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History of Slavery pt 1 · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we Do what we Do? Welcome to Why We Do
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what we Do. I am your eternally sad host Abraham and I am your
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completely infuriated host. Shame where a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
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that people do, the things that people have done, and why they do
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them and unpack in the most scientific way that we can what is going on
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in these situations because we find it interesting and we find it valuable too sometimes
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understand what's happening around us, as well as take retrospectives on things that have
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happened in the past and maybe why that took place. And that's what we
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do. You know, every now and again we'll do a history episode,
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and this is one of those history episodes, but it's a history of behavior
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that is completely apparent, you know, something that has long lasting ramifications.
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Unfortunately, Yes, let's start some of the lighter things that we like to
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do. First. We know that this is going to be a longer topic
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because just how vast the notes were and putting together the research for us to
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record this episode. So the first part of this is going to come out
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on August twenty third, So if you're listening on the day that this publishes,
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Happy Cuban Sandwich Day. Yeah. Also Happy Ride the Wind Day,
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So I assume that's for sailing. Actually no, I believe that this has
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to do a lot more with skydiving like that and aviation as well. Oh
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big fan of that. That makes sense. That makes more sense, I
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think, speaking of things that are full of air. It is National sponge
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Cake Day. Oh, big fan of that. It's also Kobe Bryant's birthday,
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so Happy Birthday of Black Mamba. Yes, so remembering Kobe Bryant and
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so yeah, those are holidays to celebrate. August twenty three is actually one
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of the lighter ones on terms of all the holidays going on. Usually we
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have this a lot more. Yeah, I was gonna say there's usually like
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quite a few more. So it's shocking that there's less. But maybe because
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people are too basically going about the school. There's a there's I think in
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recognition and honor of Kobe Bryant might be why. That's not why. Yeah,
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anyway, well we'll say that that's why just for fun. Yeah,
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absolutely, Okay, getting in today's into today's topic, I can talk.
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I would like to issue at the very top of this a trigger warning.
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We are going to be talking about monstrous abuse of humans, brutality, violence,
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rape, child abuse, all of those sorts of things ahead. So,
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although we try and handle this as well as we can in terms of
2:29
it not being about exploitation and not being about graphic depictions of these sorts of
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violence, it is virtually unavoidable in a topic like this, and so if
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that's something you're uncomfortable listening to, you might want to move on. However,
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if you're in Florida, you might consider this mandatory listening because you're not
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going to hear anywhere else. Yeah, that's true. It's being taken out
2:46
of a lot of curricula, and then what's being replaced is with something called
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prager You. So let's go ahead and avoid that place if you can.
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Definitely, all right before we jump into this. Finally, a quick thing
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is if you like to support the show, you can head over to our
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wherever you're listening to this and subscribe. You can leave us a rating and
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So thank you all for the people who have nominated nominated us for that position.
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So those are the ways you can support us. I'll talk more about
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that at the end of this discussion. Now, I did my best to
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Polishane here. I don't know I did not do it as well. But
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the question I'll start with is what is Hitler, the Bible, IQ tests,
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and Mesopotamia have in common. That's pretty good, thank you. I
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like it. The things they have in common is this episode. But we'll
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unpack why? Yes, So do we announce what we're talking about? Yeah?
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Do we say what we were talking about? Okay, just that it
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was terrible? Okay, So today we are talking about the history of slavery.
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So this is going to be a sensitive topic for folks. So we
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already kind of issued the trigger warning, but we're going to do our best
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to give this the depth and respect that it deserves given that it has impacted
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so many people. We will try to introduce a little bit of levity here
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and there because it is such a heavy topic. But please know that we
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are approaching this with the utmost respect for the people that are impacted by this
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particular thing. So we don't want you to think that we're trying to walk
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away from this, kind of blowing this off as like a goofy thing.
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We do absolutely understand the impact of this and really want to give it the
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time it deserves. Yes, so we'll start with that quick definition to make
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sure you're clear on which type of slavery we're talking about. This is a
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term that has used multiple ways, arguably and sensitively the second way, but
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we're not getting into that. That is a way that people use it,
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so it functions that way. So, slavery is the practice of owning a
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person as if they were property, especially for compulsory, unpaid labor. Thus,
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by definition, a slave does not have similar rights as a non enslaved
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person. But the other kind of slavery we're not talking about is sort of
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excessive, unwavering devotion to a cause. We're just talking about the practice of
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owning a person. Yeah, We're not talking about the idea of like being
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a slave to your job. We are talking about literally being a slave,
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being property to somebody else. Right, yes, exactly. So, all
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available evidence and the logic of sociological conditions of a small communal group suggests that
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hunter and gatherer tribes never practice slavery. So it didn't That was not a
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thing that happened in early human groups, right. However, slavery still predates
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recorded history, so the first written reference to slavery was found in the Mesopotamian
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Code of Hammurabi, which described the practice as having been going on for thousands
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of years prior to that society. It is believed that the practice may have
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originated in Sumer Sumeria and then spread to Greece. The historians are unclear when
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slavery made its way to places like India and China, although it was much
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much later than that, specifically the keen Kin maybe chin Qi n dynasty in
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two twenty one BC for China and probably later than that for India, as
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there were not The reason that they look at this is that they were looking
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at the written language and there wasn't there's not even a Sanskrit word that could
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be translated to mean slave. So that's part of their evidence for why slavery
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likely did not exist prior to that. Yeah, Now, in ancient times,
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slavery was not really a business. It came about for a variety of
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reasons. It was either an issue of debt, it was a child who
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was abandoned, it was a result of war, like prisoners of war were
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often included in that maybe folks were born into a family of enslaved peoples,
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or is punishment for a crime. So there were kind of social expectations around
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this or social I don't want to say norms, but they were social rules
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around what slavery was. That wasn't like an economics thing just yet. Yeah,
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you're exactly right. From about five hundred to fifteen hundred C, the
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humans were starting to globalize a lot, and there was war, conquering and
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colonization which expanded from regional conflicts to now for the first time, these multi
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continental campaigns, and the people that were conquered few scare quotes conquered, taken
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whatever, you know, they were invaded and whatnot. These people were frequently
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forced into slave labor by their captors. Yes, so in the fourteen hundreds,
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the Roman Catholic Church, of course, is the Catholic Church granted a
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monopoly on trade in Africa to the Portuguese and granted Spain the right to quote
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conquer the New World end quote. You know, there's probably gonna be a
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day where we're just gonna have to do our best to take down the Catholic
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Church because I feel like they're at the center of so many problems. Like
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so many problems it is assorted past. So the Church granted this monopoly on
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trade. What they specifically said here to the people of Portugal with respect to
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their trade in Africa, the Church gave Portugal permission to raid, pillage,
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and plunder Africa and to quote quoting the Church here, reduce their persons to
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perpetual slavery end quote. So that was part of the charter that they were
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granted. Okay. So ironically, Queen Isabella of Spain instructed Christopher Columbus to
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not enslave natives he found in the New World, as they were to be
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Spanish subjects. So, just to be clear, Christopher Columbus Head decided to
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ignore that and go ahead and do it anyway. It's true. Yeah,
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everywhere the people were sailing away from under the banner of the Roman Catholic Church,
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they were enslaving people, is basically what happened. There. Also the
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gaul gall and the arrogance of the Catholic Church to be like, yes,
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you can go do this all over the world without any sort of accounting for
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like what other peoples of the world felt about that, which I imagine most
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people would be like, I don't want this, but they were like,
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we're the Catholic Church, we rule above all else. Right. Yeah.
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Now, there were kind of multiple sources that were huge movers in terms of
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pushing slavery into be a economic system and really explode and how widespread it was.
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One of the people you could point to as King Charlemagne in particular,
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who was nearly single handedly responsible for creating a global slave trade. He was
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not the only one, but he was very, very importantly and definitely on
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the wheel. He had hand on the wheel. Yeah. His unification of
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West and Central Europe was funded in part by the practice of capturing people and
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selling them into slavery to the highest bidder between that and the Holy War between
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Christians and Muslims and king raids that found profitability in also capturing and selling people
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into slavery. Many people across Europe and the Middle East were forced into slavery
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kind of across lines, and they were shipped to the opposing respective country.
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And because this largely happens to people that were vulnerable populations that were relatively easy
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to capture and hold, it was largely women and children. So you had
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Muslim women and children being captured and sent as slaves to Europe. You had
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European women and children who were being captured and sold as slaves to people in
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the Middle East. It was just an ugly, gross disaster. Yes,
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And at this point in time, Asian countries such as India and China had
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started enslaving tons of people. Primarily they enslaved Jewish people and Europeans in Indian
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and China did the same exact, except also enslaved people from other neighboring countries,
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and all of them went after indigenous tribes and peoples all over the place.
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So like it was essentially a practice that took othering to another level.
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They were like, oh, you are different than me. You belong to
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me. Now you're going to do work for me to benefit me, right,
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yeah, very much. This level of subjugation, and as we said,
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I think just this important part here is the people that they were likely
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to try and grab for slaves with the people that we're going to have the
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toughest time defending themselves. And so it was a lot of people who had
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physical disabilities or potentially probably some amount of mental disabilities, and then women and
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children like they obviously would capture anybody that they could capture. There was lots
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of people who are not those populations, but the easiest people for them to
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grab and force into slavery were more vulnerable populations, which takes what is already
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a horrific practice and makes it even grosser, you know, like right,
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just really sad. So shortly after systematic colonization slash genocide began in the Americas,
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the new people practiced in dentured servitude. So the new people who were
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coming over and appropriating lands from the native inhabitants were practicing this indentured servitude,
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which for those of you who don't remember from history course or I've never heard
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that term indentured servitude is compulsory unpaid labor until presumably some debt is considered paid
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off. Like someone might say, please grant me passage to this place,
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and then someone would then pay for them to immigrate to their country, and
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payment for that immigration, they would have that person work on their property until
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they felt that that debt had been paid off. Now they might say that
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like, you make, you know, next to nothing, and so it's
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going to take the rest of your life for that debt to pete paid off,
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therefore making it functionally equivalent to just all other types of slavery. They
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may also make it so that the debt was so high that it would take
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the rest of their life to pay off, even if they were paid normal
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wages. So there are lots of ways to manipulate that system, but that
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was essentially what indentured servitude looked like when it began in the Americas. Another
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thing they would do, too, is while that person was in debt and
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kind of working in that space, they would charge them for things like certain
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meals or clothing or materials that they needed, and so that would add to
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the debt. So like their debt would get extended because they would essentially create
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a credit line where your payment was just your labor. Yes, Yeah,
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and they would just make it impossible to get out of that. Yeah.
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Really good catch. And I meant to say, but I'm glad you interrupted
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with that because that was a really important piece. But as we're setting the
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context here for what is going to be I think the crux of this discussion,
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the primary heart of what we're talking about, because we're talking about like,
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as people started to immigrate to the Americas and as I said, they're
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sort of committing genocide and taking over and appropriating lands. By about the sixteen
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hundreds and dentured servitude was really rapidly disappearing as a practice, and that was
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really important for what came next. And before we move on to that,
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we'll have to listen to what has come about from all this colonization, which
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is late stage capitalism. Here's some ads. Okay, we're back. So
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we're setting the context now for what happened when indangered servitude started to go away.
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Now, in sixteen nineteen, the sal Joe Ao Baptista, a Portuguese
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slave ship, arrived at Angola, South Africa, and attacked and arrested innocent
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people from the Indongo and Congo kingdoms. The slavers roughly packed these people into
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the hall of the ship, and you can actually, well, I don't
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know if you talk about this later, but like Dere's pictures and schematics of
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how folks were packed into these ships, it is so inhumane, it's awful.
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Yeah, Actually, we need to spend a few minutes on that.
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So as you just sort of alluded to, the conditions of slavery had almost
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certainly been horrible and disgusting and in human by its very design and sense its
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inception. Right. However, by the time the slave of trades started becoming
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this global thing, and in particular when it started requiring these months long sea
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voyages, the conditions of slavery became just legendarily abhorrent on these ships. Let's
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unpack it a little bit what they were having to deal with and being transported
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in this condition on these slave ships so many times a lot of the folks
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that were captured and enslaved. The enslaved folks were often shackled together, they
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were placed inside the hall. They were often laying down horizontally, they could
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not stand. They were not usually given very much to eat, if anything
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at all. They were not clothed very well. That I mean, it
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was just they were the worst possible condition you could think of. That's how
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folks were kept. They were essentially kept like cargo, and they were treated
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like cargo. A lot of the enslaved folks were kept as essentially just crates
15:54
inside the hull of the ship. They were not attended to, they were
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left alone. They were and then when somebody would pass away, they would
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throw them overboard. We're going to talk about that in a little bit as
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well. So, yeah, just as you said, they were strip naked
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for inspection and often just kind of left that way. They were so cramped
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and packed together, as you said, they were forced to crouch or even
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just lie down. They had very little ventilation, so this was just the
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opposite of sanitation and also made it extremely hot, and they were kept below
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deck for two to three months of the entire journey. Maybe brought up just
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to get a little bit of exercise, a little bit of food, maybe,
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but there was these rampant diseases such a small pox and dysenterry were extremely
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common and apparently was so foul smelling that it was just vomit inducing right.
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Women and children were kept separate but were regularly abused and raped by the crew.
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And the hostages were given two small meals per day, and if they
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refused, they were force fed. And the dead were thrown overboard. Sometimes
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not only were they dead thrown overboard, but the group that they were chained
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to were also thrown overboard. Man. So sometimes what would happen is that
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person who had passed would be thrown overboard and drag over other folks they were
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shackled to. This thing about this disposal of dead. A lot of these
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people that they had kidnapped, basically had stolen. They came from traditions,
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like most people in the world, that really honored their dead. When somebody
17:18
died, they were buried, there was a ceremony, They were treated with
17:21
respect. How one handled their dead was extremely important even in wartime, like
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you didn't just abuse bodies. I mean, they obviously did have some fairly
17:30
brutal practices like dismembering people here and there on various countries around the world,
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but in general, in these places, the dead were treated with respect,
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even when they were your enemy. So to them, seeing their brethren just
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tossed overboard like garbage. Was also a huge shock, and just like,
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what, like, who are these evil monsters who have like captured us,
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who treat the dead like this, who treat humans like this? Who do
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this? Like what is going on? I can't imagine how horrible that must
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have been. Yeah, and it this is not even the worst of it.
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It keeps getting worse. So it just heads up everyone. Yeah.
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Now, of course, the crew is also in danger of catching those diseases
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that spread among the slaves, because diseases spread, that's the thing they do.
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And many of the crew did die as a result. However, the
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newly enslaved people died at just massive, massive rates. As many as twenty
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to fifty percent of captured people would not survive the journey. And when the
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governments that funded these passages and the initial sort of charters for these did start
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to put regulations in place that forced a slightly better conditions for the slaves,
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the reason they did it was to protect the crew, to protect the slavers,
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as they didn't want to be losing crew as they were shipping these bodies
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across the sea. That inadvertently did make it less likely that people who were
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being transported, were going to die, but that was not the motivation of
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the people who are paying for those changes. Right now, let's go back
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to our ship, the sal Joao Batista. About half of the kidnap passengers
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had died due to the rough conditions when the ship was captured by English pirates,
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specifically a ship called the White Lion. The remaining twenties captives were taken
19:11
to a port near the colonists settlement of Jamestown in North America. The people
19:15
were sold to bidders, largely tobacco plantation owners, who immediately saw the benefit
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of unpaid labor. I mean, at this point in time, colonists tasted
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blood, wine was too thin. So what ended up happening was slavery took
19:29
off all of a sudden. It became the new thing. It became this
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incredibly powerful incentive for plantation owners to want to buy more people because they didn't
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have to pay for labor. Yeah, and I mean, as far as
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we can tell, the country was not headed in the direction of slavery.
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Arguably it was headed away from it, with them sorted to get rid of
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and dentured servitude. But this ship shows up with a whole bunch of people
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who look very different from people that most the people who lived in the new
19:56
colonies had ever seen before. Their very dark skin, had you, different
20:00
hair, different clothes, different language, all of that. And then they
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were told like, these are people who are going to work for you for
20:07
free now, and they were like, oh, okay, we could get
20:11
used to this. And so now with a market of slaves North America that
20:15
immediately picked up from that one event, Like we said, we can really
20:18
trace it to this one ship that captured those slaves and took them to Jamestown
20:22
or the colony near Jamestown. With that one event, but there was this
20:26
new market. The ships began rating and pillaging Africa, attacking and taking hostages
20:30
to the tune of an estimated six to seven million people just in the seventeen
20:34
hundreds. That's what we kind of keep going back to, is this thing
20:38
is so hugely impactful to so many people. I mean, this is just
20:44
in the seventeen hundreds, up to seven million people. Yeah, And most
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captives were spread throughout Caribbean plantations to work on coffee and sugar plantations, and
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Britain was a world leader. As one does, they tend to excel at
20:56
these things. I would say they were a leader in slavery trade, and
21:00
it continued on after Charlemagne. However, by eighteen oh seven, the British
21:03
had passed an act abolishing slavery and making all work around slavery illegal. This
21:08
pissed off so many aristocrats who would amassed a fortune in wealth on the backs
21:12
of enslaved peoples, but they all got over it and found other ways to
21:17
swindle money away from people, because that's what people do. Yep. So
21:22
Further, after the British Abolition Act of eighteen oh seven, the British began
21:26
using their navy to actually actively stop slave ships from bringing captured people across the
21:32
Atlantic to the Americas. Mantil about eighteen sixty seven, when it sort of
21:36
reached US peak, the British operations on the west coast of Africa estimated to
21:40
have captured thirty six slave ships and release and estimated two hundred thousand men,
21:45
women and children were being brought to America to be sold as slaves. So
21:49
trying to make up for the damage that they did, the incredible large amount
21:53
of damage, you know what to start, I guess, yeah, Although
21:57
slavery was very comin and growing increasingly common in the United States. Few laws
22:03
that codified and instilled slavery or the parameters of slavery, so basically there was
22:07
very little around this to protect the people that were involved in this situation except
22:11
for the people who are making money, and even then there was very little
22:15
on that front. So this ended in sixteen sixty two when Virginia wrote into
22:18
law that a child would be born free or into bondage depending on the condition
22:22
of the mother. Thus, generations of enslaved people could be born right on
22:29
American soil. Essentially, if the mother was an enslaved person, the child
22:33
born to that mother was an enslaved person from birth, which is essentially what
22:37
really kicked off the like this is now the legal precedent for slavery in the
22:41
United States, saying that we are acknowledging that this is a thing, and
22:45
we're ensuring that it continues as long as possible. Because one might have argued
22:51
before that the people who were brought to the Americas were slaves because they were
22:55
captured from another place, but that people born on American soil are people who
23:00
are American citizens. Like that was definitely an argument that someone could and almost
23:03
certainly did make at the time. And so to prevent that from being the
23:07
case, they said, no, no, no, no, no,
23:08
no no no. We're going like, if they are slaves, everyone that
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comes after them as slaves, their skin makes them slaves. They're slaves,
23:17
right, and Virginia enshrined that idea into law. So we'll talk. I
23:22
think let's get into the kind of work that slaves did once they became slaves
23:27
or were born into slavery. Right. So, although an enslaved person might
23:33
be assigned to a variety of roles or tasks, most enslaved people worked on
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farm plantations. Initially those folks that the enslaved folks would work on indigo,
23:41
tobacco or rice farms from Chesapeake Bay, Maryland all the way down to Jolgia.
23:47
And so you found that that's a large area to cover the fact that
23:49
was as far north as Maryland, which I knew that it was kind of
23:55
spread around and all over and what they consider the south is a lot further
23:57
north than you might think. But yes, that seems like it covers a
24:03
huge amount of land. Yes, Now, in seventeen seventy six, the
24:07
United States. Many people who listen to this may know that that the United
24:11
States. Nobody in Florida does. That's right. Yeah, the United States
24:15
formally gained its independence from England. Up unto that time, it was still
24:19
technically like an England branch if you will. Yeah, we were like the
24:23
Scranton branch of dunder Mifflin exactly, right, Yep, that was a perfect
24:29
comparison. So HQ is over in England, but Dundermifflin America version is over
24:33
here. And in seventeen seventy six we said no more. We declared our
24:37
independence and signed that into law, and so we were now independent from England.
24:41
And many people in the North, for whom slavery was really not particularly
24:45
important to their economy, saw slavery as a form of oppression similar in their
24:51
minds to what they had just liberated themselves from with the English monarchy. Thus
24:57
the North sought to a pallish slavery in the North, right, Yeah,
25:03
because this is a really important thing too. As we started to establish the
25:07
United States, so much of the conversation was as the colonies and the states
25:11
started to develop, the federal overreach versus states rights now stuff became a huge
25:17
thing. And ultimately, when people talk about the Civil War being about states
25:18
rights, they're really talking about states rights to own slaves. So that's kind
25:23
of us. So we have that, but let's dive into this. Yeah,
25:26
right, as we get into that, just as you were saying,
25:29
like this really did divide the country and sort of what were the important things
25:33
that made the North different from the South, because we said the North wanted
25:36
to abolish slavery in the North, and we'll get to that in a moment,
25:38
and this really did divide the country, and like that divided the country.
25:42
We're going to divide this podcast and insert some ads. Okay, we
25:53
are back. We were talking about the rift that formed in the United States
25:57
once the North decided to abolish slavery. And because the North decided to abolish
26:02
slavery, that doesn't mean that the North was anti racist at all. No
26:06
no, no, no, no no no. And largely they were specifically
26:10
focused on only being banned in the North, as we'll talk about. So
26:12
there was a major divide politically in the United States between states that abolished slavery
26:18
and states that depended on it. The South wanted more political power to keep
26:21
and expand the practice of slavery. Enslaved Africans made up nearly half of the
26:25
entire population of the people in the Southern States, and the people of the
26:29
South thought that those people should count for the purposes of having representation in the
26:33
government. So there's some interesting things. The compromise was to write into the
26:37
Constitution of the United States that people had the right to possess quote any person
26:42
held to service or labor i e. Enslave people. Thus, Africans,
26:47
although definitely not having the right to vote, were allowed to be counted as
26:51
three fifths of a person for the purpose of calculating how many seats at the
26:56
government table the South would get. So to people by that, essentially,
27:00
if a person wasn't enslaved and they were working on a plantation, they counted
27:06
as three fits of a person, which meant that in the South, because
27:08
there were so many enslaved people, they got more votes, they got more
27:12
representation, they got more government kind of power in the South because of the
27:18
three fits law, even though this was supposed to be representative government, and
27:22
the three fifths of the person meant that those bodies were being counted toward the
27:26
number of elected officials that would represent the South. They were not high in
27:32
representatives for those three fifth peoples. That is to say that the people who
27:36
were enslaved, although being used to calculate seats for representation, we're not getting
27:41
representation, which I think is so transparently a power grab. That understand,
27:49
like how that even made it through the government. But that's where they're at.
27:52
I guess it's people in power keeping power. I mean, you know,
27:57
some things just never changed, you know, right, Okay, but
28:00
we're getting into it now. So as we said, at the time,
28:03
they were really farming things like tobacco and into go and stuff like that.
28:07
But in seventeen ninety three, as the story goes and most people have heard,
28:11
Eli Whitney developed the cotton gin and this massively reinvigorated the agriculture of America,
28:17
exclusively the South, and this became the primary export of the South.
28:22
In fact, three fourths of the world's cotton for the whole world came from
28:27
the American South in the United States. And although this amounted to incredible wealth
28:33
for the Southerners profiting from slave labor, this was not restricted to profits in
28:38
the South. Northern textile factories erupted and were massively profitable from the cotton that
28:45
was obtained by the slave labor in the south. Northern banks granted loans to
28:52
purchase lands for growing cotton in the south, Northern insurance companies ensured slave owners
28:57
for their slaves and their products as property, and the Northern textile factories even
29:03
sold those cotton made clothes back to the South to clothe the enslaved people who
29:08
had picked the cotton that became their clothes. So it became this very entertangled
29:15
web where people in the north benefiting from slavery nearly as much as the people
29:19
who were running the plantations in the South were. Although they liked to preach
29:23
that they were all on the all doing the right thing, there was a
29:26
lot of people who were specifically, you know, saying one thing and doing
29:30
another while so they can make a buck, and many of them were not.
29:33
Even a lot of people in the North were not abolitionists. And I
29:37
think a lot of the people who are making money on this were in that
29:40
camp of pro slavery, just not in the North. So basically, just
29:45
to be clear, if that wasn't abundant, likely are already some form of
29:49
the United States economy and the people that are involved. Everybody directly benefited from
29:56
slave labor except the slaves. Except slaves. Yeah, it just to bec
30:00
clear because that's a thing that's happening in Florida right now. Slavery did not
30:03
benefit black people, did not benefit enslave people. It did not simply put
30:07
and we just kind of saw a tip of that iceberg here. Now,
30:11
slave labor in the South was so profitable that it actively prevented the development of
30:17
other industries. I mean, this is so wild to think about how big
30:21
this industry was. Yeah, there were a few factories or manufacturing operations or
30:26
technological innovations in the South, including railroads, because why would they need to
30:30
Yeah, they had people power, right, There was a sort of silver
30:34
lining there, and that because they didn't develop these better factories and they didn't
30:38
have a good railroad system. That was part of what made it very difficult
30:42
for the South in the Civil War. They had very little technology or infrastructure.
30:47
The North was much better supplied for the Civil War fight when that took
30:52
place, which likely contributed to the victory as opposed to now, which the
30:56
South is just a technological and intellectual beacon. Of the world right full one
31:04
eighty they made you know, and thinking about what this looked like. There
31:08
were obviously massive plantations with hundreds of slaves, but really most people who owned
31:15
slaves only had three or four slaves, and most people did not own slaves
31:18
at all, although a lot of these people would rent slaves when they could
31:22
afford to, to help with some of the labor they were doing. But
31:25
I think a lot of people think of their being these massive fields that were
31:27
just populated by slaves. And although those did exist on some plantations, most
31:33
places where you would find a slave owning family, they had three or four
31:37
and that was actually fairly uncommon still because most people didn't own any slaves.
31:41
Right, Most of the nation's founders saw slavery as a necessary evil. So
31:45
essentially they're saying, we need this right now. Most people recognize the horribleness
31:48
of it all, but did not see a way to you end it and
31:52
preserve the wealth and success of the country. And Thomas Jefferson wrote, quote,
31:55
as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we
31:59
can neither hold it nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale,
32:02
and self preservation is in the other end. Quote. You know,
32:07
not that Thomas Jefferson's the greatest person to quote when it comes to slavery,
32:09
but that is specifically kind of understanding that he was like, well, we
32:14
need this, and he was directly benefiting from it. Yes, he was.
32:17
Another one that I forgot to put in here in the notes is George
32:21
Washington also had many slaves, and George Washington was apparently a real sneaky son
32:25
of a bitch about this. So there was a law in the North.
32:30
Maybe it was part of Virginia, I don't remember where it was, but
32:31
wherever it was, the law was that if a slave worked in a particular
32:36
area for like it was like nine months or something like that, then they
32:39
automatically gained their freedom. And they basically had this saying that it was not
32:45
cumulative, it was consecutive. If they worked in this area for this amount
32:49
of time then and maybe I think it was actually longer than that. I
32:52
think it was like three year years or something, or five years, but
32:53
if they worked in this period of time, then they would automatically gain their
32:57
freedom having worked there for such a period of time. So George Washington,
33:00
who had multiple estates, what he would do is he would as soon as
33:05
slaves got up to the point that they were about to gain the freedom,
33:07
he would move that entire group of slaves across state lines to a different estate,
33:13
and the ones at that estate across to the other estate, so that
33:15
he could force them to stay enslaved for much longer. He apparently had one
33:20
slave in particular that was going to be granted to, like his niece or
33:24
something like that, who apparently was just horrendous, horrendous nightmare of a person,
33:30
and the slave ran away, and they were so surprised that, like,
33:32
why would the slave run away? They're like, you know, we've
33:36
always treated them so nicely. I'm like, well, first of all,
33:37
you've forced them into labor well beyond what they should have actually been had to
33:42
go through. And second of all, like you're trying to force them in
33:45
a position of someone who treats them very badly, Like this should come as
33:47
a surprise to nobody who has eyes, ears in a brain, but apparently
33:52
that's where we at. So anyway, long story, Shore George Washington really
33:57
worked hard to ensure that he could severely and permanently restrict the freedom of his
34:02
slaves by circumventing the long as you will, and also too, just to
34:07
kind of illustrate how ungreat he was. You know, everybody was taught when
34:12
we were younger that he had wooden teeth and he had dental problems. But
34:15
many of his teeth were ivory. They were animal teeth that were shaved down.
34:19
But some of his teeth and his dentures were actually from enslaved people that
34:22
he owned. So just to keep that piece of information in mind when we
34:25
talk about the founding fathers and their merits, if you will, Yeah,
34:32
actually I just heard recently it was not that uncommon back at the like I
34:37
want to say, the eighteen hundreds, but probably before that that when Pete
34:40
they needed to make false teeth for people, they got them from the young
34:44
people who had died recently. A lot of times it was on battlefields.
34:47
But they would like, well, you know, it makes the most sense
34:50
to make replaceable teeth out of real teeth. And where are you going to
34:53
get real teeth that are not already rotted someone who's fairly young. Where are
34:58
you going to find someone who's fair lily young whose teeth you can salvage?
35:00
Soldiers? Sure, and so people were walking around with dead soldiers teeth in
35:05
their mouth, which it's pretty gross to think about. Yep, yeah,
35:07
it's a whole thing. Maybe one day we'll just do a whole episode on
35:12
teeth. I'm sure people will really be stoked about that. Now, people
35:16
who needed to maintain and expand slavery to continue to build generational wealth struggled with
35:21
the cognitive dissonance of it all, the kind of like, we know it's
35:23
bad, but we benefit from it, and they started to try to talk
35:27
themselves into believing that slavery was good for those enslaved folks. Sound familiar twenty
35:31
twenty three, Florida. Oh right, The masters fed them, sheltered them,
35:36
clothed them, and took care of them and their old aids. So
35:37
the slave owners must be good people, right, That's kind of what they
35:42
were trying to talk themselves into. Yes, So these deluded slave I'm going
35:46
to say owners and scare quotes there therefore, could paint themselves as benevolent and
35:52
paternal and opposed to the poor working conditions of the free labor in the north,
35:58
and which the business owners had no responsibility to the well being of their
36:00
employees. The business owners didn't clothe them, or shelter them, or feed
36:06
them or anything of that nature. And so these people in the South could
36:08
then were sort of talking themselves into believing that they were being kind to their
36:15
enslaved people, even though they obviously had taken away their freedom. They were
36:20
feeding them, and there that made it okay. And so I think,
36:22
as a quick thought exercise, you can think about if your employer stopped paying
36:25
you, but you had you were forced to work for them anyway, and
36:29
when they could beat you anytime they want it, or do anything else they
36:31
wanted to, but they would they would give you food from now on.
36:35
Would you take that deal? Probably not. I would not. Nope,
36:38
I'd say probably not. There's a very small chance that I would like.
36:40
It would have to be very, very very little, and even then it
36:44
would not be good. Now. John C. Calhoun, in a speech
36:46
on the Senate floor, said, quote, I hold that in the present
36:50
state of civilization, where two races of different origin and distinguished by color and
36:54
other physical differences as well as intellectual are brought together, the relation now existing
37:00
in the slave holding states between the two is, instead of an evil a
37:04
good a positive good end. Quote I swear to God, that could just
37:08
be Rhonda Santis right now talking on the Senate floor. Honestly, that's not
37:13
an exactly that's what that's where this is going right now. Yeah. And
37:15
John C. Calhoun was unfortunately not some like, you know, whack job
37:21
way off in the field that people didn't listen to. He was, of
37:23
course, the Secretary of War from eighteen seventeen to eighteen twenty five, the
37:28
Vice president from eighteen twenty five to eighteen thirty two, and the Secretary of
37:32
State from eighteen forty four to eighteen forty five. So he, this guy
37:37
who was sitting here telling us that slavery was a good thing, was like
37:42
in a position of power for a very long several positions of power for a
37:46
long time. Yeah. And further, people justified slavery by referencing the practices
37:52
of the Greeks and Romans, as well as passages from the Bible. The
37:54
curse of Ham was a common one. And yere we go quote and the
37:59
sons of Noah went forth from the ark where shem Ham and Jaffeth, and
38:02
Ham is the father of Cannon. These are the three sons of Noah,
38:07
and of them was the whole world overspread, and Noah began to be a
38:10
husbandman. And he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine and
38:15
was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the
38:17
father of Cannon, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two
38:22
brethren without, and Shem and Jaffeth took a garment and laid it upon both
38:27
their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. And
38:31
their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah
38:36
awoke from his wine and knew that what his younger son had done unto him.
38:39
And he said, cursed be Cannon, a servant of servants. Shall
38:44
he be unto his brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord,
38:47
God of Shem, and Cannon shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Jaffeth,
38:52
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Cannon shall be
38:55
his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fift years end.
39:00
Quote. I would like to say, if I saw my dad naked,
39:02
I don't think I should be an enslave person for the rest of my
39:05
life. I think that would suck. That's not cool. Yeah, that's
39:08
a ridiculous way to go about that. Another verse Apostle Paul's Epistle to the
39:13
Ephesians is like a tongue twister. Six five through seven says, quote,
39:17
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh,
39:21
with fear and trembling and singleness of your heart, as unto Christ,
39:25
not with eye service as man pleasers, but as the servants of Christ,
39:30
doing the will of God from the heart, with good will, doing service
39:34
as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing
39:37
any man doeth, the same shall he receiveth of the Lord, whether he
39:40
be bond or free. End quote. Apostle Paul repeated the same sentiment almost
39:45
verbade him in Collossians. So what ends up happening is people will take something
39:50
that like a holy book and they will literally interpret it and then they will
39:53
turn it into something that ends up being quite harmful for people. And that's
39:58
one This is one of the justification for why slave owners would continue to keep
40:04
enslaved people. It was like, hey, this is in the Bible.
40:06
Look, Noah did it. Yeah, except there was his own kid who
40:08
saw him naked because he was too drunk to cover himself, you know,
40:12
which is like they didn't they didn't talk about that part. They're like,
40:14
see the Bible said slaves are fine, instead of being like it was Noah's
40:17
fault, which you know is kind of ironic, right, and also super
40:21
cherry picking, like what parts they're gonna be Like, let's focus on these
40:24
couple of passages here that make our position look legitimate. Yeah, which is
40:29
you know, consistent for you know, extremists, that's true. Further,
40:31
they argued that Africans were naturally genetically inferior to people with pale skin and must
40:36
be subjugated for society the work not enslaving black people would destroy society and upset
40:40
the natural order. They argued that sentiment you have heard time and time again
40:45
in different forms across different decades. I mean, you heard you hear terms
40:50
like super predator describing black folks in the seventies and eighties, when people were
40:54
like creating like a black scare. You hear the War on drugs, which
40:59
was specifically use to target low income black neighborhoods and incarcerate black folks. I
41:05
mean, this particular narrative has changed time and time again, but the sentiment
41:09
in the theme is the exact same. It's just another way to describe how
41:15
people in power are going to keep those who they consider lesser than in a
41:19
subjugated form. And you know, I might argue tongue in cheek saying like,
41:23
did unenslaving black people lead to the destruction of society and upset of the
41:28
natural order? Clearly not. And yet I could almost guarantee you that that
41:32
is like the next stump speech we get from Ron de Santis or someone,
41:37
because they start to say, like, our country is off track, We've
41:40
destroyed the natural order, We've upset society and things of that nature, and
41:46
then they point maybe all the way back to see it all happen when we
41:51
undid slavery. Yeah, And I don't think that as a stretch to say,
41:53
like because and normally I would have said that jokingly. I would have
41:58
joked that that would be an argument they would make. But they're like,
42:00
they just keep marching backwards through time to this point and some of their arguments.
42:05
So I think that it would not surprise me at all to hear them
42:08
invoke the same rhetoric to justify why they should come into power is because the
42:15
thing that they said would happen happened, which is, we've destroyed society by
42:19
giving people equal rights. When I would completely disagree, saying that things have
42:23
gotten better and better since people have gotten more and more rights, and that
42:27
taking those rights away will make things significantly worse. But maybe some disagree with
42:31
me on that, and I'm just gonna say, you're all that's a good
42:34
stance. Now. Although we've been talking about sort of the history of slavery
42:37
up to this point, what we haven't really done yet is unpack what slavery
42:42
was like, what it consisted of, and the conditions of slavery. So
42:45
I think we need to get really clear about what slavery was. And I
42:50
think that is a really good time for us to go ahead and pause this
42:52
conversation and pick that up in part two, because we have so much to
42:55
cover still, so I think we can end that one here. And as
42:59
we come to the close of this, I always like to say, if
43:00
you appreciate what we're up to today and would like to support the show anyway
43:04
that you can, you can do so non financially by leaving us a rating
43:07
in a review and subscribing. You can do it financially by joining us on
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43:13
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43:16
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43:19
Patreon, you can have said support us financially by picking up some merch.
43:22
The people who have already supported us on Patreon and we are just eternally grateful
43:25
to their help and for just being who they are and continuing to allow us
43:29
to do the things that we do includes Mike, m Megan, Leyla,
43:32
Mike T, Justin Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian,
43:37
and Ashley. Thank you all so much for your continued support of this
43:40
show and what we're trying to do here. My team of people includes writing
43:45
in fact checking from Shane and myself, editing an audio production from Justin,
43:50
and our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Now, we do like to
43:54
recommend some things as we are closing out a discussion, So is there anything
44:00
that you need to say before we get to our recommendations. Shane, this
44:01
is generally heavy topic and like we said, we wanted to try to treat
44:05
it with grace and dignity and respect for the folks that this is impacted,
44:07
because we know how big this impact is. So we hope that you don't
44:10
take the recommendations as kind of like us light on that topic or like trying
44:14
to wash away, Like we really think of this as like kind of a
44:16
palate cleanser, because this is so tough and sometimes you need to step away
44:21
from a topic and just kind of regroup process and kind of absorb that information.
44:25
So we're we're not dropping this in to kind of say, hey,
44:29
by the way, here's some levity just because we are doing this as like
44:31
a like this is something that we do on every show. But yes,
44:36
just so you know, we're not trying to do this insensitively. We are
44:38
putting this in a space where we say, you know, you might need
44:42
a little bit of a palate cleanser after all that. Just to be clear.
44:45
Also, the recommendations that we give often are completely unrelated to the topic
44:47
at hand. That is definitely the case today. But as you said,
44:52
we'd like to try and end with something a little lighter. I mean,
44:53
we do end every episode with this, but it helps, I think,
44:57
allow us to end and go about the of our day. Yes, and
45:00
understand, you know that we we're not forgetting the things we've talked about.
45:04
We're not forgiving the horrible things that have happened. And we can also,
45:07
as you said, bring a little levity to this. So anything else before
45:10
we transition to our recommendations, nothing else. All right, here is an
45:15
ad break for you, and then recommendations. All right, we're back from
45:27
the ad break, but I do have one more quick audio transition. It's
45:30
one that we wrote ourselves. Well, justin wrote itations. Okay, I
45:40
am recognizing a product for which I'm going to appear to be a shill,
45:45
and I'm actually not getting paid for this product placement type advertising buzz marketing thing
45:49
I'm doing. But I was convinced by the commercials. I went out and
45:53
tried it, and I really liked the product. So I'm gonna go ahead
45:57
and echo that sentiment here like a shameless humor. I'm recommending the product that
46:01
is called Dawn Platinum Easy Squeeze, which is a kind of dish soap.
46:06
It's as advertised, It's just works really really well. You don't eat very
46:08
much of it, and it's very effective. It cleans really well. And
46:12
the bottle design this is part of why I picked it up, and so
46:15
that it always sits basically upside down, so the soap is just sort of
46:17
always being pulled down by gravity toward the nozzle. But they designed it so
46:22
it doesn't leak or drip at all. Like it's actually really well designed,
46:23
and so you just a little squirt of the soap on your dishes and it
46:27
will really works super well. It cuts through pretty much everything I've put a
46:31
task on it so far and done a pretty stellar job, even things that
46:36
I thought I had cleaned really well before. When I put the soap on,
46:37
it think got even more clean. So I'm like, okay, I'm
46:40
down for this soap. So that is my shameless plug for this product that
46:45
I just really like. I love that well. I think that's the first
46:49
time that we've had dish soap as a or like you just like, got
46:52
a cleaning product so good. Maybe the last two does. Unless we get
46:58
a paid sponsorship then you know on hit us up, well we'll take some
47:00
money. Yeah, absolutely, So my recommendations A movie and it's The New
47:05
Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem movie that just came out. Oh, the
47:08
like animated one. Yes, it is so fun. So it's written by
47:15
Seth Rogan and a couple other people, Like there's a bunch of writers on
47:17
it. Wow. The animation style is really cool. It looks like it's
47:20
animated as if storyboard sketches were kind of like that's like the entire art style
47:27
sort of stop motion, sort of stop motion and then like there's like scribbles
47:30
like where maybe like lights or shading would go like almost like it's like a
47:34
it looks like it's drawn quickly. Okay, but really cool. Like it's
47:37
a really cool design. Now, the voice acting in it is incredible.
47:43
So first of all, the teenage mut Ninja Turtles are all teenagers. They're
47:45
actual teenagers. Wow. But the voicecast is bananas. So just to kind
47:52
of give you an insight on this, Jackie Chan is Splinter, who Seth
47:58
Rogan is Bebop. The Ninja Turtles are actual teenagers. John Cenaz rock Steady
48:02
ao at a Beeri is April O'Neil. She plays as I think Sydney in
48:07
The Bear If you've seen that show, I haven't, but you recommended it,
48:10
and it is on my list. Okay, good Ice Cuba, super
48:14
Fly, Post Malone is Ray Filet, Paul Rudd is Mondo Gecko, Let's
48:19
see Rose burn his leatherhead. Giancarlo Esposito is Baxter Stockman, Maya Rudolph as
48:24
cynthia Umtron. Hannibal Burris is genghas Frog. I mean, there are so
48:30
many people in this movie. It's absurd and it is so fun. Yeah,
48:34
it's it's just a really fun it's a fun movie. So it's it's
48:37
a nice palate cleanser. They act like teenagers in it, because you know,
48:40
when you watch the old movies, they're all they all act like they're
48:43
a little bit more mature and grown up. They're very goofy in this one
48:45
fun they act like kids, and that's exactly what you would expect that of
48:49
a teenage mute ninja turtle movie. So it was fun and it was good
48:52
and you should go see it. Awesome, all right, quite like that
48:53
recommendation. Yeah, all right, Well, if you would like to tell
48:57
us how awesome of a job we did, or you'd like to critique something
48:59
that we did and do so constructively and kindly, you can write to us
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directly info at WWDWWD podcast dot com. You can also reach out to us
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on the social media platforms. Thank you all so much for listening today.
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Thanks again to our patron supporters. Thank you for recording with me. Shane.
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Is there anything else you'd like to add before we close it out for
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this week and then we come back next week with part two about slavery?
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Nothing else this time perfect. This is Abraham and it's a Shane. We're
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out sea. You've been listening to Why We Do what we Do. You
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can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
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Thanks for listening and we hope you have an awesome day.