It's weird how all those people who are so insistent THEIR ancestors "never owned slaves"

[ck4829]

Are so keen on defending an extinct regime with a slavery-backed economy at the same time.

[dlk]

1. Rationalization takes many forms

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. They probably don't even know.

It's all part of their "I just want to feel good about myself" delusions.

Not that they should be personally blamed if it happened, of course.

And there were indeed many white people who did not own slaves in the past. It was an expensive initial "investment".

[Codeine]

3. My family always said that shit.

Imagine my surprise after setting up an Ancestry.com account and learning one of them actually did own two human beings as property.

[Sherman A1]

4. There were a few slave owners in my family tree

Of on I am certain, another one is possible but rather unlikely as the area from which he was from was pretty impoverished.

Two served in the Confederate Army, the slave owner in a Virginia Cavalry unit the other mentioned above in a North Carolina Infantry before he deserted and made his way to Illinois. His brother who deserted was caught by the Home Guard and it is the family story that he is buried in an unmarked grave in the local church yard.

[ananda]

16. Mine too.

My aunt had the papers.

They were small farmers in Tennessee, I believe.

I also had an ancestor in Texas who fought for the
confederacy in the Civil War. He came home with
lung damage and didn't live too much longer.

That's all I know.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. This John Oliver video shows some of the reactions...

... to it starting around the 10-minute mark, from people like Ben Affleck and Larry David.

That's better than someone being proud of it, as far as I'm concerned, but I'd prefer honesty too.

I found out from DNA-testing that I'm related to some people of "mixed-race" background that originated from the slavery period, and I have to admit that I ASSUMED THE WORST about rape of female slaves and such. I accepted it despite the disappointment. We later discovered it resulted from my distant uncle who married a black woman, despite how it was illegal, and that whole family was also involved in abolitionist efforts around the Loudoun Valley of VA. So in my case, my initial assumption that seemed so highly probable to me was wrong. Regardless, I played no role in it and it doesn't have much bearing on me personally.

[niyad]

13. Thank you f or the video. Sharing it widely.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. You're welcome!

[moose65]

6. I don't have a clue about my own ancestors

From all that I know of them, they were all poor farmers living in rural NW NC. The mountains and foothills didn't have as many slaves as the coastal plain, but I have no idea if there were any slaves or not. Nevertheless, I am definitely NOT proud of that "heritage."

A bigger question: why do people who live in places like Ohio and Indiana want to fly the Confederate flag?

And my other question, which just adds to the list of contradictions with conservatives: many if not most of these Confederate flag defenders are the same people who get SO upset about perceived slights to the US flag.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

7. In Ohio? It's bizarre to me too.

It's not like it's a common sight here, but I've seen it a few times over the years.

They're racists, period.

And some of them could have recent Southern roots. There's many of them here.

[KentuckyWoman]

9. I see a more confederate flags in Ohio than I ever saw in Kentucky.

And yes, it's a bafflement to me too. I can't explain it.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. In mostly Southern Ohio, by any chance?

I won't share some of my past experiences there again, because it previously made a DU member from Georgia upset at me for whatever reason.*

I'll just summarize it by writing that some of the people in those areas seem "worse" than anyone I ever met in Northern Kentucky.

* Oh, it was probably my reference to the movie "Deliverance".

[KentuckyWoman]

17. I've been around - and yes, southern Ohio.

Raised in eastern Kentucky. A bit less than 10 years in Georgia between Atlanta and Macon. A lot of my family moved to southwestern Ohio and I live here now.

I don't know if it's the times we live in, the general demographic, or both - or maybe I am more shocked that attrosity has not been relegated to museums yet. It isn't like they are on every other street corner, but I swear there are more here than anywhere I've ever lived.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

18. It's depressing, and I think it's a more recent thing.

[moose65]

23. Interesting

I think many people who aren’t Southern have picked it up as a general ”Rebel“ symbol or another way to “stick it to the libtards.” But it’s amazing to me that these same people need a fainting couch when folks like Kaepernick take a knee.

[Captain Zero]

11. I had to unfriend a younger Ohio cousin who was spouting racist thoughts, waving confed flag.

and saying he would die standing up with his gun and wrapped in the stars and bars.

Our family came to Ohio off the boat from Germany, that was his moms side.
His dads' side been in Ohio for ever too farming country where original arrivals still there.
So no family background in the South, either side.

Basically he is a racist and proff that racists take the stars and bars as their racist banner now.
It's a hate symbol.

[Tipperary]

21. I have seen them in PA, NJ, and NY.

Go figure.

[Crunchy Frog]

25. I think a lot of southerners migrated to many of those areas.

I know some parts of Indiana are hotbeds for KKK activity, and I'm guessing it was brought there by migrants at some point.

[Wounded Bear]

8. Yeah, whatever. Rationalizers gonna rationalize...

generally involving a TON of denial of reality.

In fact, there weren't that many slave owners. They did, of course, control things as they were the landed, monied interests and controlled all of the state governments. Poor folks, who didn't own slaves, were told they were fighting for their freedoms, which is the typically bullshit governments tell their citizens to convince them to risk their lives going to war.

[Cracklin Charlie]

12. I think mine may have.

I could never defend that.

[Mariana]

14. My mother used to say that

until I found irrefutable proof that one of her ancestors did, in fact, own at least one slave. There was a marriage between two slaves in Malden, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1764. The marriage was recorded in two places, and the slaves' owners were named.

In Boston, the record says, "Dover neg. svt. [to after Stoddard] of Boston & Violet neg. svt. [to Ebenr. Prat] of Maiden"
In Malden, the record says, "Dover, belonging to Mr. Stoddard of Boston, and Violet, belonging to Ebenezer Pratt of MaId., Au,. 5, 1764"

Mr. Arthur "After" Stoddard was our ancestor.

Violet apparently remarried in 1771. I have found no further record of Dover.

[treestar]

19. In fairness most Southerners didn't

Once again, it was the rich.

But they supported the system. Similar to people now - always think you're going to get rich, so you vote for those who will look out for the rich.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. My Family Definitely Didn't

But it's beside the point.
Sharing the responsibility is how society works.
Nobody in my family has General Dynamics stock, but our taxes still go there by the train car load.
Just because one, or their ancestors didn't own slaves, american families did.
It's not about the individual. It's about society overall.

[JCMach1]

22. We are never bound by our history

My family tree has

-Slave owners
-Confederate and Union soldiers
-first gen Mormons
-several genocided NA tribes
-French nobility
-poor farmers
-KKK
-People who married first cousins
-one saintly woman who had 18 kids including 3 sets of twins and also raised some of her grandkids

But essentially, if you had white ancestors in the south they probably owned slaves at some point. Not why you dig,but you will find it.

[Hortensis]

24. I live in the south and don't know anyone personally who

defends the slavery-based economy, though some romanticize white life IN the big houses, huge ignorance where the women are concerned of course. I have met a couple who expressed their rancid racism by insisting AA were more suited to slavery than freedom, but that's entirely different.

Where are all these people who defend the plantation economy? Many poor people in the antebellum era supported it in spite of the reality that it made a very small proportion wealthy, supported a vestigial middle class, mainly on the coasts to support the wealthy, refused to let the south industrialize, and left the vast majority of people living anywhere from very modestly to dirt poor, struggling on hardscrabble farms. And that is the actual history of most families in the south. You still see the legacy of generations of poverty in the tough but small and scrawny bodies of some here in Georgia.

The south only finally started leaving its history of deep and widespread poverty behind after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which created an adequate labor force that allowed industry to move in and hire both races to work together, and finally create middle class living.

Now, if you want to argue for a geographic culture-based loyalty and cohesion, that's another matter. The southern fondness for its own culture and rejection of all the northeast wrongly and rightly has meant to them for 500 years is still entrenched, though not a fraction of what it was at the time of the Civil War.