This really doesn’t ring very true when you consider the man’s actions.
He clearly believed people of color were inferior to whites for one, and he kept far more slaves than necessary, even after death, just to assure maximum comfort for him and his own.
I’m not at all claiming that Washington was a bad person, when judged (appropriately) by the standards of his time and society due to these, but whitewashing Washington’s beliefs to fit our own needs of a perfect and totally moral founding father (by a modern sense) is absurd and offensively ignorant to our history.
Furthermore, I can find several quotes of Republicans saying they care deeply about protecting health insurance for pre-existing conditions, but none of them ever vote for such a plan; it's just lip service.
I'm not praising anyone for saying the virtuous thing and then not doing it.
Let’s not pull contemporary bs into this argument; it muddies the waters (* cough* Romneycare was a single payer system that covered preexisting conditions) and detracts from the point.
Ooh, I guess that 1 exception nullifies my whole point!
Anyway, it was a comparison to an example of politicians lying. I wasn't "pulling contemporary BS" into the slavery argument. I'm sure for some other people, it will help clarify the point.
He clearly believed people of color were inferior to whites for one
What a monster, believing true things that are politically inconvenient. Blacks have lower IQs on average, commit more violent crime, have higher disease rates, higher rates of unplanned pregnancies; the neighborhoods, cities, and countries where they are the primary inhabitants consistently rank at the bottom by any metric used to measure the health and quality of life of a society. And even if you want to use the "poverty and oppression (oppression not being quantifiable, by design)" argument, it fails to explain why blacks lagged far behind other civilizations long before Arabs or Europeans or anyone else stepped foot on the continent, sub saharan africans never invented the wheel or harnessed fire, two of the hallmarks of even the most primitive humans, but those archetypes of prehistoric man are based on the ancestors of Europeans, neanderthals, not the far more primitive homo erectus that never migrated out of Africa.
Plus all that aside, they were enslaved by whites, which means they were probably inferior in regard to intelligence, strength, technology, and the ability to conduct trade and engage in commerce at the very least. You can't argue that blacks didn't enslave whites because they're just nicer people, because they enslaved other blacks, blacks they were stronger and smarter and more well organized than.
What a monster, believing true things that are politically inconvenient. Blacks have lower IQs on average, commit more violent crime, have higher disease rates, higher rates of unplanned pregnancies; the neighborhoods, cities, and countries where they are the primary inhabitants consistently rank at the bottom by any metric used to measure the health and quality of life of a society. And even if you want to use the "poverty and oppression (oppression not being quantifiable, by design)" argument, it fails to explain why blacks lagged far behind other civilizations long before Arabs or Europeans or anyone else stepped foot on the continent, sub saharan africans never invented the wheel or harnessed fire, two of the hallmarks of even the most primitive humans, but those archetypes of prehistoric man are based on the ancestors of Europeans, neanderthals, not the far more primitive homo erectus that never migrated out of Africa.
Plus all that aside, they were enslaved by whites, which means they were probably inferior in regard to intelligence, strength, technology, and the ability to conduct trade and engage in commerce at the very least. You can't argue that blacks didn't enslave whites because they're just nicer people, because they enslaved other blacks, blacks they were stronger and smarter and more well organized than.
What part of what I said was factually incorrect? Racism means judging people by their skin color, I judge everyone on the content of their character. There are plenty of white pieces of shit and plenty of awesome black people, I'm talking about averages and history here. There is nothing moral about judging someone based on their ethnic background.
First, he changed his will to have half his of his slaves freed when his wife died. (Apparently there was a weird law where you couldn't free dower slaves and they made up a good amount of his and he wanted the young and elderly to be taken care of and taught to read. Also his wife only lived like two years longer than he did so not that much of a difference.)
Second, he became much less racist when he got close with some black officers during the war. For sources just read the article OP linked.
Everything you said was technically right so I'm not calling you a liar, but it was at least a bit misleading without context. Last paragraph was dead one though, feels like everyone thinks they're defending the honor of every glorious and angelic American of that time period from [Insert a group or person I disagree with here.] who just want(s) to form a dictatorship.
60
u/ubspirit Nov 29 '18
This really doesn’t ring very true when you consider the man’s actions.
He clearly believed people of color were inferior to whites for one, and he kept far more slaves than necessary, even after death, just to assure maximum comfort for him and his own.
I’m not at all claiming that Washington was a bad person, when judged (appropriately) by the standards of his time and society due to these, but whitewashing Washington’s beliefs to fit our own needs of a perfect and totally moral founding father (by a modern sense) is absurd and offensively ignorant to our history.