21 August, 2021

Georgy_K_Zhukov on the evil of slavery

 When your teacher says that slave owners were "nice", he means that they used the whip less, or perhaps that when they did feel it necessary, they allowed the wounds to be dressed immediately. What he doesn't mean is that they recognized their enslaved persons as full human beings. The mere fact that they owned another person at all gives that the lie, as in doing so they inherently participated in a system that was perpetuated the dehumanization of their human property.

And to be sure, the slaves themselves were aware of this, even if the enslavers might be oblivious. In the recollections of his period of enslavement, Frederick Douglass remembered how his owner would occasionally give him a penny or two (I've written more here on slaves and property), but as Douglass relates:

I always felt worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a pretty honourable sort of robber.