3. Pick a quote or two from one of the texts that spoke to you or that confused you. Describe and explain the quote(s) as best as you can and/or identify your questions about them.
Angelina Grimké’s reading “Appeal to Christian Women of the South, 1836” a quote that stood out to me was not because it used text that was not her writing. But in the way she interpreted he Declaration of Independence. Grimké tried her best to depict the reality of what it means to be an American “We must come back to the good old doctrine of our fore fathers who declared to the world,
“this self evident truth that all men are created equal, and that they have certain inalienable rights among which are,life,liberty,and the pursuit of happiness”. It is even a greater absurdity to suppose a man can be legally born a slave under our free Republican Government,than under the petty despotisms of barbarian Africa. If then, we have no right to enslave an African, surely we can have none to enslave an American.”
Surely not in the United States is allowing slavery to occur when it is highlighted that all men that are born on this land is able to have all that rights of others.She also claimed that the children of slaves are technically American because they were born on American soil. In the other reading by Ida B. Wells in 1895 it shocked me to read specifically that the white “masters” of the slaves would decide that corporal punishment was a good way to punish and devalue them in order for them to do more dirty work.
“But emancipation came and the vested interests of the white man in the Negros body were lost. The white man had no right to scourge the emancipated Negro, still less has a right to kill him… In slave time the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into Vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed”.
When I re read what their tactic was in order to get away with abusing another human being, it infuriated me even more. Whites would manipulate the situation and would not kill slaves before the emancipation because it meant it would be a financial loss.
Overall slavery was not accepted by everyone. Many people fought to see justice occur in this messed up system. This is deeply rooted and racism is still severe as back then. There are laws that are set up now to stop the discrimination in school and in the work place. In my opinion I think it’s so pathetic that we need to have laws in order not to discriminate others because it should be in everyone to treat each other correctly. Sadly it is not that way and there are all these laws in order to protect the minorities.
Both of the quotes you’ve highlighted stood out to me as well Elba, it is insane to think of how normalized violence against people was (and still is) that it was given its own legal term, corporal punishment, and that any human possessing any degree of intelligence or compassion would make it legal to abuse a person, and how many people would have to go along with it to uphold these behaviors as normal, pathetic is an apt word to describe it, I’ll add disgusting. And you are right to point out these systems of abuse are still alive and well, I know where I am from schools were still engaging in corporal punishment up into the 1980’s at least, and this was often found in private “corrective” schools rife with abuses of power, many of which had more people of color than white kids. Voter suppression and hate groups still run rampant, people are still used as commodities. It is even more terrible to consider when we know people have been speaking such profound truths to the matter like the speakers behind this weeks readings.