Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
I'm fascinated in the internal workings of viewpoints I think are super wrong, which is why I'm reading The Pro Slavery Argument, a collection of articles from 1853 about why slavery is the best thing ever, guys. Here's a summary of what I'm reading until I get bored.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Harper characterizes anti-slavery perspectives as taking for granted that slavery is bad without actually questioning why, and frames pro-slavery as unfairly judged. He says slavery is necessary for advanced civilization, that all advanced civilizations have used slavery,
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"Will those who regard Slavery as immoral... tell us that man was not intended for civilization, but to roam the earth !is a biped brute ? That he was not to raise his eyes to heaven, or be conformed in his nobler faculties to the image of his Maker?"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Which is an incredible argument. He's equating slavery to civilization, and goes on to say rejecting civilization is basically blaspheming God and His plan for us. He says labor is necessary, that men don't like labor, and that we can't avoid a world where some people do things
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
they don't like. But we've got a natural Way Of Things, because: "the negro race, from their temperament and capacity, are peculiarly suited to the situation which they occupy" He summarizes anti-slavery argument as "but men have unalienable rights", to which he replies:
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"It is not the first time that... men may repeat with the utmost confidence, some maxim or sentimental phrase, as self-evident or admitted truth, which is either palpably false, or to which, upon examination, it will be found that they attach no definite idea."
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He says "all men are created equal" is a statement of how things should be, not how they are, and even if society was perfectly equal, people still wouldn't want to do labor and labor would still have to be done, so the claim about equality doesn't mean anything.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"Females are human and rational beings. They may be found of better faculties, and better qualified to exercise political privileges, and to attain the distinctions of society, than many men; yet who complains of the order of society by which they are excluded from them?"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He says we have to function with general rules that are good for society even if they violate the rights of individuals (i.e., one 18 year old might be capable to hold political office but we still don't allow 18 year olds).
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"It is saying, in other words, that the privileges in question are no matter of natural right, but to be settled by convention, as the good and safety of society may require. If society should disfranchise individuals convicted of infamous crimes, would this be an invasion of..-"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"-natural right? Yet this would not be justified on the score of their moral guilt, but that the good of society required or would be promoted by it." Later on: "Man is born to subjection. Not only during infancy is he dependent, and under the control of others; at all ages...
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"So when the greatest progress in civil liberty has been made, the enlightened lover of liberty will know that there must remain much inequality, much injustice, much slavery, which no human wisdom or virtue will ever be able wholly to prevent or redress."
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He goes on to list a bunch of ways in which society already restricts rights and liberty (including animals) and why we think that's fine and why it's super necessary, and why are you suddenly getting mad about *slavery*?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Lol he weirdly argues against utilitarianism by saying how can you compare the pleasure and suffering of a man with cultivated and nuanced taste to a man with dull and simple taste?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He says civilized society all have their own evils to make them run, that doing a few not-ideal things is the cost of flourishing and happiness, and that "we need say nothing of the evils of savage life." He also says slavery is harder for 'employers':
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"In [non-slave places] when a business becomes unprofitable, the employer dismisses his laborers or lowers their wages. But with us, it is the very period at which we are least able to dismiss our laborers; and if we would not suffer a further loss, we cannot reduce their wages."
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"That there are great evils in a society where Slavery exists, and that the institution is liable to great abuse, I have already said. To say otherwise, would be to say that they were not human. But the whole of human life is a system of evils and compensations."
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"Who but a driveling fanatic has thought of the necessity of protecting domestic animals from the cruelty of their owners ? And yet are not great and wanton cruelties practised on these animals ?" Oh man dude, so close.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"[whipping] would be degrading to a freeman, who had the thoughts and aspirations of a freeman. In general, it is not degrading to a slave, nor is it felt to be so. The evil is the bodily pain. Is it degrading to a child?"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"I have heard of complaint made by a free prostitute, of the greater countenance and indulgence shown by society towards colored persons of her profession, (always regarded as of an inferior and servile class, though individually free,) than to those of her own complexion...
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"The colored prostitute is, in fact, a far less contaminated and depraved being." "Under these circumstances, with imperfect knowledge, tempted by the strongest of human passions... can it be matter of surprise that [colored women] should so often yield to the temptation?"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This particular one is surprising to me. I had heard vaguely of racist stereotypes of black women as sexually depraved but this makes it seem super real.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"But I do not hesitate to say, that the intercourse which takes place with enslaved females, is less depraving in its effects, than when it is carried on with females of their own " ??? ok I was trying to maintain empathy for the author but it's getting seriously harder
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I'm gonna stop reading now, but this was super interesting. Most of his arguments rely on inconsistency - he points out all the ways in which abolitionists are hypocritical. He also relies a lot on how sometimes bad things are necessary and inevitable.
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