Posted on 04/08/2015 8:17:16 AM PDT by cripplecreek
Last night I stumbled across a collections of interviews conducted in the 1930s with blacks who had been born into slavery. They're kind of hard to read since they're written as the words were spoken with a heavy southern black accent.
Most interesting to me is the lack of anger from these former slaves. In fact, some spoke quite fondly of their former owners. At worst, they spoke with indifference of their former owners.
None of this matches the rage filled narrative of today with the endless claims of payment due.
Do you honestly believe that being someone's property is better than being free, regardless of the hardships? Really?
Yes. I do.
Do you seriously believe that it’s better to be starving, homeless, jobless, and penniless with your family than to be “owned” and have your food, shelter, and necessaries provided for you?
Would you become a slave in exchange for that?
To survive? To keep my family alive? In a heartbeat.
“Today , we are all subjected to economic enslavement wherein our taxes must support the laziest and most indolent of our society.
We labor under the yoke of this unjust oppression our entire lives
That is a tragedy, and wars have been fought for less.”
Exactly. I blame myself. But, if most people look at themselves truthfully they’ll find they are in the same boat. Fer instance...
I work from 8 a.m till 7 p.m 6 days a week mostly. “They” let me off Sunday. A good day for me is every now and then I can go to “them” and ask “hey massa, would it be o.k for me to get off at 5 today? I have some chores to take care of at home.”
At least I have a home. Own it. Well me and the government own it anyway. “The Government” you say? Well yea, just try not paying your property tax.
About this time every year you pay, or I pay, my little pound of flesh to big daddy. I didn’t have enough withheld so now I’m writing a nice little check to the government. After maxing out my IRA contribution and eating into my little nest egg I have been saving for a rainy day. Sure hope “they” don’t decide to take my IRA. Or my 401k that I have been struggling to save for my retirement.
I could go on but I won’t. I will say we might be a lot of things. But free ain’t one of them.
Then, sir, you are a fool to trade away temporary adversity for a lifetime of bondage for you and your children.
And you are an ass to let your family starve to assuage your own vanity.
Some things are worth dying for, freedom for example. Getting back to the subject of this post, many of those ex slaves suffered terribly after being given their freedom. Many suffered privations their entire life. But for all that, in all those slave narratives I would defy you to find a single one where the slave said that they wished they had remained a slave. Some things are just that important.
How many of those slaves knew what awaited them after "liberation?" How many of them would have said they were better off a year after they were "freed," when they were tramping the countryside starving?
To paraphrase the Eagles, every form of freedom has its price.
But my point was -- and remains -- that the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" portrayal of slave life is false, and grossly exaggerates the hardships routinely endured by the vast majority of the slave population.
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