John Derbyshire sticks his foot in mouth again...
Remember John Derbyshire, who got fired from the conservative National Review Online after his racism was exposed?
(He also wanted Chelsea Clinton killed, simply because she is a Clinton.)
He's still at it, now he's pining for the good old days of slavery.
Derbyshire: 12 Years A Slave Is 'Abolitionist Porn'
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 11/22/2013 1:40 pm
No, former National Review columnist John Derbyshire hasn’t seen 12 Years a Slave, but he knows it is a bad movie because it is unfair to the poor, persecuted and maligned slave-owners of the antebellum South. In his latest racist column, Derbyshire calls 12 Years a Slave “Abolitionist Porn” and chides the film for not including what he sees as the happier instances of slavery, such as one slaveholder who only doled out beatings “once in a while.”
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/derbyshire-12-years-slave-abolitionist-porn#sthash.qEE40nx2.dpuf
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You have to work hard for an employer, and it's not pleasant because you can't tell the boss what you are going to do for the pay. You either do what the boss tells you to, or you get fired.
In slavery, it's just the same, except the boss is paying to house, feed, and take care of you too, so the constant work is only fair and legal - you obviously should be obliged to work off the expenses it takes to keep you and your family housed and fed.
So, Mr. Derbyshire thinks "12 Years A Slave" has as much historical relevance as a season of "Downton Abbey", "The Office" or "Mad Men".
It's just horrible in that movie that all they did was show the bad owners, not the ones who treated their slaves just like family, who weren't allowed to be educated in most places, and weren't allowed freedom of movement...the owners who were "good", until they sold their slaves off, piecemeal, for gambling or other debts or to pay for their daughter's wedding or son's schooling - or bred the slaves like cattle to sell the children when they got old enough, or the owner's heirs ignored the "good" owner's wishes and sold the group off to make some money.
Even when you read the memoirs the movie is based on - okay, yes - there were "good" owners mentioned - but those people were few and far between. And a freeman or freewoman wasn't really "free" in much of the country - no one was going to help them if they were kidnapped by civilians who wanted to make a few extra dollars selling people as property to slave-owners who didn't want to pay fair wages to get their work done.
Mr. Derbyshire, you are a f**ing fool.
As late as 1860(and probably a couple years after), if you were in, say, Georgia (where after 1840, no free black was allowed to reside), and you just looked like you could have some African blood in you - even such small details as curly dark hair, brown eyes, a tan and a broad or broken nose - someone could claim you were "passing-yellar" and a run-away, tie you up, tell people you were lying when you claimed to be free or white, and they would sell you for what could easily be half a year's wages for most people in the south. And that would be the end of life as you knew it unless you could escape, or survive long enough to the end of the Civil War.
Haele