October 13, 2011
July 29, 2011
“This is the first global human rights legislation. How can people not know about it?”
I’m ashamed to say that this was news to me:
Monday, August 1, is a holiday in Canada. Everyone knows that. But what is the name of the holiday?
[. . .]
It is “Emancipation Day.”
You’re scratching your head, aren’t you? Don’t be embarrassed. Be angry — angry that you have been denied a truly majestic story all Canadians should know and cherish.
On August 1, 1834, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. “Emancipation Day” has been celebrated ever since in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and elsewhere.
[. . .]
In 1793, a free black man named Peter Martin – who had served with Butler’s Rangers in the American Revolution – told the legislature of the abduction of Chloe Cooley, a black slave who had been bound, gagged, thrown in a boat, and taken to the United States for sale. Simcoe seized the opportunity and moved to immediately abolish slavery.
It was a radical, audacious move. And it was too much. Wealthy slaveowners in the legislature resisted and Simcoe was forced to compromise: Existing slaves would be denied their freedom but the importation of slaves would stop and the children of slaves would be freed when they reached age 25. In effect, slavery would slowly vanish.
It was not the sweeping victory Simcoe wanted. But it was the abolitionists’ first legislative victory anywhere in the British Empire.
June 29, 2011
“Yes, of course, there is racism in Canada”
Publius has a go at a silly speech by Senator Don Oliver on the idea that black Canadians need to “rise up and address the deep racism in this country that keeps them out of positions of power”:
Yes, of course, there is racism in Canada. As there is where ever different racial groups are present. Some portion of the humanity will always insist on thinking in tribal terms. Of all the countries in the world where such attitudes are least persistent it is in Canada. Senator Oliver then goes onto make this utterly absurd statement:
Oliver blames Canada’s experience with slavery for much of the black community’s inability to support each other and for the stereotypes old-stock Canadians continue to show.
“It really flows from the days of slavery . . . because of the slave mentality,” he explained, when someone got ahead, they would get dragged down by the group.
The overwhelming majority of Canadians don’t even know slavery existed in this country. The Senator even alludes to this in the interview. So you’re influenced by something you thought happened elsewhere? To say nothing of the risible notion that old-stock Canadians are more bigoted than newer group. Seriously? Groups that spent generations slaughtering each other over trivial differences in physical appearance, religious beliefs and language are suppose to show up in Canada and have no problem with blacks? Is the Senator aware of the Indian caste system? Is he aware of the prejudice shown in many Caribbean countries for darker blacks by lighter skinned blacks? There is likely more systematic racism, if we can call it that, in Jamaica than Canada.
[. . .]
The vast majority of Canadian blacks, or their parents, emigrated to Canada in the last forty years. They came here like most Canadians and there ancestors were never held as slaves on Canadian soil. Many of those who came to Canada before 1970 did so to escape the systematic racism of the American South. While this country was hardly a picture of tolerance by modern standards, it was far preferable to what else was on offer.
June 5, 2011
Surely this “cure” is worse than the “disease”?
John Perry Barlow retweeted a link to this Kuwait Times post:
A female political activist and former parliamentary candidate has recommended the introduction of legislation to legalize the provision of enslaved female concubines for Muslim men in Kuwait in a bid, she says, to protect those men from committing adultery or corruption.
The activist, Salwa Al-Mutairi, suggested apparently seriously in a video broadcast online that she had been informed by some clerics that affluent Muslim men who fear being seduced or tempted into immoral behavior by the beauty of their female servants, or even of those servants ‘casting spells’ on them, would be better to purchase women from an ‘enslaved maid’ agency for sexual purposes.
She suggested that special offices could be set up to provide concubines in the same way as domestic staff recruitment agencies currently provide housemaids.
December 30, 2010
Cartographic explanation for the order of secession
A fascinating NYT post looks at one of the most influential maps of the US Civil War period:
The 1860 Census was the last time the federal government took a count of the South’s vast slave population. Several months later, the United States Coast Survey — arguably the most important scientific agency in the nation at the time — issued two maps of slavery that drew on the Census data, the first of Virginia and the second of Southern states as a whole. Though many Americans knew that dependence on slave labor varied throughout the South, these maps uniquely captured the complexity of the institution and struck a chord with a public hungry for information about the rebellion.
The map uses what was then a new technique in statistical cartography: Each county not only displays its slave population numerically, but is shaded (the darker the shading, the higher the number of slaves) to visualize the concentration of slavery across the region. The counties along the Mississippi River and in coastal South Carolina are almost black, while Kentucky and the Appalachians are nearly white.
H/T to Walter Olson for the link.
August 12, 2010
If you search for “James Buchanan worst president ever” you get 1,550,000 hits
But in spite of that, he’s still getting a dollar coin minted in his honour:
The 15th coin in the presidential $1 coin program honors President James Buchanan. It features an image of the president with the inscriptions “James Buchanan”, “In God We Trust”, “15th President” and “1857-1861.”
The reverse side of the coin shows the Statue of Liberty. The ceremonial launch and coin exchange will take place at Wheatland, the former president’s home.
About the only thing that might make this a good idea is if the value is pegged to the pre-Civil War dollar.
