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Not really. What they did was to both understand and recognize that they stood at a unique time in history (European Reniassance) which gave them the unique opportunity to found a nation established by the rule of law by the self governed. Was this greedy to take advantage of that unique window of opportunity? Really?
Uhmmmm, is it greedy to:
-Flee your homeland due to oppression
-Arrive in a land ALREADY inhabited and claim it your own, enslaving the native people and importing "savages" from Africa
All to secure land and monetary success?
In a word...YES.
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I suggest you go back and do some real historical reseach at your public library or local university library (not Wikipedia). You may find that your assumptions are not exactly accurate.
I use Wikipedia for entertainment, rather than educational purposes. I'm a English grad with extensive study in AA history, so be assured that I don't rely on the www to teach me my history.
I'm sorry but there's absolutely nothing that will convince me that the term "all men created equal" shouldn't (and obviously didn't) include Africans. Are we not humans? If so, then aren't we men (and women)? What possible defense is there to grant equality for some and not all?
I think the problem comes from your misunderstanding of the prevailing opinion of the time. It was a time when people could own other people, and where women couldn't own property, etc. If they meant "all humans" they universally did a pretty bad job sticking to it.
If it meant "all humans," why weren't women allowed the vote? (Despite pleas from the "Founding Mothers" to "not forget the women")
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Originally Posted by ChocLot
Weren't the European ESCAPING from a country that oppressed and discriminated? It's laughable that they escaped to win the very freedom that they denied to millions of Africans.
Actually, no. The Europeans were not ALWAYS "escaping" oppression and discrimination. SOME escaped religious persecution, or famine, but some of our most renown founding fathers were of Aristocratic birth.
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Originally Posted by ChocLot
You say "how righteous [I am] to impose.. 21st century sense of justice and morality on 17th-18th century peoples!", yet posters in this thread point out that there *were* founding fathers who were against slavery....so obviously even THEN, people knew what was just, yet they allowed their greed to overtake their morals.
It was not yet settled. Hence the debate. Today it is settled. Slavery in all forms is bad. At the time, however, slavery was practiced all around the world. That some abolitionists believed differently does not mean that it was a moral problem for everyone.
As someone pointed out, today there is a raging debate on the morality of abortion. If 100 years from now we all decide abortion is murder, and that becomes the world "truth," future generations will look upon 20th - 21st Century America with disgust, and all mothers who had abortions as murderers deserving of contempt. Meanwhile, 20th centuery mothers will say, "but we believed that it was a woman's choice, woman's body."
In my opinion the real founding fathers of the US were black people. It was their hard work that served as the foundation of the future US.
I disagree. I'm not saying that the work the slaves did wasn't valuable but i wouldn't call them "the real founding fathers" as if the historical founding fathers were some knock-off imitation. If anything it was the combination of the two.
What is somewhat amusing/disturbing to me is the notion that hypocrisy is somehow dependent on time. Hypocrisy is a question of logic - not time, not epoch, not era... logic. It no more requires intellecutal enlightenment to know that freedom and slavery are incongruent with one another anymore than you need to consult your moral compass to determine if something can be all wet and yet all dry.
This is not a question of looking back through time and judging someone through our lens... it's about realizing, via logic, there is only one lens - consistencey. We're not talking about people who didn't know what freedom was or what slavery was - we're talking about people who justified incoporating both into their existence and living a duality.
To excuse their failings (the Founding Fathers) as merely products of their environment, is untenable - especially since some didn't. Certainly they are more than JUST their hypocrisy, we are all hypocrites within the right context and we are all more than JUST our failings, but let's stop with this apologism.
Sometimes challenges have to be faced one at at time and not all at once. The fact is there never would have been a concensus to establish this nation as one of 13 united states had the requirement of the abolishment of slavery be held to the colonies just freed form British tyranny. Look it up.
So how do you live with the duality that the lights you use to illuminate your home were produced in a Chinese factory that likely uses child labor? Do you wear jewelry? Was it made in India? Child labor there too. Same slavery, different time, different nations, same benefactors of the labor.
Duality is a funny thing until you look in the mirror. Wouldn't you say?
What is somewhat amusing/disturbing to me is the notion that hypocrisy is somehow dependent on time. Hypocrisy is a question of logic - not time, not epoch, not era... logic. It no more requires intellecutal enlightenment to know that freedom and slavery are incongruent with one another anymore than you need to consult your moral compass to determine if something can be all wet and yet all dry.
This is not a question of looking back through time and judging someone through our lens... it's about realizing, via logic, there is only one lens - consistencey. We're not talking about people who didn't know what freedom was or what slavery was - we're talking about people who justified incoporating both into their existence and living a duality.
To excuse their failings (the Founding Fathers) as merely products of their environment, is untenable - especially since some didn't. Certainly they are more than JUST their hypocrisy, we are all hypocrites within the right context and we are all more than JUST our failings, but let's stop with this apologism.
Since the founders of this country are held up in high esteem and since they also owned slaves how should this topic be taught to kids especially Black kids? As a Black person myself I just can't view these men with the same enthusiasm as many whites do. Am I wrong?
I don't think kids hold them in high esteem at all. they are just a bunch of old men in wigs way back in history.
I disagree. I'm not saying that the work the slaves did wasn't valuable but i wouldn't call them "the real founding fathers" as if the historical founding fathers were some knock-off imitation. If anything it was the combination of the two.
It's a Marxist critique of production that I tend to agree with on many levels.
The oppressed and poor generally do all the "labor" that "builds" a country, literally. Slavery was a large (but not exclusive) part of that. In fact, a lot of slave production was wasted and inured to the benefit of only a few wealthy families.
However, the managerial class "builds" the country, figuratively, by directing its course. Without one, you cannot have the other.
I think the problem comes from your misunderstanding of the prevailing opinion of the time. It was a time when people could own other people, and where women couldn't own property, etc. If they meant "all humans" they universally did a pretty bad job sticking to it.
If it meant "all humans," why weren't women allowed the vote? (Despite pleas from the "Founding Mothers" to "not forget the women")
Do you not see the hypocrisy in founding a nation upon the beliefs of freedom, liberty and equality all while enslaving people? To say that "all men are created equal", while deeming African *men* as property not to be included in these rights is total hypocrisy.
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Actually, no. The Europeans were not ALWAYS "escaping" oppression and discrimination. SOME escaped religious persecution, or famine, but some of our most renown founding fathers were of Aristocratic birth.
So you agree, some were? And those who escaped for religious and/or monetary reasons, were looking for the very thing denied to Africans: freedom from oppression. Only to become oppressors themselves asserting that it was their Christian duty to enslave and tame the wild African savages.
I disagree. I'm not saying that the work the slaves did wasn't valuable but i wouldn't call them "the real founding fathers" as if the historical founding fathers were some knock-off imitation. If anything it was the combination of the two.
If I had meant what you have read into it, I would have written original rather than real
It's easy to talk, write, and philosophize when you have millions of slaves planting your food and doing all sorts of other unpleasant work for you...
The OP asks a very valid question and one that resonates among teachers in general. It's true that the whole situation is very complex and nuanced. It can't be taught purely as right or wrong- or solely from a white or black perspective- just what happened and what was and what is now.
I find that the current rendition of slavery is often too much " it was the white folks who were all evil" line. As other posters have pointed out- where is the teaching about slavery then and as it exists today- especially as a long standing tradition in African countries?
Where is the teaching about the offers of free passage back home in the 1800s by the American Colonization Society and other movements such as free passage to the new republic of Haiti in the early 1800s? Thousands took advantage and left but African American leaders opposed these movements- will you teach your students that?
Will you point out, as an earlier poster said, that today's blacks are very likely better off here than in their countries of origin?
Are you going to teach your students about the Harlem renaissance and ask why there is no parallel today?
Black students deserve to have the whole truth, not just the truth that's easy and makes them think they are the perpetual victims of the white man.
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