The original question was: Is Northam right to call theost first arrivals “indentured servants. Yes, he was. None of the but-he-should-have-saids matter.That does not at all detract from his demonstrated disdain for Negroes and his support for infanticide. But the claim that he lied because he said something that was true but inappropriate should not be in our arguments and claims. We could say that he was technically correct but substantially misleading but claiming he lied is bogus.
I don’t remember anybody saying he lied.
I remember people saying that it was a stupid thing to say when you are trying to crawl out of a hole you just dug with blackface and stupid responses.
I also believe he was “wrong”, but I don’t fault him for being wrong, because he was addressing the issue from the point of view of the people who bought the slaves, rather than the point of view of the people who were the slaves.
If I were kidnapped and sold without my consent, sure I’d be “happier” to know that I was only required to work for 10 years, instead of my entire life, and that I would be treated somewhat more civilly than a piece of property might be. But I’ll still be a slave.
Which was my point — Northam is trying to explain that he isn’t a racist, and that he understands how he hurt people (the first I don’t know if he is or not, the second I don’t think people should let themselves be hurt by something someone did 30 years ago). While doing that, he probably shouldn’t use owner-centric language when discussing slaves.