Any questions? (I thought his name was familiar. He wrote a great article about how much he hates kids on airplanes.)
Posted on 01/17/2014 12:00:18 PM PST by C19fan
The image of Solomon Northup's body hanging from a tree -- noose around his neck, hands tied behind his back, feet barely touching the ground -- is uncomfortable to look at. And Steve McQueen, director of "12 Years a Slave," does not spare the audience with an expedient exit.
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The movie is an unsanitized portrait of a nation's shameful past. It is two hours of breathing in the antebellum South and then walking out of the theater trying to pretend the stench is all gone. There is no question that "12 Years a Slave" was the best picture of 2013. But as the box office receipts show, not many of us are ready for that kind of honesty.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I haven’t seen this film or any film for the last 20+ years.
http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/240477341.html
Mequon native Ridley talks Oscar nomination
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
I guess too many suburban WASPs are flocking to the Tyler Perry movies.
Rmember Yankee General U.S. Grant? At the beginning of the war, his wife owned slaves. At the end of the war, she still owned slaves. It took the 13th ammendment to free her slaves.
Remember General William T. Sherman? He also owned slaves.
I’d be interested in a movie portraying the lives of their slaves.
It was all bad. North and South.
Heck, these days they have willingly become cradle to grave slaves.
Several years ago archeologists discovered a slave cemetery in New York City. That’s right—New York City.
It was amusing to watch the reactions of the holier-than-thou Yankees when they learned that slavery existed in the North as well as in the South.
Indeed, the much-revered Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in those states which were in “rebellion.”
The ignorance of most Americans of their own history is breath-taking.
No matter how good the movie, no matter how true a picture it paints, it will have one effect. “Teens” will come boiling out of the mall multiplexes near the ‘hoods to assault their “oppressors”.
Or, that the first slave owner in the colonies was a black man and former indentured servant - Anthony Johnson. In fact at the time Anthony Johnson became the first legal slave owner in the colonies, ONLY blacks could be slave owners of other blacks and only Indians could own other Indians. The white man could neither own slave, or be a slave.
I'm by no means defending slavery, but if we're going to talk about race and slavery, then we should tell the full story.
Ah yes, the “African Burial Ground.” The skeletal remains showed their bones were misshapen as they had been literally worked to death.
The dirty little secret of when the North abolished slavery was it was usually not immediate manumission giving the slave holders plenty of time to sell their slaves south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Yes, that particular stench is pretty pervasive in the company this author of this stinko "progressive" keeps... And it's not likely to dissipate any time soon with the level of denial these bozos are into.
Yeah, after all, it's only been 150 years ...
Reparations for slavery?
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!!
First the obligatory disclaimer made necessary by the black race pimps (Jackson and Sharpton, et al.) and the racist par excellence now infesting the Spite House.
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 slave system 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 “worshiper.” 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 of 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 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 (Original created circa 2008 with edits/additions as required)
(Please feel free to use this little essay in whole or in part so long as attribution is extended to the author.. I may require some notice to permit me to enhance security here.)
POSTSCRIPT
Got this email from a fellow Freeper:
From BTCM | 01/08/2013 4:21:57 AM PST replied
Thank you for an intelligent post. Locally we had one of the largest slave holding families in Virgina. The Jones family was a wealthy black family whose main product was breeding an selling slaves. When the local mullet wrapper paper printed the historical story a few years back, I thought the local NAACP was going to burn down their building.
RATS hate America.
I refuse to see “the Help”, “The Butler” , or any other “black grievance” movie until they start portraying the knockout game or the “tawana brawley hoax” or whatever.
Any questions? (I thought his name was familiar. He wrote a great article about how much he hates kids on airplanes.)
Not many Not a single sub-human liberal is willing to face the facts about racial violence in the USA.
About 5000 blacks died in the entire past century due to racial violence perpetrated by whites.
About 5000 whites die every two years due to racial violence perpetrated by blacks.
If there ever comes a "time for reckoning", the liberals are just going to crap their pants, because they are equally to blame for these deaths through their race-baiting, hate-mongering lies.
***and then walking out of the theater trying to pretend the stench is all gone.****
As we say, when you stir old s#!t it still stinks. And Hollywood loves to stir.
Of the 5000 lynchings, 3500 were blacks. 1500 were white Republicans.
OK, I’m going to get real about why I would never go to a theater to see this movie.
I live in a city, so the crowds tend to be, uh, “urban.” Movies about race, particularly from the black POV, tend to be populated by mostly black folks. In the past, these crowds that fill theaters for Spike Lee movies come out with pretty rotten attitudes about non-blacks, particularly whites (me). There was a riot at a movie theater recently near Rochester NY because the audience was whipped up by one of these propaganda movies. The Police spokesgal blamed the movie.
My sense of situational awareness says to never expose myself to that kind of crowd, it’s too dangerous to be a sole white face in a large room full of black people angry at white people. I refuse to make myself a target. So, Mr. Granderson, I will not be going to this movie. Are you ready for that kind of honesty?
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