Ben Carson declares that slavery was no big thing
Ben Carson stumped for Trump in Iowa on Thursday. Sadly, Carson dashed any hope he had gained wisdom since his unexpectedly long-lasting primary campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. A run that saw him win more votes and delegates than pre-season favorite Jeb Bush and other recognizable names, such as Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie.
Instead, he proved this week that he is still one of the small group of Black Americans whose policies on race and discrimination echo the philosophy of white conservative racists rather than mainstream Black thought.
He was particularly right-wing in his analysis of slavery in the United States.
"And interestingly enough, you look back to the beginnings of this country and our founders, a lot of people are trying to denigrate them now, saying that they were horrible people, maybe because some of them had slaves, and that America is a horrible place because we had slavery.
People who say stuff like that obviously don't have a good grasp on world history, because every society has had to deal with slavery, and there are more slaves in the world today than there have ever been at any point in time."
We can dismiss Carson’s argument that slavery was not so awful because other people did it with the simple logic, comprehensible to small children, that “two wrongs do not make a right”. To embrace this facile nonsense would be like excusing Nazi concentration camps because FDR had interned Japanese-Americans in WWII.
He extends his sophistry to modern times. He absolved the US of its founding sin by saying American slaveholders did not own as many slaves as today’s slave owners. His argument takes the form of, “How bad could we have been when today people are so much worse.” Is he even correct that there are more slaves globally than there were in 1860 — especially if you account for population growth? The answer is no.
There were c.4 million slaves in the US in 1850. Estimates conclude the US had 25% of all slaves in the Americas at the time - reflecting a population of 16 million slaves in the New World in the first half of the 19th century. No one knows how many slaves there were worldwide. But it is reasonable to assume that it was the same or more than the number of current slaves — estimated at 38 million to 49.6 million. And the 1850 slave count existed in a world with a population estimated at 1.2 billion — compared to 8 billion today. So at best Carson is just guessing.
Carson continues:
"And if there's anything unique about the United States, if there's anything unique about the United States and slavery, it's that we had so many people who were vehemently opposed to it that we fought a bloody civil war to get rid of the evil institution."
Carson looks at facts and draws a conclusion that is the complete opposite of what those facts demand. Unlike the rest of the West — which ultimately abolished slavery politically — there were enough morally defective Americans determined to keep slavery legal and widespread that we had to fight a bloody Civil War to rid America of her “Peculiar Institution.”
Finally, channeling his inner Ron DeSantis, Carson concludes,
"And that's what we should teach our children. Our history is nothing to be ashamed of."
This hogwash is pure rose-tinted, pie-in-the-sky, delusion. Our history has shameful tides — not just slavery. We can add:
The treatment of Blacks after slavery (Jim Crow and medical experimentation).
The forced removal of indigenous Americans from their homelands.
The indentured servitude (not as bad as slavery, but still not good) of poor whites.
The serial racism against each new group of immigrants (brown ones today).
The internment of Japanese-Americans (see above).
The long-term second-class status of half the population (women).
And a fiscal philosophy that caters to plutocrats and exacerbates the scandalous inequity in income and wealth distribution — while millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
The good news is that no school kids today are responsible for any of that. They can still live morally upright lives and be decent, considerate citizens. But their possibility of becoming quality adults is diminished if we whitewash their ancestors’ sins in a Soviet-style reimagining of history. Carson seems to think Orwell’s 1984 is a ‘how-to’ manual rather than a warning.
Good parents try to raise morally upright children by using their failings to guide their kids' instruction. Bad parents either forget their sins or celebrate them. And in doing so, they raise children who might well repeat them.