Republicans Are Attacking Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor for Saying Slavery Was Terrible

[Celerity]

Conservative politicians and commentators are circulating carefully edited clips of a speech by Mandela Barnes and claiming to be outraged.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/politics/wisconsin-mandela-barnes-slavery/tnamp/



My Wisconsin ancestors embraced an opposition to slavery that was best expressed by Joseph Goodrich and the Milton Seventh Day Baptists. In addition to maintaining a stop on the Underground Railroad, these small-town abolitionists resolved in 1852 “that we enter our solemn protest against the system of American slavery, as a sin against God, and a libel upon our national declaration, that all men are created equal, that we regard the fugitive slave law as an atrocious violation of the rights of humanity…and that to aid in its execution would be treason to Jesus Christ.”

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes echoed that historical viewpoint last August during a forum at the public library in Portage, Wis., when he spoke about the legacy of slavery in America. His words were not considered controversial at the time. Yet Barnes is now being attacked by Republican politicians and conservative commentators, who are circulating carefully edited clips of the speech and claiming to be outraged at the lieutenant governor’s honest reflection on US history.

What the reactionaries find offensive is nothing more than Barnes’s echoing the language of Wisconsinites who have long recognized the violent arrangements upon which this country was founded.

Reflecting on the failure of the founders to bar human bondage, and in so doing to permit the forced servitude, dispossession, dislocation, and family separation of millions of Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Barnes said, “Things were bad. Things were terrible. The founding of this nation? Awful. But we are here now, and we should commit ourselves to doing everything we can do to repair the harm because [the legacy of slavery and segregation] still exists today.”

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[Lovie777]

1. It was and still is terrible . . .

and fuck the GQP.

[iemanja]

2. What has this country become?

This kind of thing is horrific.

[elleng]

3. NOT 'Conservative.'

Rational people must STOP using that term.

[keithbvadu2]

4. If their daughters were kidnapped/sold into sexual slavery, what would be their take on it?

If their daughters were kidnapped/sold into sexual slavery, what would be their take on it?