“For better or worse, a number of the Founders owned slaves. That did not necessarily mean they were cruel to their slaves.”
How many suspense and horror movies and tv episodes are built around true life or imagined stories of white women and white children being taken from their families and homes and being forced to act like they love the people who abducted them or risk being killed.
Like the movie The Room… White people can somehow understand the emotional toll with that… what it would do to another white person’s psyche… the terror… the anger… desperation… the PTSD… for both the person abducted and the families they left behind.
No one says… “But didn’t the guy feed and clothe the girl he raped and had babies with? Didn’t he educate the kids and bring them toys? Didn’t he treat her like his wife for the 10 years he had her locked up under his shed? He was a kidnapper but a good man. He was kind to her! Besides she came from an abusive/neglectful home. At least he gave her attention that she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else. She’s better off having been with him.”
Because it doesn’t matter how “good” he was to her… Everyone knows it’s still a horror story.
They can understand that, but not the horror of 400 years of being violently and forcably taken from your country… packed into ships like sardines for months-long voyages to god knows where… being sold at auctions… sent to do backbreaking work for no pay… being raped so your children could be used as bait for alligators, sold, or forced to do more backbreaking work… having to feed your own babies sugar water because your breakmilk has to be reserved for your abductor’s children who you are forced to care for even though they’ll grow up to abuse you and your family, having to see the spouse you managed to find in this nightmare situation be sold away and knowing you’d never see them again… and all so that your abductor could make some money.
Even if the founding fathers never cracked a whip against the back of a slave they owned, this is still an American horror story… and these men were monsters.
Thoughtfulfangirling 