case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2014-01-22 06:38 pm

[ SECRET POST #2577 ]


⌈ Secret Post #2577 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.
[Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald-Crane, from the soap opera Passions]


__________________________________________________



03.
[BBC Sherlock]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Nobunaga the Fool]


__________________________________________________



05.
[Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia from Star Wars]


__________________________________________________



06.
[The Quick and the Dead]


__________________________________________________



07.
[Nathan Fillion]


__________________________________________________



08.
[Warehouse 13]


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 030 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
greenvelvetcake: (Default)

[personal profile] greenvelvetcake 2014-01-23 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
'Early was an outspoken believer in white supremacy and despised the abolitionists. In the preface to his memoirs, Early wrote about former slaves as "barbarous natives of Africa", whom he believed were "in a civilized and Christianized condition" as a result of their enslavement.' Not exactly a point of pride.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 12:26 am (UTC)(link)
Oh no! A person holds a commonly held belief for his historical time period. Stop the presses and pass the smelling salts. Seriously people. You cannot judge historical figures by contemporary standards.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
I think we can reasonably assume that there are things that Early did and believed that were not universally accepted by people of the time, given that he was a general in a war fought on the fundamentally political issue of slavery.

I find it hard to take the "it was simply the spirit of the times" argument seriously in a case like that.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
There was this little thing called 'state's rights and sovereignty' that came into play as well, but they seldom talk about that in the Reader's Digest Condensed version of history commonly taught today.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 12:47 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, bless you, anon.

The notion that the Civil War was fought over state's rights is fucking delusional and the only reason it has any traction is because of 4 or 5 generations of descendants of Confederates desperately trying to find some way to pretend that their side had been fighting to defend anything other than slavery. It's true that the commonplace version of history is misleading in the way in which it says the war was about slavery - it certainly wasn't a grand crusade to free the slaves; rather, it was an attack launched by the South to stop what they saw as a gradual process that would lead to the destruction of the economic system built around slavery. But, as much as it was complicated and involved, slavery was still the central issue. Slavery had been one of the central issues in US politics during the 20 or 30 years before the war (along with tariffs, which were also an issue that was basically about the different economic models of the North and the South, hence intimately related to slavery).

There's a reason that Abraham Lincoln spent most of his first inaugural trying (and failing) to convince the South that he wasn't going to touch the slaves. There's a reason that most of the people talking about secession and the declarations of grievances in the South explicitly talked about the defense of slavery - go read South Carolina's Declaration of Immediate Causes and tell me that it had nothing to do with slavery. Look at Georgia's, which mentions slavery in the second sentence. Look at Mississippi's, which states that, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world." There's a reason that Bloody Kansas was about slavery and there's a reason the South was obsessed with finding ways to add slave states. States' rights were a secondary concern. The whole conflict was centered around the question of whether the South could maintain its slaves.

The Civil War was about slavery. It. Was. About. Slavery. There is no way to look at the things that people did and said at the time and deny this. You are wrong. There are no two ways about this.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 11:46 am (UTC)(link)
THANK you. Christ, am I tired of the post-hoc apologetics.

[personal profile] cbrachyrhynchos 2014-01-23 01:09 am (UTC)(link)
State's rights and sovereignty only when it supported the right to own, transport, and sell slaves. The fire eaters at the Nashville Convention rejected the compromise of popular sovereignty which permitted territories to abolish slavery by popular vote. And then they rejected it again in the 1960 primaries by walking out of the Democratic party and nominating their own candidate.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
The right to hold slaves was explicitly enshrined in the constitution of the CSA (Article I, Section 9). They went out of their way to make sure that, should they have won, people in the CSA would still be allowed to own other people for the foreseeable future. What more evidence do you need that they were really, really focused on the importance of slavery?

While the Civil War might have answered questions about states' rights and sovereignty, those questions weren't the reason for it.
greenvelvetcake: (Default)

[personal profile] greenvelvetcake 2014-01-23 12:40 am (UTC)(link)
No, I'm pretty sure I can and will happily judge someone who thought black people were inherently inferior to white people. Calling it a "commonly held belief" doesn't make it any less wrong.

(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
You must be very young. I can remember times when it was a commonly held belief that there was a genetic inferiority. Seemingly rational people would argue this. Even kind and gentle people would argue in favor of being kind as if they were arguing humane treatment for a puppy. This attitude and belief system was commonplace and accepted.
Times have most definitely changed, if you can't put yourself in the mindset of the time, please yourself do not judge.
greenvelvetcake: (Default)

[personal profile] greenvelvetcake 2014-01-23 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
You must be very old, to believe that "that was what people thought at the time" means they get a pass on the judge-o-meter.
arcadiaego: Grey, cartoon cat Pusheen being petted (Default)

[personal profile] arcadiaego 2014-01-23 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
if you can't put yourself in the mindset of the time, please yourself do not judge.

Yeah, I'm sure all the black people at the time thought they were inferior as well.
diet_poison: (Default)

[personal profile] diet_poison 2014-01-23 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
commonly held =/= automatically okay

I don't think he has to be ashamed of his ancestry, but I wouldn't be proud of (that particular part of) it either. Interesting fact, yes; moment of pride, no.

Which means a lot depends on which this actually was.