I would like you to posit two slave owners, one “good” and one “bad.” If you can’t picture this for yourself, then maybe you can recall or rent the Steve McQueen movie, 12 YRS A SLAVE, based on the memoirs of Samuel Northrup. That movie, whatever you think of it, did indeed have two slave owners, one relatively humane played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch, one glowering sadistic monster played by Michael Fassbender.
Now, as slave-owners go, the Benedict Cumberbatch guy is close to being a peach of a guy. Or at least, that is how it is possible for you to interpret the facts, if you don’t look closely. He feeds his slaves well, houses them well, praises them when he thinks they’ve excelled, preaches to them on Sunday. He also has a sadistic thug of an overseer, is too much of a weakling to stand up for Northrup when that overseer dedicates himself to Northrup’s death, and eventually sells Northrup down the river to Fassbender’s monster – all while feeling bad. He also felt goddamned bad about the likelihood that Northrup was a free man stolen away from his family, genuinely tortured himself with it, but, you know, money’s tight, he’s still paying for Samuel, what are you gonna do. So off Samuel goes, to be tortured by the more overt monster for over a decade.
It is possible, I suppose, to feel some sympathy for Cumberbatch’s character, a guy who feels the things a good man does, but will not sacrifice his own resources to act on them.
But, really, screw him. He was still evil, as much as his instincts counseled otherwise. He still owned people. He still held command over their lives. He still thought he could be a kind of father to them, by preaching to them on Sunday. He still belonged to a system that enabled him to sell Samuel Northrup to a brutal monster, when it suited him, and it matters not a whit that he felt badly about it.
Thomas Jefferson is responsible for one splendid gift to the human race, the sentence that begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” The sentence is an absolute good. The life of the slave-owner who wrote it is not. We no longer give Thomas Jefferson a pass on that. Why then would any of us assume, as Bill O’Reilly does, that “they were well-housed,” even if true in some isolated cases, minimizes the damage that was done to these people just by being owned?
Let us assume that the slaves who helped build the White House had humane working conditions.
No. Let us be ridiculous about this. Let us assume that the slaves who built the White House lived in sybaritic luxury. Let us assume that they had luxuriously upholstered condos with Lazyboy sofas and let us assume that we could go back in time and give them Netflix, Jacuzzis, vibrating beds and Keuric coffee machines. Let us say that they had servants of their own who would perform any task for them, no matter how intimate; let us say that they were fed peeled grapes while serenaded by orchestras.
They still lived their lives knowing that AT ANY TIME they could be hauled off in chains, delivered into the power of absolute psychopaths, and sent to hard labor clearing tree stumps from mosquito-ridden swamps. Or whatever else the free market wanted them to do.
They knew this. WE KNOW THIS.
You are not well-treated when you know that you may be plunged into Hell at a whim, every goddamned day of your life.
You are not well-treated when, even being “well-treated,” this remains the central fact of your existence.
And because we know this, people like Bill O’Reilly who think they can slice the living damnation of enslaved people finer and harrumph that, actually, some of them were actually quite well treated…need to be recognized as racist pigs who need to shut up and not open their mouths again for a long, long time.
Comment By: Genevieve Williams
July 27th, 2016 at 11:18 am
Right? I mean, even if they *were* well treated (and how would O’Reilly know?), they were still slaves!
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
July 27th, 2016 at 1:17 pm
That’s the point Harriet Beecher Stowe made in Uncle Tom’s Cabin: no matter how well slaves were treated, no matter how kind their masters may have been, they were still treated as property, not people, with no human rights. More to the point, the kind master could get into debt, or die, and the slave could be sold down the river to much, much worse…and have no recourse.
Comment By: Daniel Persons
July 27th, 2016 at 11:18 am
How *dare* you, Adam-Troy, questioning the accuracy of one our greatest [best-selling] historical writers [whose books are riddled with errors]?
Comment By: Barbara Weitbrecht
July 27th, 2016 at 11:18 am
I do love this video series. Some of the questions are in deep face-palm territory.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPZR1lUMS47BA-N2Ihrtlg
Comment By: Genevieve Williams
July 27th, 2016 at 11:18 am
She’s so awesome.
Comment By: Jason Bennion
July 27th, 2016 at 1:17 pm
The right doesn’t want anyone to talk about race… except when THEY bring it up.
Comment By: W. Owen Powell
July 27th, 2016 at 2:17 pm
And they’re really, really terrified that sooner or later nonwhites will respond in kind to what whites have done to them for centuries.
Comment By: Peter Wilson
July 27th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Yeah, for them, talking about race generally equals racism.
Comment By: David Vineyard
July 27th, 2016 at 2:17 pm
Well treated slaves are still slaves. Slavery in and of itself is abuse and humiliation of human beings.
Comment By: Richard Rickert
July 27th, 2016 at 5:43 pm
Clowns like O’Reilly should apologize to the offspring of the former slaves for the treatment that they endured for 250 years and for the Jim Crow period which lasted for another 100 yrs .At least the Hitler regime lasted only 12 yrs .
Comment By: Zily Popygaj
July 27th, 2016 at 7:20 pm
– If BillO believes it was so great to be a slave ((and no, the doesn’t mean the voluntary BDSM kind)), he should become one. OH WAIT, that’s right, he has no fear that would *ever* happen.
– It’s bad enough that his fans are bigots, but the way they pervert and subvert everything from history, to our laws, to their own proclaimed ((if not practiced…)) religion in order to try to “justify” their bigotry is mentally sick.
Comment By: Ross Youngblood
July 27th, 2016 at 9:18 pm
I ranted on my FB and one FB friend replied to my OReily Rant that “to be fair …something about well treated slaves” and I had to point out that Michelle’s speech was not about the diet of Slaves. Then he replied “Must have missed something, and I’m not racist.” I’m thinking one sign that you may be a racist is having to say “I’m not racist.” I haven’t unfriended this guy, because I’m trying to get a clue why he could think his post was rational.
Comment By: Patricia Williams-King
July 27th, 2016 at 10:18 pm
Doesn’t the so called “White slavery” still go in in some Countries? The capturing and confinement of young girls & women as SEX workers?
Comment By: Stacy Spangler
July 27th, 2016 at 11:18 pm