George Washington owned hundreds of slaves.
The only place that ought to celebrate President's Day is hell.
60% of Washington's field slaves were women. 75% of his slaves were field slaves. His slaves were forced to work from sun-up to sun-down, everyday except Sunday. By 1799, when George Washington died, there were 316 slaves living on his estate.
Martin Luther King was a hero. Mahatma Gandhi was a hero. Henry David Thoreau and John Brown were heroes. George Washington was a racist slave-owning enemy-of-freedom.
I don't want to hear the excuse that slavery was commonly accepted "back then". Slavery wasn't commonly accepted by the majority of people. Perhaps, slavery was commonly accepted by rich white slave-owners, in the same way rape is commonly accepted by rapists, and the same way killing Jews was accepted by blond-haired Germans during Nazi Germany.
There's two types of people in the world: People who continue and promote exploitation, and radicals who fight to stop exploitation and inspire society to change its values for the better. George Washington was of the former class.
If I have offended you, just think, at least I didn't enslave you. I'm better than George Washington at least.
From George Washington to George Bush, I see no honor in being president of an offensively violent, coercive, and deceitful institution such as the United States Government, a major human rights violator.
4 comments:
well i agree with you on most part of it.
great post!
good thing I did not select George Washington as one of my heros
you would have torn me apart!
WOW. You sound just like another friend of mine. I certainly see your point and thank you for making me think more about it!
We don't celebrate President's Day, or promote George Washington as out Founding Father because he owned slaves, we do those because he helped us win out independence from Great Britain, and acted as a good president to benefit our newly founded nation.
Washington was a farmer, and the farming technology at that time pretty much consisted of a shovel, a hoe, and a plow.
Slavery IS bad in many ways, but don't hate George Washington because of his early career choice.
He didn't want to publicly bring up the issue of slavery because that would tear apart the brand new USA.
Also, George Washington tried to be relatively fair to his slaves. He made sure to never break up any family.
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