There should be a global outcry against the Tea Party for this one.
Apparently they want to change American school textbooks to make slavery look like it really wan’t that big a deal in our history. A Huffington Post article quotes a spokesperson:
According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.
Hmmm…”made-up criticism.” Let’s think about that. Did our founders “intrude on the Indians?” Intrude might not be the right word. How about “come crashing in, in a genocidal sort of way?”
And our Founding Fathers DID own slaves. That isn’t “made up,” and that needs to be a part of the conversation. Hal went on to say:
The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.
Yes, they were revolutionaries, and they did bring a new form of governance into the Western world (there is evidence that the US Constitution was significantly influenced by the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy, which existed long before the fledgeling United States). They did bring liberty into the world for some, but let’s keep in mind that abolition movements had been happening in various part of the world for millenia, so it was not a new idea that slavery was wrong. The idea was there, so they could have fast-tracked it a bit more if their own slaves weren’t helping them to stay rich.
To look at History without the “ugly parts” destroys the opportunity to learn from History. The world constantly struggles with threats to human rights. The complex web of issues that both nurtured slavery in the States and led to its downfall can give us insight into modern-day struggles for human rights.
Read more about the issue of slavery in textbooks in Texas.
Mark D. Jordahl
Related articles
- The Tennessee Tea Party Wants to Do What? (tinfoilhatman45.wordpress.com)
- Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder’s Slave-Owning History (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- Oh Isn’t That Nice! The Tea People Want us to See Slavery in a Cheerier Light… (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
- First Tucson, now this: Tennessee Tea Party ‘Demands’ That References To Slavery Be Removed From History Textbooks (classroomconscious.wordpress.com)
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Mark D. Jordahl says:
I think “illegal” is murky in this case given the instability in southern Sudan when these deals were brokered, and I agree that probably none of these firms are doing anything technically illegal. I just think “legal” is a low bar in situations like this. Unethical is more the issue, and since money has no ethics, the only way to get many corporations to act in an ethical way is to make sure that the public is watching what they are doing. Many legal things are still wrong.
It isn’t the government officials selling the land, so saying they “want the maximum amount” doesn’t really apply here, unless they are accepting bribes (which you know as well as I do that they probably are, even though there is no “proof” or mention of it in the articles). In the case of NTD, it is the Cooperative selling the lease and, if they don’t actually exist in the form they say they do, it is the Cooperative, not the US company, breaking the law. If this is the case, do you honestly believe that NTD doesn’t know about it? Also, if it is true that 26 out of 28 land deals did not do a consultation with the local people, that does seem like the law is, at least, being skirted.
You are very right to mention China, and that is a big issue globally, not just in Sudan. How do we hold our corporations or our government to a higher standard when China is happy to step in wherever we step out? If our government tells Uganda, for instance, that we will only give aid dollars if they improve their human rights, of course they will just look to China for investment dollars instead since they don’t care. How do we deal with this?
And do we drop our own standards to make sure we are on par with China just to keep them out? If our corporations knowingly enter into deals with warlords, are we a “better” option? Maybe it’s better to have China in there, since they are more up-front about their motives and aren’t quite as sneaky in their dealings. It might be easier to monitor.
And you are right that it would be good to put pressure on (or give support to) the South Sudan government to think about their long-term interests in land deals and tighten their laws, but I honestly don’t know how to do that.
You are also right that the issue is the deals more than the fact that the deals are with American corporations. However, I am here in the U.S., as are most of the people reading this, and I think it is often difficult for people to see why they should care about Africa since it is so far away and we don’t realize how much involvement our country actually has there on many levels. Norway sounded the trumpet on this, and I hope there are people in other countries that are buying up land there who are also shining a spotlight on it.
Thanks, as always, for thinking deeply about these issues!