Potentially sensitive PoAC
Nov. 24th, 2005 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageThis came from a comment I made in ursulav's journal, about how I found the association of slave ownership with an evil character to be sloppy character portrayal or a serious misunderstanding of historical realities. The return comment could be read a calling me a racist, and certainly did say that this was a cop-out to diminish the impact of slavery and apologize for the oppressors. (The comment wasn't from Ursula, btw.)
Here is my response.
I am not negating the evil of slavery. I am not negating the trials that slaves went through. I make it very clear to my students that those were very real, and very serious, and that they still occur and the values that inspire them still need to be fought.
I am, however, arguing against one point. This was not dehumanization. It was a different value system placed on life in general - all life, human included. They didn't decide, "Yes, all humans have value just because they're human, but we're going to make it so these humans have less value so that we can use them." They didn't acknowledge human value in the same way we do. NONE OF THEM DID. There was no serious effort at any point in history until modern times (i.e. the Renaissance and later) to abolish slavery, as far as I know. It was simply not seen as evil in and of itself.
To say that it was a conscious violation of human dignity, and that it's the grossest we have seen in a very long time, implies several things I don't think are true. First, it implies a similar concept of human dignity to ours. Second, it implies a blip in history. Third, it implies that there were those who disagreed with it vocally and that the oppressors were aware of the disagreements. NONE OF THOSE THINGS WERE TRUE until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
If you're arguing only nineteenth-century America, you'd have a point. You couldn't have known the history that I teach my kids, so I'll fill you in: I teach ancient civilizations to ten-year-olds. A completely different context.
It is not necessary to downplay the evils of slavery in order to point out that most people throughout history have not seen it as evil. That is simply a fact. Even the Bible, the document that was most often cited as the reason for the great social change that was abolition in the West, never said slavery was wrong; in fact, it laid down quite extensive guidelines for how people should treat their slaves if they were Christians.
If you're telling me that my race and class have impacted my perspective, of course they have. I'm from a social group that were undereducated working-class people until two generations ago. My ancestors were slaves too - admittedly much longer ago than two hundred years. If you go back far enough, every ethnic group has slavery in its past, with the possible exception of most Han Chinese. Slavery was a fact of life in most parts of the world until quite recently in historical terms.
Here is my response.
I am not negating the evil of slavery. I am not negating the trials that slaves went through. I make it very clear to my students that those were very real, and very serious, and that they still occur and the values that inspire them still need to be fought.
I am, however, arguing against one point. This was not dehumanization. It was a different value system placed on life in general - all life, human included. They didn't decide, "Yes, all humans have value just because they're human, but we're going to make it so these humans have less value so that we can use them." They didn't acknowledge human value in the same way we do. NONE OF THEM DID. There was no serious effort at any point in history until modern times (i.e. the Renaissance and later) to abolish slavery, as far as I know. It was simply not seen as evil in and of itself.
To say that it was a conscious violation of human dignity, and that it's the grossest we have seen in a very long time, implies several things I don't think are true. First, it implies a similar concept of human dignity to ours. Second, it implies a blip in history. Third, it implies that there were those who disagreed with it vocally and that the oppressors were aware of the disagreements. NONE OF THOSE THINGS WERE TRUE until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
If you're arguing only nineteenth-century America, you'd have a point. You couldn't have known the history that I teach my kids, so I'll fill you in: I teach ancient civilizations to ten-year-olds. A completely different context.
It is not necessary to downplay the evils of slavery in order to point out that most people throughout history have not seen it as evil. That is simply a fact. Even the Bible, the document that was most often cited as the reason for the great social change that was abolition in the West, never said slavery was wrong; in fact, it laid down quite extensive guidelines for how people should treat their slaves if they were Christians.
If you're telling me that my race and class have impacted my perspective, of course they have. I'm from a social group that were undereducated working-class people until two generations ago. My ancestors were slaves too - admittedly much longer ago than two hundred years. If you go back far enough, every ethnic group has slavery in its past, with the possible exception of most Han Chinese. Slavery was a fact of life in most parts of the world until quite recently in historical terms.
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Re: Dictionary.com:
Date: 2005-11-25 04:32 am (UTC)I'd like to point out that I am NOT and never was an anthropology major. I probably misused the term from your viewpoint, and I will admit to not having been happy with it from my own, but I couldn't think of the word I wanted, so there you go. My point was to say that one person is thinking in very different, non-historical and more emotional, cultural terms (and I don't mean historically cultural, but rather, what was acceptable within their own system, whether it included castes, slavery, etc), and
Now, that doesn't give anyone the right to be insulting, but did the person come out and call her a racist? I haven't read the post yet, so I can't say. Did they assume they knew all that she did about the history of slavery across several historical periods and had read her correctly? Quite possibly, and that was erroneous. It would, however, be equally incorrect of us to assume that they called her racist or felt she thought one way or another about the matter at all without asking them for clarification on the matter.
I didn't mean to raise your hackles about anthropology by using it in place of the word I couldn't remember, but it was close to what I was trying to say and I assumed the gist would be perceived by the other things surrounding it.
Assumptions are terrible, aren't they?
Re: Dictionary.com:
Date: 2005-11-25 12:07 pm (UTC)She didn't come out and call me a racist in so many words, but she did say that the only people who could afford the attitude I had were white middle-class people who would never have to deal with the ramifications of this. This was after stating that my viewpoint was a social cop-out that downplayed the horror and apologized for the oppressors. I resisted the urge to ask her if she thought I was racist, because that wouldn't have solved anything. Lines in the sand were not my goal.