Saturday, September 20, 2014

Tote that i-Pad, Lift that Smartphone

Don't you just love it when 21st century white, male "historians" who live and work and drive in air conditioned comfort, who hold cushy jobs in academia and fly hither and yon for TV appearances, conferences and symposia, who have hundreds of channels on their wide, flat-screen TVs, and smart-phones that connect them to the world, who cook their designer meals in minutes in microwave ovens that don't raise the temperature in their kitchens, and who ... but you get the idea.

Don't you just love it when they tell you precisely what was in the mind of a slave over 150 years ago because THEY know and you don't?  Who purport to tell us what slaves THOUGHT and what they FELT?  Who presume that their own extremely un-slave like mind and life experience somehow uniquely qualifies them to teach us what enslavement was like? What actual thoughts transpired in the slave's mind?

Oh yes, these folks really know all about slave life....

Tote that i-Pad, gentlemen. Lift that Smartphone.


 
 
Preposterous and hilarious, in equal measure. And I thoroughly reject it.

There's a reason why these folks minimize the slave narratives. Heaven forbid you go to the source instead of to these academics for information about slaves.

If you want to know what slaves thought and felt, read what THEY said:  Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938

10 comments :

  1. Corey sez, "You do know when those slave narratives were gathered right?

    Duh, wellz, I thank it wuz las' week some time...

    Yes, Corey. The Federal Writers' Project was from 1936-1938. It was conducted during the Great Depression. I've known this since junior high, at least. You make yourself look like a fool, and worse, when you ask such stupid questions out of your lust to denigrate.

    "You do know that many of those interviewing those slaves where whites...right?"

    THEY WUZ? They wuz WHITE?
    Oh, lawdy, that makes the whole project suspect, don't it? The ex-slaves wuz LYIN' cuz they wuz interviewed by w'ite folk. You cain't b'lieve a thang they said....

    I guess in the twisted academic world, it makes PERFECT SENSE to ignore what slaves actually said (because they were saying it to w'ite folk, don'tcha know) but then lap up what WHITE ACADEMICS today say about slavery because THEY KNOW and THEY UNDERSTAND what slavery was like for slaves BETTER than the slaves knew and understood it -- despite the fact that slaves EXPERIENCED it and today's arrogant white academics HAVE NOT AND DID NOT.

    Yes. Arrogance is highly characteristic of flogger academics.They know they're arrogant, and seem quite proud of it, and can't understand when people are put off by it.

    Back in August, Simpson lamented anti-intellectualism in Confederate Heritage and posted this snippet from Huffpoo: "...There is an aversion to education, a rising tide of anti-intellectualism, contempt for scientific investigation, and condescension towards the study of the humanities."

    Maybe, maybe not. But when it comes to the lily white, academic floggers, the aversion I've seen is to their sheer arrogance. The aversion is to the animosity these floggers display toward those they don't like because they see things differently. The aversion is to the flogger lust to denigrate, and -- but you get the point.

    As an aside, Simpson bellyaches about Ben Jones, the SCV's new honcho of heritage defense, and sez, "I find Ben Jones amusing. I also find him disappointing. His posts here suggest that his appointment as chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans was little more than a cosmetic change..."

    So? Is Simpson a member of the SCV? Then what on earth does it matter WHAT he thinks about it?


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    1. You should tell them that those white interviewers were Yankees who were expecting terrible stories of horror, but were disappointed when the opposite was true "I didn't want to be free; I didn't want to live like the poor white folks."

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXDn61jNPxE&list=PLTpswYh24E4NRpSsep9GLdeiO2skv86oV&index=1

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  2. If Corey's breeches were on fire and he didn't want to believe it when you pointed it out, he'd say you misinterpreted the smoke, or didn't smell it right. He always demands sources, but will never accept them as valid, even if it's thousands of letters written by Northern Soldiers. Anything that doesn't comport with his view is worthless. Period. Arguing with him is like arguing with a fence post.

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  3. Furthermore, the people who interviewed those former slaves were all Yankees. People one wouldn't expect to look upon the South with favour.

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  4. I haven't read up on who the interviewers were, James, but they were in the employ of the federal government. Corey, no doubt, sees no potential for bias in them....

    He makes the sort of assumptions you'd expect biased and prejudiced people to make -- that because I reject the notion of the flogger academics as the sole fount of all knowledge about slavery, that means I blindly swallow the slave narratives without allowing common sense to engage...

    I think it is hilarious, and typical, that he's willing to drone repeatedly about the "unreliability" of the slave narratives, but hasn't said a word about the lurid excerpt from a "historian" being discussed and palmed off as a factual account of slavery over at Levin's flog...said lurid excerpt having been written in the 21st century by a man who has never been a slave....

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    1. I think I read somewhere that the interviewers were Northern academics. I do think Corey rejects the narratives themselves.
      narratives themselves. For

      reasons stated above. In his mind, the liliterally thousands of letters and statements of record by Northern soldiers, officers and political leaders are isolated instances, taken out of context, or misquoted. Southerners, on the other hand, are always lying, or making up excuses after the fact.

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    2. James, you want to hear something hilarious? Corey sez you have no idea what he thinks... This, from a guy who claims to know that people he doesn't know are racists, haters, etc....

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    3. I know what he thinks, because he says what he thinks. Demanding sources, then applying disqualifications to them, tells me he doesn't much like what they say. Now, what I don't know is why he worries
      so much about what people in Virginia get up to. Or why he'd comment on a Confederate memorial in TTexas.

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    4. That's the difference between us and them; they care too much about other peoples business that ain't their own.

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    5. We were taught from childhood that it's rude to butt into other people's business or conversations. If If I ever did that back then, mama woulda slapped my face off of my head. You don't butt in, period. Who but a Yankee drives thousands of miles just to tell other people what to do?

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