Chapter 11: Slavery
Owens takes the position that many Americans in college are not being taught a solid education on hard academics, but rather an indoctrination on social issues. Leftists Democrats like Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, Al Sharpton, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren all pander to white Americans to feel responsible for how the ancestors of black Americans were treated. Owens does not justify slavery. I don’t believe any honest and fair-minded person would stoop so low as to rectify what most classical liberals deemed as an American tragedy. However, white Americans are not just blamed for slavery, but also for the inhumane treatment of Native Americans. These acts of dehumanization are awful, however, today’s college students are not to blame for America’s tragedies. However, it is through a revision of history that the Left are carrying out to make young Americans feel the moral brunt of their ancestors. Here’s a saying I heard from a gospel preacher: “Any text without the context is a pretext.” That means a professor is impressing their beliefs and assumptions that they do not demonstrate to be true or correct, but want you to believe like they do. That’s what a pretext is: fake news.
Owens doesn’t ignore the tragedies of slavery. On page 254, she lists, in detail, the struggles of what Africans had to deal with. However, she makes this comment on page 249: “Black Americans are taught to believe that historical sin is almost synonymous with white men;…” College students do not learn of the sins of Africans that enslaved their own people and sold them to slave traders. College students do not learn of the slavery, cannibalism, imperialism, and human sacrifices the Native Americans partook in. College students do not learn of the dehumanization of the of other empires like the “Persian Empire…Egyptian Empire, the Turkish Empire, the Muslim Abbasid and Rashidun Caliphate Empires, the Chinese Yuan or Ming Empires, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire or the Japanese Empire” p.249. Why don’t we hear about how the American Framers set the country in the direction that created conflict between the slave holding states and the northern free states.
Why don’t we learn about the effects that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had on the Midwestern territories involving slavery? Why don’t we learn that the slave trade was made illegal just a few decades of the ratification of the United States Constitution? Why don’t we hear about all of the bible believing Christians and their literature like ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and more that created moral tensions between slave holders and abolitionists and anti-slavers? Instead of believing that the 13th Amendment was written with a purposeful loophole in it to preserve slavery, why don’t we learn that the 13th Amendment was the same law that made slavery illegal in places like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinoi, Minnesota, and eventually worked its effects on states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey to become free states. That means the Northwest Ordinance was directly copied and pasted into an amendment, the 13th amendment, where prior to the 13th amendment the Northwest Ordinance is the exact same law that kept free states free from holding slaves without enslaving them through a prison system. Also, the Southern states hated the Northwest ordinance and its effects it had against the slave holding states. Why would the Civil War generation use legislation that prevented slavery in newly adopted states and also influenced most of the northern states to abolish slavery in them also? If you were to purposely preserve slavery institution, wouldn’t you implement a law that didn’t guarantee its demise? Owens notes that it was the white man that first abolished slavery in England in 1833. It was the white man that abolished slavery in France in 1848.
Why aren’t our institutions of learning focusing on the good as well as the bad? Owens notes that even today, there are nonwhite countries that still have slavery instituted, yet, there is no outrage against places like Lake Volta in Ghana or about the 700,000 slaves in Sub-Sahara Africa today. Owens accurately points out that race baiting is profitable. That’s why the Left keeps their universities funded to spread propaganda in revisionist history to keep their students angry at America because Democrats are obsessed with power, control, and money; not educating our youth to become flourishing, contributing, and civil citizens of America.
The Left has turned black America against Conservatism by attacking biblical Christianity and holistic history. The result of this is anger, bitterness, and destruction. We saw this manifest itself last year during four months of rioting in places like Kenosha, Portland, New York City, Washington DC, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. These are days where lovers of truth become lovers of mankind. Only the truth in love will turn the tide. It can happen. I believe it will. We will see the days where anger is turned to grace.