Posted on 01/23/2007 5:26:07 AM PST by ItMatters2Me
Del. Frank D. Hargrove Sr., who recently disparaged blacks and Jews with comments about apologizing for slavery, had a great-grandfather who owned a slave.
The Hanover Republican yesterday gained unanimous approval to introduce a resolution in the House commemorating the end of slavery in America. The measure would acknowledge Juneteenth, the nationally recognized commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.
A search by librarians at The Times-Dispatch and the Library of Virginia shows that Hargrove's great-grandfather owned a slave. An 1850 slave schedule lists Nathan D. Hargrove, a 22-year-old Henrico County resident, as owning a 60-year-old female slave.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
You're right the thought police should be in charge of deciding who is fit for public service.
Well, Hargrove is like 78, so he was born in 1928. The elder Hargrove was 22 in 1850, so it's doable, although it suggests people having children in their late 30s.
It could be one of them married a younger woman. Men can have children at quite an old age.
That's not the original title.
No. Actually, it's quite the opposite. His point is that he would rather support a positive statement about the end of slavery, which of course was a positive development, than to approach it in the negative way of trying to cast blame now onto people who had nothing to do with it in the first place.
I have no idea why anyone would consider the celebration of the end of slavery a bad thing.
And do they even know for sure he is his great grandfather for that matter?
Just because they share the same last name.
I'm 44, my father is 78, and my late grandfather, who died one year before I was born, was himself born in 1867. The timeframe is plausible enough, considering that many men didn't get themselves "fixed" enough to marry and start a family until 40 or so ... amassing enough land to support them and all. My paternal fourth great was a dragoon in the Revolutionary War.
A couple of my ancestors were pirates (for real); seriously nasty guys, nothing like Johnny Depp. They were probably involved in the slave trade at one time or another. We have no proof of that except the documentation indicating that pirates who operated in the South Atlantic during the 1720s frequently did engage in the slave trade as well. There is no reason they wouldn't have. It wasn't as if they had any ethical compunctions or feared the hardships involved. It was legal, the profits were enormous, and it couldn't be as dangerous as tangling with HM ships.
None of this is my fault, needless to say.
No. A stereotype is attributing attributes to an individual based on group membership. "Killing jesus" is NOT AN ATTRIBUTE, it is an act. "Jews don't eat ham sandwiches" would be a stereotype. "Germans killed 6 million jews" is not a stereotype, it is a fact of history.
As I said in my post, Jews did not actually kill Jesus, the romans did that using crucifiction. But the Jewish leaders of the Jewish state at the time DID request his death, and without their action (speaking from a human-centric viewpoint) Jesus would not have been arrested and put to death. So the Jewish leadership of Jesus' day were responsible for his death.
The fact that Jesus was a jew is entirely meaningless to the discussion. People do kill others of their own kind.
Anyway, my argument was against the use of the word "stereotype" and maybe I didn't make that clear. I would not myself say "Jews killed Jesus" because it distorts the true meaning of the events of our Lord's death and resurrection.
The problem with attacking Hargrove is that people always make stupid statements, and the democrats have seized on that fact to destroy the republican party, with the help of the media, who will run 20 stories about the word Macaca even though they have no idea what it means, but will IGNORE a democrat calling arabs Towel-heads in the same election race.
I got in a discussion here with someone who has a few clients who are the children of Confederate soldiers. They were born in the 1920s (older than Hargrove) in areas of poverty where quite young women decided to marry much older men for security and whatever other reason. So if there are people a little older than Hargrove who have parents who could have owned slaves, it's certainly reasonable that he had a great-grandparent who could have owned slaves.
I'm 30 and my great-grandparents were born in the 1870s and 1880s. If I were 40 years older, and everything shifted back, they'd have been of the same age as Hargrove's ancestors.
"... the democrats have seized on that fact to destroy the republican party, with the help of the media, who will run 20 stories about the word Macaca even though they have no idea what it means, but will IGNORE a democrat calling arabs Towel-heads in the same election race."
Point well taken. Agreed.
I thought it was just in Texas, too. They must've heard it's a great party and wanted in.
Maybe they just made it up. I would HOPE that they went through the records and found the geneological chain to him. It can be done easily enough if his family was always in Virginia. My family has been traced back to 1820 or so.
I don't know if the article says how they did that, but since they could have done it, and I assume their editor isn't a complete fool, I presume they did.
She was probably his "au pair," don't ya think? Wonder if he bought her a red petticoat.
Can't both be true. He could have refrained from participating in the debate... he chose to join it, thus he injected himself into the discussion.
I agree with you... and it would seem more than appropriate that the background and familial history of other figures in the public eye also be open to scrutiny... rather than when it is merely convenient to do so.... does anyone know if the Hargrove is question is in fact an ancestor, the circumstances under which that Hargrove became a slave-holder and what the ultimate conclusion was i.e. was the slave in question held in bondage, sold or imancipated?
Didn't Mohamed own slaves? How many people claim direct decendancy from Mohamed with pride? Do those slave owner decendants get scrutiny?
How about modern turkey? Their ottoman empire was powered by slavery...
MSM free passes.
Why should he do such a silly thing. He's a member of the HoD. Participating in such debate is his job.
You, on the other hand ... aren't flying a State flag on your profile page. Are you a Virginian? If not, you're mighty hypocritical accusing a member of the Virginia House of Delegates of "injecting himself" into a debate in the Virginia HoD. If you are ... I think it's mighty stupid to be whining about one of our elected representatives doing his job.
I'm not a "son" of Virginia but I did drop her and the paper, a line:
I was appalled to read what must currently pass for investigative journalism in your paper. A man, 257 years ago, in Virginia, owned a slave and this is news. Before your journalists start lecturing Delegates and citizens about race relations and civic responsibility, perhaps they need to re-take their high school government classes. The Constitution specifically states that no Corruption of blood shall occur for that most heinous of civic crimes: treason. Why, then, is it permissible to suggest that Delegate Hargrove is somehow tainted by the actions of a forefather? Actions that, by the by, were legal, socially acceptable, and widespread in 1850s Virginia?
Ms. Meola had best contact Child Services and have my children removed from my care, since I have an ancestor who was a pirate. You never know when I might take up drinking rum and stealing while giving up brushing my teeth! Arr!
Black Indians and white Indians, too.
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