From: Pat Inniss (inniss@sprynet.com)
Date: Sat Jul 28 2001 - 09:49:27 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Olga writes
>
> > Remember - whites profited from UNPAID slave labor for hundreds of years.
> > When a tourist goes to visit the White House, it is rarely mentioned - if at
> > all - that it was built with unpaid slave labor. How shameful - both this
> > historic fact, and the fact that not many people are aware of this.
>
> You are quite wrong. I don't think I've ever meant anyone so
> ignorant of history as to be unaware of slavery. It's usually
> put forth as the reason that the Civil War was fought, "to free
> the slaves". Abraham Lincoln is probably best known "for freeing
> the slaves." Okay :-) maybe you didn't hear this growing up
> because you weren't here.
> <snip>
Lee -
Congratulations on getting me to de-lurk. That takes a lot.
When you say that someone is "quite wrong," a little specificity would
help. I can find nothing in Olga's statement that is untrue. Are you
saying that whites DIDN'T profit from slave labor? Or that slaves didn't
provide much of the labor to build the White House? When you say that
the Civil War wasn't fought to free the slaves, you're just dancing
around the issue, which in any case is merely tangential, at best. If
you next intend to suggest, as is popular in some circles, that the
issue of slavery wasn't the root cause of the Civil War, then it would
become painfully obvious that you are the one who is "ignorant of
history," or at least have exposed yourself only to the most biased and
atavistic sources. Rather than clutter up the list with a lengthy post
on that tired subject I'll direct you to something I threw together on
this subject:
http://www.eskimo.com/~pierres/opinions/opinion050800.html. I was kind
of hoping this would be cleared up by the close of the previous century
- now I'm shooting for 2100. The persistence of this type of BS is in
itself enough to disprove the myth of inevitable progress.
Regards,
Pat Inniss
inniss@sprynet.com
http://home.sprynet.com/~inniss
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