MattL
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- Joined
- Aug 20, 2015
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- SF Bay Area
From the article:
In response to such criticism, representatives of the museum ask why they should have to tell students about the evils of slavery.
“They just know it,” said Gibbs Davis, a member of the nonprofit group that solicits donations and maintains the privately-owned but partially state-funded house.
The Confederate White House is only one stop on the trip to Montgomery that Alabama fourth-graders traditionally take as part of their history education and is not the sole lesson they receive about the state’s past. Some groups choose to spend more time at civil rights sites such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church or the Rosa Parks Museum.
I agree. Everyone is beaten over the head with SLAVERY!!! every time the Confederacy or Davis are mentioned. Places that tell other aspects of the story get browbeaten for daring to go off of the approved message, but they shouldn't be. It's not as if all the facts aren't out there, easily found by anyone who's looking.
Why wouldn't slavery come up? It was a significant and integral part to planter culture, life, and Southern economy (as well as American economy as a whole). Would you give an overview of Jefferson Davis and not mention the Confederacy? About Lincoln and not mention he was a President. Slavery was as much (and can possibly be argued more) important to the story of so many individuals and American cultures that unless you are purposely focusing just a on a specific piece then it needs to often be included, like any other integral topic.
We wouldn't talk about the American Revolution without taxation without representation why would we not talk about slavery with the Confederacy (or much of American history). Slaves made up 40% of the entire Confederate nation, certainly even that alone would warrant the scale at which it is fully relevant (and then of course all the economic and state rights arguments over aspects of slavery, etc).
Why should slavery be treated differently than any other topic or aspect so critical a part to economy, culture, and history and be avoided. There's nothing wrong with telling all the other important aspects, but if you talk about all those other aspects (many less significant in many ways) especially things like cotton production, the importance of cotton economy, etc, and you don't heard about the slaves and both their contributions and hardships (except how much they loved Davis) then that's literally whitewashing.
Sure if you are looking at a farm that had no slaves, maybe at a Southern manufacturing location, or something else that doesn't bridge on topics where slavery was a key aspect... then sure. Though when you are literally dancing around all the things where slavery is immensely relevant and you mostly avoid it and any negatives of it, well that's something completely different.
Slavery is also a part of the story of other regions of the Nation, but in most cases it's a smaller part of the story than in the South. That's just the reality.
To me it's no different than say talking about US pioneers into land acquired and being sure to include the key aspect of Native Americans and how that land was acquired (and hopefully some of the specifics that are relevant)... this applies to everywhere in the US including the North.
We shouldn't be afraid to talk about slavery, it is a historical fact and a significant part of much of US history, we need to own that and in a lot of ways that can help free us from the stigmas applied to it. Theres nothing wrong with being descended from slave holders, or being part of a Nation that fully embraced slavery, or from a region that expanded it greatly... it is wrong to avoid and deny those aspects that were immensely critical. We are not responsible for how those came before us handled such topics but we are responsible for how we face those topics now.