Homework assignment asks students to list positive aspects of slavery - CNN

Edited

I just happened to be reading about this guy a few days ago,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Bonnell_Phillips

The Phillips school asked, what did slavery do for the slaves? As the historian Herbert Gutman noted, the Phillipsian answer was that slavery lifted the slaves out of the barbarism of Africa, Christianized them, protected them, and generally benefited them. Scholarship in the 1950s then moved to the question, what did slavery do to the slaves, and concluded it was a harsh and profitable system. More recently, scholars such as Genovese and Gutman asked, "What did slaves do for themselves?" They concluded "In the slave quarters, through family, community and religion, slaves struggled for a measure of independence and dignity.[6]

Probably not a question appropriate for grade school kids (edit: in today's climate).

[–] Kannibal [OP] 1 points (+1|-0)

thus we get into the logic of how stealing a man's freedom is justified because it is supposed to benefit him in some way.

[–] doggone 0 points (+0|-0)

I'm not trying to justify it. I think it's just the way it was and that it's possible that it's not zero sum.

[–] Kannibal [OP] 1 points (+1|-0)

well, there is the question of of those assumptions, things like "the barbarism of Africa" and the "benefits" of Christianity

given the continued wars in Europe, etc.

Plus the whole romantic notion of "the white man's burden" which covered a world of sins of colonial exploitation for fun and profit.

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Homework assignment asks students to list positive aspects of slavery - CNN

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