NAVEL GAZING AND TOWN: Professor Miles offers good advice!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2021

First, though, the navel-gazing: Surely, no serious person alive today is conflicted about the institution of slavery.

The institution was outlawed in this country in 1865. No one is suggesting that we bring some form of the practice back. 

Over the many years, people have surely become acquainted with the pain, and with the horror, of the discarded institution. For that reason, we thought the prominent headline at Slate this weekend was perhaps a bit peculiar, though also instructive about the Hamptons-based values which prevail in Our Town:

Understanding the Horror of Slavery Is Impossible. But a Simple Cotton Sack Can Bring Us Closer.

Understanding the horror of slavery is impossible? At this point, for whom could some such act of comprehension even be slightly hard?

We thought that headline was slightly peculiar. We had a similar reaction to large parts of the interview which ran beneath it—an interview with Tiya Miles, who has written a book about an apparent horrific incident from the annals of slavery.

Parts of the interview struck us as odd, even as disrespectful, cold, dismissive, self-involved, insulting. That said, we thought Professor Miles offered some good advice as the interview came to an end.

Miles' book is built around an apparent historical artifact—a cotton sack which seems to tell the horrible story of an enslaved woman who was sold away from her place of bondage, never to see her 9-year-old daughter again.

As we noted yesterday, such horrible stories are legion, and have been for hundreds of years. Miles' book examines one such apparent incident—an apparent incident whose particulars can't be verified by normal historical practice.

According to Slate's headline, the cotton sack might help us come closer to understanding the horror of slavery. Late in her interview with Slate's Rebecca Onion, Miles offered some good advice.

The story that cotton sack seems to tell "felt like a gut punch to me," the Harvard professor said at that point in the interview. "All of a sudden I could imagine the vulnerability of my beautiful son, my own child, to this kind of horrific possibility," she also said, perhaps somewhat oddly.

Presumably, Professor Miles isn't going to be sold away from the Harvard campus—from the ivied preserve where so much embarrassing, incompetent and useless conduct occurs. 

Her son won't be left without his mother in some such horrific manner. And of course, horrific stories like the one the cotton sack seems to tell have been well known for centuries, and are certainly well known to Miles.

In that sense, that initial statement by Miles could possibly seem a bit odd. But at that point, as she continued, she offered some sound advice:

MILES (6/13/21): But that kind of electric feeling of connection isn’t really an end goal of this kind of [historical] work. I certainly would not want people to become so lost in the horrors of this time period that the book is attempting to interpret that we forget that change is possible. The powerful emotions that we can feel, and that undertow of horror that can pull us under—they are real, they are true to the history of the experience, but we need pull ourselves back up again and look around in this moment and this time, and think about how we can apply the lessons of the past.

The apparent story told in Miles' book can produce "that kind of electric feeling of connection," the professor now said—but that isn't the point of her book. 

The professor said she doesn't want readers to get so lost in the apparent story she tells that they "forget that change is possible." She didn't say what kind of change she had in mind.

According to the published transcript, Onion didn't ask.

The professor said we should "pull ourselves back up again" from our feelings about the apparent story told in her book. When we do, we should  "think about how we can apply the lessons of the past." 

The interview provides no suggestions as to what sorts of lessons we might draw from the past, or about how we might apply them. But in that moment, at least in principle, Miles was offering some very good advice.

As Miles continued, she continued to sketch out her point. At least in principle, her point was a good one. This is what she said:

MILES: Many people cry when interacting with this object, this story. These are gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching stories. These things happened, and our ancestors—some of them—lived through these atrocious things, and if it weren’t for their persistence and survival, many of us wouldn’t be here. When people who don’t share that ancestral past engage with these materials and also feel an empathetic, emotional reaction, when they recognize, “This is horrible. How could individuals, how could municipalities, how could states, how could the federal government be complicit in this brutality?”—I think that’s a good thing.

In that statement, Miles was responding to a question about how "white" people should respond to an apparent story like the one explored in her book. 

(Onion had asked if it was "self-indulgent, in some way, for audiences to consume this kind of story of Black trauma—maybe especially white audiences?" In our view, that was an excellent question concerning all groups of readers. That was Miles' response.)

According to Miles, "white people" may recognize, while reading her book, that the events in question were "horrible." They may even ask themselves "how the federal government could be complicit in this brutality," the Harvard professor now said, speaking, perhaps a bit oddly, in the present tense.

In principle, we agree with the basic point the Harvard professor was making. People shouldn't wallow in the apparent story her book seems to tell. In principle, people should channel their feelings into an attempt to create "change" in the present day, presumably in societal or governmental practices.

In principle, we very much agree with that; the time is past for feel-good navel-gazing! But that type of gazing had been general up to that point in the interview, and neither Onion nor Miles seemed interested in asking what kinds of "change" this new book might inspire.

Frankly, we found much of this interview appalling, insulting, self-involved, uncaring, vile. In many ways, we think it was Slate and Harvard and even Our Town pretty much all the way down.

In part, we had that reaction because of other things we read, and didn't read, in Our Town's leading journals last week. Another such item appeared in Slate the very next day.

Another such item appeared the next day! More on our reactions tomorrow.

Tomorrow: As always, the top few percent. Plus, the navel-gazing!


66 comments:

  1. 'Frankly, we found much of this interview appalling, insulting, self-involved, uncaring, vile'


    Naturally, because it wasn't a Tucker Carlson interview dedicated to defending Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Ron Johnson, Devin Nunes and Matt Gaetz, i.e. an interview palatable to Trumptards like Somerby

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Understanding the horror of slavery is impossible?"

    Meh. Hysterical drama-queenery is a well-known routine of your liberal-hitlerian priesthood.

    Don't you know that, dear Bob? Are you being coy? Oh, whatever, suit yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Corporate-mass media-generated hysteria and hate-mongering have led people into proposing all kinds of silly and even harmful things. It’s proof of their enormous power of propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels green with envy. Last year it was abolishing the police this year, it's an obsession about slavery. The idea that Americans are going to sit around reading slave narratives to each other follows on the heels of the demand to abolish the police. We know that Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Anderson Cooper, and Rachel Maddow have not lifted a single finger to abolish the police forces that protect their mansions. And we know they’re not sitting in a circle every morning reading slave narratives to each other. Neither have any of our flock of Somerby-hating stooges done any of these things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nor are these people working to eliminate modern day slavery, which actually exists in certain countries.

      Delete
    2. The corporate mass-media's agenda is to not hold police accountable. Just like yours, Glaucoma.
      You are, however, correct that their propaganda works (on you).

      Delete
    3. You're on a roll today Gloucon... good comments.

      You can see the inherent knee jerk, binary thinking that has been programmed into one-party voters on full display here.

      They aren't fully capable of processing any thought or idea that isn't clearly Left or Right, anti-Trump or pro-Trump.

      In short, TDS left them permanently scarred and now watching CNN nightly has probably worsened that condition even more. Many on the Right have been similarly driven to a partial state of insanity by the false allegations of voter fraud and other propaganda from that side of the aisle.

      Just to be clear, I did not and do not support Trump. Uh oh! How to process my contribution, which playbook to break out, oh dear!

      What I'm suggesting is that each issue, each situation be evaluated on its own merits instead of having to perform a quick lookup in the latest dogma to find out how you should react. And we very well might end up with a mix of valid ideas offered by people with different viewpoints. Even leftists AND rightists! Crazy I know!

      Delete
    4. We don't have to eliminate modern day slavery before we can talk about our country's past. And I don't think Oprah is the right person to do that job anyway -- or Interpol would have recruited her. Where is it written that any black person has to oppose worldwide slavery before they can care about their own ancestors?

      Delete
    5. 'You can see the inherent knee jerk, binary thinking that has been programmed into one-party voters on full display here.'

      Sure, world salad filled, historically inaccurate, incoherent and bizarre rants about corporate media and race are a great way to show independent, non-binary thinking ! Show what an independent thinker you are by ranting about corporate media !

      Delete
    6. Anonymouse 5:07pm, I don’t see a comment about race in Rationalist’s post and there was no reference of what you generically refer to as “corporate media”. There was only a sole statement about CNN.

      Delete
    7. Psueudony-ninny, I was referring to the post Rationalist was praising, that of Gloucon X who was the one to generically refer to 'corporate media'

      Delete
    8. Oh, that post. I liked it too.

      Delete
    9. Realist,
      Explain how both sides are the same. By action and degree.
      Good luck.

      Delete
    10. Liberal icon and queen of all warmongers Hillary Clinton enabled modern day slavery of black Africans. But she gets a pass from liberals. Why? Because they don't really care about black Africans or black Americans.

      https://bit.ly/3gybZ6q

      Think about it. Their chosen candidate, a Democrat, was responsible slaves being sold on the street while she was gearing up to run for president.

      Any posturing about caring about slavery is a total lie from these pathetic buffoons. They could care less.

      Delete
    11. 4:20 Rationalist - you are dead on. The commenters here lack imagination, creativity and a sense of who they are. They are afraid to think for themselves, afraid to not go with the herd and have never had a political thought of their own, choosing instead to be led around by the nose by pathetic, low-IQ propaganda blogs.

      And can we blame them?

      Think of the alternative. The ultimate result of the alternative is revolutionary overthrow of the plutocracy. And that must scare the shit out of them. They have zero courage in addition to zero imagination and creativity.

      The alternative to the programmed, fake two party system is truly frightening. It's safe and warm in watching the Punch and Judy show from dreamland. The alternative is too much to take.

      Delete
    12. Make no mistake when it is said Hillary Clinton, the Queen of all Warmongers, was responsible black African slaves being sold on the street - it means you were responsible, I was responsible, we are all responsible for the violent and often illegal wars we perpetrate on the world.

      Including the ones that enable modern day slavery of blacks.

      But let's talk about Republican Congressmen who sleep with young girls! That way we don't have to face the reality of the violent death and destruction we have wrought on the world every day for decades and decades.

      Delete
    13. Who is going to stop her? Republicans? They couldn't even find one thing she ever did that was illegal.
      The plutocracy thanks you for playing.

      Delete
    14. I’m not convinced that Rebecca Onion or anyone else at Slate or Michele L. Norris or anyone else at the Washington Posts really cares about what happened to slaves until I see a dedicated effort by them. What would that look like? How about video or all these folks reading slave narratives to each other for a few hours a week, maybe with Jeff Bezos and Oprah leading the discussion. What could be more inspiring than seeing the super-rich owners of our planet personally lead us to the promised land!

      Delete
    15. She was not a warmonger.

      Delete
    16. 'The ultimate result of the alternative is revolutionary overthrow of the plutocracy. And that must scare the shit out of them. They have zero courage in addition to zero imagination and creativity.'

      Yup, takes lots of creativity to follow iades over 100+ years old, and asking for another revolution circa 2017 .. or Cuba .. or Venezuela.

      Delete
    17. "...we are all responsible for the violent and often illegal wars we perpetrate on the world."

      I think you're confusing me with Cecelia's lazy good for nothing daughter.

      Delete
    18. Don't be fooled by Glaucon X.
      A real revolutionary wouldn't want to keep thug police unaccountable.

      Delete
    19. Hillary Clinton was Darth Vader in a pants suit. Thankfully Obama reined her in because the only thing that matched her lust for war was her incompetence. Just ask all the black slaves sold on the streets as a result of her warlust and incompetence.

      Does this make Trump good? No.

      Delete
    20. Nice.
      Hillary Clinton has the same fictional character flaw, as fictional character Darth Vader.

      Delete
    21. AnonymousJune 17, 2021 at 7:57 AM
      Don't be fooled by Glaucon X.
      A real revolutionary wouldn't want to keep thug police unaccountable."

      What's your plan? And what have YOU done to implement it where you live?

      Delete
    22. LOTTO, lottery,jackpot.
      Hello all my viewers, I am very happy for sharing this great testimonies,The best thing that has ever happened in my life is how I win the lottery euro million mega jackpot. I am a Woman who believe that one day I will win the lottery. finally my dreams came through when I email believelovespelltemple@gmail.com and tell him I need the lottery numbers. I have spend so much money on ticket just to make sure I win. But I never know that winning was so easy until the day I meant the spell caster online which so many people has talked about that he is very great in casting lottery spell, . so I decide to give it a try.I contacted this great Dr Believe and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers. But believe me when the draws were out I was among winners. I win 30,000 million Dollar. Dr Believe truly you are the best, all thanks to you forever
























      LOTTO, lottery,jackpot.
      Hello all my viewers, I am very happy for sharing this great testimonies,The best thing that has ever happened in my life is how I win the lottery euro million mega jackpot. I am a Woman who believe that one day I will win the lottery. finally my dreams came through when I email believelovespelltemple@gmail.com and tell him I need the lottery numbers. I have spend so much money on ticket just to make sure I win. But I never know that winning was so easy until the day I meant the spell caster online which so many people has talked about that he is very great in casting lottery spell, . so I decide to give it a try.I contacted this great Dr Believe and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers. But believe me when the draws were out I was among winners. I win 30,000 million Dollar. Dr Believe truly you are the best, all thanks to you forever

      Delete
  4. And then we have the ironic spectacle of Ophra trying to gin up sympathy for a couple of royal parasites trying to become members of the royal family that created the corporation that funded the slave trade of her ancestors. And good liberals shower praise upon her for doing it! Why didn't "our town" demand that the three of them read slave narratives?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Somerby seems unaware that Freedom Day (Juneteenth) is coming up on Saturday, so the reporting will be about slavery and emancipation. He seems to take it as an afftont that the media would cover such things.

    He never tells us what about that interview would elicit such negative feelings, but I supose we can guess by now. This is a black female from Harvard with a successful book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, since you’ve obviously looked at what Slate wrote the very next day, can you direct me to it so I can make my own judgment?

      Delete
    2. There is a link in Somerby’s essay today.

      Delete
    3. "my own judgement"
      LO fucking L.

      Delete
    4. More like Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour judgement.

      Delete
    5. Corby, the links today are to the Slate piece on 6/13 and to his own blog on 6/15.

      Delete
    6. Anonymices 3:44pm and 3:46pm, every hour is “white power hour”, is it not?

      Mazel tov.

      Delete
    7. Cecelia, that Slate piece is the one he is talking about today, the one my comment was about.

      Delete
    8. Cecelia,
      If Republicans have their way, obviously.

      One-trick pony,that I am, I have to ask.
      Still worked up that private equity firms loot businesses on the regular?

      Delete
    9. Anonymouse, I never ever voted for John McCain. Wish I could say that for Romney.

      I think estate taxes are a form of highway robbery but I don't confuse taxes or predatory capitalism with breaking and entering and looting small or large businesses.

      I am against abortion, but I don't want it made into a capital crime.

      You should be able to make distinctions rather than excuses too.

      Delete
    10. "I think estate taxes are a form of highway robbery..."

      I apologize. You don't think like an anodyne Right-winger. They usually use their deep belief that you need to earn, and not have things given to you, as a bedrock of the country.
      As most people say about the Estate Tax, "Let your lazy good for nothing kids get a job like I did."

      Delete
    11. My kid isn’t a lazy good-for-nothing.

      She’s everything.

      So is yours.

      Delete
  6. "The institution was outlawed in this country in 1865. No one is suggesting that we bring some form of the practice back. "

    We have never eliminated the existence of a racial subclass. You can't bring back something that never went away. The form of suppression changed from legal slavery to Jim Crow to racial injustice (institutional racism) but the effect has been the same. Our nation has subjugated black people in order to maintain a cheaper labor supply and have someone to do menial work. Read Wilkerson's book, Caste.

    Somerby would like to focus only on legal, government authorized slavery, and tell us that because that is gone, there is no longer any problem. That is about as ignorant as it gets.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought we had people here illegally to do under-the-table, less than minimum wage, menial work.

      Delete
    2. Yes, they were called the Pilgrims, but there weren't enough of them.

      Delete
    3. Anonymouse 5:39pm, its more than likely that they didn’t cook the Thanksgiving dinner.

      Delete
    4. My relatives all came over in boats to escape even worse circumstances.

      This country has been the way up for a lot of people.

      It’s no reparation for the horror of slavery, but the ancestors of slaves have benefitted too.

      Delete
    5. I'm sure you mean the descendants of slaves, not the ancestors, unless you believe they benefitted by having their relatives stolen and shipped away from there.

      Delete
    6. I do mean descendants. Thank you.

      Delete
    7. That's not true, mh. No one wants to shut the door on legal immigration. I'm a conservative and I supported George Bush's plan for amnesty and sane border control.

      As for Somerby, you've done the usual conflating of his position in contrast to the sheer scale of the conversation-cum-national-flagellation being proposed.

      Delete
    8. Cecelia: "I supported George Bush's plan for amnesty and sane border control."

      Republicans in power: "Who?"

      Delete
    9. Democrats in power: Now that’s was a good [chimp, stooge, Bushwipe, Bushhitler] Republican.

      Delete
    10. "To read Somerby, you’d think that learning about the history of black people in America is the end of civilization and is some sort of affront to white people, which is ridiculous."

      What an idiotic misreading. You're stupid as hell woman!

      Delete
    11. Nah. Bob's just running interference for bigots, again.

      Delete
    12. "And liberals constantly praise this aspect of America: the diversity, the “melting pot.”"

      But they don't, dear mh; it's been rejected, replaced with "multiculturalism" long time ago.

      You know, dear mh, you might be a WHITE SUPREMACIST after all...

      Delete
    13. "I thought we had people here illegally to do under-the-table, less than minimum wage, menial work."

      That's right. And, according to liberal-hitlerian priests, they, and everyone whose wages get suppressed because of it, and those whose jobs have been shipped overseas, they all should feel extremely fortunate -- because they aren't literal slaves, you see.

      Delete
    14. They should put Trump on the nickel, since that's what he thinks the minimum wage should be.

      Delete
  7. Somerby needs to read this (from The Root):

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGkXmhwPnQkWFQJJVzMwmGFqpDr

    ReplyDelete

  8. David in CalJune 16, 2021 at 3:12 PM
    Nor are these people working to eliminate modern day slavery, which actually exists in certain countries.

    Heavens no. Slavery is one of the reasons our overlords made it untenable to link official China with covid-19.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Take your conspiracy theories somewhere else.

      Delete
  9. "Frankly, we found much of this interview appalling, insulting, self-involved, uncaring, vile."

    This, after Somerby also implies that maybe the whole story about the cotton sack was made up, because it is hard to verify it (no one is alive to confirm it).

    Somerby never explains why he thinks these things. He never explains any basis for skepticism about the story either. He just dumps all over this woman's book, without any justification whatsoever. Why? Because he can. And that is how white male privilege works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think they call that healthy skepticism and any Tomasine, Deidra, or Harriett with a Blogger account can dump all over that book.

      Delete
    2. It's not white male privilege per se, it's just Somerby being a Trumptard.

      Delete
  10. Do people who say things like “ the slaves were well treated” understand the horror of slavery? And does a detached, statistical compression of what went on really lead to a serous understanding of that horror, beyond what an obvious degenerate like Mao can grasp? Seems like fair questions. On the other hand, the obsession with slavery often seems to deliberately want blot out the accomplishments of the civil rights movement, which used to be Republicans thing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Treating slavery as if it were an all-or-nothing phenomena and failing to recognize the legacy of slavery in discriminatory laws and social practices obscures the need for the civil rights movement.

      Somerby wishes to pretend that there is no need for a continuing civil rights movement today. That is untenable given those detached statistical comparisons and in terms of horror. Imagine if a friend or relative were dragged behind a truck until dead, or hauled off a bicycle and murdered, for no reason other than skin color! That is still horrible, no matter what your opinion of the slavery of past centuries. The civil rights movement has accomplished a lot, but their work is not done. This is where Somerby, Republicans, and liberals tend to disagree.

      Delete
  11. "A Mercer survey released on June 3 found that 9% of surveyed companies planned to observe Juneteenth as a holiday in 2021 — the same percentage as planned to observe Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day, a long-established federal holiday."

    Another typical American B.S. so-called holiday. Corporations aren't going to give people a holiday, let alone a paid holiday. An notice that the self-appointed Black leaders refuse to advocate that the corporations should let Blacks have this day off.

    ReplyDelete

  12. MH June 16, 2021 at 7:37 PM said: To read Somerby, you’d think that learning about the history of black people in America is the end of civilization and is some sort of affront to white people, which is ridiculous.

    What's ridiculous is the notion that Americans are interested in historical truth of any kind. They're not even interested in knowing the truth about recent events like the Jan 6th riot. It's laughable to think that they're going to want to research and discuss the truth about slavery in the Western Hemisphere, which begins with the Portuguese in the 1400s.

    ReplyDelete
  13. This submit may be an desirable prosperity of informative facts that's interest-grabbing and nicely-written. I commend your labor on this and many thanks for this specifics. You’ve purchased what it's going to acquire for getting thing to consider.สล็อตออนไลน์

    ReplyDelete
  14. I am regularly astonished by the level of info obtainable on this subject. Whichever you presented was effectively investigated and very nicely worded in an effort to Get the stand on this throughout to all of your visitors.สล็อต 999

    ReplyDelete
  15. betflix เครดิตฟรี ทดลองเล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ เว็บสล็อต BETFLIXPG จัดกิจกรรมเครดิตฟรี ไม่ต้องฝากขั้นต่ำ

    ReplyDelete