Please help me understand what I just watched. 'Cause I'm speechless.

[Celerity]

Link to tweet

RACIST: People were taken care of. Would you take a tractor that you just bought brand new and tear it up, misuse it? No, you're going to take care of it, 'cause you just spent a pile of money on that. Those people produced their crops, worked their fields, so you're not gonna mistreat something like that.

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Slavery apologists. Disgusting.

[elleng]

2. Interesting points of view we should recognize.

[LakeArenal]

3. Paraphrasing: slaves cost a lot of money, why tear apart "SOME 'THING' like that"

Egads. They don’t even realize how racist that statement alone is.

[gratuitous]

4. The response

"Whoa, you make it sound like such a sweet deal. Would any of you like to be my slave?"

[PETRUS]

6. Well done!

[BlueJac]

5. Pathetic

[tirebiter]

7. Enlightenment takes some time sometimes

Cut ‘em some slack' and continue the conversation. Fried chicken tonight.

[Hortensis]

15. Yes, some more than others.

I imagine their grandchildren have very different conversations.

[rickyhall]

8. And for every pathetic excuse I reply "They were slaves."

But some never seem to get it...

[Solly Mack]

9. Wow. All the rapes and beatings and dismemberments were imagined, I suppose.

And, golly, I love my slaves like I love my John Deere tractor!

Woohoo! Because speaking about a people in terms of being property is AOK as long as you compare them to your spanking new Kubota.

Don't it just make good common sense?

You buy a car, you take care of it.

You buy a person, of course you're going to take care of it. (and property is an IT)

Why would anyone get the idea that I'd work a slave to death or beat them to death or rape them until they die or hurt them in any way?

I treat my property better than that!

Sure, I do!

Besides, once you need a new one, you trade your old one in - that's how I got my brand new Massey Ferguson. I traded my old one in - and it was in great condition! Because you take care of property!

[Scrivener7]

10. This is horrifying. I would like to think that the internet would bring actual information into

historical knowledge wastelands like the one in the video, but it seems like it is having the opposite effect.

[markie]

11. you just watched...

ignorance, willful ignorance, lack of critical thinking and lack of any kind of meaningful empathy

[pandr32]

12. Comparing people to inanimate objects

No wonder human features like will, personality, communication, intelligence, sexuality, emotion, etc. scared the hell out of 'owners'.

[MuseRider]

13. That was disgusting.

How on earth can they even do their "nice" talk like that and not know what they are actually saying?

We are so done if this is a majority, I will close up and just stay away. This makes me ill.

[Diamond_Dog]

14. Then there are the ones who say

“But SOME slave owners treated their slaves very well”!

They are still people who were brought here against their will and forced to work for nothing!
As if “They were treated well” excuses anything at all!

[treestar]

23. This

We could agree, and it likely was factual, that some of the situations were not horrible, not every slave worked under Simon Legree, but the idea of being owned was wrong no matter how benevolent the "owner."

[Hortensis]

16. Maybe their fellow congregant and friend, Big Mama, will weigh in on this exchange

when the outsiders are gone, touching, or not, on that off-the-cuff parallel between their relationship with her and affectionate slaveowners with their slaves.

It wouldn't surprise me, though, if she was also somewhat offended by how these outsiders portrayed them since she knows their good parts too. I hope so. It would mean she really does like them, isn't just pretending, which would be awful.

[CousinIT]

17. "something like that"

THEY WERE NOT THINGS. THEY WERE PEOPLE.

[hlthe2b]

18. I'm unsurprised as I've heard it... most notably from apparent "southern wannabes"--those who

buy into the "heritage" argument to veil their racism--yet they themselves were "new arrivals" to the south, absent any family history. I honestly can't say which is more disgusting--those who have "redefined" their families' history to make it more palatable and to deny that their ancestors might have been responsible for horrendous cruelty--or those who want to "glom" onto that story for their own bizarre self-aggrandizement and sense of belonging to this phenomenon.

Outside the south, my state of Colorado has in recent years begun to own up to its horrendous record of Native American massacres (e.g., Sand Creek) and now the racist history of some of its leadership post-civil war with the publication of the KKK ledgers, exposing the full membership on 1300 pages from the years 1924-1926. Concurrently, figures like the late Mayor Stapleton, for whom the original Denver airport (and so more) was named, has been reexamined and the process of removing his name from important sites begun. I, for one, am grateful that this process has begun in earnest.

The people in that video are locked in denial. I doubt much will ever get through unless their children and grandchildren somehow leave the area, become enlightened, and bring change back to their communities. For most of them, though, that is unlikely to happen, having already brainwashed their children into the same fake revisionist history and interpretations.

[Kablooie]

19. This is America.

I don't know how this changes.
If you hear this stuff all your life from friends and neighbors you would probably consider media accounts to be exaggerated or false.

Only someone who is curious and really thinks would develop a more accurate view.

I'm sure most of these people are content with their own whitewashed stories which makes them feel comfortable about themselves.
They don't see anything positive for their own lives by learning the truth.

It's all about how it affects your own life not how it affects other lives.

[onethatcares]

21. they lack the curiousity

and the will to really think.

This is why the progeny wants to do away with critical thinking and evaluation.. IT HERTZ THER HAID!!!

misspelling on purpose.

[ananda]

20. My Texas ancestors owned slaves and...

I used to hear stories like that from my grandma.

It was something like the former slave didn't want
to leave and would do anything for her and do her
hair.

My mother had a very difficult time with the racism
here in Texas and with the bigotry in my grandma's
family. She wouldn't let us kids use the N word and
she told us about racist encounters she had when she
first moved here.

She was Irish Catholic and her parents were from
Nebraska before they moved to Los Angeles. It took
me awhile to grow into a good, decent person but
it's because of her that all her kids and their families
are good Democrats.

[kimbutgar]

22. I thought I knew about slavery after watching Roots at a young age, my parents told me Gone with

The wind was a joke. But then, I went to the Smithsonian Museum and saw an exhibit that upset me so much I started crying by the atrocities committed by those slave owners on their fellow human beings. Young girls raped at 6 and 7 years old, slaves with limbs cut off for not complying and seeing pictures of the scars inflicted by white slave owners on their former black slaves. No it wasn’t good for the black people it was criminal.

[mcar]

25. I felt the same way when I saw it

Gobsmacked and nauseous.

[malaise]

26. Something like that

just an African-American human being.

No racism - not at all.
:puke;

[malaise]

27. Something like that

just an African-American human being.

No racism - not at all.
:puke;

[Edwcraig]

28. Grew up with this crap.

The vast majority of Southern whites do not accept that the pre-civil war South was evil They believe that they are not racists and that they are not perpetuating racism today. The Republican Party adopted these bigots as the core to the Republican Party in the 1960's and the belief of these bigots now controls the policies and beliefs of the Republican Party. I am surprised at how many Democrats do not understand this. You cannot compromise with these people. We must confront them and treat them as the evil people they are.