It would have been a kindness, given his historical views.
Recently convicted felon and conservative columnist Dinesh D’Souza’s book,
The End of Racism,provides some great examples of rewriting race. D’Souza says of slavery,No free workers enjoyed a comparable social security system from birth until death.Later, he writes,Masters … encouraged the family unit which basically remained intact.In a particularly appalling passage, he writes,slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many other ever tried to escape.And concludes,In summary, the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.
That’s the end of racism? So what was the beginning like, or the middle?
Almost makes you wonder why anyone is opposed to slavery. Must have been something to do with imposing a cradle-til-death socialist state. Obviously.
As for the beginning. Given the appalling death rates during transport across the Atlantic, and the sheer numbers thrown overboard, how would D’Souza refer to this? “Benign wastage?” or perhaps “anticipated spoilage?”
Some humans make me sick to my stomach.
The family remained intact? Where does he think the term ‘sold down the river’ came from? And has D’Souza ever looked in the mirror? I’d love to put him on a time machine and send him to 1850 Richmond or Charleston. He could report back on the fine treatment he received there.
On a related note, I just finished reading a book on the Battle of Gettysburg and one of the things I learned was that often the very first thing the invading Confederates did upon entering Pennsylvania was to round-up any black people they found, regardless of whether they were born in the North or were runaway slaves, and sent them down to the Richmond slave markets to be sold. Some historians have performed a diligent search for these people, assuming they’d been sold farther south, but never turned up a single one of them. And none of them ever returned to Pennsylvania after the war. I think it’s safe to say that they were not treated pretty well.
D’Souza is an ignorant and infuriating asshat.
With such scintillating contributions to public discourse, you can see why Michael Shermer was so enthusiastic in D’Souza’s defense.
To be clear, I ‘m not suggesting Shermer shares D’Souza’s revisionist views on slavery. I suspect he doesn’t. I suspect Shermer’s support for D’Souza was just an example of elites sticking together, and the degrees to which even a self-proclaimed seeker of truths will go to defend even the most dishonest of his fellow “thought leaders.”
“slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many other ever tried to escape.”
Only a blinkered snot like him could consider such a thing and not notice the massive, glowing, pulsating contradiction. Or maybe it takes a convicted felon, I don’t know.
Don’t tell Aron! He’s pretty sick of historical revisionism already.
Hmm…Has either had an original thought in decades?
You mistake the title.
“The END of Racism” was perfectly consistent with D’Souza’s MEANS in that book.
Just repeating from last Thunderdome:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/department-justice/dsouza-spared-prison-time-980347
(This time around, bolding for emphasis)
That was one of the arguments of supporters of slavery, in fact, and there was some truth to it. There were laws forbidding owners from freeing slaves who were no longer economically productive (whether anyone enforced them is another matter) and they were expected to support their slaves until they died. There were no such laws for free workers. That was one reason Karl Marx expected slavery to vanish naturally, just as serfdom had.
After the abolition of the slave trade it’s likely slaves were encouraged to form families- that was the main way of getting new slaves then- and their value would probably be higher, whereas, for example, in eighteenth century Jamaica the policy on sugar plantations was to work slaves to death in a few years and buy new ones. The death rates for crew and cargo on slave ships were comparably high before the trade was abolished.
This shit sounds very familiar. Most of the history teachers at my western Maryland high school viewed slavery as a necessary evil — necessary to bring the heathens to god, necessary to build the Greatest Nation EVAH!, necessary to stop the evil Yankees dominating the innocent and Constitutionally Pure southerners.
Of course, this was in a lily-white public high school. And it was three or four decades ago.
What the fuck is this asshole’s excuse?
Well, other than he is paid very well for his lies.
The correct thing to wonder, of course is why doesn’t Dinesh D’Souza want to be a slave.
I wonder if Dinesh D’Suouza ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
I don’t think so Tim…..
So Mr D’Souza begins to question the motivations and actions of those that experienced slavery firsthand, rather than question his own interpretation of events while he sits in the comforts of his own office 150 years after the end of the Civil War.
The arrogance and hackery of this man are staggering.
One would think D’Souza would collapse from sheer cognitive dissonance between ‘how many people escaped and left first-hand or transcript accounts of why they left’ and ‘oh, no, it was a good life’.
I’ve been highlighting various racial caricatures on my blog each day for the past week. Every one of them has roots that stretch back to the days of slavery (the Jezebel caricature stretches back further than that). D’Souza could stand to read about the Jezebel, Brute, Sapphire, Nat, and more. His beliefs about slavery do NOT match the reality.
For that matter, has D’Souza ever read any fucking Frederick Douglass? Could it be that a man of his alleged education could have gotten so far without being exposed to probably the greatest American writer of all time?
D’Souza claims: “Masters … encouraged the family unit which basically remained intact.”
Holy shit, this is so far beyond ignorant, it goes into opposite-land.
Excerpted from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
D’Souza is an amoral motherfucker who should be made to feel the crack of a whip.
Holy shit, Owlmirror’s quote. By god. I knew Dinesh D’Souza had no principles, but fuck, kicking his wife in the fucking neck was not something I expected from him. Far more disgusting of a man than I ever imagined.
And suddenly the Shermer-D’Souza alliance all makes sense.
Did he hit his head on a fucking brick wall before writing this shit?
swampfoot @17:
I share the immense disdain and loathing of D’Souza, but can we not do this? Visiting violence upon others, no matter how much anyone might feel it is justified, serves no purpose other than revenge. How can anyone claim the moral high ground if they’re willing to subject another human to such violence or advocate it?
anteprepro @18:
I knew there was something about D’Souza’s actions that struck me as similar to Shermer-the lack of respect for women and disregard for their bodily autonomy. They’re both vile fuckers.
consciousness razor:
I have read a lot of D’Souza’s “thinking”. I’m certain that this is part of his “creative” process.
Tony!
Seconded. I get why someone might say it without necessarily wanting violence or revenge. It also comes from a craving for a “careful what you wish for”, ironic punishment form of justice. (It also seems to be something that PZ is alluding to with this post title). But it is still problematic. Tread carefully. Even advocates of slavery don’t deserve slavery.
Tony @20:
Of course you are correct, I apologize. That was the wrong thing to say. My rational side sometimes fails to check my emotion.
Its a shame the judge that sentenced Dinesh didn’t give him some prison time and thus deprived us of another right wing asshole for prison reform ala Chuckie Colson
@swampfoot, 23:
Happens to the best of us…who show that they are the best of us by gracefully admitting error and apologizing without seeking to justify.
Your example was nicely set.
anteprepro @22:
You’re right about PZ’s title. It treads close to the same thing as swampfoot’s #17.
****
swampfoot @23
Thank you.
felidae
At very least, make him legally obligated to change his full name to Dinesh D’Souza Right-Wing Pundit and Convicted Felon, which will need to be displayed with every televised apperance and used as his name for every article or book that he authors. No abbreviation, no pseudonyms, only Dinesh D’ Souza Right-Wing Pundit and Convicted Felon.
anteprepro @27:
Any way to work ‘Domestic Abuser’ in there?
D’Souza certainly hasn’t read Frederick Douglass or any other slave who cared to opine on their experiences. One presumes that his capitalism rather than the color of their skin disqualify their testimony. After all, they’re only workers. I do wonder if the testimony of a white man would convince him, though. This comes to me from Frederick Law Olmstead’s travelogue of the South in the 1850s, by way of William W. Freehling’s The Road to Disunion, Volume One. I apologize for the language and should warn the reader that it includes sexualized violence against a girl:
The same slaveholding humanitarians defended slavery on, among other grounds, that it provided a wellspring of black women to satisfy the lusts of white rapists.
(Full disclosure: The link is to my own blog, which has a lengthier treatment of the original document.)
I suppose that stumps me. D’Souza must have it right. All those slaveholders were good men and the abolitionists terrible, terrible people. Or perhaps blinding zeal and base stupidity are the chief ingredients of D’Souza’s position.
However much exposure to and study of the material helps, you don’t need to be a genius or a trained academic to get these basics even if one doesn’t get all the way down into the details. D’Souza is telling white supremacists that white supremacy in its most literally rapacious and brutal form is what’s best for everyone. I suppose there’s good money in that, but it’s not the kind of cash I’d want.
Tony: Sure, we can make room. We don’t need the “Dinesh D’Souza” part in there anyway.
For a man of color, D’Souza sure defends racism and colonialism a lot!
Trav Mamone @31:
Internalized racism isn’t that surprising to me. Nor does it surprise me that he says things that the rest of his tribe do. He wants to be part of that group.
This bit of odiousness was penned in 1996. I feel squicky at having not known this.
Property is treated well? I own a pickup truck, it is my property. I do not take proper care of it. Nor did the previous owners. My house isn’t being properly maintained. The dogs need a vet. The cat isn’t spayed. My teeth hurt. My glasses blur. In other words, my property is not treated well.
(The folks that I know that worship the Confederacy, are damned touchy about being told how to treat their property and their fellow humans.)
Trav and Tony: Because he was from a region of India that only was the way it was because of colonialism, and was Catholic because of it as well, he probably supports colonialism because of his ethnic identity. Or, more specifically, because of his religion. He wouldn’t have been raised Catholic if it weren’t for Portuguese colonialism. So he might view colonialism, from his personal and selfish perspective, as a situation of “the ends justify the means”. Because Catholicism is such a vital and beneficial end goal!
And that probably feeds into his support for all kinds of racism: His religious identification is most important to him. And any group that doesn’t fall under that religious banner isn’t good enough for him. He has a very particular, elite in-group and anyone who doesn’t fall into it is inferior, for whatever myriad of reasons in his mind. I’m sure being an Ivy Leaguer didn’t help that mindset either. He also knows that because of being a racial minority in America, it gives him a little lee-way to say more horrible things than other right-wing pundits can get away with. Though it is pretty blatant in Dinesh’s case: he pretty much is just flat out racist against black people. I doubt that that is due to internalized racism either. He just plain views them as an Other. As a distinct group from himself, and as inferior. He is from India, so he doesn’t have the U.S. conception of race, where basically everyone with a darker skin tone is all lumped together and treated the same. He views himself as Indian, and does not care how bigots in the U.S. might categorize him in with other racial groups. He sees clearly that he is distinct from African Americans and from teh Mooslems and so forth, and helps makes this clear by being sure to bash them at every opportunity.
Self-loathing might be a factor, maybe. But I don’t think it is. Dinesh D’Souza is a very egocentric man. So it is not that he hates himself: it is that he is willing to hate anyone who isn’t Dinesh D’Souza, and is willing to throw them under the bus in order to ensure the success of Dinesh D’Souza. Dinesh D’Souza is the only thing on this planet that he truly loves, and his self-promoting and his lying and his support of colonialism and his disregard for racism and his pulling off election fraud and his abusing his wife, all stem from the singular self-love. The man is a moral vacuum. He would offer up his own mother for a public execution if it meant a lucrative book deal.
You watch the eyes of professional horrible person Ann Coulter and you can see her mentally chortling, “Trololololo” as she counts the money she’ll be making off of the idiots in her audience.
D’Souza, on the other hand, has the crazy eyes of a fanatic. He’s not quite at the staring-a-meter-past-your-ear level of Michele Bachmann, but he’s in her neighbourhood.
#10 After the abolition of the slave trade it’s likely slaves were encouraged to form families- that was the main way of getting new slaves then- and their value would probably be higher: “After the abolition of the slave trade it’s likely slaves were encouraged to form families- that was the main way of getting new slaves then- and their value would probably be higher”
Banning the slave trade was pushed by the slave owners for the very reason that it increased the value of the slaves they already owned. Encouraging them to have families isn’t the correct term. Forcing them to breed like livestock would be a more accurate term.
And supporting unproductive slaves for their remaining years? Don’t make me laugh.
Dinesh needs to visit Letters of Note and search for “slave.” There are quite a few letters from former slaves (including Douglas) to their former owners in Shaun Usher’s collection. I haven’t read all of them closely but as far as I can tell none of them find anything good to say about slavery or their former owners. But Dinesh is a dishonest pseudo-intellectual, so I would be shocked that he ever bothered to look at anything disagreeing with his prefabricated opinion of himself and his ilk.
I’m sure this has been said, but this “slaves were treated well” myth was common in the South in the 50s and 60s when I lived there. I probably even pontificated it myself at some point in my youth, thoughtlessly aping what I had heard repeatedly. I assume it goes way back before my days. I would not be surprised to hear it in dinner table conversation today. Delusions know no end.
Dinesh D’Souza is a bit like Nixon: the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think that all of the dreadful, vile, evil crap has played itself out and there’s no more left, something like this pops up.
Yikes! I say, yikes! D’Souza belongs to the United States of just making stuff up. No matter how many times he gets caught confabulating, he just keeps cranking out the, well, crank-ness.
And he’s taken seriously on the right because … ???
GEE I WONDER WHY
*rolls eyes so hard they create a vortex*
anteprepro:
Thanks for correcting me @32. I was wrong to say internalized racism.
williamgeorge:
No. If Ann Coulter is a troll, so is D’Souza. They are peas in a pod. They are both comparable in terms of seeming intentionally provocative and having a blatant profit motive. They are both comparable in being unabashedly horrific. For fuck’s sake, they’ve even dated: http://www.nndb.com/people/810/000049663/
They are soulless soul-mates.
Surely being a man of diligent scholarship, he might once have read Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a woman? And he didn’t need to read all of it for his notions about slaves and families. Just this bit will do.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp
Tony!: You weren’t wrong, necessarily. It’s just not the whole picture. In case you couldn’t tell, I know waaaaaaaaaay too much about Dinesh. Needless backstory: He basically inspired me to start blogging. I heard he was coming to my University for a speech. I was less cynical back then and wanted to learn why he was being advertised as a Right-Wing Intellectual. So I read some of his blog. And so his inane dribble about atheism and about Iraq. Then I went to his speaking engagement, and was astounded that it was just as bad as his blog. So I continued to read his blog and even dipped my toes in the massive comment threads until the host website (AOLblogs) went down the shitter. That lead me to making my own blog, reading Pharyngula, and then eventually commenting as soon as FTB became a thing. I am a more militant atheist and a louder and more confident leftist today because Dinesh D’Souza is an incompetent blowhard who doesn’t live up to his PR. Strange to admit, but true.
Not only that, but his family belonged to a privileged class that was given a great deal of power and influence over the lesser natives under Portuguese rule. (Basic divide and conquer strategy by the Portuguese.) When newly independent India forced the Portuguese to leave, his family lost that privileged status and, perhaps because the locals were none too happy with them (I can’t recall), they fled.
So D’Souza’s racism and pro-colonialism actually make perfect sense, given that he was the direct beneficiary of a colonial racist caste system. Then, hilariously, he projects “anti-colonialism” onto Obama as an expression of resentment at this loss of undeserved privilege.
I love how they’ll go to the mat for a religious “truth” that requires violent oppression to spread. And that’s not just speaking historically, that’s all over the Bible too.
The article’s comment section has been overtaken by whiny, old white guys. Bemoaning the soviet states of America.
Everyone is so unfair on these historica, we might say peculiar, institutions. For example, the Inquisition should be given credit for keeping thousands of people warm for the rest of their lives.
This asshole is born the same year as I was. It is nice to compare myself to violent sociopaths like this, the contrast makes me shine.
anteprepro,
Next time D’Souza is late for a speaking engagement , i suggest you ask him if he was busy kicking his wife in the neck.
D’Souza absolutely should not be forced into slavery, under any circumstances.
He should volunteer.
Or, better yet, he should explain why he doesn’t volunteer to be a slave. I would love to see him try to squirm his way around reconciling “Well, it’s not a bad life, slavery” and “Obviously, freedom is important” without clear and explicit othering.
On second thought, no, I wouldn’t love to see him do anything at all.
So never mind.
Wow! That’s all I have to say.
Holy shit, that’s the worst thing I’ve read in a long time. And I just got done reading the morning paper.
And this is a guy who was supposed to be a reasonable and respectable conservative. Aside from the basic fact that he has whitewashed and ignored the horrors associated with slavery, it also seems pretty intellectually dishonest for someone whose political views tend toward libertarianism and who espouses American Exceptionalism based on freedom, to simultaneously claim that as long as they were treated well, slavery was no big deal. I mean, I guess it could still be intellectually honest if you think that black people are simply not equipped for freedom by their very nature, but that would be rank racism, so that couldn’t be it, right? I mean, it’s the End of Racism, right?
Oh, he means the end of people confronting him with the truth of his racism? Now I get it.
Maybe he can explain how his recent Facebook post isn’t at all racist: https://www.facebook.com/DSouzaDinesh/photos/a.279556495404346.96395.216709768355686/968061683220487/
Or this tweet, it’s not racist at all, right: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/11/26/dinesh-dsouza-and-his-vile-trayvon-tweet/
If American conservatives afford this man any respect at all, if they don’t treat him as a complete pariah the way they would any skinhead white supremacist, then modern American conservatism is rotten to the core with racism.
But we knew that, this is just proof. Also, skeptics who write letters to get him out of jail and talk in glowing terms about what a wonderful guy he is might be a little suspect as well.
Oh wait, the tweet version of that Facebook post is even worse: http://www.mediaite.com/online/dinesh-dsouza-isnt-even-trying-anymore/
Please. Former KKK members run for office on the Republican ticket for as long as they can get away with it.
What the vertical gene transfer.
I repeat: what the vertical gene transfer.
@vaiyt (#56): I know, I tried to come up with an example that could give conservatives some shred of decency to at least pretend to be clinging to, some level below which they would not stoop because they at least care about the appearance of not being racist beyond their claims that they’re not, but that was the best I could do, I had to say skinhead because I couldn’t use Grand Wizard of the KKK because one of them was considered a serious republican politician already.
Which says an awful lot.
I actually believe there are individual Republicans who really racist beyond the inevitable implicit racism, but I don’t get how they can ignore the facts about the party that they say represents them, so I expect there are damned few of them.
More context to the first quote:
“Actually, Fogel and Engerman’s critics had a point. Reading ‘Time on the Cross’ by itself, slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many others ever tried to escape. Fogel and Engerman’s statistical work frequently does obscure the day-to-day hardships of slavery, which are more apparent by scrutinizing the fates of particular individuals, not mathematical tables.”
The context of the second quote doesn’t really change anything.
Let me second what robro says above re: the letters of note site. The letters from ex-slaves to their former holders are really something.
Frederick Douglass writes with a clarity that D’Souza ought to envy
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/i-am-your-fellow-man-but-not-your-slave.html?m=1
“to my old master”
http://www.lettersofnote.com/?m=1
Wow, that was powerful. I am not sure which trope that describes, perhaps “Shut Up, Hannibal!” as part of it. That is a brilliant man, one who writes with astounding clarity, civility, and well-deserved venom all at once. If Auld didn’t feel like something that lives under a rock and eats shit for lunch, he wasn’t human.