Note: This is my summary of chapter 1 of “The 1619 Project” (2021) – the book, not the television show. As in the book, “America” means US America and the 13 British colonies that it grew out of. Quoted text is straight from the book.
In America slavery is older than democracy – and way older than full democracy, which is only some 50 years old. It did not merely practise slavery, as many societies have down through history, it was built on slavery. “Slavery affected everything about society.”
Samuel Johnson, an English writer, in 1775:
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
Two reasons:
- In 1775 Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to any enslaved person who joined his Ethiopian Regiment to fight for the British.
- It is easy to champion democracy when most of your poor are in chains, as they were in places like Virginia, a hotbed of the American Revolution that gave us the likes of Washington, Jefferson and Madison.
One of the main freedoms they were fighting for was the freedom to get rich off of running forced labour camps (aka plantations) – and to practise the torture that that required.
For the South the American Revolution was in defense of slavery, just as the Civil War nine decades later, even if couched in terms of “liberty”, as did Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate South.
From the Founding Fathers of 1776 all the way down to Lincoln in the closing days of the Civil War in 1865, US freedom, democracy and equality were for Whites only. The Supreme Court was quite clear about that in 1857 in the Dred Scott case. From the book:
“Democracy existed for citizens, and the ‘Negro race,’ the court ruled, was ‘a separate class of persons,’ one the founders had ‘not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government’ and who had ‘no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’ This belief, that Black people were not merely enslaved but a slave race, is the root of the endemic racism we cannot purge from this nation to this day.”
Even Lincoln did not believe in full equality for Black people – just for the right sort (war veterans with education).
The idea of the US as a multiracial democracy comes not from Washington or Jefferson or even Lincoln, but from Black activists and, during Reconstruction (1865-77), the Radical Republicans – “rare white men such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner who truly believed in Black equality.”
Even a hundred years later during the Civil Rights Movement:
“For the most part, Black Americans fought back alone, never getting a majority of white Americans to join and support their freedom struggles.”
Which is not surprising:
“Free Black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional in its creed of freedom and equality; they held up a mirror into which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on Black people by every generation of white Americans justified the inhumanity of the past and the inequality of the present.”
And so:
“The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of Black resistance and visions for equality. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused but Black Americans did.”
– Abagond, 2023.
See also:
- The 1619 Project
- The term “America”
- slaveries compared
- Why do whites hate, demonize, fear and look down on blacks?
- racial frames:
- democracy
- Medgar Evers
- Selma
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- voter suppression
- Lincoln
- Jefferson
- Notes towards a multiracial history of George Washington
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Abagond 
I like how a white male who’s father was a head of the kkk ,becomes president just because a black male became president , and his entire campaign was based on lies
now basically the entire republican party is so steeped in lies that they have a newly elected congress person who everyone knows repeatedly blatantly lied even about his own name but they need him to maintain thier majority.
And when I see crowds of exclusively white mostly males complain about one congress person
I think
no one ,not even most black people would even consider
the god concept for what it is – the biggest lie about life you can tell yourself and others
upon which america was founded
for how else can you look at other humans slightly different from you in appearance and
justify treating them with every crime possible yet claim to truly value justice and truth.
or how many black people I see serving them – where the smallest simplest thing – to honestly wear your hair
is steeped in a tradition lying so deep that to even raise the question is seen as offensive
yet I wonder – such a long and deep and successful tradition of blatant lies but only if you support albinism.
i mean white people who are white because of a lack of melanin pigmentation i.e white serpremcey – that is white albinic/albino people must lead and dominate all of humanity and are allowed to rape murder steal and lie
more than any other group
because they look and act smarter than all other humans.
the truth is only valid or worthy if it supports and upholds albinio/albinic/white dominance and control.
but its always been global the planet is round
black people kicked out of ukraine who in turn is brutalized by russia
never mind why so many black africans run to Europe to escape the poverty Europeans caused in their original counties to be ridiculed but a few well compensated entrainers for white people
russia vs ukraine is interesting –
a powerful nation of white people with the nuclear bomb
want to expand thier territory and recreate their former empire
they brutally attack a nieboring nation of white people ,brutally killing even raping civilians
America the most powerful nation of white people with over 800 bases around the world in other contries
whose own society was founded on conquest and slavery
which is in thier most valued book – which condones slavery
and other lies and brutality – but is the required book to “swear on ,when sworn in to office or testifying in a legal case.
A country that has never really been a democracy nor practiced it
that has been active in overthrowning most of the current governments in the world
now leads the “west” – white europeans in morally sanctioning russia
while you hear of numerous other conflicts throughout the world but only white ukraines are suffering…….
the world is round ,i would like to present a comprehensive
consistent and complete description of the world i live in and share it with most of my fellow humans – sorry for the gender bias inherent in the language ,but even the full and equal humanity of our mothers sisters daughters and wives are
central to this system of lies we live under
the god concept – a white male
because the very idea of a female esp black having that level of authority and agency
so white people organize socially a system where one white male has all the money and or power
esp the ability to order other people to kill other people.
and we should admire and aspire to what is a social and moral monstrity and in any practical fashion absurd – a billionaire – because one person could need or want a billion things and have the wealth and means to eliminate suffering and poverty but does nothing.
see this is why i hate writing ,intellect ,philosophy dialog ,research and books ,a bunch of words
stats – 3 pages
673 words
3,756 characters
aprox time : maybe and hour
cognitive personal and social processing – unknown
but hopefully I will live another 20 years or more and die of old age
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Democracy is overrated. It dumbs down political decisions. Instead of having the intelligent rule with their intelligence, they have to rule in a way that satisfies the average voter, who isn’t all that bright.
I’m a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up…LOVE SPEECH
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