1619: 400 years ago, a ship arrived in Virginia, bearing human cargo

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

After having been kidnapped from their villages in what is present-day Angola, forced onto a Portuguese slave ship bound for what Europeans called the New World and stolen from that ship by English pirates in a confrontation off the coast of Mexico, “some 20. and odd Negroes” landed at Point Comfort in 1619, in the English settlement that would become Virginia....

For many black readers, accustomed to being told in myriad ways that blacks had no history, the notion that their ancestors’ presence in America predated the 1620 arrival of the Pilgrims story was a mind-boggling revelation. Bennett provided an origin story to embrace.

To read more:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/08/1619-african-arrival-virginia/2740468002/

Over 240 years of literal slavery, and unpaid contributions to the slavers and their descendants.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. 1619 project is required reading

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

[guillaumeb]

2. And it is also necessary to "unlearn" US history as it is generally taught.

So much of what people assume is factual history is nothing more than apologetics for slavery, and the economic system that used slavery to achieve dominance.

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. Yes and wait till we see the W folks complaining that they are not responsible

sigh

[guillaumeb]

4. And that they themselves did not literally benefit.

As if whiteness itself is not a huge benefit in a white controlled society.

[pangaia]

5. I bought the NYT sunday first time in maybe 35 years.

The magazine section is worth every penny.

[guillaumeb]

6. I will asssume that you read "A Peoples' History of the United States"?

It should be the standard for history texts.

[pangaia]

8. You know, I have it, and started it several times, but.. stopped......

not sure why..... maybe I found it too depressing.. Was(is) that a cop out? could be...


thanks for the reminder..

[Throck]

7. Is Europe being held accountable for their contributions to slavery?

[guillaumeb]

9. Or their contributions to colonialism?

But what of the US, and historical revisionism as it has been practiced by the rich?

[IronLionZion]

10. Trump officials will count it as illegal immigration and start deporting black people

[guillaumeb]

12. Now that is certainly rewriting history.

And Miller and Trump would both approve.

[appalachiablue]

11. African slaves were in the country prior to 1619. Spanish

settlements utilized slaves earlier in South Carolina (1520s) and Spanish St. Augustine, Florida (1565).

Colonial powers, especially top rivals Spain and England along with France fought each other for many decades to control trade and lands in North America, the Caribbean, South and Central America.

The Dutch and Portuguese were also slavers and controllers of areas in the Caribbean, South America, Asia.

The Danish West Indies (1757-1917), in charge of the modern Virgin Islands also used slave labor to run the profitable sugar industry there.

In the US our history has been so Anglocentric and Eurocentric that the other European colonial powers are often overlooked, but more recent research is broadening perspectives.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misguided-focus-1619-beginning-slavery-us-damages-our-understanding-american-history-180964873/

[guillaumeb]

13. The winners always write history.

And that history is more fiction than history.