DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 234 points –
washingtonpost.com

GOP presidential candidate draws renewed criticism after suggesting slavery helped African Americans develop skills such as being a blacksmith

Archive link: https://archive.ph/JX8Gb

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Marvin Dunn, a professor emeritus at Florida International University and author of “A History of Florida: Through Black Eyes,” said DeSantis would gain no political advantage from his argument because “it is so outrageous that people are going to reject it.”

“These children know in their hearts and in their minds that slavery was evil,” he said.

“One of the main things about slavery, beyond the physical damage that it did to people of so many generations, was that it prevented people from becoming what they could have become,” he said.

“So what if you became a carpenter or a blacksmith or a good maid? Your chances of that were not determined by you, it was determined by somebody else. That’s not a rationalization for enslavement.”

Well said

That didn't happen. <-- Removing slavery from history lessons.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad. <-- We are now here.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

I'd say various conservative factions are at each of the first 4 steps (step three: claiming systemic racism doesn't exist, step four: "why should I be held responsible for something that my ancestors did?")

This is one of those things you could only argue in a vacuum

But literally the moment you step out of that it's the stupidest thing you could possibly say. A slave would rather obtain skills that would benefit them towards not being a slave

The diabetes induced amputation of my uncles leg was beneficial to his weight loss goals

He knows damn well that this is a stupid stance on the subject, but he also knows damn well that his voting base is made up of some of the dumbest people in America and they’ll believe whatever he says.

His entire platform is based on this exact thing, which is lying to idiots.

I don't know about this smart man manipulates idiots theory. Sometimes I think ding dongs can vote ding dongs is sufficient to explain most of the time.

In all seriousness though, it's the three S model of conservatism. Scared, Stupid, and Selfish. You don't have to be all three to be conservative, but you're fucking one of them.

He knows how to manipulate. Idiots aren’t capable of doing something like that on such a large scale. He’s clearly smarter than his base to be able to keep them believing his dumb shit makes any sense.

Doing blacksmithing helped develop skills.

The deprivation of humanity, dignity, compensation, etc did not. You know, the slavery part.

Exactly. I'm wondering how DeSantis thinks the slaves applied the "skills they learned" for their own benefit.

Let's say a slave learned how to be an expert blacksmith. Great, but what does he do with it? He can't exactly ask the Guy Who Owns Him As Property to set him free to open a blacksmithing business. He's still a slave and has to do whatever his master orders him to do. There is no "personal benefit" when you're a slave.

Even if there were a non-zero amount of African slaves that somehow had a better life (and to be absolutely clear, they're weren't any), that in no way absolves the practice of slavery for the millions of slaves who's lives were irrevocably harmed. And that's not even touching on the centuries of damage that had and continues to have on the class structure of the US, but I suppose that's the point of statements like this - they want to pretend nothing happened and nothing is wrong now. What an absolutely shit take.

Next Desantis will start extolling the benefits to the Jews from the holocaust

It would certainly play well with his supporters protesting outside Disney World.

Is it me, or does this kind of shit smell like a Trump techniques to get attention, and make libs mad? It's that or pushing the Overton Winslow, or racist and fascist, or now that I wrote this, all of the above.

Maybe we should start making absurd claims from the left, to counteract this kind of crap.

Maybe something like, this argument from DeSantis is a classic repressed homosexual cry for help. We will redirect the next pride parade to go shower him in the asschaps and male thong energy he needs to recover.

I don't like insinuating that him being gay is some sort of insult. Even if they see it as one, it's still bringing that connotation.

There were lots of blacksmiths in Africa and some really advanced metalwork. Go to a museum.

Props for posting the archived article link. Also: Fuck Ronny D.

"some blacks"

I am from the Netherlands and read Uncle Tom in school early in my teens, must be desantis favorite "some blacks".