You see how there’s a difference between saying slavery was good and saying that slaves developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit?
Those are absolutely not the same positions.
@volkris
Um, they are not the same, obviously, but the one logically entails the other.
If you argue that there was a benefit to enslaved people of being enslaved, then you are also committed to saying that slavery is at least in part, good.
My advice to you is not to try arguing the merits of enslavement, especially to a population that includes the descendants of slaves.
Well no. Just because one receives a benefit doesn’t mean it’s overall for the best. There are examples all throughout life where a person benefits from one thing even though it is on the whole for the worse.
It is entirely reasonable to say that slavery is bad even though there were some minor benefits to individuals in the course of that overall terrible institution.
The two statements are not mutually exclusive, and it’s apparently very worthwhile for our education system to point that out, since so many people on here seem to overlook that.
@volkris
Sorry, but you are wrong at several levels.
Viz.
"Just because one receives a benefit doesn’t mean it’s overall for the best."
Nobody said anything about best. The point was that saying that slaves received benefit from enslavement is EXACTLY to say that there is good in slavery.
You cannot say that this one sliver of potential benefit accrued to this one hypothetical individual without normalizing the greater harm they suffered.
/2
Well that’s a pretty naive take on things, and arguably exactly the sort of position that this curriculum helps guard against.
If this education helps students realize that things can be bad overall even though there are minor, individualized benefits against the overall negative, then that’s a net gain of education.
I’m sorry you seem to have missed out on that realization, but let’s hope the students down in Florida are educated with a broader perspective on the world than you’ve come across.
My dude, please.
I lived in Apartheid South Africa, I have lived on three continents, and I have seen and experienced a great many things in a great many cultures.
I most certainly do not need you eulogizing slavery or playing the amateur apologist to it.
I have seen your ilk before, I have heard these same arguments for decades, and I have seen that they always just devolve into base racism.
@volkris
But you are My Dude, and several independent people are telling you as much.
You are eulogizing, platforming, and acting as an apologist for slavery.
The sooner you come to terms with that and correct your behavior and thinking, the better for all.
@InkySchwartz @futurebird @cadenza