Because it shows the truth, and the left has a need to perpetuate the lie that all slaves were mistreated.
Imagine sometime in the far future when owning a dog is outlawed and deemed horrible. And then imagine a future version of the left trying to sell the lie that all past dog owners chained up and beat their dogs in the past. All information on the truth would have to be suppressed.
exactly.
Great analogy! Can I steal it?
Many people got their impression of how ALL slaves were treated from Alex Haley’s Roots.
“imagine a future version of the left trying to sell the lie that all past dog owners chained up and beat their dogs in the past.”
Don’t give them any ideas. ;)
IIRC, this was set in the postwar south, so the main character was a free man. 8 saw it as a small child and loved the song Zipadeedoodah- race and skin color meant nothing to me, if anything, at the time I had just lost my beloved grandfather and the main character reminded me of him, and the stories reminded me of grandma, who being from southern Missouri had a pretty thick hillbilly accent and was quite a storyteller.
I think the leftist objection was exactly that- they want to perpetuate fear and segregation so they can continue their successful divide-and-conquer strategies. It is their bread and butter. White kids who fell in love with the cartoon wouldn’t be afraid of or hate black people, and would see our commonalities rather than the differences the Democratic Party has for so long worked to stoke, highlight and exploit.
Silly me. I tend to think that owning another human being as a slave is in of and itself “mistreatment”. Just because a slave wasn’t beaten and was fed, clothed and housed to some degree or another, didn’t mean they were not mistreated by the mere fact of being treated as chattel and in a system where a husband and wife and their children could be sold off to different plantation owners, where it was a crime to teach slaves how to read and write.
Ding! The Left....let’s face it....is and has long been dominated by the Northeastern Establishment (think Ivy League). These are Yankees. They H.A.T.E. the South and Southerners and always have. They simply cannot bear the idea that life in the South or that race relations were marked by anything other than cruelty and unremitting hatred. That blows up their entire narrative about the South and could even spill over into politics with Blacks not being nearly so beholden to the Democrat Party. That, they must oppose with full force.
So anything that cuts against their narrative will be demonized to the hilt.
And I am now inclined to believe it is exactly this sort of lying that has been told regarding the civil war every since the 1860s.
Some time back I got into a discussion about whether slaves were actually abused. I tried to find other examples (beyond that one picture of a former slave's back having been whipped badly) and I couldn't find any.
Abuse of slaves doesn't make any sense because it is counter productive to the value of slaves or the economics of it.
Thinking about this is when I began to wonder if abuse of slaves was actually a lie spread for propaganda purposes.
I now think more than likely it is.
This seems to be a common misconception. But the movie is post Civil War.