Your own experience
Yesterday I found myself reading a first hand account of slavery in an interview of two sisters who had been 12 and 6 when emancipated. It intrigued me because there really are not many first hand accounts by slaves of their experience. What both interested me and annoyed me though, were the comments.
Person after person expressed regret that the sisters, in their eyes, seemed unaware of the horror of slavery since the ladies both agreed that their former master was a good man who treated them well. They even said that growing up in the main house they were spoiled and didn't want to leave when word of emancipation came through. I found it annoying that someone who has never come close to their experience felt that they were better equipped to classify and describe it than the women who actually lived it. So many of the comments were patronizing. People said things like "poor things they didn't know any better"
I don't like the idea of slavery any more than the average black person in the states living this day and age. However I refuse to believe that slavery as it exists in my mind is the end all be all experience even when being told something different from someone who experienced it. Those ladies know better than I do how they were treated and if they say they were treated well then I believe them. I do wonder if part of their good treatment was due to the fact that they were children. How things might have changed had they reached adulthood still enslaved I don't know. What I took from the interview was that their particular owner was not a cruel person and endevored to treat his slaves as humanely as one could while still keeping them enslaved. The slave children were all christened, they attended mass and on his deathbed their father requested and received a priest to attend him and legally marry him to his handfasted wife. From our current point of view we see that as the very least one could do but given the widely accepted and even encouraged cruelty of the time being kind or "soft" on ones slaves could cause the owners to lose standing within their communities so to be kind was in some ways quite radical.
I'm not naive enough to believe that all or even the majority of slave holders ruled with a great deal of kindness treating their slaves as not simple property but as people. There have been enough first hand accounts that say otherwise and I believe them. It takes nothing away from my strength of belief in the wrongness of slavery to believe a former slave who says their life was not one horror after another. No one should no matter how kindly intended, refuse to allow someone to own their own experiences. As a woman, as a person of color, as an adult who remembers being a child I have been in the position of having others assume they know more about what I have lived than I do and it's annoying to say the least. Not to mention just downright disrespectful. Slave owners like any other group of people, have their mix of horrifying, evil, ok, and even dare I say it, kind. If I accept that then I must accept that the lives and experiences of slaves were not monolithic, and every experience no matter how much it may chafe current sensibilities, should be valued and acknowledged as their truth.
If your arguments against slavery can only stand when all slave owners are cast as the devil incarnate then you need to work on your arguements.
Person after person expressed regret that the sisters, in their eyes, seemed unaware of the horror of slavery since the ladies both agreed that their former master was a good man who treated them well. They even said that growing up in the main house they were spoiled and didn't want to leave when word of emancipation came through. I found it annoying that someone who has never come close to their experience felt that they were better equipped to classify and describe it than the women who actually lived it. So many of the comments were patronizing. People said things like "poor things they didn't know any better"
I don't like the idea of slavery any more than the average black person in the states living this day and age. However I refuse to believe that slavery as it exists in my mind is the end all be all experience even when being told something different from someone who experienced it. Those ladies know better than I do how they were treated and if they say they were treated well then I believe them. I do wonder if part of their good treatment was due to the fact that they were children. How things might have changed had they reached adulthood still enslaved I don't know. What I took from the interview was that their particular owner was not a cruel person and endevored to treat his slaves as humanely as one could while still keeping them enslaved. The slave children were all christened, they attended mass and on his deathbed their father requested and received a priest to attend him and legally marry him to his handfasted wife. From our current point of view we see that as the very least one could do but given the widely accepted and even encouraged cruelty of the time being kind or "soft" on ones slaves could cause the owners to lose standing within their communities so to be kind was in some ways quite radical.
I'm not naive enough to believe that all or even the majority of slave holders ruled with a great deal of kindness treating their slaves as not simple property but as people. There have been enough first hand accounts that say otherwise and I believe them. It takes nothing away from my strength of belief in the wrongness of slavery to believe a former slave who says their life was not one horror after another. No one should no matter how kindly intended, refuse to allow someone to own their own experiences. As a woman, as a person of color, as an adult who remembers being a child I have been in the position of having others assume they know more about what I have lived than I do and it's annoying to say the least. Not to mention just downright disrespectful. Slave owners like any other group of people, have their mix of horrifying, evil, ok, and even dare I say it, kind. If I accept that then I must accept that the lives and experiences of slaves were not monolithic, and every experience no matter how much it may chafe current sensibilities, should be valued and acknowledged as their truth.
If your arguments against slavery can only stand when all slave owners are cast as the devil incarnate then you need to work on your arguements.
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