Have to admit, and might have to be the itchy butthole here, but I simply do not get Juneteenth.
Yeh yeh folks in Galveston, Texas received news from Union soldiers in June of 1865 that – oh lookee here – their labor could no longer be stolen for the sole benefit of … ahem … others.
Mewonders if those folks even knew a war was going on, or if that news was kept secret as well.
Hard to believe, what with how people talk, but perhaps gossip only travels so far …
BUT, however, nevertheless, despite this … America continued to constitutionalize the torture of human beings for fun and profit for another six months or so after June 1985, until the Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment (Go, Georgia!!) and the US officially outlawed its peculiar institution in December 1865.
Decemberteenth? Well, there’s a Christmas gift.
Except of course as punishment for the commission of crime … oh-ho-ho loophole more to come digress
And to give those old, dead white guys a significant amount of credit, they did a truly remarkable thing just in drafting the 13th, never mind getting it before the state legislators, and ratified, and added to the Constitution, considering the times of their lives.
Unfun fact: some argument (go internet!!) indicates the term “slave” originates from “slav,” which describes the Slavic people of Middle Europe, who apparently were “conquered” from the Ukrainianism places and forced into “slavery.”
Although that particular state of servitude exists from long before, because humans generally suck, its form was dependent upon the society practicing it.
Greco-Roman times (yehyeh) if a person was a “slave” for a wealthy household, then a “slave” was a kind of status symbol, both in being one and having one.
Same in ancient China and other parts of Asia. Hmmm …
As well as parts of the Middle East, altho’ Muslims tended to castrate the males … ewwwwowwww.
However, another totally unfun fact: here in the States, slavery created wealth … easy to get rich when payroll is not a business expense.
Comically (not really, more ironically) fratboy King Roophie Hawley twitted something along the lines of America is the place slavery died, or some such.
Highly educated, totally stoopit.
Early American Ishtains (‘cos that ain’t Christian) used the Bible to justify slavery in the states — called it the Curse of Ham (should have been Canaan, if reading that right {Genesis 9:25}) — and even enshrined the practice in the Constitution back in 1791 … see, to wit: Article 4, section 2, clause 3.
Which is proof they didn’t know the Bible, or GOD. {Deuteronomy 23:15}
Maybe they rationalized that they weren’t Hebrews, so GOD’s Word didn’t apply, and most definitely not in that context.
Pick and choose, you early espousers of democracy, liberty, and justice for all
(except you people, over there … we have a whole economy to consider). Anyhoo …
Which leads us to debt, and what is owed, and by whom, and to whom.
The Place Where Good Sense Goes to Die / the Crazy Woke Abyss of California (land of fruits and nuts) is offering up cash the state doesn’t have to give lump payments as reparations to the Ice Cream Social.
Truthfully? Methinks reparations, at least with that approach, is all wrong.
Doesn’t really fix the systemic problems and will simply be a boon to rim shops, beat installers, weave purveyors, and Best Buy (sell more big screens than Super Bowl Sunday). Thass ray-sis!!!
Nah, methinks more long term would be more effective … the harm of America’s peculiar institution lasted for over two centuries, so the remedy should extend just as long.
How to do that? So glad you asked.
Mentioned somewhere around these parts that a tax exemption would work nicely … no capital gains tax, no income tax, maybe even no property tax, if a person can prove ancestry.
Oops. Methinks the Horsemen will go on another night ride but thass ray-sis!!!
Can’t/won’t/don’t expect rational thought from inbred ignorance. Shouldn’t raise the bar that high.
Saw a bumper sticker: “If I’da known, I’da picked my own dang cotton.”
Millions I’m sure would have preferred that you did but you ‘n yourn likely would have perished from skin cancer digress ….
Honestly? Methinks that particular debt is just too big, too fraught, too expensive, to ever repay.
After all, it wasn’t just the US that profited, but the entire world.
No tax on anything, anywhere? At least Haiti could get out from under. $21B could help with that.
Or maybe not.
But maybe so.
Would be interesting to find out.
After all, we do live in interesting times.
But I doubt mankind even has another 200 years … it was 105° in Beijing, when the national average this time of year is typically under 80°, Texas is currently on fire, and one of those Arctic ice shelves is melting faster than the sciency types ever thought possible so methinks no real danger of actually providing a full remedy to the entire Ice Cream Social.
Which in itself is reason enough to try.