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forsythVia Obsidian Wings, I give you this bit of news:
"Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures."
Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think."
According to the post I swiped it from, the school's issued a statement saying they pulled the pamphlet because of "faulty footnotes and citation errors."
Right. I've got no words, so here's some quotes from the pamphlet:
"Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence."
"Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care."
You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.
"Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures."
Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think."
According to the post I swiped it from, the school's issued a statement saying they pulled the pamphlet because of "faulty footnotes and citation errors."
Right. I've got no words, so here's some quotes from the pamphlet:
"Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence."
"Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care."
You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.
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Re: Dont be so rash, it takes years off of your life.
Date: 2004-12-13 03:20 am (UTC)The basic problem with the "present both sides of the story" idea outlined in the first part of the reply is simple. This isn't a "side of the story", it is factually wrong on many levels, such as the two I quoted above. The life of a slave was NOT a life of "plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." It was a life of beating, unpaid labor in the fields, rape for the women often, families broken by sales and trades, minimal food to keep them alive and working, and early, unlamented deaths. That's not "clerical issues" or plagarism, that's trying to rewrite history.
As for the praise of the greatness of the teachers in preparing the students to think for themselves, I have suspicions on that, based both on this and my own prejudices, but no evidence one way or the other, so I'll leave those un-remarked on. Except to note that this isn't a matter of "shouldn't teach young children things that may sway their beliefs," this is a matter of the pamphlet being full of lies and distortions and trying to rewrite history.
If I was going to be snarky, which I could easily do, I would tear int the slam at the public schools and what the "contradictory writings" comment was about, most likely "evidence" "contradicting" evolution. But that's just an assumption on my part.
I'd also like to note that nobody was accusing the school of supporting slavery, it was a matter of sheer disbelief that a school would teach anything so blatantly factually wrong. Very good work on whoever wrote it for trying to do the jujitsu thing and try and corner anybody criticizing it as being against "controversy" and "critical thinking", which wasn't even the issue, too.