Bill Moyers Journal: Slavery By Another Name
(Guest Blogged by Heather)
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Bill Moyers Journal, which unfortunately is probably not on the top of most Americans TIVO list for Friday nights, dove head on into some of our country's darker days. Days that many in the South would probably prefer to forget, when slavery was no longer legal, but still practiced by an economy addicted to slavery, and unwilling to let it go. Bill Moyers interviewed Douglas Blackmon, author of the book, Slavery by Another Name, and it is truly worth your time to watch the entire interview.
With a Presidential election that has brought the issue of race front and center and forced us to confront the reasons for racial divides, understanding the past and how it relates to the racial tensions that still exist in this country is an important discussion for anyone who would like to finally heal those wounds. Hopefully, one day we may move to a place where race is no longer an issue, or a way to keep a segment of the population from ever achieving equality.
Douglas Blackmon delves into a time that has helped to shape the views of African Americans towards our judicial system, our law enforcement, and our legislators. Open dialogue about what happened during those dark days, and how we move forward to make sure that it does not continue today is a discussion I hope more Americans have as we ponder whether we may have our first black President and what that will mean for our country and the future of race relations.
I wonder how many white people will post saying racism is dead, or it is okay because black people are racist too? Or even better, that white men are somehow the underdog in America.
This thread should be very interesting. interesting indeed.
Moyers is a national treasure, and always on my TiVo list, btw...
Modern slavery is our Mexican (and South Western US) cousins slaving away for not a lot of money, but making their Republican bosses very rich.
Interesting how Moyers said that sort of thing ended maybe right before he was born.
We had Jim Crow laws as a kid. I was born at the tail end of that, and for the longest time I never saw a black person except on film. They were usually carrying things on their heads, and calling some white explorer bwana.
Was that there way of calling him bananas?
Oops. Looks like the video links are broken on this post. Stuff happens.
C&L's been notified of the prob. Should be fixed shortly.
Saw a review of this book in the St Louis Post-Dispatch a couple months ago. Haven't read it yet. but a picture in the paper really stuck out for me. It was 2 black men in some type of stockade. They were sitting on their butts with hands and feet stuck through the stocks. It look very uncomfortable. Was dated in 1940's in Miss. or Ala.
I know a racist jerkoff who cannot even be in the same room with a PICTURE of a black man with a white woman together at a high school prom !
and the real scary part, the girl in the picture is his NIECE !!!
We've got a looooong way to go here in 'MuriKKKa. a loooong way.
The Exotic Chico Hussein Escuela @ 7:
It was reported on the news, 30% of Americans have a racial problem, ie they are uncomfortable at the least around other peoples.
McC*nt is not fond of Asians, Lieberman loves Hagee (who hates Jews)
Its the Republican way to promote hatred.
We are still addicted to slavery. Industry may never fully recover from having cheap labor.
casper46 @ 6:
It was only in 1967 NINETEEN SIXTY SEVEN that black and white marriages were legalized in the last sixteen holdout states in the US.
Thats forty one years ago, that within living memory.
South Carolina lasted until late 1990s going by this.
And there still was reports of a racist Sheriff in one of the southern states arresting a towns complete population of mixed race couples and jailing them on bogus drugs charges a few years ago.
angelo @ 10:
Slavery and the perpetual quest for cheap labor killed off the Roman Republican.
The Romans could have had steam power and a middling tech revolution, they didnt.
2 white guys making over $500,000 a year getting together to discuss race and class. How adorable !
What about how our economy is restructuring itself to bring back slavery by another name. In today's economy the (wage) slaves are making 1/5 of a penny for every dollar the owners (CEOs) are making. Our rights our quickly being stripped and costs of everything are on such a rise to put most of our country's workers into a perpetual debt.
casper46 @ 6:
Theres some verbal history from my old home town from WW2, of a black American GI that got tied to a tree in a park and disemboweled by two white GIs,
his crime was fraternizing with the white english girls, who didnt care what colour a persons skin was.
All the GIs were heroes and mostly welcomed as friends by the British people, British men tended to think 'over here, over paid, over sexed' but mostly jokingly and about all GIs.
The disemboweling was GI on GI hate crime.
CannibalPlanet @ 14:
Blame the Federal reserve for giving out so much easy money leading to all the credit cards people have- leading to the crazy amount of debt most Americans have. Not only that but adding all that new money is lowering the value of our currency and thus the price increases for all items.
Cheap labor is not the cause of our problems, its an effect.
The land of the free provides many different avenues to slavery, for many different types of slaves.
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/articlemodule/view_article/id/12/src...
Here's the review. But, not the same photo that ran in the article.
I don't have tivo or whatever, but I hardly ever miss Moyers' show. I haven't always agreed with his point of view over the years, but he should be praised for at least trying to provide complete information (mostly truth) about issues that are extremely important for the survival of our republic (no matter how much money he makes).
And, we should keep in mind that most of the folks in the South and elsewhere in our country who have been/are enforcing this "slavery by another name" are bible-toting christians. Those who have commented about wage slaves are right on - now we all work for "the Man."
Oil is slavery. It enslaves the user to machines. How? Simple. the average car gets 20 mpg. How long would it take for you to push a car 20 miles? That's a slave right there. cook your food for you? Heat your shower water? make shampoo for your hair? Dry your hair? Etc.
. How Much Human Energy Is Contained in One Barrel of Oil?
1 Barrel of Oil = 5,800,000 BTUs
Source: Louisiana Oil and Gas Association
1 Gallon of Gas = 125,000 BTUs
Source: US Department of Energy
1 Barrel of Oil thus contains the energy contained in 46.4 gallons of gas
(5,800,000 divided by 125,000 = 46.4 )
1 Gallon of Gas = 500 hours of human work output
Source: Calculations Done Above.
1 Barrel of Oil = 23,200 Hours of Human Work Output
(Energy equivalent of 46.4 gallons of gas per barrel of oil x 500 hours of human work ouput per gallon of gas = 23,2000 hours)
We are slaves to our mechanical slaves.
ferrofluid (Obama 08) @ 15:
The worse thing about your story?
That I have no doubt it's true.
Today, slavery is outsourced to the whole third world (not to mention the Mexican situation here in US).
Just read an excellent book- Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
It will open your eyes to many things- institutional racism included.
As a side note- African Americans can not, technically, be racists. They can be bigoted or prejudiced but racism requires the power to enact and enforce bigoted beliefs. A minority, by definition, does not have that power.
"Bill Moyers Journal, which unfortunately is probably not on the top of most Americans TIVO list for Friday nights, dove head on into some of our country’s darker days. Days that many in the South would probably prefer to forget, when slavery was no longer legal, but still practiced by an economy addicted to slavery, and unwilling to let it go."
Or, as some people who are a tad more enlightened may tell you, it was an economy that was not given ANY real, viable alternatives by its new carpetbagger masters in Washington. You see, "they" won the war and "ended" slavery, but "THEY" had no plan to effectively transfer the "slave-based" economy to a "paid-worker" economy, and GOD FORBID any of those freed men come NORTH! Just more proof that the CIVIL WAR was never about freeing men in bondage but was all about crushing a burgeoning independent economy in the SOUTH. Why salt the fields of plantations and burn factories and docks of occupied lands, yet NOT allow the local slaves to join your forces? Lincoln actually had plans to repatriate the South back into the Union economically and racially, but the assassin's bullet and Johnson's hatred for the South and desire to punish held sway.
tyler82 @ 13:
Hi troll,
How you doing today?
This was an intersting piece but the author suggests this is somehow new information. It is not. Historians have written about "Convict Leasing" for years now. Don't know why the author refuses to use the accepted phrase, or why he suggested this is somehow a new topic - I guess to sell books.
Nice retort to the GOP concern troll. They are so precious you just want to put one in formaldehyde and take it home...
This should be taught in every high school and college. Slavery did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Also on the same lines, check out David Oshinsky's "Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice", which talks about the false imprisonment of thousands of post-bellum African Americans and how obscene profits were made from their forced labor.
tyler82 @ 13:
Prove they earn that much working journalism annually. Let's see your evidence chump.
JD @ 25:
I know. As a black man, I'm used to all the 'fake concern' haters. Those guys that try to invalidate what a person says because... god (whom I don't believe in) forbid... he might actually know what he or she is talking about (religious right, I'm talking about you too!)
I will admit one thing, Douglas Blackmon (interesting name) kind of points out the obvious... BUT... it's the elephant in the room that everyone has been ignoring for quite some time. Having people write about the subject is a good thing. A very good thing.
Racism is all around us, and slavery actually lasted longer than people thing. In fact, in some ways it never really went away.
People just have to open their eyes and see things for what they are.
He will be tagged as an ennemy of America.
tyler82 @ 13:
So??
samdog @ 23:
There are a lot of things people in this nation need to know and except as fact.
For instance, Fact: Sharecropping is alive and well in 2008.
Amerikkka has a long way to go.
There is one way and one way only to finally make race not an issue.
Alien invasion.
They mention the Slave Code and Black Codes of the past. Basically, they restricted the mobility of blacks.
How is today's Racial Profiling by police any different?
I recently read that the LA Police Dept was charged with 300+ instances of racial profiling in 2007. After an 'extensive' investigation, the department cleared itself in all cases- for (at least) the 6th year in a row!
Way to Go, Jim Crow!
Numinous @ 24:
Even if it is written with a little troll snark, there still is a valid point in there.
Why is a discussion about race and class, or anything for that matter, seen as more valid if it's being conducted by white males, who also are in the top wage earning class?
In the video, Blackmon even describes blacks who heard these stories from their own family, but didn't believe them.
Kudos to Blackmon for doing the research, and for Moyers for having him on, but basically, the instituitonal racism is so deep, that Bill had to wait for a white guy to cover the story before picking up on it, rather that finding those grandma's that still remembered, or interviewing someone who knows the subject on an intimate, personal and intellectual level like Mumia, rather than someone who knows it on an intellectual level like Blackmon.
Also, from the vid, it seems that he focused on the South and their addiction to slavery. But what about the North, did they not enslave children to work in the factories? It seems that rigged Capitalism and slavery go hand in bloody hand.
Umm...kill whitey? No seriously, I grew up with my parents telling me of how they picked cotton and stuff. As I got older I started to think about them and everyone they knew having to do mundane things like having to get medicine or go to a doctor. I am so lucky to not have grown up in that era, and I'm only talking about a generation or two ago. That's something a lot of whites just don't understand. It the simple pervasiveness of it all that humiliates and angers so many blacks, not to mention that to a lot of whites it's virtually invisible.
The interesting to think about, in regards to this book, is how much of this infrastructure is still in place? How many legalese gray area laws and practices still exist that are essentially tools to disenfranchise blacks, along with any other non-whites?
Michelle Obama has every damn right, along with every other negro in this country, to not be proud of America and to be angry as hell. This is the truth. If you're black and not angry, then something is wrong with you, frankly.
the buried legacy of the second amendment is another act of treachery against freedom for african-americans.
this country was founded with the tacit agreement that slavery would not be interfered with.
tyler82 @ 13:
Are you really that dumb? Wait, don't answer that.
Yea, I forgot the KKK and NRA hated black gun ownership.
equilibrio @ 34:
Not really a valid point at all. Are you suggesting there is a book out there written by a black author that he could have interviewed?
Btw, if you actually go to Moyer's site you will see that he also had a conversation with two black men about the situation.
It's at the top of my list - I never miss it if I can help it.
The current Prison System in America isn't very different from the situation Douglas Blackmon describes.
Main difference is that the US Taxpayer pays the states to incarcerate large numbers of African Americans, instead of sending them back to work in chains.
Progress, I guess.
Tweakerbell @ 20:
One thing that will change radically in a oil scarce future is empty fields.
You drive down the freeway and do not see hardly anybody in a field working,
the few that are there are driving a tractor or similar.
The days of 20 people hoeing or picking root crops are long gone mostly.
But it will have to return if the oil runs out, BUT people dont have 6 kids per family any more...
We lose the oil we will starve and fade away as a dominant society very quickly.
I suspect the prisons will be emptied to provide chain gang labor for the farmers soon as the oil gets too expensive.
And of course if a location doesnt have enough prisoners for the farmers,
then crimes will be invented to create them, taxes raised high to encourage inmates.
time&again @ 38:
Both coincidentally founded in the same year...
BennyP @ 33:
Court 'Exclusion Orders' which removes older teens and young people from their neighborhoods and families.
Amitola @ 19:
Remember those bible-toting christians needed slaves to be seen as 'lesser humans' which eased their consciences, it enables them to sleep at night and fended off akward questions from children.
Slavery also makes the ignorant minimum wage redneck feel special and superior, to the slave class.
It was the perfect scheme for keeping the two biggest sections of the population in their place,
fear of the slaves (by the slightly better off) of the owners (by the slave), and fear of being downgraded to slave class by anybody who might dissent.
As was sort of pointed out above, we're still addicted to slavery. Only it's more like the indentured servitude that followed the Civil War. We're buying cheap products from overseas, where worker standards are low or non-existent, and we're using "illegal" labor here. The constant double-standard of complaining about foreigners stealing our jobs, (and arresting them, harassing them, complaining about all the signs in Spanish, etc.) while we exploit their desperate need for work to survive is as close to the old ways as is possible these days. We can't discriminate against Americans as easily as we used to, so we'll just shift that attention to others outside our country. I'm really sick of people complaining about "all the illegals" while they brag about how cheap and hard-working the "Mexicans" they hired are. Meanwhile, no, we haven't ended the original racism either.
We need to stop pretending like we can't do anything about racism.
I had the pleasure of working with Moyers, in the late 80's and early 90's. I was quite young, but knew it wouldn't ever get any better, and has been my standard for doing documentary films.With the loss of George Carlin, and when Moyers is gone, who will hold up the mirror to our society, and make us look at who we are, and be accountable?
Bill Moyers' Journal is one of the few "must see" television shows for me every week, and I am rarely disappointed in both the content and insight that he provides on a wide range of topics. Plus, if you miss the show when it airs, you can always watch the episodes on-line. As far as I'm concerned, Moyers is a treasured and much-needed progressive voice in the public discourse.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
I used to believe that 45 years ago when we pledged daily in school. The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave thing checked out a long time before that. We need to get the bullies out of our government before we can even begin to work our way back toward being considered honorable people by the rest of the planet.
Bill Moyers Journal: Slavery By Another Name
S&M funnery?
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13 tyler82 Says: 2 white guys making over $500,000 a year getting together to discuss race and class. How adorable !
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Never heard of Noblesse Oblige?
I wish there were more Bill Moyers .
Racism is alive in America. Your copy of Websters might say something about minorities, but mine says "discrimination based on race", and I have felt this, even as a white male, even in the military.
The problem is we, and many before us, fought for equality; yet "go black" T shirts are tolerable for some Obama supporters. It is OK for people of a certain race or color to speak with a certain idiom, but when someone of another color does the same we brand them as an "Uncle Tom", "Whitewashed", or a "Wigger". If I (I never would) put on a "Go White" T shirt, everyone would brand me a racist. Where is the equality in that?
I have had blacks, hispanics, and asians "label" me as a white male, and sometimes hate me because of my "curse". While it might not be as dominant, that is still racism. If you are still stuck on the definition, just look at the word itself and do the math.
Why fight for equality when we brand Reps "right wing christian nuts"? Isn't that casting a group out? Nobody likes being called a "left wing liberal" in offensive terms, so why the separation?
If we are to look at definitions, lets look at liberal. The one that stands out most to me is "broad minded and understanding". Why cant some of us see the difference in people and teach acceptance rather than equality? We all should have equal rights, but each one of us is different simply by pigmentation. Why is it OK to typecast right wingers based off religion or hypocricy and not OK to typecast races? Both are wrong.
My girlfriend is from Guatemala. I hold her in the highest regards and love her dearly, yet I would never say we are equal. She is superior to me in many ways, and there are things I can do that she cannot.
We need to teach difference, and acceptance...only then will equaliy come. I am no better, nor worse, than my mate, yet I am not equal.
Slavery was, and is, a horrible scar on our past. I know many minorities still feel it's sting, but maintaining racial barriers and preset "norms" is not the way to do it. Me wearing a "go black" shirt only comlpicates things (not as a white male, but an Obama supporter), and has nothing to do with unification.
Elect someone on their merit, not the color of thier skin. Only then will you, of any race, be free.
Seriosly, with everything we are going through, I would elect a black, yellow, white, purple, or blue horse to run the country. My football team sucks too...speaking of races in coaching; if a green woman could coach them to victory I would supprt her, nomatter of sex or color of skin.
Racism is alive in America, but are you fueling it or helping other? Comments here don't save lives...
Yeah. I have been talking about this for yrs. though I did not have the dilligence to do the hard research, Mr. Blackmon needs to be commended for his stick-to-it-ness.
I've been trying to get this guy on AAR so he can talk about the peonage system, and how it mirrored the southern attitudes toward blacks up into the 1960's. We aren't that far from those dark days of slavery, afterall. Take that as a check on our hubris about equality, and those who argue against affirmative action. We are still a bigoted nation and we need to examine our own minds as to whether we have come as far as we think.
Obama WILL be the next President. No question about it. McCain is just a disaster as a candidate.
Anything can happen in politics. But Obama is looking more presidential everyday. He's running the better and stronger campaign.
Samdog, I gotta call bullstuff on your nonsense. The north didn't impose Jim Crow on the Southern states and Southern economy. It was the Southerners that did that, once they managed to push out the carpetbaggers. You're just making excuses for a corrupt and degenerate culture that was addicted to its own evil.
Sinto @ 55:
I've bet that he isn't, given the track record ..........
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