You know, I’ve been conflicted about this subject for a while. You see, my grandfather’s great grandfather was a confederate soldier. He was injured and sent back home to Alabama where he helped people during a cholera outbreak.
He was a complicated man without whom I wouldn’t be here. Was he racist? I’m sure he was. That wasn’t unusual back then for the north or the south.
Race relations are complicated everywhere. Not just in the south. Hell, not just in the USA. We lack the proper words in the English language to explain just how fucking awful slavery is. Slavery is abhorrent. Slavery is repugnant. Yet those descriptors don’t seem to properly convey just how fucked up slavery is. But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
I’m sure that a lot of people will not appreciate what I’ve said, and that’s ok. I decided that the racism in my family stops at me. My kids have never met my family. Instead I tell my kids about the lessons I learned from the parental figures I collected like Pokémon. Like Ronnie if any of you read that comment a while back.
But also, when I was a kid, every Memorial Day we would go to the cemetery where a lot of my family is buried. We’d put flowers on everyone’s graves including a confederate soldier. Not because he was racist, but because he was family. For better or for worse.
But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
That is not, in any way, a new take. That was very much the take at the time, even among certain slaveholders. For example, here’s Thomas Jefferson, a famous slaveholder, talking about the subject of slavery:
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
Here he is, saying that God hates slavery, that slavers richly deserve death by the hands of their enslaved populace, and that slavery is a great injustice. All this while having about 200 slaves himself, including several of his own children.
Slavery is not now, and was not back then, a “complicated issue”. It wasn’t a moral gray area. It was a great evil perpetrated by incredibly evil people. Whether or not the slavers themselves thought that they were doing evil is irrelevant. All this hand wringing about “Oh, the times were different back then!” is complete hogwash. Do you think that abolitionists didn’t exist? That they didn’t tell people that slavery was evil even as the first American colonists adopted the practice? Do you think that the people back then were some kind of proto-human who didn’t have the capacity for empathy or morality?
Fuck that. Your grandfather’s great grandfather fought for and defended evil. He picked the wrong side. Oh, he helped some people who were sick? Bully for him. He was still a fucking prick. Fuck him forever.
They are dead and gone. What ever feelings the dirt and stone provoke are your own. The dead flowers too are only for yourself. Me, I despise the unempethic people who brought suffering to others. They did live in a different time and any one person alone couldn’t have done enough to change all of society. If I’m going out of my way to honor a thought in my head I would chose to honor the few that did put society on the right track.
My extended family’s ancestors stole land from indigenous people that their descendants sold to provide a comfortable upper middle class life for their family. Fuck them for destroying the livelihood, culture and lives of those people. If people want to piss on their graves I wouldn’t stop them.
You know, I’ve been conflicted about this subject for a while. You see, my grandfather’s great grandfather was a confederate soldier. He was injured and sent back home to Alabama where he helped people during a cholera outbreak.
He was a complicated man without whom I wouldn’t be here. Was he racist? I’m sure he was. That wasn’t unusual back then for the north or the south.
Race relations are complicated everywhere. Not just in the south. Hell, not just in the USA. We lack the proper words in the English language to explain just how fucking awful slavery is. Slavery is abhorrent. Slavery is repugnant. Yet those descriptors don’t seem to properly convey just how fucked up slavery is. But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
I’m sure that a lot of people will not appreciate what I’ve said, and that’s ok. I decided that the racism in my family stops at me. My kids have never met my family. Instead I tell my kids about the lessons I learned from the parental figures I collected like Pokémon. Like Ronnie if any of you read that comment a while back.
But also, when I was a kid, every Memorial Day we would go to the cemetery where a lot of my family is buried. We’d put flowers on everyone’s graves including a confederate soldier. Not because he was racist, but because he was family. For better or for worse.
That is not, in any way, a new take. That was very much the take at the time, even among certain slaveholders. For example, here’s Thomas Jefferson, a famous slaveholder, talking about the subject of slavery:
Here he is, saying that God hates slavery, that slavers richly deserve death by the hands of their enslaved populace, and that slavery is a great injustice. All this while having about 200 slaves himself, including several of his own children.
Slavery is not now, and was not back then, a “complicated issue”. It wasn’t a moral gray area. It was a great evil perpetrated by incredibly evil people. Whether or not the slavers themselves thought that they were doing evil is irrelevant. All this hand wringing about “Oh, the times were different back then!” is complete hogwash. Do you think that abolitionists didn’t exist? That they didn’t tell people that slavery was evil even as the first American colonists adopted the practice? Do you think that the people back then were some kind of proto-human who didn’t have the capacity for empathy or morality?
Fuck that. Your grandfather’s great grandfather fought for and defended evil. He picked the wrong side. Oh, he helped some people who were sick? Bully for him. He was still a fucking prick. Fuck him forever.
Obligatory: https://youtu.be/FAZJVkelgcg
Knew it was this before I ever clicked the link
“I mean they visibly didn’t like it”
God, I fucking love that man. <3
They are dead and gone. What ever feelings the dirt and stone provoke are your own. The dead flowers too are only for yourself. Me, I despise the unempethic people who brought suffering to others. They did live in a different time and any one person alone couldn’t have done enough to change all of society. If I’m going out of my way to honor a thought in my head I would chose to honor the few that did put society on the right track.
My extended family’s ancestors stole land from indigenous people that their descendants sold to provide a comfortable upper middle class life for their family. Fuck them for destroying the livelihood, culture and lives of those people. If people want to piss on their graves I wouldn’t stop them.