Publisher Pulls George Washington Kids Book for Upbeat Portrayal of Slavery

[Haiku]

I wrote what I wrote because I chafed at the idea of Washington being considered a dick (in other words, an atypically bad person) 

 

Not that's he atypically bad. More that we as a culture spend way too much time lionizing men who don't deserve lionization.  We don't critically examine people's lives. We choose a few incidents and focus on them, and we build our perception of them as great men based on a few happenings. I object to that. I think it robs us of our right to know the truth, and I think it diminishes our humanity when we hold up as heros people who did a lot of unheroic things.

 

One thing I have focused on with my kids as they have gotten older is reading primary source documents so that we know the really story of events and people. I teach my kids not to idolize people based on just a small snippet of their lives. Frankly, it offends me that Washington is considered a great person. I object to him being characterized as moral. He may have done some historically important things, but that in and of itself does not make him great. In an era of burgeoning abolitionism, he failed in the moral realm. He made his own choices, for varied and complex reasons, I am sure, but in the end he went against his misgivings and treated people like property. That is almost more vile than people who thought there was nothing wrong with slavery holding slaves. Washington could have pursued the moral line of action, and he chose not to. He failed when he could have chosen to lead.

 

That makes him typical, unfortunately. And it makes him a dick. He was in a position to know and choose better. And he failed.

[Tanaqui]

Don't forget, Washington also committed acts of genocide during the Revolution. Massacring people when they come out to parley under a flag of truce was considered shockingly bad form even before people used the phrase "war crimes". So, you know, there's room for criticism on old Town Destroyer.

[poppy]

. I object to him being characterized as moral.

 

I get this, and I respect it. But.  

How many of us are doing things that will be considered unconscionable 300 years from now?

Factory farms.

Indifference to genocide and injustice and hunger throughout the world.

Using so much plastic that our ocean will be more plastic in it than fish in 35 years... but we scoff at laws enforcing change.

How many of us purchase clothes and consumer goods produced by slave labor / child slave labor? 

Most Smartphones. Chocolate. Lots and lots of clothes.  Shrimp.

I don't know how history will judge our culture, but I'm not confident that we'll get a thumbs up.

 

And , of all the former presidents on US currency, I still hold that Jackson should be removed before Washington.

Edited January 25, 2016 by poppy

[Pam in CT]

re prevailing norms of prevailing times, and banality of evil:

 

 

Yes, Washington had no children of his own who would expect to inherit his slaves, and Martha's children by her first husband (Custis) would inherit all of Martha's slaves plus additional slaves from the Custis estate, so they really had no need of the additional 120-some slaves that Washington owned. There were more slaves at Mount Vernon than were needed, which is something Washington complained about during his lifetime (having to feed and clothe the ones he didn't really need).

 

_____

 

 

The one thing he did seem to be somewhat sensitive about was not wanting to split up families. That was one reason he didn't sell off his surplus slaves, and also the reason his will said to free his slaves after Martha's death — his slaves had intermarried with Martha's, so he wanted the slaves that were technically his property to be able to go with Martha's slaves when they were inherited by the various Custis heirs. And he did stipulate in his will that those who were too elderly or ill to support themselves should be allowed to stay on the plantation with basic rations.

 

______

 

 

Jefferson, on the other hand, only legally freed 7 of the more than 600 slaves he owned in his lifetime, and two of those were his own sons. He wrote that the greatest financial benefit of slaves was not their labor, but their rate of reproduction — slaves are like money that prints itself. He said "I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption." He even used his slaves as collateral for large loans, and after his death, many were sold off to pay debts. Even his mistress, Sally Hemings, was due to be sold, because despite fathering 6 children with her, he never freed her, not even in his will. ....

 

These are examples of what I see as cognitive dissonance - one part of the brain extolling rights to life liberty and happiness for all (well, some), one part constructing the foundations of a wholly new type of nation, while other parts hold ideas like the above. 

 

I think that recognizing and grappling with these kinds of tensions is among the very most important skills we can teach our kids, and continue to work on as adults.  It's not as tidy as straight-up hero worship, but it's more true, and therefore IMO more relevant to the present and future.

 

 

Not that's he atypically bad. More that we as a culture spend way too much time lionizing men who don't deserve lionization.  We don't critically examine people's lives. We choose a few incidents and focus on them, and we build our perception of them as great men based on a few happenings. I object to that. I think it robs us of our right to know the truth, and I think it diminishes our humanity when we hold up as heros people who did a lot of unheroic things.

 

One thing I have focused on with my kids as they have gotten older is reading primary source documents so that we know the really story of events and people. I teach my kids not to idolize people based on just a small snippet of their lives. Frankly, it offends me that Washington is considered a great person. I object to him being characterized as moral. He may have done some historically important things, but that in and of itself does not make him great. In an era of burgeoning abolitionism, he failed in the moral realm. He made his own choices, for varied and complex reasons, I am sure, but in the end he went against his misgivings and treated people like property. That is almost more vile than people who thought there was nothing wrong with slavery holding slaves. Washington could have pursued the moral line of action, and he chose not to. He failed when he could have chosen to lead.

 

That makes him typical, unfortunately. And it makes him a dick. He was in a position to know and choose better. And he failed.

 

I don't want to end up lionizing Washington OR counting him a failure.  Clearly he actually did accomplish an awful lot.  Yet equally clearly he failed in other realms.  I want my kids to understand both parts.  In some trite sense that better self/lesser self, mix of good-and-bad makes him typical of being a human being... but... I dunno.  He wasn't typical.  He was in all sorts of ways exceptional -- yet even he could not rise above his own cognitive dissonance. 

 

*That's* the lesson, the gift, that I'd ultimately like to impart to my kids.  To fully learn myself, actually.

 

I do not for one moment delude myself in thinking that I'm somehow smarter than Washington or Jefferson.  (!!)  I live in my own time, with different prevailing norms, and at this distance it's easy for me to see their cognitive dissonance and moral inconsistencies.  Less so, to see my own complicity, as I embrace (for example) cheap retail goods built on the backs of children toiling in dark distant places, or cheap food built on corporate subsidies, predatory labor practices and environmental degradation...  

 

 

I think I have a problem with "the nicest of the three" -- maybe the least evil of the three, but really - does it matter?....

 

The institution of slavery clearly created a type of psychosis in the majority of white people at the time around the reality of slavery that resulted in the justification of all kinds of things. "Well, I think it's okay to enslave people, but I don't do X to my slaves, because THAT'S IMMORAL." "Oh, I'm so conflicted that I'll free them after my death (cause wouldn't want to free them while I still needed them, especially that chap who makes the cakes)." Jefferson's writings on the topic of slavery were just downright tortured - a form of psychosis. 

 

I do get that you are not attempting to condone slavery, but, sorry, if one got into the slavery game back in the days of the founding fathers, one gets to be judged in history. It is what it is. Why wouldn't we judge them against contemporary standards? I can "get" the context in which they lived, and still see their flaws for what they were -- and name them as such without qualification or hedging. History is filled with all kinds of examples like that. Washington's involvement in slavery was awful, right along with the rest of them. Slavery was no small thing, and we are still feeling the effects of that legacy today. I just don't think it's particularly useful, historically speaking, to try to make distinctions between the really horrible enslavers and the "not so bad" ones 

 

... there's nothing wrong with judging the past against contemporary standards; obviously we can judge by whatever standard we want.  

 

For me, though, the purpose of the exercise is not so much to de-lionize heroes (though that might be a necessary first step), as to discern from the lens of the present-looking-back, tools that help evaluate and in Slojo's words "name" the present and in so doing, god willing, shape the future.    As patterns of domination and exploitation morph over time, so too does the current form of latter day dissonance and banality.  Stepping up our collective game means that we have to get better at recognizing that cognitive dissonance in the present, in ourselves and our leaders and our wanna-be leaders.

 

 

 

 

 

[LucyStoner]

Could you expand then? I took you to be saying that, for example, we could not understand her accomplishments as a professional, without also talking about her as a victim. .

Your comparison falls apart because no one, from you to Elizabeth Smart, would ever tolerate her time in captivity being written about in a positive way. What's been done here is that the book discusses a man in captivity and doesn't discuss what he did and gave up to be free. To leave your daughter, you must really not like where you are. A similar treatment of Elizabeth Smart would discuss her "happiness" while she was wth her abductors and end before she was rescued.