http://samuel-warde.com/2013/09/slavery-remains-inspiration-right-parts-south/
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand payment for their work.
The practice of slavery predates written records and has existed in many places, even Aristotle justified slavery, and while his justification today smacks of abhorrent sophistry, his arguments had no racist connotations. For Aristotle, slavery was justified for captives of war and their offspring, whom he believed were incapable of directing their own lives, and would therefore be better off. Even the Bible has passages attempting to justify slavery. Both slave owners and abolitionists quoted text from the Bible.
There is no plausible justification for slavery of any kind. In fact, the prohibition against slavery is one of the few ‘universal’ moral propositions accepted by every country in the world. Even though today slavery is illegal in every country in the world, there are still an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide; some opponents are hopeful that slavery can be eradicated by 2042.[3]
The American slave trade was particularly pernicious. It largely came about because property owners had indentured servants, who worked off their indentures and became competitors to their former masters. This caused a shift to African slaves, who were chattel, owned by their masters. Further, Africans were not only chattel that could be bought and sold, they were regarded as less than a full person. In fact, they were, for purposes of taxation, consider three-fifths of a free person. Known as the Three-Fifths Compromise reached at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 between the North and Southern states, Article 1, Section 2 Paragraph 3—States were to be taxed according to the Number of free persons, and not Indians, and three fifths of all other Persons, obviously referring to African slaves.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected president, a Republican who opposed slavery, but whose party did not adopt the 13th Amendment as part of its party’s platform until Lincoln ran for re-election in 1864. The Amendment was passed by Congress in 1865 and slavery was abolished. However, this did not stop the hate and bigotry, and lead to state adopted Jim Crow Laws, principally in the South.
Racism is alive and well in this country, and an integral part of the Republican’s tactics used in personally opposing the president and his policies. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is landmark piece of legislation that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. The implications of this landmark piece of legislation are way beyond the scope of this article, but it has been widely seen as the nail-in-the- coffin, which motivated Conservative Southern Democrats to become Republicans. President Obama during the last election polled 40 points behind with these white voters in the South, while only polling behind between 4 to 8 points with white voters in swing states.
A new study by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen“suggests that there may be a simple explanation for this divide — slavery.”
“Drawing on a sample of more than 39,000 southern whites, we show that whites who currently live in counties that had high concentrations of slaves in 1860 are on average more conservative and express colder feelings towards African Americans than whites who live elsewhere in the South. That is, the larger the number of slaves in his or her county of residence in 1860, the greater the probability that a white Southerner today will identify as a Republican, express opposition to race-coded policies such as affirmative action, and express greater racial resentment towards African Americans. We show that these differences are robust to a variety of factors, including geography and mid-19th century economic conditions and political attitudes. We also show that our results strengthen when we instrument for the prevalence of slavery using local measures of the agricultural suitability to grow cotton. In fact,our findings indicate that in the counterfactual world where the South had no slaves in 1860, the political views of white Southerners today would be indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white Northerners.”
Even after 150 years, racism and bigotry flourishes, particularly in parts of the American South, but not exclusively. The historical persistence and resentment of African Americans by radically Conservative white folks who align themselves with the Republican Party, stand to be a major stumbling blocks to their own success. Some of these Southern states are among the poorest performing states both economically and educationally. Folks in these states, consistently elect representatives that throw-up obstacles–preventing adoption of the president’s policies, despite the fact that these policies are in their citizens’ best interests.
The radical Right, which also exerts itself outside of the South, has been responsible for the Tea Party and much of the extreme we see in Republican Party policy and politics. The Republican Party has come to hope that this fringe mobilizes like thinking white folks, and carries it back to national prominence. Besides the fact that “It’s Arithmetic” and they are a dying minority—their ideas are dead, and their representative come across like a bunch of crazy sociopaths:
Sen. John Cornyn regarding voter disenfranchisement says that “Facts mean little to a politicized Justice Department bent on inserting itself into the sovereign affairs of Texas and a lame-duck administration trying to turn our state blue.”
Citizens within the Springboro, Ohio school district are upset about the antics of the president and founder of the Springboro Tea Party, Sonny Thomas, who unfurled a Confederate flag this past Thursday at a school board meeting. And not satisfied with just that level of shock, he is reported to have said that African-Americans should consider themselves lucky since they are treated better in the United States than they would be if they were in “Black Countries” with “genocide.” What is more stunning was that, despite the man’s clear disruptive behavior, he was allowed to stay for the whole meeting while others the board deemed disruptive were removed.
Televangelist Pat Robinson has stated that Haiti’s natural disasters, poverty and political turmoil is due to the fact that enslaved Africans made a pact with the devil in order to win their freedom from the French.
Cruz senior’s claim that Obama ”is trying to eliminate God and impose socialism on the U.S. After all, he’d seen it happen before…A young charismatic leader rose up, talking about ‘hope’ and change’ Cruz yelled, as the crowd booed. His name was Fidel Castro.” Got it? Obama = Castro.
Let us not forget Donald Trump and his birther rants, or a few weeks ago, the crowd cheering a rodeo clown with an Obama mask, or Representative King’s comment about African Americans having “calves the size of cantaloupes”.
We surely cannot forget the statement that showed ‘the great Right ostrich’ still had its head in the sand–Reince Priebus’ infamous autopsy, an assessment of the state of the Republican Party, after Republicans took a beating in the last presidential election. Calling for more inclusion, Priebus issued a report that called for better communication strategies to avoid repelling young voters, women, African-Americans and Latinos. “Our policies are sound (my emphasis), but I think in many ways the way we communicate can be a real problem.”
Rush Limbaugh perhaps the most pernicious outside source of hatred in radical Republican politics had this to say today about the president: “Bush had Shock and Awe? We’re looking at shuck and jive here. That’s what I’m gonna name this. The Obama operation in Syria, Operation Shuck and Jive, because that’s what this is.”
The Republicans, their Conservative friends, and Tea Party supporters hold ‘freedom’ to be the paramount value…I guess they mean, only if you are white!
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