Who is more moral...a kidnapper who despite his actions waxes eloquent about liberty, or a kidnapped person who kills those responsible for his bondage so as to live the values spoken of by the first? Now insert Thomas Jefferson and Nat Turner in the respective slots and discuss.
And if the example makes you uncomfortable ask why. The only possible answers are that you don’t see slaveowning as equal to kidnapping or that you think persons kidnapped are morally obligated to resist only by non violent means...
And yet u would NEVER say that about the women kidnapped by Ariel Castro and held for years against their will. If they’d slit his throat in the middle of the night everyone would have understood & applauded. But black folks killing white slavers? Um, well... it’s complicated!
No, it’s not. It’s not at all... but we find it hard to just admit this Bc we know that if black folks had done what they were morally entitled to do, millions of us wouldn’t be here today... so we downplay the horror. Fascinating...
Oh, and both Virginians by the way! So ask... how many statues for Turner you think VA has?? But remember we need to “preserve history” without regard to ideology...
My point is this: for many of us, our very EXISTENCE is predicated on black folks having been far more restrained than we would have been in the same situation... shit, we went to war over some effing taxes on Tea FFS...
