Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/12/saved-by-slaves.html
…
12 Likes
On top of that the French forced Haiti to pay reparations for “lost property” of 90million franks. Haiti paid this from 1825 until it was finally paid off in 1947…
23 Likes
You can post all the history you want, backed up with citations and rock-solid evidence, but America’s Know-Nothing 30% (including the president*) will continue to believe about Haiti what they’ve believed about inner-city America since the 1960s: “sh-thole = n-ggers and sp-cs, amirite?”
That aside, it’s always new and fascinating to many of the other 70%, so thanks for posting it.
13 Likes
Plugging my favorite podcast here:
Chapter 4 is Haiti. It’s fascinating and horrific. Even by horrific revolution standards, it’s horrific.
Shitholes are often shitholes because someone has intentionally made it that way. Haitians were punished by the entire world for their freedom, including by the US, where under the Monroe Doctrine, we were supposedly defending the whole of the new world against European interference. Because can’t have a country of freed (is it “freed” if they literally fought their way to freedom? No one did any freeing there,) slaves.
14 Likes
We keep treating slavery like ancient history—imagining that enough time has passed that no person living today could reasonably blame their present-day circumstances on the practice.
Meanwhile John Tyler, tenth President of the United States and owner of 70 slaves, still has two living grandchildren.
20 Likes
One of Hollywood’s many crimes is that it never let Danny Glover’s big-budget Toussaint biopic get off the ground. I mean it’s basically a Spartacus story except the slaves actually win. There is a zero-percent chance someone wouldn’t have produced that story by now if the heroes weren’t all black people.
18 Likes
Fucker Carlson just pointed out that this is what many Trumpist Americans already believe.
2 Likes
Listened to the American Revolution, then tried to get through the French Revolution. Didn’t even get to the Terror, damn that was a slog through a quagmire of political chaos!
1 Like
In full agreement with the Trumpists, I’d guess?
2 Likes
In full sympathy, at least. After all, according to Carlson and his ilk we’re all obliged to listen to the “forgotten voices” of Dolt-45’s core voters: white suburbanite men with college credentials.
4 Likes
You’d think they’d realize that their attitudes could well lead them to being just another sad old man, living alone and dying of cancer.
5 Likes
I may as well post this one again…
And let’s not forget the Arawak:
9 Likes
And for 20th century Haiti:
3 Likes
8 Likes
Getting someone else to pay most real costs, while reaping most of the benefits- that’s just what USia does best! For that matter, it’s the core narrative of the last 500 years, and that’s why it’s so hard to imagine a future where everything costs an appropriate amount. (labor, gasoline, war…)
5 Likes
Now you’ve given the CIA (and the Alabama dept of corrections) a whole big bunch of new ideas.
You would think that, if it were commercially viable, that perhaps Oprah or Jay-Z might provide financing? Must be all the Hollywood types holding it back.
That’s the problem. It’s “common wisdom” in Hollywood that audiences don’t want to watch big-budget movies with black leads*, so they don’t get made because they aren’t “commercially viable.” Forget that the actual data doesn’t back the premise up (for example, Black Panther recently broke ticket preorder records for any Marvel movie).
*Exception: Will Smith
6 Likes
Definitely. See also the data that, even in Sweden, the effects of family wealth are still observable 10-15 generations later:
So yeah… maybe when we get to the early- to mid-2400s we’ll be right to claim that no one’s circumstances are the result of slavery and Jim Crow.
2 Likes
