explainlikeimfive 内の Vephyr によるリンク ELI5: Why do headlines and titles avoid words like "Are" or "The"

[–]thesweetestpunch 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

This might be a good question for /r/linguistics. I would guess (with no expertise whatsoever, so pulling it out of my ass) that it has something to do with how articles and other parts of speech work in certain languages.

bestof 内の Ritchell によるリンク User thoroughly refutes claim that "slavery wasn't 'Roots' or '12 Years a Slave' most of the time."

[–]thesweetestpunch 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I understand where you're coming from on my "rant" (I was going for a friendly sarcasm, but whatever - I'm not always on my game, and I issued a caveat once I realized I hadn't been successful in conveying what I meant to convey), but nobody likes the tone police. I had a really long morning talking to racists. Cut me some slack.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

I didn't scream "racist" at anyone except for the original commenter...who had several posts spouting the n-word and comparing black people to monkeys. So I think I was justified there.

Anyway, I guided you towards a place where you might find more knowledgeable people who can give you more information, and who can also probably help to clarify or refute some misinformation you're likely to have received. Take it or leave it.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

You rely on statistics, yet you're also relying on the anecdotal evidence of this one plantation you know of to refute mounds of data.

Look, why don't you ask some historians (perhaps at /r/askhistorians) for stats or information. Right now you're parading your ignorance while cloaking it in "waiting for more evidence."

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

When I visited Williamstown VA (is that the name? I always confuse it with Williamsburg) they had a thing where you got to see two slaves interacting. I kept wondering, "where do they get all this free time?" and "these slaves are in awfully high spirits." They were still saying slavery is wrong, but...they went out of their way to exclude crushed spirits and the scars of that kind of life.

bestof 内の Ritchell によるリンク User thoroughly refutes claim that "slavery wasn't 'Roots' or '12 Years a Slave' most of the time."

[–]thesweetestpunch 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I had to spend my whole morning defending those facts against racist shitheads. I'm not in the best of moods at the moment.

It's easy to be smug when the opposing viewpoint is so stupid. I'm a lot less smug on other topics that are less black-and-white (edit: pun not intended).

Also, fuck you. At least I don't go around calling strangers smug assholes for the crime of using a little sarcasm.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

The German government went out of its way to make reparations, to continue to prosecute perpetrators of the holocaust, to make education on the holocaust a huge national topic, and to even outlaw types of speech denying the holocaust.

We continued slavery under Jim Crow, made sundown towns in the North, and had counties and towns where it was illegal for black people to live as late as the 1980s, segregated proms as late as this decade, and have an entire political party (in a two-party system!) that gained votes in the South by courting racists and segregationists in a policy they made very explicit in internal memos.

Hell, when we had to relocate families and communities in the 1950s and 1960s for infrastructure updates and massive public works projects, between 70-90% of the people who were forcibly uprooted from their communities were black. We then spent the next generation decrying the problems in the same black communities we had just devastated, all while benefiting as a society from the infrastructure that uprooting them had caused (without them seeing the same benefits).

My grandfather was able to buy a house using the same GI bill that excluded veterans who came from majority-black professions, and was able to buy in neighborhoods that didn't allow black people in, and go to a college that mysteriously didn't have black people in it. You're damn right I have something to answer for. I got so much free shit that was taken away from black families. Most of us did, whether we know it or not.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

How about all the shitty racists and rape apologists get the hell outta here. We were here first.

bestof 内の Ritchell によるリンク User thoroughly refutes claim that "slavery wasn't 'Roots' or '12 Years a Slave' most of the time."

[–]thesweetestpunch 10ポイント11ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah but back then it was just called Five Flags because Texas hadn't been through all those flags yet.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Miraculously, racist and sexist arguments tend to disappear pretty quickly when the moderators require that you actually know what the fuck you're talking about on a given topic.

bestof 内の Ritchell によるリンク User thoroughly refutes claim that "slavery wasn't 'Roots' or '12 Years a Slave' most of the time."

[–]thesweetestpunch 25ポイント26ポイント  (0子コメント)

Aww, thanks y'all! I'm so glad I've received so many rewards for saying that racism is bad and slavery was not good and white people who say the n-word aren't worth listening to on race-related issues. I know it's a brave stance for me to take, but I took it! This is 2015, by the way, if you'd like to be depressed about how little things have progressed in the past few decades.

edit to add: This is pretty controversial on the karma, so I want to clarify that I am grateful that this made it to /r/bestof and that so many decent people came out of the woodwork to refute that racist dude and downvote him (he started at around 400 upvotes when I showed up). I'm just grumpy and sarcastic after a whole morning of those racists, y'know?

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

You don't think plantation homes, often owned or sold by the ancestors of slave-owners, might not have a bias?

Anyhow, I'd encourage you to look at some primary sources, rather than relying on tour guides and descendants of the people who fought a war where "slavery's not that bad!" was part of the rallying cry.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

No I don't, I begin by citing an askhistorians thread and then a WPA survey summary. The "fiction" thing was a single line at the end of a long second paragraph.

Cutie. ;)

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Alright, feel free to defend a KKK member who's defending slavery, just to spite me because I made fun of your wording.

Really. That'll make you a cool person. High-five!

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 13ポイント14ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think it's likely that people will view your comment as racist and downvote it, so I'll clarify for them what I think you mean [edit: and why I think what you're saying is basically correct]:

A white male demographic is much more likely to have a large percentage of people who have not actually been meaningfully educated in the history and effects of slavery, who are more susceptible to southern revisionism, or who are more desensitized to casual racism. A white male demographic is also likely to have a small but powerful minority of virulent racists who will willfully spread misinformation, which the former group will then latch onto as sounding "reasonable".

A larger minority population on reddit would be, at least theoretically, better able to counter false narratives about their history.

Just to recap: This isn't "white men bad." This is "Lots of different kinds of white men and not a lot of minorities = greater likelihood of misinformation on topics that a minority of white men have a vested interest in lying about, and fewer people to rebut it".

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

You're making a false analogy here, though. Slavery in the Americas lasted for several hundred years and the reliable stories we get from it are almost uniformly cruel. This isn't like we took a few stories and then extrapolated - the mountain of data is HUGE and, again, lasts for HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

Can you read? It's not like slavery was some fad, bro.

explainlikeimfive 内の puzzlednerd によるリンク ELI5: How did slave masters sleep? Wouldn't they be scared their slaves might kill them in their sleep?

[–]thesweetestpunch 10ポイント11ポイント  (0子コメント)

But in my opinion 95% of human beings would not act out anymore after being hit repeatedly for 'doing something wrong', so the idea that slaves would continuously be hit is generally wrong. You would be quite surprised how much people (off all races) can suck it up and how submissive they can be (I know, it's awful, but it's the sad truth). Submission generally gets repaid with trust and slaves would be fed and housed properly so that slavers would have strong slaves working the fields.

This is the danger of an "in my opinion." Remember that the past is a foreign country - people think, feel, and behave differently in the past, and so your own thoughts and observations may not be helpful in guessing how people may have behaved in the past. Even when slaves were treated well, they would sometimes try to escape or their productivity would fall below acceptable levels - and that's when the nice massa hires the other guy to beat the slaves for him.

Also, sometimes you just get shitty slave drivers. Massa might be nice, but the guy who's in charge of getting quotas met might be a piece of shit who receives little oversight. Think of all the cruel middle managers you've heard people talk about, and then imagine if they had slaves.