Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
it’s important to acknowledge the domestic enslavement living through prisons and the police, but this system absolutely includes the borders and immigration laws, which exist to produce a slave class of workers who are quite literally non-citizens with no rights so that capitalists can exploit them and retaliate with deportation, often to homelands torn by war or poverty because of the U.S./the West.
there’s a book here, Fields of Resistance, that’s really informative. I’m in the middle of it but it’s been great so far
tldr: borders exist to enslave people
Abolish borders, abolish prisons, abolish ICE, abolish the police. They’re different machines of the same system
“The widely circulated timeline created by @Zerflin does a great job in showing how recently slavery & segregation occurred & that they lasted longer than the modern era.
“I’d like to offer this timeline as another way of viewing the same period of history to show the constancy of both Black resistance in US & efforts of the white power structure to maintain racial caste since 1619.”
I just left a plantation tour in Louisiana. I have a lot to say…
SAY IT!
I honestly thought I knew everything about slavery. Not so.
The owner of this particular plantation had it built by slaves for 3 years. Every brick was handmade. Over 120,000 bricks on 2,000+ acres of land (this place was huge.) The clay used for the bricks came from the Mississippi River. The majority of the slaves are buried under the Levees and water. Some are buried with their Masters. Not allowed to live with them but could be dead with them.
Before you enter the house, there’s a list of slaves who lived here including their age and how much they were purchased for. 124 total. Some slaves were worth as little as $25. As young as 5 years old.
On this particular plantation, the owner was big on punishment…he used noise making neck restraints. Imagine three 4lb balls around your neck with bells inside. Children were restrained by ankle locks that connected between their ankles.
This was a sugar cane plantation, one the worst practices to involve slaves because of its danger. A lot of slaves were decapitated, amputees and killed from the fields and machinery. A lot of kids lost their lives creating sugar. Speaking of children, a child stood in the living room and operated the fan with a string while guests ate dinner. As young as 3 years old.
Here’s what shook me even further: Before the Civil War, a lot of slave owners were going in debt and could not afford their properties and were not producing enough cotton and sugar to maintain their lifestyles. Slaves were used as HUMAN CREDIT CARDS. Slaves were a guaranteed line of credit. You could get HALF of your property’s value depending on how many healthy and able slaves you owned.
My people were human credit cards and lines of credit to BANKS. We were property. We were labeled as equipment and nothing more.
There is no such thing as a good slave owner. They owned my PEOPLE and used them as checks and balances. This cycle continues with prison and brutality. I do not want to hear shit about “Why can only Black people say this or that?” I don’t want to hear shit about “we’re all human.”
And by the way, not one of those slaves are at rest. Those spirits were so alive, you could feel their presence, their pain and someday, their revenge.
The front of the house and yard. This plantation was huge. Just thinking about my ancestors tending to all this land…
SOME of the enslaved names, ages, race and purchase price.
The living room.
Interior.
The dining room. That piece hanging above the table is ORIGINAL to the house. That’s the fan that a slave as young as 3 years old had to operate manually with a string.
The view from the balcony in the main hallway. This is how they looked over the slaves while they worked in the yard.
*sigh* Names of the enslaved that occupied the shacks. Children included. Their names are written inside one of the shacks. I’m not sure if there are other names inside other shacks because I could only handle 2. After I saw the punishment equipment, I left.
Slave Shacks. These are NOT the original shacks. These were built to imitate them.
Slaves for Sale Ads.
The landscape of Slavery throughout the United States in 1860. JUST 1860. Let that sink in.
Note: The last time the home was OWNED by a Louisiana citizen was 1972. This is her original bedroom, her lipstick is STILL on the dresser. This is why the house has been updated since slavery times because it was occupied up until 1972. Regardless, this used to be where house slaves slept.
This really fuckin happened, don’t let white people tell you that it’s in the past & to let it go.
Despite what white people of today want to believe, it was NOT that long ago. At all.
Like, my father who is absolutely still alive (he’s sleeping right now though cause it’s after midnight) vividly remembers being packed in a car with some of his siblings and my grandparents and going to hear MLK speak in DC
Rosa Parks only died in 2005
I can only trace my paternal lineage back to my great-great grandfather who was an escaped slave. Like, me myself is only three generations removed from chattel slavery
The daughter of a slave was in the opening ceremony of the National African American History Museum
This isn’t even touching on the ramifications of Jim Crow Laws. There are literally Sundown Towns (though not with the blatant signage they used to have at the height of Jim Crow) and redlining is still a thing that happens (Google them if you’re unfamiliar)
I really hate that when White people talk about slavery and segregation, they frequently act like it was so long ago because it wasn’t. And that green strip? We’re still going through systemic oppression and racist practices held over from the segregation era. It’s not like the US desegregated and everything was copacetic after
Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to go to a White school is only two months older than my dad
Please, if you’re White, really try to conceptualize how recent these events were and what’s still going on. Just because something is historical doesn’t necessarily mean it happened a long time ago or that its effects aren’t still felt
Racism, white supremacy, and the confederacy have touched things you don’t even think about. For example, I had no idea that Six Flags was named as such because it’s named for the six flags that have flown over what is now Texas: Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, United States, and the Confederacy. Six Flags is only JUST announcing that they’ll be taking the Confederate flags down (in Texas and Georgia) in the wake of Charlottesville.
It’s wild to me that people don’t know that. I used to go on daily rants about how Six Flags in other states don’t make sense.
Amazing Grace was named after a slave ship
Slavery, in particular, has had a huge impact on American (and British, Spanish, etc) culture. In terms of medical advancement, though, I don’t think people fully grasp how much medical knowledge was discovered through slavery.
There were so many American, British, and Spanish doctors boarding slave ships to examine the bodies of living, dying, and dead slaves. Most medical knowledge of illnesses like smallpox, yellow fever, malaria and so many more; came from slaves who were examined constantly by doctors. The doctors experimented on ways to raise mortality rates and fertility, as a lot of the knowledge we know on fertility came from slaves as well. An epidimic of blindness on a french slave ship in 1819 is what provided majority of the medical knowledge on what is known as trachoma. The list really goes on, you’d be surprised by the amount of medical knowledge that can be attributed to slavery.
A lot of mental disorders and illnesses were not even identified or discussed in any sort of medical text until the symptoms were displayed by slaves. In a time where mental illness was said to have been caused by demons, doctors began relating psychological trauma to slaves. When doctors witnessed the psychological damage that’d been caused by being severely underfed and left to sit in complete darkness with hundreds of other people crying and screaming; this sparked use of words such as melancholia, nostalgia, and schism in psychological contexts.
Basically, putting an inumberable amount of humans through unthinkable physical and psychological trauma is how we have majority of our medical knowledge today. I used the word doctor a lot in this comment but by no means were they interested in the wellbeing of these slaves. It was common knowledge amongst medical professionals, even way after slavery, that black bodies were nothing more than cadavers. Doctors have been quoted in as late as the 1960s as saying, publicly, that black people’s only purpose is to serve the medical community, that it’d be cheaper and more beneficial to use us for medical purposes than to send us to school.
So how can someone say that we are not owed reparations, when this much medical knowledge has been quite literally learned through the torture and deaths of our ancestors.
brb gotta get some paper towels and sop up the gray matter thats leaking out of my ears
unpopular opinion but people try to cover up the fact that many 18th century white women, while not having the same power as their husbands, were still awful racists. they’re constantly portrayed as being “’ benevolent masters ”’ who took pity on the people they were keeping enslaved and were the exact opposite to their emotionless husbands, and it just isn’t true. white women participated in vile treatment and the oppression of black men and women just as much as men did. and by calling them ‘pure babies who could do no wrong’, etc, it isn’t helping get rid of the stereotype either.
to quote directly from Olivia A Cole’s blog when she was discussing the issue:
“But white women whipped black bodies. They burned them. They posed next to the murdered bodies of black people who were lynched. They called people n*ggers. They scratched faces. They separated families. While wearing their pretty dresses, they ruined lives.”
The Founding mothers are perfect examples of this.
Martha Washington is this feisty broad who took care of herself while always being there for her powerful hubby, right? Well, yeah. She also had no desire to release her own slaves, gave young women as WEDDING GIFTS, & only released her husbands slaves early because she was afraid someone would assassinate her to get freed early, in accordance with George’s will.
& Dolley Madison was the charismatic first lady who lit up rooms with her decadent outfits & strong, extroverted personality, getting even her reclusive hubby to join in on the fun, right? Well, yes. She was also the one slaves FEARED at Montpelier, to the point where a hired chef caught some of the slaves stealing food & threatened to tell Mr. Madison. They laughed, until he threatened to tell DOLLEY.
Women could be as bad as their husbands.
Women could be WORSE than their husbands.
& frankly, if you don’t believe they had the agency to be horrible, horrible racists, you’re playing into their husband’s belief that they didn’t have agency at all.
Kayla Renee Parker shared her story of how she managed to expose her racist teacher who appeared to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“She wears a safety pin so everyone knows she’s an ally for minorities. Her cover photo has a Black power fist. She regularly discusses her love for the Obamas, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and her admonishment for this current administration.”
However, it wasn’t enough to hide her racism.
It all started with a simple question from a test. The question stated,
“Historical research on African-American families during slavery shows that: A) Family ties weren’t important in African cultures where the slaves ancestors originated; consequently, family bonds were never strong among slaves. B) Two-parent families were extremely rare during the slave period. C) Black family bonds were destroyed by the abuses of slave owners, who regularly sold off family members to other slave owners. D) Most slave families were headed by two parents.
So, obviously, Kayla chose C. And it was incorrect. According to the teacher, the right answer was D.
The argument started when Kayla wrote her an email and respectfully provided the professor the evidence, even directly from their textbook. “However, my Professor continued to argue that family bonds were not destroyed and that 2/3 of slave families were headed by two parents.” The teacher cited Herbert Gutman, sociologist, who died in 1985 and surely took part in the whitewashing of Black history.
When they met to discuss the subject in person the professor gave Kayla books to read adding such statements as, “This book would be good for you to read. I believe it’s $6 so I could buy it for you if you’d like.” The stated that she spent her whole life fighting for minorities and something like “I’ve got Black friends.”
When the girl was proving her opinion, she heard more comments as, “You’re talking to someone who has spent their entire life fighting for people of diversity and marched with my Black brothers and sisters.”
As the result, the teacher asked Kayla to lecture the class on the topic and that was her fatal mistake.
Kayla took all her courage and made a presentation on the topic she was passionate about. She defended Black people and Black history.Here’sher presentation.
That was the point where the story should end, but NO.
The professor obviously forgot about privacy settings on Facebook and posted offensive comments about Kayla.
The professor’s last words to Kayla were:
This time The University of Tennessee stood up for the student. In July the teacher officially retiring from the university.
This is fucking insane.
The last paragraph of kaya’s story is everything:
To my Professor, I forgive you for robbing me of my focus last semester. I forgive you for calling my Father, a graduate of Yale Medical School, “educationally challenged.”I even forgive you for threatening me. However, I do not forgive you for being willfully ignorant to the subjects you teach students. I also do not forgive you for claiming to be an ally. An ally is so much more than wearing a safety pin. It also requires that you listen to the needs of Black people and respect the issues that we raise. When a Black student raises a concern over the way you are portraying her history, referring to all you’ve done for Black people doesn’t change the fact that you’re portraying slavery as some kind of slavery lite. As an educator and as an ally, you are not expected to know everything but this does not abdicate you from the responsibility of always continuing to learn- even from your students. Additionally, if you wanted to actually help Black men and women, you’d value our words. Unfortunately, your actions simply mirror how America values Black people in today’s society.
This Black girl is a hero who overcame her fear and faced her teacher defending Black people and Black history.
#StayWoke #BlackPride #StopRacists
this is why…white women…cant teach black people, or people of color as a whole. White supremacy has a long history of setting up white women to destroy people of color namely black and native people) via education.
Not a fucking ONE of those people on Facebook said anything. Even if they didn’t know the context that is a bunch of grown ass adults crowing about ruining a student’s life.
You have a thoughtful, engaged student that you won’t listen to, you antagonise and condescend and then claim the place of wronged person and talk about revenge? On a student? For questioning you? For challenging you?
Fuck this woman and fuck her empirical data nonsense. I can’t say I’ve done the research to knew what percent of slave families were raised by two parents, maybe it was the majority… That still doesn’t change the fact that slavery DID tear families apart who might be sold and torn from each other’s lives. How far up your own ass do you have to be to ignore that reality and promote only your selective version of the truth?
