Pro-Slavery Social Studies Textbook Approved in Louisiana

Strathos · Jun 16, 2021

Denying the existence of the southern strategy and trying to claim that Republicans and Democrats have the same policies today that they did 100 years ago is one of the most ridiculous arguments right-wingers have ever used.

Democrats used to be the party of conservatives, Republicans used to be the party of liberals. This is historical fact. You might as well say that modern Germany is the same as Nazi Germany, or modern Russia is the same as the USSR (in which case the Trump administration would be working hand-in-hand with and constantly praising communists).

wing2000 · Jun 16, 2021

Question: Is the perspective of Kate's slaves (or any slave for that matter) included in the book?

I have no issue with representing the slave owner's perspective (albeit, the text below does appear to be sympathetic....if only emancipation has not occurred....).

Strathos · Jun 16, 2021

wing2000 said:
Question: Is the perspective of Kate's slaves (or any slave for that matter) included in the book?

I have no issue with representing the slave owner's perspective (albeit, the text below does appear to be sympathetic....if only emancipation has not occurred....).

View attachment 300827

If the reviews posted beforehand are anything to go by, then no, they didn't give the perspectives of any of the slaves.

Clare73 · Jun 16, 2021

morningstar2651 said:
This is in a history textbook for middle-schoolers used in Louisiana.
I'm surprised they don't call it "the war of Northern aggression.

With this usual kind of misrepresentation, I'm not surprised its peddlars, as well as its embibers, remain so uninformed.

hislegacy · Jun 16, 2021

essentialsaltes said:
Do I need to share that list of Southern politicians who switched party affiliation again?

Only if you can substantiate the reason why they changes was racist in nature.

Otherwise it's just another wiki list that doesn't do anything.

Looking forward to it.

hislegacy · Jun 16, 2021

Strathos said:
Denying the existence of the southern strategy

Is reality - the theory of "The Southern Strategy" came out when? See if we can answer that.

Let's do a thread on the topic.

essentialsaltes · Jun 16, 2021

hislegacy said:
Only if you can substantiate the reason why they changes was racist in nature.

That's not quite right.

SummerMadness: Racist Southerners have not changed, but they did change political parties. Their racism has been consistent.
hislegacy: So has their party affiliation.

I don't need to substantiate the reason why they changed party. Just that racist Southerners did change their party.

Strom Thurmond literally ran for president as a segregationist 'Dixiecrat' and has his place in the Guinness Book of Infamous Records for the longest one-man filibuster in US history -- against the Civil Rights Act guaranteeing voting rights for black people.

David Duke is literally a Klansman.

That list is of all politicians who switched from D to R in the 1960s. There's a reason why nearly all of them are from Southern states.

Bradskii · Jun 16, 2021

BNR32FAN said:
Where is the sympathy for Kate Stone in this chapter? I don’t see anything about sympathy.

I agree. And the stories I've read about Second World War concentration camps are all about the Jews. There's no sympathy whatsoever shown to the prison guards who had to work in dreadful conditions. How about we have a balanced approach! The guards were people too.

Bradskii · Jun 16, 2021

essentialsaltes said:
Its nostalgia for the glorious slave-owning South seriously creeps me out. Fair ladies and their gallant knights in their finery, and the slaves singing like songbirds in the fields. Ahh....

Yikes! I don't remember that intro. I'm truly shocked.

Albion · Jun 16, 2021

Bradskii said:
I agree. And the stories I've read about Second World War concentration camps are all about the Jews.

Really? Not only is that not true, but we've all seen documentaries (I assume) or even Hollywood movies that deal with non-Jews being shipped off to the camps for one or another reason that don't include the victim being Jewish.

Bradskii · Jun 16, 2021

Albion said:
Really? Not only is that not true, but we've all seen documentaries (I assume) or even Hollywood movies that deal with non-Jews being shipped off to the camps for one or another reason that don't include the victim being Jewish.

What was that whooshing noise I just heard..?

Oompa Loompa · Jun 16, 2021

Strathos said:
Denying the existence of the southern strategy and trying to claim that Republicans and Democrats have the same policies today that they did 100 years ago is one of the most ridiculous arguments right-wingers have ever used.

Democrats used to be the party of conservatives, Republicans used to be the party of liberals. This is historical fact. You might as well say that modern Germany is the same as Nazi Germany, or modern Russia is the same as the USSR (in which case the Trump administration would be working hand-in-hand with and constantly praising communists).

The myth of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’

Bradskii · Jun 16, 2021

Oompa Loompa said:
Having your entire world as you knew it completely turned upside down and having to start over, I would say, is justifiably fearful. It seems like the only crime the textbook committed was not dehumanizing slave owners.

Unfortunately, they were all too human. As are all people who find themselves in positions of power over others when it's 'the others' are dehumanised. Can we have a show of hands by those who would have acted differently to Kate had they been born and brought up in the same family? But to then, a hundred years later, concentrate on her 'hardships' is a gross indecency and an insult to those she 'owned'.

Albion · Jun 16, 2021

Strathos said:
Denying the existence of the southern strategy and trying to claim that Republicans and Democrats have the same policies today that they did 100 years ago is one of the most ridiculous arguments right-wingers have ever used.

Do people just like to find something, anything, to pin on the "right wingers" of their imagination?

Right wingers spend no time exulting over Southern strategies. And trying to make something out of this silly side issue is a waste of time.

SoldierOfTheKing · Jun 17, 2021

In the minds of some, portraying slave owners as something other than monsters is not distinguishable for support for the institution of slavery. If history serves no purpose other than political propaganda, then there is no room in the story for any of the complexity or ambivalence inherent in human life. People who lived in past eras can only be remembered to be demonized or fetishized, those who cannot think of history in any other terms assume that nobody else can either.

Serious students of history, on the other hand, know that we can learn about the story of our ancestors without judging them. Not because their actions can’t be designated as good or evil, but because in the broader historical framework, what we think about them isn’t all that meaningful. We are just one generation out of 5000 years of recorded history. We are dust and ashes as they were, to which we will return as they did. That’s easy to understand, if we can only approach history with a measure of humility.

Bradskii · Jun 17, 2021

SoldierOfTheKing said:
In the minds of some, portraying slave owners as something other than monsters is not distinguishable for support for the institution of slavery. If history serves no purpose other than political propaganda...

Telling of the hardships that slave owners 'endured' and the struggles that they 'suffered' IS history written as political propaganda. That's the whole point of the arguments being presented.

How does this sound?

In the minds of some, portraying extermination camp guards as something other than monsters is not distinguishable for support for genocide.

Yeah. I agree. Pretty nonsensical. But you'd be fine if a book spent some time on the hardships the guards had to endure. Of course, that wouldn't actually be support for killing millions. Perish the thought!

Hans Blaster · Jun 17, 2021

Trying to find out a little more about the context of our put-upon slaveholder in the pages show in the OP I learned the following:

1. The family in question *couldn't* have lived in "East Carroll Parish" (county) as it didn't exist until 1877 when Carroll Parish was split in two. (E. Carroll Parish is the northernmost portion of Louisiana's Mississippi River frontage.) The "why" is very illustrative.

2. Before the war, the population of Carroll Parish was already 3/4 enslaved. After the war, Black veterans (USCT) settled in the Parish and the ratio of black to white residents was 7:1. As one might expect, Black residents were elected to numerous parish offices and the state legislature.

3. When White Democrats recaptured the state legislature in 1877 after reconstruction collapsed, the parish was split so that the western portion had a white majority reducing the scope of Black rule to just the eastern portion. That was finally put to an end with the 1898 (Jim Crow) Louisiana constitution.

4. Even today W. Carroll Parish has a white majority and E. Carroll Parish has a black majority.

This is *exactly* what is missing from this text book. (And I didn't even mention the political violence used to regain power.)

Gene2memE · Jun 17, 2021

Doing a little thinking, and I'd say its not too to support that Kate Stone is meant to be a proxy/stand-in for Louisiana.

She's presented as a unmarried (pure/virtuous), wealthy white woman with a guaranteed successful future ahead of her (thanks to slavery).
Then she's presented as patriotically supporting the Confederacy in its succession (her "firm Confederate patriotism) and being convinced of the justness of the war
After that she suffers losses - first personal and then property - from the war and from the end of slavery
The she's displaced, and comes back from that displacement to find things changed ("a world she felt had been turned upside down)
Then she's "ambivalent" to the end of slavery . Indeed, her only related feeling about the end of slavery is "regret" that people are demanding to be paid
Then she spends the rest of her life being a good, prosperous woman and being "devoted" to celebrating/memoralising the Confederacy

KCfromNC · Jun 17, 2021

Oompa Loompa said:
Yes...Democrats like Joe Biden.

Biden isn't a southener, isn't supporting Jim Crow laws, and isn't whining about racist monuments being taken down. But other than being wrong on all points, this post is 100% factual.

Albion · Jun 17, 2021

Bradskii said:
Telling of the hardships that slave owners 'endured' and the struggles that they 'suffered' IS history written as political propaganda. That's the whole point of the arguments being presented.

No, nearly everyone who lived in areas affected by the war suffered. To take note of that without making too emotional a presentation about it is simply good history.

Anyway, the title of this thread--and the proposition it makes--is still false. There is nothing "pro-slavery" about the text, even if a reader thinks that the account is unnecessarily concerned with the lives of people in the slave states who were not themselves slaves.

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