Photos of Escaped Slave Gordon at a Medical Examination, Louisiana, 1863
vintag.es
vintag.es
My ancestors fought and died to end slavery in the USA.
edit these pictures are upsetting to me. Modern politics is full of emotional drivers chosen for a response, as has been noted here and elsewhere about "outrage clicks" .. this difficult, true history, out of context, appears to be an "outrage driver" why? to fix wrongs from 160 years ago? or to advance a topic of discussion today..
As an urban dweller in a Blue state, I get sideways accosted by accusations of racism, personally, because of my skin color, pretty regularly.. as the social situation is more difficult recently, this has happened less, but with more intensity. I am defensive about this, and these are my opinions here.
Why make this about yourself and your feelings?
Just basing my opinion on your comment here. I doubt it’s solely because of your skin color.
You can’t even handle a post with no apparent agenda about the slavery of Africans in America without a rant.
So either this comment is a bad day or it’s indicative of your real life reactions, responses maybe even just body language and microaggressions that generate the responses you’ve received.
So how did I handle it? I walked away.. much later, more than a month, a old African American man was walking and appeared to be headed into that apartment complex, in the daytime. I stopped him and told him just about exactly what I just said to you. I pointed to the door the boy came from.. he nodded knowingly, as if it was not a complete shock. He looked me in the eye and said he would try to have a word with them. I have never approached that place, and few people know this story.
edit: your sig says you live "Remote SWE in Midwest US" and you "doubt" my story ?
> a three or four year old boy walks out of the door and says in loud voice "f* you white boy" .. I was upset by this, since my parents went to great lengths to teach us that racist name calling is always wrong. I did nothing to those people in that apartment.
> a three or four year old boy
This can’t possibly be the example that you’re referring to. Do you have an example of what you actually stated in your comment? Where someone just called you a racist out of the blue for no reason?
You’ll get no debate from me against the idea that all people, including Black people, can be racially discriminatory.
But how was this perpetrated broadly by multiple societies?
I try to remind myself that the part of humans that makes this possible is in all of us. I don’t think it’s anything special – there needs to be constant vigilance to ensure we don’t allow things like this over and over.
It could be illogical, but it seems true to me if this can occur for generations at such broad scale. It’s a feature of humanity, and to an unknown degree even me as a result.