06-21-2021, 11:08 AM
(06-21-2021, 04:54 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: Juneteenth sounds so retarded. I understand the slaves, using African languages and having limited knowledge of English at the time, did not understand the phrase "June Nineteenth". "Emancipation Day" or "Black Independence Day" would be better names.
Slaves didn't have calendars and watches. By 1865 slaves were almost always monolingual speakers of English. Early slave-owners punished slaves for using any African language or performing any music of undoubted African origin. Such musical instruments as drums were out of the question. Obviously their formal learning was severely limited; whatever inefficiency came from slave illiteracy more than made up for the reduced likelihood of slaves escaping.
Freedmen knew that enterprise, thrift, vocational skill, and formal learning were all means of power, and for a while Reconstruction was great progress for blacks who had recently been slaves. Some fellows who liked to dress up like ghosts did what they could to put an end to that.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
