Just in time for Black History Month....

I've read some vile tripe from the fringes of the right-wing, but this latest nugget is by far, the most insulting piece of garbage I've read. This comes from Jeremiah, the self-called "fundamentalist Evangelical" who believes the standard conservative Christian nonsense that gays are an abomination to the Almighty, Liberalism is evil, etc.

One of the most common arguments you hear coming from modern Secular skeptics these days is that, Christianity and the bible "support" slavery. What does the bible say? Were they treated like slaves were in the 1800s? Leviticus gives us some incite...

Leviticus 25:53 - He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year; you must see to it that his owner does not rule over him ruthlessly.

Hmmmm...Let's see, they got paid, were given plenty to eat, a place to sleep, they went to church (as was required by God), so forth and so on. Doesn't sound to me like cruelty or mis-treatment, but of servants of their own free will, willing to work, so they could survive

Yes, you heard right.

My black ancestors couldn't have possibly been cruelly mistreated because the Bible said so.

Let's take a look at how 'kind' the plantation owners were to my black ancestors.

According to both the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis and the Marxist historian Eugene Genovese, treatment of slaves was both harsh and inhumane. Whether laboring or walking about in public, people living as slaves were regulated by legally authorized violence. Davis makes the point that, while some aspects of slavery took on a "welfare capitalist" look......

Was this the kind of humane treatment you spoke of, Jeremiah, or is this what you were talking about?

On large plantations, slave overseers were authorized to whip and brutalize non-compliant slaves. Slave codes authorized, indemnified or even required the use of violence, and were denounced by abolitionists for their brutality. Both slaves and free blacks were regulated by the Black Codes, and had their movements monitored by slave patrols conscripted from the white population which were allowed to use summary punishment against escapees, sometimes maiming or killing them. In addition to physical abuse and murder, slaves were at constant risk of losing members of their families if their owners decided to trade them for profit, punishment, or to pay debts. A few slaves retaliated by murdering owners and overseers, burning barns, killing horses, or staging work slowdowns. [30] Stampp, without contesting Genovese's assertions concerning the violence and sexual exploitation faced by slaves, does question the appropriateness of a Marxian approach in analyzing the owner-slave relationship.[31]

Or was it this random act of kindness you spoke of Jeremiah?

Genovese claims that because the slaves were the legal property of their owners, it was not unusual for enslaved black women to be raped by their owners, members of their owner's families, or their owner's friends. Children who resulted from such rapes were slaves as well, as they took the status of their mothers, unless freed by the slaveholder.

Jeremiah was right. Such loving kindness did the Southern slave owner showed toward my ancestors.

Here's how the slaves were treated in terms of living conditions:

According to Genovese, slaves were fed, clothed, housed and provided medical care in the most minimal manner. It was common to pay small bonuses during the Christmas season, and some slave owners permitted their slaves to keep earnings and gambling profits.

Hey, at least they were being housed, clothed, fed and during the holiday season, paid, isn't that right?

Jeremiah: your words were not only blatantly ignorant and false, they were also out-and-out insulting to the memory of our black ancestors who were robbed of their humanity because of their skin color and because of centuries of racial prejudice and the racist thinking that the white man was superior over all beings.

You ought to deeply ashamed of yourself.