When it Comes to Slavery, We’re Stuck on STUPID

About Slavery; Why is one teaching bullet point (out of 195) about slavery, the weekly national tempest in a teapot? Because anything that can be used as a political weapon will be. Words are always weaponized in the Great U.S. Culture War. A conversation on what public schools should teach about U.S. slavery can’t be had. People are stuck on stupid about slavery.

Frankly, anything said – however innocuous or factual – about slavery, racism, The Recent Unpleasantness (1861-1865), all things Confederate, the South, abortion, homosexuality, Gender Dysphoria aka all things “Trans”, masculinity, Christianity, climate change, Covid, and Islam is fighting words.

It’s said that all great evils are based on damnable lies. Slavery in the U.S. was a great evil. Our national “original sin.” It doesn’t matter that slavery existed from pre-historic times. That the indigenous Indian tribes in the Americas had slavery. That there was more slavery in Spanish and Portuguese colonies. That there was and still is, much, much more slavery throughout Islam.

The damnable lie in the 1600s was that persons of African descent could be kept in chattel slavery for generations, but those of European descent could not – based on the color of skin. The lie was an awful answer to the extreme labor shortage in 13 English colonies.

Today, the Human Secularist Totalitarians and race pimps lie that Black History isn’t taught, isn’t taught properly, with enough anger, or isn’t taught with enough focus to make political points for Democrats.

Bovine scatology.

Slavery has been taught well for at least 60 years for those who choose to read.

I still have my additional text from my Virginia High School “American Civilization” class in 1966-67 – “The Peculiar Institution, Slavery in Ante-Bellum South (1956).” This book gave specific and explicit examples of the cruelty and abiding evil of slavery in the U.S. Also, it showed the complexity of a widespread, multi-faceted human institution. It wasn’t a cartoon.

Therin, lies the challenge.

How do you teach a complex subject when so many people choose to be stupid, and aggressively confident in their stupidity? Furthermore, when their stupidity exceeds their ignorance?

Ignorance what someone doesn’t know. Stupidity is what someone is incapable of learning.

The ignorant and stupid Left would ridicule the “Peculiar Institution” today because it didn’t report only the most awful aspects of slavery. It didn’t report only the awful, because the records don’t show only the awful.

So, what can be said?

Start with real history. Competing facts, opposing narratives, contradictory conclusions co-existing for the same space and time. Draw conclusions cautiously, and wherever possible, backed by rational empiricism. Examine quantifiable, testable hypotheses with unstilted rigor. Allow for differences of opinion, but not differences in facts.

Then, teach as best one can to whoever is willing to listen and learn. Stand up against all those who insist on remaining ignorant and stupid. Disagree with them in public. Mock them when it’s effective.

Finally, use memes, tweets, movies, and songs to further the telling the tales to folks who’ll never read a long article, let alone a book. Look at the effect of one song – Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” Consider the devastating boycott of Bud Light. Imagine how to turn the tables on the brouhaha about one bullet in Florida’s history education. Publicize the other good points and challenge the deaf, dumb, and blind Commies to argue against them?

Above all, take the damnable lie that slavery stood on and show how it applies today to the new racism of CRT, intersectionality, and DEI. Expose the lie that skin color matters.

Anytime someone says anything about “Diversity” ask them, politely, to define Diversity. Push them to peel the onion on their definition to get to the basic bean counting based on race. And race alone. Point out how that is racism – by definition.

When they say the differences between Blacks and Whites on income, imprisonment, etc. indicate systemic racism, point out that any bi-variate distribution proves nothing. Never proves cause and effect.

If they give you deer-in-the-headlights stare at the mention of “bi-variate distribution”, tell them they have the wrong independent variable. That you have to use all the relevant independent variables to do a valid multi-variate quantitative analysis. On second thought, that may cause the same dull stare.

Just explain that fatherless households may account for more men in prison than color of skin.

If you do your homework, there’s a sound reply to every stupid thing said about slavery, racism, white supremacy, white privilege, reparations, etc.

Critical Race Theory, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, and every other racial mantra of Cultural Marxism is based on damnable lies. Every racial wedge issue leads to evil outcomes in execrable identity politics and tribalism.

When people go stupid on slavery, like they have about the Florida history standards, speak up.

In Virginia, our Republican Governor’s appointments to the State Board of Education and public input – like mine – changed the history and social science standards of learning from woke to worthwhile in 2022.

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