Posted on 06/15/2006 4:06:18 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
In another example of PC stupidity gone wild, a Civil War re-enactor portraying a Confederate officer was kicked out of Historic Crossroads Village Park, near Flint, Michigan this past weekend, for saying that a young black child would probably have been a slave in 1860's Georgia.
Civil War re-enactor Tim VanRaemdonck said he was just staying in character when he wrote "slave" as the occupation of black children on fictitious enlistment papers during Civil War Days at Crossroads Village.Gosh! Imagine that! A black person being assumed a slave in 1860's Georgia?Word reached Crossroads Village manager Garry Pringle, who had two conversations with VanRaemdonck and asked him to leave.
What's next, assuming a Japanese man might have been in the Imperial Army circa 1930? Maybe an English soldier being thought a Cursader in the 14th century? Maybe it would be wrong to generalize that a North Vietnamese man would be a Communist in 1965?
Darn that history stuff anyway!
Not to be outdone by the stupidity of Village manager, Garry Pringle, Parks Director Amy M. McMillan said the following to the Media:
McMillan believes there were better choices than labeling the young boy a "slave" - even if the label was designed to share history.Um, no Mz. McMillan. You are wrong on all counts proving you know next to nothing about American history. But, also proving you are a swell practitioner of the dark arts of PCism."There were also free people of color in the southern states during this time period," she wrote in an e-mail to The Flint Journal. "More appropriate answers could have included occupations such as farmer, blacksmith, or other occupations typical of that time period.
"It would have been equally inappropriate to respond 'slave owner' to a Caucasian child who had asked such a question. Had any re-enactor provided such a response, he/she would have also been asked to leave the village."
For some REAL history, Mz. McMillan, the total number of free blacks in Georgia as noted in the 1860 census was only 3,500. By contrast, the total number of slaves in Georgia in 1860 amounted to 462,198! So, NO, Mz. McMillan, it would NOT have made much sense to assume that, on average, a black person in Georgia would have been a free man. There was nothing "more appropriate" to have said to the child but that he would probably have been a slave, Mz. McMillan.
Now, to clear up your other garbled historical claim, Mz. McMillan; The number of white slave owners in 1860 Georgia was 41,084 out of a total white population of 591,550. So, while it would not have been an automatic assumption that a white person in Georgia in 1860 was a slave owner it was far, far more likely to assume that a white person might own slaves in 1860 Georgia than to assume a black person was a free man in the same place and time period. The statistics do not lie, Mz. McMillan.
The reenactor was right and the staff of the Crossroads Village is wrong to have removed him from the Park for telling history like it is.
Another member of the group to which the unduly accosted reenactor belongs told the Flint paper:
"If we don't discuss it, children don't learn.""Learning" is NOT what the putrid purveyors of PCsim want. They want whitewashed, cleansed history free of anything that might "upset" or cause certain people to have any "low self-esteem". They don't want people to actually understand the history of this country at all. They just want to label all white people as evil and let that "lesson" go unexamined, kept as a vague notion never investigated and never spoken of directly.
I hope that Civil War reenactors in Michigan stop participating at the "Historic" Crossroads Village Park and stop helping them make all that money off a public whom the Village refuses to help learn about our history. Sadly, the "Historic" part of their charge is to be ignored.
A few years ago I was at a civil war reenactment here in Jackson Mi. and heard some idiot complain because some of the reenactors were black.
It's not like they have an invalid argument though. Not every black person in Georgia was a slave in 1862.
Actually a better answer would have been field hand, house servant, cook ...or in the case of some slave men, they were trained as blackmiths and carpenters.
Of course they were all slaves.
The irony is that kids are a lot more likely to grasp a simple concept like "pretend" than these PC jackasses.
The kids can figure out, without the condescension, that they are neither slaves nor slavemaster today. If "adults" would simply give them the space to "re-enact".
No they weren't "all slaves". Manumission was a fairly common practice in Deep South states, and in the Southern ports, there did exist a rather prosperous free black class, and many of them would go on to form volunteer units for the Confederate Army, granted the lions share of these units originate from Louisiana.
Since 99.3% of them were, however, not choosing so certainly points to a let's ignore history agenda.
Disgusting. And have you seen the History Channel lately? Boy, you really have to wade through the PC history to find real stuff. And the film at Monticello was written as if Thomas Jefferson were a liberal democrat of today -- what hogwash. Such idiocy.
Instead of "slave," he should have said "webmaster."
Most if not all of Georgia's free black population (in keeping with the trends of the time) was located in Savannah. They could have improved the accuracy by just listing Savannah, Georgia rather than just Georgia. When you go to a black kid at one of these things and automatically say slave, then you perpetrate stereotypes about the war, such as it was primarily a war over slavery, ignoring all the issues of tariff, sectional conflicts, and everything that had been brewing for decades.
The factually unencumbered, knowledge-based nonpossessor,
selectively perceptive, motivationally dispossessed, uniquely fortuned individual on an alternative career path, at it again.
According to the 1850 census, there were black slave owners in every state that became the Confederacy.
Azalea, you are JUST as bad as the PC idiots... maybe worse, because you seem to really know better.
Less than 1% of the blacks in Georgia in 1860 were free. To tell a kid he would probably have been free would have been a LIE!
(If you are confused with the word lie, ask Bill clinton. He is an expert at it)
Reenactors are far better historians than college professors.
I must say, the blacks were so kind to me while I was there and treated me with great respect. To that, the southern whites I worked for responded: "They know their place". It was disgusting.
He should have written down "Non Indigenous Involuntary Servitude Individual". The PC crowd would have given him a pass. Of course, the school kid would have had no idea what it was.
If you listed the place of registration as New Orleans, Louisiana, then it most definitely would not have been a lie. As far as the antebellum South goes, they were the best as far as having free blacks goes, and they had alot of them. Most of the black pro-Confederate militias organized during the war were drawn up in the New Orleans area, and they consisted of free blacks who had something to protect.
You may or may not be familiar with Mount Vernon, Alabama. All you need to know is, it is black, everyone up there is distantly related, most of them have some French blood in them, and, this is the kicker, they are descended from a family of blacks who not only held slaves, but ran major plantations within the area. Incidentally, a major black Catholic in-church social fraternity was founded by these people.
Let's not forget, many masters would give their slaves manumission in their wills, and those that didn't, well, more often than not, in their wills, they would leave instructions that would effectively allow their slaves to live as if they were free, often times, this included a large amount of money, and executors were bound by law to carry out these instructions. And, as I alluded to before, there were certain areas in the South where there were concentrations of free blacks.
A better answer? Ya mean one that would have appeased more people.
Slaves.....just doing the job that American's wouldn't do.
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