Posted on 10/15/2013 3:56:12 PM PDT by jazusamo
Culture: Slavery's stain on American history cannot and should not be whitewashed. But neither should it be portrayed as worse than it was to serve a political agenda.
And yet this is what Hollywood is doing with its slate of horror films about slavery and its legacy.
"The Butler" — which claims to be "based on a true story" — opens with a stomach-turning scene of white cruelty.
A boy picking cotton on a Georgia plantation watches his mother dragged off to a shack where she's raped by a white landowner, who not long after the assault coldly walks up to the boy's unarmed father and shoots him in the face for timidly questioning his authority to violate his wife.
The mother becomes dysfunctional and the effectively orphaned boy is taken in by the plantation's matriarch as a "house n----r," thus launching his career as a butler.
It's a jarring depiction of Southern sadism. Groans and gasps can be heard from audiences as the scene unfolds.
Only, it never happened.
Longtime White House butler Eugene Allen (played by Forest Whitaker) grew up in Virginia, not Georgia, where he worked as a waiter in a resort and never spoke bitterly of his childhood, according to his biographer. Neither he nor his family experienced the atrocities depicted in the movie.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
They are all orgasmic over the idea of slavery to the state.
Democrats never pass up on opportunity to tell us why enslavement by the state is for our own protection and our own safety, because life under the anarchy that conservatives want to impose is just too risky and dangerous. We can't have any of that inhumane"on-your-own economics" that conservatives advocate.
Thereby proving that you no longer have to be black to be an Uncle Tom.
When a black woman is one of the richest people in America?
When a black man was Secretary of State??
When a black woman was Secretary of State?
When black men have sat -- and do sit -- on the Supreme Court??
When a black would-be despot sits in the White House?????
When countless black men have risen to the top of the ranks of the richest in professional sports and show business?? Men like Hank Aaron. Men like Bill Cosby who... (Never mind. As we all know, Bill's either an Uncle Tom or Oreo Cookie, depending on which black race pimp you listen to.)
And, how about Liberation Theology?
Liberation from WHAT? The chance to achieve and succeed??
Give me a break!!
Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I supported Herman Cain in his run for the Senate and supported him in his run for the WH. And if Allen West goes for it, he, too, has my support.
I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.
Sowell, Williams and Cain – among others -- have spoken out against those fellow blacks who castigate and vilify America for a slavery now long in our past. And ALL thinking men and women oppose the periodic calls for reparations. (When he ran, I supported Alan Keyes. I even spoke in his stead on the RTKABA at a Capitol rally and was asked to fill in for him on his radio show at the time. Sadly, while I still consider Alan a good man, I have had to rethink my support since he came out FOR reparations.)
The fact is that the modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE!
Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders --the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be "plaintiffs" would not even exist.
And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by – American BLACK muslims LISTEN UP!! -- MUSLIMS) and Asia today. How ironic that disgruntled American blacks are embracing a system that participated mightily in their initial bondage – and would, if Islam takes root here, probably put any who cling to their Christianity back INTO BONDAGE – or to the sword. In fact, as the majority of muslims consider black folks as “sub-human”, many of you black muzzies will get the axe.
95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?
And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. Although the term looks to be related to “slave,” depending on your source, it either means “glory” or “worshipper.” But my family research indicates that many of my of my ancestors LIVED lives of virtual slavery to some despot or other. Do I qualify for reparations? From whom?? And it begs a question: Are most of us now living here headed into a modern form off that servitude? But that’s a topic for another discussion.
The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and one of the first slave owners was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners. -"Selling Poor Steven", American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90
Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a recitation of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony: Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers' Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378
A few more salient points on the subject:
Until the US declared independence, the Colonies were REQUIRED by the King of England to embrace slavery.
The Northwest Ordinance (1789) prohibited slavery in federal territories.
A law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the US became effective in 1808.
Beginning in 1820, the Democratic Congress started passing laws allowing and encouraging slavery.
It was only after the Republican Party (many of whom were southern Blacks) was formed some 40 years later that the anti-slavery movement was able to move forward.
And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!
At the height of his remarkable boxing career, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), once declared, “I’m glad my great-grandpa got on that boat.”
And speaking of ancestors, my paternal grandmother’s daddy joined with the 80th Ohio Volunteer Infantry early in the War Between the States (re-upped twice) and fought on the Union side at Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Jackson then joined up with Sherman for that infamous march to the sea through Georgia. My wife’s great-great grandpappy ALSO fought for the Union. While I revere the memory of my ancestors, inasmuch as that conflict was less about slavery than it was the economic exploitation and abuse of the South by the North, I fear they MAY have been on the wrong side.
Author Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
Next problem!
Dick Bachert
AFTERWORD:
A few additional facts on the subject:
Until the US declared independence, we were required by the King of England to embrace slavery.
The Northwest Ordinance (1789) prohibited slavery in federal territories.
A law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the US became effective in 1808.
Beginning in 1820, the Democratic Congress started passing laws allowing and encouraging slavery.
It was only after the Republican Party (many of whom were southern Blacks) was formed some 40 years later that the anti-slavery movement was able to move forward.
my parents picked cotton and they were white. OMG how’d that happen???
Now we can understand the positions the Jews were placed into in the 1870 to 1939 period in Europe.
My dad’s family were sharecroppers. Both my parents picked cotton. Took a long time to fill those giant sacks with the fluffy white poofs.
Excellent post!
Don’t forget “Django Unchained”.
Thanks for the post.
“Roots” which was widely seen as the greatest work of art ever made, was just about totally inaccurate. It contained some errors which professional genealogists say were egregious in that Haily claimed kinship to people who he was not kin to him.
What else is new?
When my family picked cotton, I was 9 the last time we were in the fields, the pay was $3.00 per hundred pounds. If you were a good picker you could get 200 pounds per day. That’s six bucks for leaving the house around 6 A.M. and getting home at 6 P.M.
Earlier in the spring we chopped the weeds out of cotton fields for $6.00 a day. Sun up to sun down. I think I was 12 or 13 before I ever saw a black man. And that wasn’t in a cotton field.
Good old Hollywood and all of its scumbags.
Hey, Yo!
Bachert, settle down now.
When WHITEY begins behaving like what these fools have been accusing whitey of being for the last 100 years, THESE PEOPLE WILL RUN FOR THE HILLS CRYING THEIR WHITE HATING EYES OUT.
Matter of time, matter of time.
One question, why do you feel the NEED to state that you are NOT A RACIST? When did a black man EVER make that statement”
You’ve been compromised by the propaganda my friend.
Ask the BLACK MAN why HE IS NOT A RACIST!
All you’ll get is shuck and jive.
Racism is an original sin, instilled by God himself. Just like Gluttony, Jealousy, Hatred, Love, Etc, Etc.
We overcome it or we don’t.
Think about it.
I picked cotton as a child (six to 12 years of age)and I am white. The worst thing it ever did for me was enable me to throw one hell of a fastball and throw a football 60 yards.
Fox Searchlight Films is set to release “Twelve Years a Slave” in a couple of days. This film was made by the British director Steve McQueen, and produced by the American actor Brad Pitt, among other producers. It appears to reflect an accurate and true story of 19th century slavery in the U.S., as written by Solomon Northup (who experienced it firsthand).
I suppose some idiots will pay to see this farce, with jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan, I wouldn’t crap on it.
I worked for my Uncle picking cotton at the exact same rate as you. It was 3 cent a pound. I was 9 or 10 and didn’t have to work but wanted some spending money.
I typically would pick around 90 pounds a day. I was not trying to set any records tho. The one thing which bothered me is the open bolls were a little like thorns and if you missed the cotton it would eventually irritate your fingers.
I spoke to a friend who grew up in Texas and he said they just picked the entire boll. That would have been tremendously easier.
I remember the first trip to the cotton gin. Uncle Buck paid us in cash and I went to the dime store and bought a monopoly set. When I got home, I ordered a telescope from a tiny add in Sports Afield. I got it in a couple of weeks and it was a pretty decent telescope.
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