I’ve been reading Richard Brookhiser’s excellent intellectual history of Abraham Lincoln, Founders’ Son—and, simultaneously, following Ron DeSantis’s execrable insistence that slavery had its upside: it taught skills like blacksmithing. Lincoln had a few things to say about that in his debates with Stephen Douglas. In fact, he seemed obsessed by the image of a black woman baking bread and not receiving the fruits of her labor. In a speech in Springfield, Illinois, in 1857, he said:
In some respects, [a black woman] is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she makes with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal and the equal of all others.
He returned to the theme later at Alton, Illinois:
[There] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
Now, as we know, Lincoln was not an abolitionist or even an egalitarian; he was a reluctant emancipator. He flat out says in Springfield that the black woman is not his equal. His “solution” to slavery was to send blacks back to Africa. He was, in that way, a creature of his times. But he understood the essential principle at the heart of slavery, a principle that appears to elude Ron DeSantis: that forced labor is immoral. That if you are forced to work for free, you aren’t free. That if you are an enslaved blacksmith, you are not receiving the fruits of your labor. And worse, you are a piece of property. You can be beaten at will, your wife can be raped and impregnated against her will. You can be separated from your family and sold down the river—your skills enriching your market price—at your owner’s whim. If these fundamental facts of slavery are not taught in the schools—and taught with rigor and passion—then the schools are distorting, downplaying this profound American disgrace. Any attempt to on-the-other-hand or “balance” slavery is beyond disgusting.
DeSantis has doubled down on Florida’s decision to teach children that slavery was a perverse sort of vocational education program. In a press conference last week, he said: "They're probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life."
What nonsense. What crap. Now, it is true that slaves had skills. In fact, David Hackett Fischer has devoted an entire and very fat book, African Founders, to the skills that blacks taught whites in colonial America. But the moral obtuseness of DeSantis’s claim is staggering. It’s the equivalent of saying that some Jews became successful dentists because of the skills they learned picking gold fillings from the mouths of corpses at Auschwitz. It is, to me, a very bright line—or should be: Every Republican should be asked, Do you agree with DeSantis?
Republicans have an absolute responsibility to be clear on this because, as Tim Scott said in 1995, according to Politico: “The Republican Party by and large has been a racist organization and still to this day exists as a racist organization to a large extent…Being a Republican shouldn't mean being a racist. I don't think it should be an oxymoron for a black to be a Republican. It should mean that you are pro-business, pro-family and that you are anti-tax.”
Amazingly, in an era of great racial progress, the Republican Party has regressed since Scott said that in 1995. This is largely the work of Donald Trump, but DeSantis—in his crude, chuckleheaded way—continues to make the mistake of trying to outflank Trump to the right. His campaign descends from stupidity to obscenity.
It is notable that Tim Scott is pulling close to DeSantis in the most recent Iowa polling. And, to the dismay of the Afro-Academic left, the second half of Scott’s formulation is right: a majority of blacks are conservative when it comes to crime, social issues and immigration, among other issues. In 2020, Trump increased his support in the black community (it’s still tiny, of course). This trend will increase as the black middle class grows; it is certainly increasing among Latinos…unless the GOP continues its white nationalist memes and dog whistles.
Back in the 1990s there were competing Republican and Democratic ethnic fantasy scenarios. Karl Rove dreamed that the Republicans would become a majority party if they could win the Latino vote; George W. Bush—no bigot—agreed. Ruy Teixeira and John Judis believed that the Democrats would thrive as the electorate became less white. Neither of these fantasies materialized. But the Democrats have stayed true to their egalitarian principles, even if the left foolishly wants to replace equality with equity. And the Republicans have stayed true to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy…and now, via Trump and DeSantis, they’re getting worse.
If you’re not yet a member of our hardy Sanity band, you can join us—for free, for now:
They’ve done this for a long time. There were textbooks from Texas saying the slaves were “workers.”
Lately people have been trying to argue that them being slaves and raped incessantly was better than being than dead. That’s up for argument, but plenty of rape victims feel suicidal after one event, let alone years of repeated events.
Others argued that Irish and English being enslaved was anywhere near as bad as American Slavery of Africans or excusing it because other tribes sold them into slavery.
“They sold them into slavery! They did it first!” Is something your six year old says when they threw a toy at the four year old. None of that stands up when it comes to how brutal American Slavery was.
Joe, you are way off base. Democrats have been the party of racism since the late 1880's. They created the KKK, They voted against the Equal Rights Amendment. They pushed back against integration. Democrats enacted Jim Crow laws. How convenient for you to forget the Democratic past. Today's Democrats are the true racists. It is the racism of diminished expectations. They tell blacks that they can't measure up on their own and need big government handouts to survive. Republicans on the on the hand know that they can and do compete very well against other races including whites. Quit making people victims and help them succeed.