Worst Book Review Ever Criticizes Slave History For Not Presenting 'Both Sides'

[gollygee]

112. Just knowing

your children couldn't be sold away from you, while you watched helplessly, knowing you wouldn't see them again, know what was happening, or have any way of even trying to protect them. That alone would be enough to make it a million times better than being enslaved.

A scene that really stuck with me from 12 Years a Slave was where the woman's children weren't bought with her, and her young daughter was obviously being marketed specifically to become someone's regular rape victim. That was her daughter's future, she knew it, and she was helpless and could do nothing about it. She'd likely never see her kids again. And then when the plantation owner's wife seemed so nice and sweet and seemed to empathize with that, and then said to her, "Don't worry, in a couple of weeks you'll have forgotten all about them." Then she later told her husband to sell her to someone else because the woman's constant crying was bumming her out. Those were what the nice people, what history revisionists would call "benevolent slave owners." That's about as good as it got.