Is this true? Black slave masters

[garbon]

Yeah, well you and the rest of us are history nerds.  I would bet most people are unaware that some blacks themselves had slaves.

There is a huge difference between being unaware that some blacks had slaves, and believing your "general narrative" that  "no blacks benefited from the system."  Most people who are not auto nerds are unaware that a Chevrolet 454 Big Block produced 255 hp, but there is no "general narrative" that  "no pickup truck engine ever produced over 250hp."

I'm saddened by how it is cool now to go about with one's ignorance. I miss when it was shameful to be so openly ignorant.

it's the post-truth era.  Deal with it!

Fuck that noise. Even in the post truth era, I'm still a minority.

[Oexmelin]

Note that examples of "Black owned slaves too" - in British colonies, anyways - are mostly taken from the earlier moments of slavery, in the early 17th century. The real takeaway of this "quirk" - not really a quirk - is that racialization of slavery took place over the course of the 17th century (incidentally, borrowing a lot of the conceptual tools elaborated in the crucible of Iberian antisemitism), solidifying during the 18th century into a notion of race, much more familiar to us today, than the medieval and early-modern notions of liberty from which slavery as a status, emerged.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yes, I've often thought that racism became a necessary ingredient to justify slavery some time in the 1650-1750 period.  The ancients practised slavery on the principle of "woe to the conquered"; for a 19th century slaveholder something more was needed as justification.

[viper37]

That there were black confederate soldiers, which meant that some blacks supported the CSA, which meant that the civil war wasn't really about slavery.

Seems pretty similar then, yeah.

Kind of, but not really.

There's fairly decent evidence that blacks did own slaves - partly (as mentioned by Viper) as a way to protect family members.

There's not really good evidence that blacks acted as soldiers.  That black slaves acted as manual labour / cooks?  Yes.  But taking up arms the evidence is scant, and fighting as uniformed soldiers there's not one shred of evidence.

there were certainly no free black regiments in the Confederacy.
A few here and there, integrated into other regiments and local militia in New Orelans.

The Wikipedia article provides first hand accounts, but they do not distinguish between slaves forced to fire on union troops by their masters or freed man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War#Confederate_States_Army

[Oexmelin]

Yes, I've often thought that racism became a necessary ingredient to justify slavery some time in the 1650-1750 period.  The ancients practised slavery on the principle of "woe to the conquered"; for a 19th century slaveholder something more was needed as justification.

To simplify a complex process:

The example of total debasement given by plantation slavery increasingly shaped, and refined - like sugar - notions of total emancipation as political freedom. Note the prevalence of the language of slavery in early American revolutionary rhetoric. As long as liberty was just a matter of which form and nature of the binds that tied you to your betters, slavery was just the extreme end of the spectrum. As the demands of plantation slavery increased - and as the working conditions became increasingly inhuman - "freedom" became increasingly "pure", the mark of not being a slave. It also meant that, as it was increasingly described as inevitable, and necessary, it was increasingly becoming intolerable to the universalist rhetoric of the Enlightenment. The mounting pressures from abolitionist forced slaveowners to come up with ideological justifications where pragmatic ones (and the fictions of war prizes) had previously sufficed. Race -- a medieval notion with a long history of concern over purity of bloodlines, free from Jews, Conversos, commoners -- was reenergized thus. 

[Barrister]

there were certainly no free black regiments in the Confederacy.
A few here and there, integrated into other regiments and local militia in New Orelans.

The Wikipedia article provides first hand accounts, but they do not distinguish between slaves forced to fire on union troops by their masters or freed man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War#Confederate_States_Army

I'm generally a big supporter of Wikipedia, but some topics are so controversial you simply can't trust it.

This is one of those topics.

[viper37]

there were certainly no free black regiments in the Confederacy.
A few here and there, integrated into other regiments and local militia in New Orelans.

The Wikipedia article provides first hand accounts, but they do not distinguish between slaves forced to fire on union troops by their masters or freed man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War#Confederate_States_Army

I'm generally a big supporter of Wikipedia, but some topics are so controversial you simply can't trust it.

This is one of those topics.

well, other information I found is just as contradictory as Wikipedia.
Bottom line is, yes, there were free blacks fighting for the Confederacy, as soldiers.  But not terribly much and usually as part of local militias to defend against looters and criminals.

Again, it seems to be a case of false truth.  It ain't false to say that there were black men fighting for the Confederacy, but it's false to say they represented any significant number or always did it of their own free will, and it's certainly false to pretend the total number of black men enlisted in the CSA actively fought the unions.

[Siege]

I've noticed that a few of my fellow co-religionists have some willingness to give consideration to racist or white supremacist arguments of this nature; there seems to be a bit more of that going around lately.  It shouldn't be necessary to have to explain the problem with this or appeal to self-interest.  But just in case - if for no other reason than self-interest, this is a really terrible idea.

"Did you know that Jewish intellectuals were disproportionately represented in Bolshevik leadership?"

really?

*furiously searches teh internetz* 

[Siege]

Come on dudes, I am grinding no ax.

It is just a curious fact of life that no liberal ever heard about. And I wonder why.
Maybe it disrupts the narrative, or maybe educators don't think the snowflakes are ready for it, or maybe it's a way to minimize the occupation of school safe spaces.

Regardless, I doubted the original source had the numbers right, since Army retired old dudes are not known for political neutrality, and this tipic is clearly politically charged.

[frunk]

How does it change anything?  Slavery was a part of the American colonies from the beginning.  I don't see how it particularly matters if not all of the slave masters were white.  What narrative do you think is being disrupted?

[derspiess]

It sure caused a strong reaction here.

[The Minsky Moment]

Come on dudes, I am grinding no ax.

It is just a curious fact of life that no liberal ever heard about.

Hmm . . .

Jones' book received a lot a commentary when it came out in places like the NYT book review, and the Guardian, it won a Pulitzer, he was on NPR, interviewed by Jim Lehrer, etc. and a lot of discussion was about the historical basis.  So LOTS of liberals heard about it.

[Ideologue]

Okay, I'll let him answer that then.  So is this like the new Black Confederate Soldiers thing?

What's the "Black Confederate Soldiers thing"?

That there were black confederate soldiers, which meant that some blacks supported the CSA, which meant that the civil war wasn't really about slavery.

Over a million Russians under arms for the Axis, and millions (with an "s") of Chinese, Indonesians, Indians, etc., under arms in service to the Japanese puppet governments.  So I guess WWII wasn't really about living space and violent resource extraction?

It is just a curious fact of life that no liberal ever heard about. And I wonder why.

Dude, if you really wanted to shout "gotcha!" at liberals, why not bang on about the Crimean and North African slave trades?  You know, the three or four million white people kidnapped and sold to the Turks and Arab states?  At least that one counters the narrative (the one that barely exists, although God knows that right-wingers think it does) that Western Europeans are somehow uniquely evil.  It also would jive with your well-attested hatred of Muslims, and I'll even cop to it being not very-well-known outside of history-oriented circles.

But guess what?  No liberal is remotely surprised to learn that free black people owned black slaves.  It is not surprising, in the slightest, to discover that anybody of means, in any society where slaveholding was legal, owned slaves--in much the same way that it would also not be surprising to discover that they owned houses.  It does not meaningfully detract from the idea that America was and is a white supremacist state.  (But hey, don't give up: if you can find a few hundred thousand white slaves in the American South--especially if they were owned by black slaveowners--then you'll have achieved a real coup!)

It helps a lot, obviously, that liberals tend not to be impervious to facts, and are more comfortable with contemplating nuance and ambiguities.

[Admiral Yi]

The Cherokee owned black slaves too.

[Ideologue]

Trail of Tears: JUSTIFIED.