared holiday in Florida and Mississippi. Louisiana has a parish (county) named after him. Confederate Memorial Day is celebrated in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi South Carolina, and Texas. Kentucky crowns a "miss confederacy" each year. There would be worldwide outrage if people tried this kind of crap in Austria or Germany. But this equivalent is apparently mainstream A-OK. We need a variant of Godwin's law for these nazis. They even put their crooked cross on some state flags.

aravindet 7y ago

This should be required reading in American schools.

hi41 7y ago

>never seed her no more in this life I am moved by the stories. The accounts are so raw and visceral. Is there a website where there are audio recordings of the narrations?

SomeOldThrow 7y ago
Maybe not these narrations, but there is this: https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering-slavery/about-this-collection https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering-slavery/a...

zdw 7y ago

Slavery is undoubtably beneficial to Capitalism (ex: sea trade via the triangular trade routes), and the almighty dollar frequently overrides morality for the worse.

bachmeier 7y ago
I will respond to this only because I've heard it before. That view is impossible to justify because a. Slavery is an evil, repulsive act, and if it's linked to capitalism, then that will (for good reason) lead to opposition to capitalism. b. While it was economically good for some, it was bad for others, and you can't write down a sensible economic model in which ownership of others leads to an efficient outcome. That's all I'm going to say about this crazy claim in an attempt to prevent its misuse.
- thephyber 7y ago
  This seems like the same "solution aversion"[1] argument that lots of conservatives have when it comes to rejecting the possibility of "global warming" / "climate change". I would argue it's also wrong, especially in the modern USA flavor of capitalism after the Friedman Doctrine[2] said that shareholders are actually immoral for not maximizing profits despite any other social responsibility. This is a "Paperclip Maximizer"[3] utility function where companies eventually figure out how to use legal, financial, and psychological/addictive tools to overwhelm the defenses of all consumers in a society. It's effectively a flavor of social darwinism. Interestingly, capitalism might be kept in check given a strong enough government (eg. regulations designed and updated smartly to keep corporations from abusing the weakest consumers), but ours has largely been captured[4] by corporate interests. [1] https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago

defterGoose 7y ago

Any time I hear another impassioned plea about some southerner's pride in displaying the Confederate flag as a mark of their "cultural heritage", I roll my eyes. Sure, I'll recognize your freedom of speech as to the display, but you'll never convince me that the display is anything but bald racism. The closest thing I've ever heard to a rationale from a defender is basically "because reasons". Even "states' rights" requires a clear motivation when you're talking about one small part of a federation, and still boils down to racism if you take it to its logical conclusion. As a rebuttal, you need only look at quotes from prominent Confederates to know the truth; that you're going out of your way to defend the acts of some very evil men. Reading these stories made my stomach churn. I'm done with [your] moral equivalencies.

pluma 7y ago
The questionability of national pride aside, if Confederate flag brandishing Southerners truly only cared about national pride they'd do what Germans do: not fly the damn flag. It's okay to have a problematic history. You don't have to be proud of everything your ancestors or their peers did. The Confederacy was a lose coalition of states that were defending their right to own slaves. If you were born in the South that doesn't mean you have to make up excuses for this or be sorry about it -- those things happened before you were born. But if you celebrate it, you celebrate slavery. There are a lot of nuances you could argue about (e.g. how much slave owners should have been subsidised to cushion the economic impact of abolishment or whether the US should have allowed states to secede peacefully) but abolishment was the right thing to do and the states that took up arms to stop it were on the wrong side of history. You don't see Germans find it socially acceptable to celebrate the accomplishments of 1930s Germany much. It shouldn't be socially acceptable to celebrate the Confederacy either. Especially if they have ancestors who fought for Germany in WW2. Oh and the most absurd part of that excuse is that the flag in question was only in use for a very short time and specifically in the context of the war. This is like saying the flag of the Nazi Germany Kriegsmarine isn't about anything the Nazis did.

yters 7y ago

Perhaps looking back in history future generations will see abortion the same way. I've heard most of the states passed stringent pro-life laws after emancipation, because it became obvious the similarity of the two human rights issues.

rolltiide 7y ago

States rights [to own slaves]

willvarfar 7y ago

Unfortunately, the website just redirects me to https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/ https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/ which has got to be the least impressive internationalisation website I've ever seen? Anyone post a text-dump?

neonate 7y ago
Does https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where-lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montg... work?
- mellosouls 7y ago
  Yes (I'm not the requester but had the same issue), thank you.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago

That was an incredibly powerful set of personal testimony. I just don't get exposed to that visceral reminder of what slavery was very much. And still so much of the south is in denial about it. Setting up gerrymandered districts in Virgina, making it harder for people to vote in ways that clearly make it harder for blacks to vote. So much of that is still here. I'm from a southern state, it's not exactly unknown to me that this has been the way it was for a lot of people. Now that I live in my west coast tech utopia I don't see people who seem to live in that world (sarcastically I kind of say this, look at all the homeless but there is less visible racism, so it must be more hidden). This should be required reading in schools. My own history classes told me a lot about how horrible slavery was, but wow, nothing like this. I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. Look through the editorials in it, search for jefferson davis and read what people say about changing school names. That was a freaking brave editorial decision. - https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/2019/06/03/jefferson-davis-birthday-alabama-holiday-why-three-montgomery-high-schools-named-confederates/2638908002/ https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/20...

pegasus 7y ago
It's already gone. WBM archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where-lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.montgomeryadvertis...
Vinnl 7y ago
> I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. (...) That was a freaking brave editorial decision. As someone not from the US: what would the controversy here be? (i.e. what reason would someone opposed to publishing this name?) The Netherlands has done pretty awful things in Indonesia after WW2, and while that is unfortunately hardly mentioned in high school, I can't imagine it being controversial for a Dutch newspaper to publish testimonials of it.
- simonh 7y ago
  Imagine that a large number of people in the Netherlands thought that what the Netherlands did in Indonesia were right and justified, and that the Netherlands should still have colonies and Indonesians should be ruled from the Netherlands to this day. Imagine these people still fly flags celebrating Netherlands rule of Indonesia and name their schools after the officers responsible for committing those atrocities in Indonesia, which they deny actually happened.

Protostome 7y ago

To us, 2 centuries after slavery went extinct in the civilized world, the idea seems incredibly cruel, although it was practiced in various forms throughout human history in most civilizations with little regard to its victims. We must ask ourselves, are there any other malevolent deeds inflicted humans to other humans or living creatures that we overlook? The most obvious answer to this is the treatment of animals in the meat and dairy industries. Those creatures can't and will never be able to voice their suffering. It seems to me that in 2 centuries from now, people will talk about this issue with the same contempt we talk about slavery today.

akiselev 7y ago
> To us, 2 centuries after slavery went extinct in the civilized world, the idea seems incredibly cruel, although it was practiced in various forms throughout human history in most civilizations with little regard to its victims. There are more chattel slaves alive today than there were during the 18 or 19th century, by a wide margin so, no, it is not extinct. Unless, of course, you don't consider much of the human world civilized, which is perhaps a more loaded can of worms than animal rights.
TausAmmer 7y ago
I exploit poor and weak for monetary gain and I think it is completely normal.
jmcqk6 7y ago
2 centuries? You might want to check your math on that. And also language. Illegal is not the same as extinct. So if you're looking for things that have been overlooked, you might start right here.
- Protostome 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your comment. Slavery is illegal, that means that we as a society reject and punish those who practice it. The question of whether it will ever disappear is a question of enforcement/policy and not of moral values.

lsiebert 7y ago

Let me get this straight, the majority of the discussion on this painful look into a horrible institution is about the financial system, and whether it technically constitutes Capitalism? These were real people, with names and faces just like you and I, not some abstract argument about personal liberty or economic systems. It seems really disrespectful to me to reduce people to that. Like people here are making them a kind of chattel again, fodder for arguments, instead of seeing their humanity. Anyway, for those that care, for white people who can see that the legacy of this horror is still with us, built into our institutions: here is a real quick read on dismantling racism in an organization. http://uuwhiteness.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti-Racist_Organizational_Development_WesternStates.pdf http://uuwhiteness.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti-R...