Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

What Nonsense is This?

My writing has it's problems. Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation. But the one thing I do not do is wrote about things i don't know about or cannot back up, or ar just plain wrong. Thomas Sowel, on the other hand has serious fact issues. His latest farce is a prime example of the serious mental problems that many so-called "black conservatives" have. I guess my first clue as to what i was getting into should have been the 'Contribute: Take A Stand For Conservatism" link. Or maybe the "Take 3 Conservative books for $1 each" should have prepared me. Besides that buck would be about the right value for those books. Back to Mr. Sowell.

In his article, "Twisted history", Mr. Sowel starts by saying the following:

One of the reasons our children do not measure up academically to children in other countries is that so much time is spent in American classrooms twisting our history for ideological purposes.

Well I'll agree with that, though not for the reasons that Sowell thinks. for my reasons you could check my post about charter schools.

Mr. Sowell continues:

One of the things we take for granted today is that it is wrong to take other people's land by force. Neither American Indians nor the European invaders believed that.

I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Sowell obtained this information but on the part of the European, with the concept of land as private property came laws against trespass and the concept of Title to prove ones ownership of land. The problem when Europeans came into contact with the American Nations was that they did not have a concept of land as private property of an individual. Rather land was a gift from all. Some land was more sacred than others but without the concept of land as private property there could be no theft of land Native Americans did practice other types of theft but given their ideology on land it just was not possible to leverage "land theft" on them. This makes a lie of this comment:

Both took other people's land by force -- as did Asians, Africans and others. The Indians no doubt regretted losing so many battles. But that is wholly different from saying that they thought battles were the wrong way to settle ownership of land.

I can't speak on Asians since I have not studied them to any extent. But I do know that many Africans held the same philosophy as the Ameican Nations regearding land as private property. So Mr. Sowell ought to have been more specific in his claim or should have refrained from making it at all.

Mr. Sowell continues with:

Nor is understanding history the purpose of such questions. The purpose is to score points against Western society. In short, propaganda has replaced education as the goal of too many "educators."[my emphasis]

Has replaced exactly what world does this man live in. All education outside of the hard sciences (Math, Chemistry, Physics) is propaganda. Most institutions call it socialization but it's propaganda none the less.

But Mr. Sowell has more for us:

Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century -- and then only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.

Mr. Sowell is right on the mark with his note that most people who were enslaved has issues with it. But he becomes down right disingeniuos with his suggestion that you cannot find comparable regection of slavery by Africans. One must realize a couple of things regearding Africa. Much of Africa at that time was either pre-literate or had means of writing that were not decipherable by Europeans. therefore you would definitely not find any literature that recorded the objections of leadership or 'intellectuals' to slavery. Furthermore, most people in Africa that objected to slavery found themselves in the Middle Passage. Also, for the people who had direct contact with africans, those involved in colonisation and slave trading, did not have an incentive to record the objections of leadership to slave trading since it would play directly into the hands of those in England and elsewhere who objected to the trade and wanted it stopped.

Mr. Sowell may have been tempted by the presence of "domestic" slavery in Africa. But that too would damage his argument. For that "slavery' is no different than what the US constitution allows to happen to people who are imprisoned for crimes. They are put to work for the state or various corporations or if the law of the land provides, be put to death or be deported if they are not "legal" members of society. I do hope that if Mr. Sowell is put off by domestic slavery in Africa during the 18th century that he would be equally against the prison system as is practiced in the 21st.

Mr. Sowell's article is an example of what happens when the wrong people get their claws into the black mind. It is sad that these negroes allow themselves to be prostituted by conservatives and liberals alike to keep us confused.

Links:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20031217.shtml