DeSantis signs bill requiring FL students, professors to register political views with state

[Gospel]

From the PBS article:

...
Barbara Segal, a high school government teacher in Fort Lauderdale, recently took a three-day training session on Florida's new civics standards. ...

Some of the most jarring material seemed to downplay the role of slavery in the country's founding, including one that stated that only 4 percent of enslaved people from Africa came to the colonies.

"Which means," Segal concluded, "we're not that bad."

Nope, no indoctrination there.

Hang on. It says Segal concluded it means, "we're not that bad." Did the material conclude "we're not that bad", or was that just a gloss Segal read into it? If it's a fact that only 4 percent of enslaved people from Africa came to the colonies, surely you aren't objecting to teaching the history of slavery?

Assuming that's a gloss Segal read into it, why did she find it so jarring? Did she want to teach her students we are that bad?

I agree, I mean if the numbers match up they match up. As long as they are not literally using a textbook titled "America wasn't fucked up if you look at the Portuguese" it's all good.

With that said, I don't agree with these amendments to Florida law. Not because of how they are written, but because of how they will NOT be used. For example, will it remove woke materials painting Europeans in the best light possible? Like leaving out their darker history. For example, the industrial revolution is touted as the best thing since sliced bread while things like white kids (up to a point) and slaves working the coal, mills, and textile industries are left for "higher learning".

They seem to only want to mention slavery when slavery is the subject. What I mean is If history is taught correctly slavery would be mentioned in more than just the civil rights division. Not to mention that not all historic scholars are European yet it seems most (if not all) of the shit found in textbooks is from a European perspective.

 

[Politesse]

They seem to only want to mention slavery when slavery is the subject. What I mean is If history is taught correctly slavery would be mentioned in more than just the civil rights division. Not to mention that not all historic scholars are European yet it seems most (if not all) of the shit found in textbooks is from a European perspective.

European textbooks are a lot better than ours, actually. Biased, to be sure. But generally more detailed and inclusive. Less graphics, more content.

 

[laughing dog]

What do you think the point is? The point is to provide context that paints an overall picture more to the liking of Koch, Hillsdale and DeSantis, and less to the liking of Segal, ZiprHead, and, I'm guessing, you. And the curious phenomenon that the three of you all seem to think presenting facts and context to children is somehow problematic because of its potential impact on which subculture's narrative the children end up internalizing gives the lie...

You guess wrong. As I indicated in an earlier post that you apparently had not read, I have no objection to teaching about the transatlantic slave trade. Given the available statements made by Desantis and various legislators about this issue, I seriously doubt that is the intent of this curriculum. Do you have any evidence to suggest it is? I think it is simply a diversionary “whataboutism” to help with the Florida’s GOP political indoctrination of children (as your response tacitly acknowledges).

I can understand anyone’s concern over the education bureaucracy creating curriculum But politicians devising curriculum to support their political ideology should create at least as much concern, if not more instead of a kneejerk ideological defense .

So how about the whole lot of you lay off the gaslighting?

You first.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you?

I do. But I gave you a compliment, not an argument. One does not have to support Desantis or Trump to employ their tactics of promoting straw man and sophistry in the defense of their cynical virtue signalling.

Actually it says a great deal about the institution of slavery and its effects in the USA. Not in the simplistic way that both sides' ideologues imagine, though. The historical fact that American slavers enslaved far fewer people overall and treated slaves enormously better than Brazilian slavers did needs to be understood in the context of the transatlantic slave trade in its totality, or else the message children take away will be either the right's message that leftists just want them to think white Americans suck, or the left's message that rightists just want them to think what white Americans did to Africans wasn't that big a deal.

The statistic about the USA’s share of transatlantic slavery says nothing about the effect of slavery’s effect on the US. It is simply a number.

Children need to be shown maps like this and see for themselves the salient fact all the rhetoric about 40%, 4%, or 0.4% neglects: how much closer West Africa is to Brazil than to the U.S.

Brazilian slavers didn't treat Africans worse than American slavers because Brazilian slavers were worse human beings than American slavers. Brazilian slavers treated Africans worse than American slavers because kidnapping an African and bringing him to Brazil was a whole lot cheaper than kidnapping an African and bringing him to the U.S. American slavers valued slaves more than Brazilian slavers because a slave cost more in America than in Brazil. In America it was cheaper to keep slaves alive and breed new ones; in Brazil it was cheaper to work slaves to death and kidnap new ones. So if America had been as close to Africa as Brazil is, American slavers would probably have been just as cruel as Brazilian slavers.

Ignoring your “whataboutism” argument (because it is irrelevant to the facts of how the US treated slaves and its effects), your argument ignores that the treatment of slaves in that region was not only based in economics, but tradition and racism.

 

[Gospel]

They seem to only want to mention slavery when slavery is the subject. What I mean is If history is taught correctly slavery would be mentioned in more than just the civil rights division. Not to mention that not all historic scholars are European yet it seems most (if not all) of the shit found in textbooks is from a European perspective.

European textbooks are a lot better than ours, actually. Biased, to be sure. But generally more detailed and inclusive. Less graphics, more content.

Your comment for some reason made me Imagine what a student using a 1950s textbook would say about today's text books. "biased fo sho. Yet less anti-Chinese, anti-Black & and anti-Mexican propaganda, while more of the same shit.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Another article:

According to the Tampa Bay Times, throughout the sessions, facilitators have attempted to downplay the history of slavery in the U.S., and insist that of all the slave-owing nations, the U.S. was the least into it. Tatiana Ahlbum, a 12th-grade government and economics teacher at Fort Lauderdale High, said it was stressed that the majority of enslaved people in America had been born into slavery, that the colonies bought fewer enslaved people from the transatlantic slave trade than has been previously portrayed, and that less than 4% of enslaved people worldwide lived in America, without noting that that percentage still constituted millions of people. Ahlbum told the Times that it felt like the instructors were trying to claim America had been “less bad” when it came to enslaving people, which certainly appears to be the case! Meanwhile, another slide reportedly quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as saying they wanted to get rid of slavery, while crucially leaving out the fact that both men enslaved people, with the latter owning more than 600 in his lifetime and also famously raping at least one of them. Ahlbum added that few of the facts presented included cited sources. “We were not told which documents stated this or how to find them, just that they existed,” she said.

So here's the context... According to educators present at the training session in the new Koch approved curriculum, the troubling slides were rife with political indoctrination and conservative skew. Founding fathers wanted to promote religion, not separate church and state, for example. Regarding slavery, it was said that 2/3rds of the founders owned enslaved people but they also didn't like it. That is more context for why the 4% statistic is being thrown around. It was said that the US wasn't out as much as previously thought enslaving all those Africans because they were born slaves. How does that work exactly, as since they were denied US citizenship but still humans, they'd still be Africans endowed by their alleged Creator with natural rights upon birth...so technically, they'd still be enslaved at birth, no? Yes, jumping semantic hoops in a greater context of coming from a conservative "think tank," does seem like the goal is to minimze something here.

 

[Politesse]

They seem to only want to mention slavery when slavery is the subject. What I mean is If history is taught correctly slavery would be mentioned in more than just the civil rights division. Not to mention that not all historic scholars are European yet it seems most (if not all) of the shit found in textbooks is from a European perspective.

European textbooks are a lot better than ours, actually. Biased, to be sure. But generally more detailed and inclusive. Less graphics, more content.

Your comment for some reason made me Imagine what a student using a 1950s textbook would say about today's text books. "biased fo sho. Yet less anti-Chinese, anti-Black & and anti-Mexican propaganda, while more of the same shit.

I'm just saying, let's not go blaming Europe for all the sins of American whites, we've been making entirely novel mistakes and telling ingenious new lies since the Revolution.

 

[Politesse]

Another article:

According to the Tampa Bay Times, throughout the sessions, facilitators have attempted to downplay the history of slavery in the U.S., and insist that of all the slave-owing nations, the U.S. was the least into it. Tatiana Ahlbum, a 12th-grade government and economics teacher at Fort Lauderdale High, said it was stressed that the majority of enslaved people in America had been born into slavery, that the colonies bought fewer enslaved people from the transatlantic slave trade than has been previously portrayed, and that less than 4% of enslaved people worldwide lived in America, without noting that that percentage still constituted millions of people. Ahlbum told the Times that it felt like the instructors were trying to claim America had been “less bad” when it came to enslaving people, which certainly appears to be the case! Meanwhile, another slide reportedly quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as saying they wanted to get rid of slavery, while crucially leaving out the fact that both men enslaved people, with the latter owning more than 600 in his lifetime and also famously raping at least one of them. Ahlbum added that few of the facts presented included cited sources. “We were not told which documents stated this or how to find them, just that they existed,” she said.

So here's the context... According to educators present at the training session in the new Koch approved curriculum, the troubling slides were rife with political indoctrination and conservative skew. Founding fathers wanted to promote religion, not separate church and state, for example. Regarding slavery, it was said that 2/3rds of the founders owned enslaved people but they also didn't like it. That is more context for why the 4% statistic is being thrown around. It was said that the US wasn't out as much as previously thought enslaving all those Africans because they were born slaves. How does that work exactly, as since they were denied US citizenship but still humans, they'd still be Africans endowed by their alleged Creator with natural rights upon birth...so technically, they'd still be enslaved at birth, no? Yes, jumping semantic hoops in a greater context of coming from a conservative "think tank," does seem like the goal is to minimze something here.

For me, Jefferson's anti-slavery writings make him seem worse, not better, in historical review. We cannot claim that he was just naively unaware that slavery was wrong, when we have it in his own writing in his own hand that he knew slavery to be a great moral evil. But he still trafficked and raped human beings throughout his life. It is not defensible, and his ambiguous position on the institution he otherwise engaged in freely just makes it worse.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So here's the context... According to educators present at the training session in the new Koch approved curriculum, the troubling slides were rife with political indoctrination and conservative skew. Founding fathers wanted to promote religion, not separate church and state, for example. Regarding slavery, it was said that 2/3rds of the founders owned enslaved people but they also didn't like it. That is more context for why the 4% statistic is being thrown around. It was said that the US wasn't out as much as previously thought enslaving all those Africans because they were born slaves. How does that work exactly, as since they were denied US citizenship but still humans, they'd still be Africans endowed by their alleged Creator with natural rights upon birth...so technically, they'd still be enslaved at birth, no? Yes, jumping semantic hoops in a greater context of coming from a conservative "think tank," does seem like the goal is to minimze something here.

What I don't get is the whole 'who fucking cares', other than the South who don't want to be portrayed as the rebellion fought to enshrine slavery forever in their fake nation. Why is there a movement to limit slavery in our history.

No nation got it right all the time. Even Canada has skeletons in the closet. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes. Slavery is a big deal in the US because it is the foundation for the Civil War that was waged and killed nearly 1 million Americans. And the freed slaves would be part of a subclass in America, discriminated and hated for the next 125 years. To fall back on a "4%" is so utterly hyper-technical, when it is a statistic that isn't speaking to the importance of slavery and its influence not only in American history but how things are today. The plight of Africans shipped to America and their future generations is a dominating part of our nation's history. Not 4% of it.

But some people are stuck on this imaginary and childishly naïve concept of American exceptionalism that can not be allowed to be tarnished. Talk about religious like cults!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The hypocrisy is that the 4%'ers are usually the people that think we shouldn't have children memorize numbers and dates in lieu of actual history.

Teacher: And it killed over 600,000 people fighting for the North and South.
Student: But isn't it true that only 4% of slaves were in the US.
Teacher: Well, yes, but the point is the human toll in lives lost was substantial. It was the deadliest toll for the US in any war we fought in.
Student: But the slaves were treated better in the US than Brazi...
Teacher: Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.
Student: I'm just saying, we could look into the economic aspects as to why slaves were treated better in the US than Brazil.

 

[Politesse]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

 

[laughing dog]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

And how did the relative treatment of slaves in Brazil affect this?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but I'm saying it isn't as relevant to the topic. Monroe Doctrine and all that, sure, but not the Civil War and subsequent history after it.

 

[Politesse]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

And how did the relative treatment of slaves in Brazil affect this?

Whose template do you think American businessmen were following? What markets do you think they were urgently trying to increase their access to? They were straining to become as much like Brazil, Cuba, St Domingue, etc as they possibly could. If you treat American slavery as something that was invented in 1619, you're missing a major part of the story. Europeans were taking slaves literally for as long as they were involved in the Americas, and at first the British colonies were only minor players in that game. But it wasn't for lack of greed or cruelty that said market was already established to the considerable advantage of the Spanish holdings in the New World. If you're teaching real history, you shouldn't just drop a number like that 4% (if it's even accurate) on a student without context. It's very clear, looking at the whole history of slavery, why that would be the case. But burying parts of the story isn't a good way forward either.

 

[Gospel]

Another article:

According to the Tampa Bay Times, throughout the sessions, facilitators have attempted to downplay the history of slavery in the U.S., and insist that of all the slave-owing nations, the U.S. was the least into it. Tatiana Ahlbum, a 12th-grade government and economics teacher at Fort Lauderdale High, said it was stressed that the majority of enslaved people in America had been born into slavery, that the colonies bought fewer enslaved people from the transatlantic slave trade than has been previously portrayed, and that less than 4% of enslaved people worldwide lived in America, without noting that that percentage still constituted millions of people. Ahlbum told the Times that it felt like the instructors were trying to claim America had been “less bad” when it came to enslaving people, which certainly appears to be the case! Meanwhile, another slide reportedly quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as saying they wanted to get rid of slavery, while crucially leaving out the fact that both men enslaved people, with the latter owning more than 600 in his lifetime and also famously raping at least one of them. Ahlbum added that few of the facts presented included cited sources. “We were not told which documents stated this or how to find them, just that they existed,” she said.

So here's the context... According to educators present at the training session in the new Koch approved curriculum, the troubling slides were rife with political indoctrination and conservative skew. Founding fathers wanted to promote religion, not separate church and state, for example. Regarding slavery, it was said that 2/3rds of the founders owned enslaved people but they also didn't like it. That is more context for why the 4% statistic is being thrown around. It was said that the US wasn't out as much as previously thought enslaving all those Africans because they were born slaves. How does that work exactly, as since they were denied US citizenship but still humans, they'd still be Africans endowed by their alleged Creator with natural rights upon birth...so technically, they'd still be enslaved at birth, no? Yes, jumping semantic hoops in a greater context of coming from a conservative "think tank," does seem like the goal is to minimze something here.

For me, Jefferson's anti-slavery writings make him seem worse, not better, in historical review. We cannot claim that he was just naively unaware that slavery was wrong, when we have it in his own writing in his own hand that he knew slavery to be a great moral evil. But he still trafficked and raped human beings throughout his life. It is not defensible, and his ambiguous position on the institution he otherwise engaged in freely just makes it worse.

Can't blame Jefferson, he was raised that way. His writings amount to a battle between his faith and reason.

 

[Politesse]

Another article:

According to the Tampa Bay Times, throughout the sessions, facilitators have attempted to downplay the history of slavery in the U.S., and insist that of all the slave-owing nations, the U.S. was the least into it. Tatiana Ahlbum, a 12th-grade government and economics teacher at Fort Lauderdale High, said it was stressed that the majority of enslaved people in America had been born into slavery, that the colonies bought fewer enslaved people from the transatlantic slave trade than has been previously portrayed, and that less than 4% of enslaved people worldwide lived in America, without noting that that percentage still constituted millions of people. Ahlbum told the Times that it felt like the instructors were trying to claim America had been “less bad” when it came to enslaving people, which certainly appears to be the case! Meanwhile, another slide reportedly quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as saying they wanted to get rid of slavery, while crucially leaving out the fact that both men enslaved people, with the latter owning more than 600 in his lifetime and also famously raping at least one of them. Ahlbum added that few of the facts presented included cited sources. “We were not told which documents stated this or how to find them, just that they existed,” she said.

So here's the context... According to educators present at the training session in the new Koch approved curriculum, the troubling slides were rife with political indoctrination and conservative skew. Founding fathers wanted to promote religion, not separate church and state, for example. Regarding slavery, it was said that 2/3rds of the founders owned enslaved people but they also didn't like it. That is more context for why the 4% statistic is being thrown around. It was said that the US wasn't out as much as previously thought enslaving all those Africans because they were born slaves. How does that work exactly, as since they were denied US citizenship but still humans, they'd still be Africans endowed by their alleged Creator with natural rights upon birth...so technically, they'd still be enslaved at birth, no? Yes, jumping semantic hoops in a greater context of coming from a conservative "think tank," does seem like the goal is to minimze something here.

For me, Jefferson's anti-slavery writings make him seem worse, not better, in historical review. We cannot claim that he was just naively unaware that slavery was wrong, when we have it in his own writing in his own hand that he knew slavery to be a great moral evil. But he still trafficked and raped human beings throughout his life. It is not defensible, and his ambiguous position on the institution he otherwise engaged in freely just makes it worse.

Can't blame Jefferson, he was raised that way. His writings amount to a battle between his faith and reason.

The hell I can't. It does people no good whatsoever for a person in a position of power to have a private moral crisis, unless it results in changing their public (and in Jefferson's case, pubic) behavior.

 

[laughing dog]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

And how did the relative treatment of slaves in Brazil affect this?

Whose template do you think American businessmen were following? What markets do you think they were urgently trying to increase their access to? They were straining to become as much like Brazil, Cuba, St Domingue, etc as they possibly could. If you treat American slavery as something that was invented in 1619, you're missing a major part of the story. Europeans were taking slaves literally for as long as they were involved in the Americas, and at first the British colonies were only minor players in that game. But it wasn't for lack of greed or cruelty that said market was already established to the considerable advantage of the Spanish holdings in the New World. If you're teaching real history, you shouldn't just drop a number like that 4% (if it's even accurate) on a student without context. It's very clear, looking at the whole history of slavery, why that would be the case. But burying parts of the story isn't a good way forward either.

I get all of that, and I already agree that the 4% (or any statistic) outside of the total context is pointless. What I don't understand is the relevance of the relative treatment of slaves outside of the US in comparison to slaves held in the US to the issue of the welfare of the enslaved in the USA.

 

[Jarhyn]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

And how did the relative treatment of slaves in Brazil affect this?

Whose template do you think American businessmen were following? What markets do you think they were urgently trying to increase their access to? They were straining to become as much like Brazil, Cuba, St Domingue, etc as they possibly could. If you treat American slavery as something that was invented in 1619, you're missing a major part of the story. Europeans were taking slaves literally for as long as they were involved in the Americas, and at first the British colonies were only minor players in that game. But it wasn't for lack of greed or cruelty that said market was already established to the considerable advantage of the Spanish holdings in the New World. If you're teaching real history, you shouldn't just drop a number like that 4% (if it's even accurate) on a student without context. It's very clear, looking at the whole history of slavery, why that would be the case. But burying parts of the story isn't a good way forward either.

I get all of that, and I already agree that the 4% (or any statistic) outside of the total context is pointless. What I don't understand is the relevance of the relative treatment of slaves outside of the US in comparison to slaves held in the US to the issue of the welfare of the enslaved in the USA.

It matters, in a way, because those travesties in fact outline what the US was driving towards.

It was not for a lack of trying but a lack of momentum towards higher slave numbers that kept the US slavery economy small at the beginning.

But never fear: since then we managed to rape, forcibly breed, and otherwise grow that 4% into what is now the largest population of black people outside of Africa.

African diaspora - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Gospel]

The hypocrisy is that the 4%'ers are usually the people that think we shouldn't have children memorize numbers and dates in lieu of actual history.

Teacher: And it killed over 600,000 people fighting for the North and South.
Student: But isn't it true that only 4% of slaves were in the US.
Teacher: Well, yes, but the point is the human toll in lives lost was substantial. It was the deadliest toll for the US in any war we fought in.
Student: But the slaves were treated better in the US than Brazi...
Teacher: Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.
Student: I'm just saying, we could look into the economic aspects as to why slaves were treated better in the US than Brazil.

That is exactly how talking to someone seeking confirmation for their bias goes. The "new" laws put in effect by my governor (Desantis) is exactly that conversation made law. What he doesn't seem to realize is that his laws apply to woke whitey just as much as it does his targets. The forefathers made the same mistake (granted a good one) when they declared that all men are created equal. Leaving an opening for future generations to make some sweet amendments. Thanks to Desantis, woke whiteness is banned in schools as well; we just won't see it happening right away.

 

[Politesse]

Slavery in Brazil had no impact on the death toll in America, nor the following reconstruction and then Jim Crow rule of law.

The slave markets weren't as disconnected from one another as you seems to be implying. Though we arrived late on the scene, for as long as we were established as a regional power, the US was heavily interconnected to, and frequently funded, much of the dirty enterprise. If we weren't trafficking directly in human lives, we were most certainly consuming the goods that Caribbean slave labor produced, and exerted enormous economic, political, and frequently even military pressure to ensure that it would continue apace. We were also very eager to "expand" our nation's borders (read: by conquering and destroying other nations and colonies) and place more enslaved humans under our direct influence, turning former slave colonies of other empires into new US territories and eventually new US states. This was, to large degree, the story of our first hundred years as a nation-state - trying to get our hands on as much of that slave labor and slave produced goods as we possibly could. We did not violently seize Florida because we wanted its beaches to relax on. We wanted its wealth, and that wealth was contingent on the brutal mistreatement of its human capital. Indeed, the proximate causus belli with Florida was that our escaped African and Seminiole slaves were disappearing into their territory, providing Andrew Jackson with his pretext for invading the peninsula.

And how did the relative treatment of slaves in Brazil affect this?

Whose template do you think American businessmen were following? What markets do you think they were urgently trying to increase their access to? They were straining to become as much like Brazil, Cuba, St Domingue, etc as they possibly could. If you treat American slavery as something that was invented in 1619, you're missing a major part of the story. Europeans were taking slaves literally for as long as they were involved in the Americas, and at first the British colonies were only minor players in that game. But it wasn't for lack of greed or cruelty that said market was already established to the considerable advantage of the Spanish holdings in the New World. If you're teaching real history, you shouldn't just drop a number like that 4% (if it's even accurate) on a student without context. It's very clear, looking at the whole history of slavery, why that would be the case. But burying parts of the story isn't a good way forward either.

I get all of that, and I already agree that the 4% (or any statistic) outside of the total context is pointless. What I don't understand is the relevance of the relative treatment of slaves outside of the US in comparison to slaves held in the US to the issue of the welfare of the enslaved in the USA.

As to better treatment, I'm not even sure I agree that it is true, though if it is true, I don't think it is because American slaveowners were more moral in their outlooks; more likely, the relatively higher expense of owning slaves in the US as opposed to Brazil might be a better explanation as to why that might be true. It certainly doesn't excuse the trauma and depredations visited on American slaves, or our government's culpability in facilitating that sufffering.

To me, arguing that "we treat our slaves better" is a bit like a mob boss arguing that they "don't order as many hits" as their competitors. Like, what do you want, a cookie? Business-driven homicide is still wrong even if you're the least murdery capo on the docks, and there's no nice way to own a slave either. You're stealing something that should never be stolen just by participating.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think you didn't quite grasp where I was going with my mock conversation in the classroom. 4%, Brazil... those are red herrings and really off-topic. Hyper-technicalities that the conservatives love to use (see SCOTUS) in order to justify an alternative perspective.