Sharecropping reading
Hello my fellow nords!
2024.05.08 16:19 Thewaffleofoz Hello my fellow nords!
Hello my name is John Fall— Falkreath! (230m Human…? Nord? Idk caucasian) And I have come to tell you about a wonderful new fac- er… Guild sweeping Skyrim. We call ourselves the New California Republic and we want to unite all of the holds in Skyrim. No empire, no stormcloaks, your new “king” would be someone you choose!
I know this concept is scary and difficult to understand, but if you can bear to read a little more I’ll tell you how this process works! We call it democracy!
Every 4 or 5 years you and all your friends get together in a building, and you all pick 1 person to be your Jarl for the next 4-5 years! Then they go to New Shady Sa- I mean— Solitude and decide amongst themselves important decisions so you don’t have to, like Mead taxes, sharecropping, sharecropping taxes, and taxes on important skooma!
If you dont like these Jarls you and your friends choose, you can just pick new ones next time we do this! And theeeeen you get to choose a high king! It’s like tradition but faster! What other nord buzzwords can I use? Uhm… Dragons, Talos mead tax.. oh man that juicy mead tax… who needs vegas when we can tax all that mead—
Oh uh
Vote today to have your hold join the NCR today!!!
submitted by Thewaffleofoz to TrueSTL [link] [comments]
I know this concept is scary and difficult to understand, but if you can bear to read a little more I’ll tell you how this process works! We call it democracy!
Every 4 or 5 years you and all your friends get together in a building, and you all pick 1 person to be your Jarl for the next 4-5 years! Then they go to New Shady Sa- I mean— Solitude and decide amongst themselves important decisions so you don’t have to, like Mead taxes, sharecropping, sharecropping taxes, and taxes on important skooma!
If you dont like these Jarls you and your friends choose, you can just pick new ones next time we do this! And theeeeen you get to choose a high king! It’s like tradition but faster! What other nord buzzwords can I use? Uhm… Dragons, Talos mead tax.. oh man that juicy mead tax… who needs vegas when we can tax all that mead—
Oh uh
Vote today to have your hold join the NCR today!!!
2024.05.01 00:14 MariSi_UwU Pol Pot's practice in Kampuchea ⟨Autotranslation of the article from "Наука Марксизм"⟩ (there may be errors in translation)
 | Introduction. One of the most poorly studied and revisionist questions to date concerning the class struggle of the international communist and labor movement is the question of Communist Kampuchea, and more specifically about the practice of the leader of the CPC (Communist Party of Kampuchea), Pol Pot. Left-wing opportunists, along with liberals trumpet that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are "people who long ago broke with the very foundations of Marxism-Leninism, people who exploited popular utopian prejudices, cultivated illiteracy, sadists and crooks..."[1]. However, such statements are not based on material facts and do not indicate the sources of such information. They are simply based on pulling out and twisting quotes from monarchical, bourgeois and communist figures in Cambodia, on distorting the political class affiliation of the latter and their actions during the Cambodian Civil War. We can say for sure that left-wing bloggers and leaders of left-wing organizations once again show their petty-bourgeoisness in practice, working contrary to the interests of the proletariat. Their formalism is evident in the fact that they have always adopted bourgeois dogmas about the "mass genocide" of the people of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, but in fact do not analyze the historiography of the class struggle in Cambodia during the civil war. The leftists themselves rivet their materials for the sole purpose of imposing, selling, and receiving for this material, i.e., they use pseudo-communist materials and theories only as a means of self – satisfaction of their imaginary authority and position, and the basis for this is a petty-bourgeois and commodity-based attitude towards communist practice. Their activity is conditioned by their class affiliation, which is communist in form and petty-bourgeois in content. submitted by MariSi_UwU to u/MariSi_UwU [link] [comments] That's very true F. said ENGELS: "The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, and consequently also history. Because of its very nature, because of the conditions of its existence, it tends to falsify every commodity: it also falsified history. After all, it is best to pay for the historical work in which the falsification of history most corresponds to the interests of the bourgeoisie "[2]. Therefore, there is no doubt that in order to extract the experience of each specific event in the history of the class struggle of other countries, it is necessary to consistently and interrelatedly study all the necessary sources, while already having Marxist class savvy and research methodology, and not repeat bourgeois phrases about the "bloody dictatorship". It is necessary to review the research and conclusions of the left-wing petty-bourgeois apologists hundreds of times, while being well aware of the primary sources of Marxism. Since this article is about Pol Pot, the purpose of this article is to study the activities of Pol Pot in the period 1925-1953 and ultimately determine the class character of its activities. 1. Pol Pot's activities in 1925-1953 Before starting a study, you need to identify the following factors, without which research is impossible: 1) The basic conditions under which Pol Pot developed – the mode of production, the class struggle, and the class correlation of forces; 2) Expression of Pol Pot's class character-theoretical views, class strategy and tactics in different periods of the class struggle. The first part of our article will cover the following periods: a) From Pol Pot's birth in 1925 to his departure for France in 1949 — the period of formation of Pol Pot's revolutionary-democratic views; b) From Pol Pot's departure to France to his arrival in Cambodia in 1953 — the period of development of Pol Pot's communist views. a) 1925-1949. Cambodia, 1925. It was in this year that Salot Sar (also known as Pol Pot) was born in the village of Prexbauw in the province ofон же далее – Пол ПотKompong Thom. His family's position was that of a well-to-do peasant, as his father, Pyong Salot, was a well-to-do peasant who owned 9 hectares of land and several units of draft cattle, and his mother, Song Nok, was a simple working peasant. The family had 9 children. The family also had good connections with the royal palace. Cambodia during the 20s-30s was a country of colonial status, which was caused by the dominance of French capital on its territory. From the undeveloped productive forces of Cambodia, many intertwined relations of production grow: semi-feudal, patriarchal, and private capitalist. On the other hand, the development of the productive forces was hindered by colonial and semi-feudal orders, and therefore it corrupted these relations. On the basis of the relations of production, the struggle took place between the following classes: on the one hand, the rural and industrial proletariat, the rural semi-proletariat, and the petty bourgeoisie (the peasantry), and on the other, the middle and large rural capitalists, as well as the royal officials. Semi-feudal relations were expressed in the exploitation of peasants by landowners through land rent. Cambodia had two types of land rents — sharecropping and fixed-and there were two sectors where rent relations were established: feudal-royal and private ownership. Sharecropping rents were found in areas of Cambodia with intensive agricultural production. It assumed that the tenant farmer gives about half of the product from the land to the landowner, depending on the area of production. As a rule, such peasants were in more severe conditions, especially in the central regions of Cambodia, as the peasants ' agricultural equipment was scarce and they were more dependent on the private landowner. Fixed rents prevailed in the central and fertile regions of Cambodia, both in kind and in cash. In its system, such peasants were arranged who had draft cattle and seed material, which is why their rent was much lower. This type of rent in monetary form was used by the royal family to exploit the peasantry, who owned land in the fertile areas of Cambodia [4]. Patriarchal relations were expressed in the fact that the majority of the population of Cambodia consisted mainly of small and medium-sized peasants, who were subjected to capitalist exploitation on the one hand, and on the other hand they lived and produced on their small land plots with undeveloped means of labor. The preservation of the patriarchal way of economy was determined by the colonial situation of Cambodia and semi-feudal orders. The industrial proletariat in Cambodia was poorly developed and extremely small, and its exploitation took place only on rubber plantations, in ports and in the railway industry. They also came from the small peasantry and rural proletariat, but they were already selling their labor power to the capitalists of these industries. In comparison with other undeveloped sectors of the economy, these industries were developed to the extent that they were financed by the French bourgeoisie, which just invested in these industries. The Cambodian population did not yet have a revolutionary spirit in overthrowing the royal power, but the tendency was for it to happen soon. The direct subordination of the Cambodian royal nobility to the French bourgeoisie, the infringement of the national rights of Cambodians, the growth of scientific historical research, commodity production and exploitation of workers and peasants by capitalists in Cambodia led to the growth of nationalist sentiments among Cambodian officials and intellectuals and demands for political independence [6]. Giving Cambodians a glimpse of their past pre-colonial history played against the French bourgeoisie, as the greatness of the past independent Angkor Empire of the 9th century was very different from the colonial position of Cambodia. This fostered a sense of national pride and anti-French sentiment among Cambodian officials and intellectuals. On the other hand, there were also hindering factors that prevented the rapid national awakening of Cambodians: the underdeveloped productive forces, the fragmentation of small producers and royal power. Since the isolated nature of production and the undeveloped productive forces remained, relations between the peasantry and the working class were limited. Workers and peasants were cut off from the royal power and divided among themselves (fragmented in the system of production), most of them considered the royal power to be something eternally existing and forever given, which determines their entire fate. It is clear that even among the industrial and rural proletarians there could not have been a strong growth of nationalist sentiments, much less communist ones, since these proletarians are recent small peasants with a corresponding class psychology. There were weak ties between the peasantry, workers, and the kingdom. Most of them did not care much about visiting historical exhibitions and performances, because of their oppressed situation, which forced them to find ways to feed themselves and their families, falling into the bonds of capitalist exploitation, slightly mitigated by the French imperialists ' restriction of interest rates against usurers. The peasants themselves hated the city, because the central and developed areas of Cambodia, where commercial capital was developed, bought up the product from the peasants for a very small price, which did not pay for the peasants ' expenses. Nationalist sentiments at that time were only in the circles of Cambodian officials. It is too early to talk about the impact of the communist movement in Cambodia, as well as its impact on Pol Pot directly. The seeds of communism have been growing since 1930, when the first Communist cell appeared in a Buddhist university in Cambodia. This cell became affiliated with the Communist Party of Vietnam by mid-1930, and later became part of the Communist Party of Indochina. The practice of CPI during the 1930s in Cambodia was insignificant, and therefore not widespread enough in its provinces. The class interests of the communists and the bourgeoisie converged at that time, because the task was the same — to overthrow colonial oppression in a revolutionary way and achieve independence. The attempt to create an all-democratic front in Cambodia failed by 1938, due to the lack of a social base among the Communists and revolutionary democrats at that time. The communist and national movement was strenuously suppressed by the French bourgeoisie. While the communist movement was in decline in Cambodia, the Indochina Communist Party continued to work and monitor the development of the national movement in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In 1934, Pol Pot and his older brother moved from their parents to Phnom Penh to study at a Catholic school. Phnom Penh itself was the economic and political center of Cambodia. Crafts, peasant farming and trade developed widely in it. Representatives of the trade were mostly from China [8]. Pol Pot's stay in Phnom Penh was varied: he studied at the monastery, visited the royal palace, went to dance performances of the palace and often interacted with dancers. The living conditions of the female dancers were poor. They lived in cramped inhabited huts on the outskirts of the palace complex, while the dancers tried to perform the dance intensely and clearly in order to be close to the king and please him. Not everyone was able to do this, and therefore failed dancers had to perform numbers for a very small amount of money. Given that Pol Pot's older sister was also a dancer, given Pol Pot's periodic meetings and conversations with other dancers, he was well aware of their life in the royal palace. In the palace, Pol Pot could also hear conversations of Cambodian officials with anti-French positions, which also influenced the further formation of Pol Pot's revolutionary democratic views. A group of nationalists consisting of Buddhist monks, student intellectuals, and government officials, led by Son Ngoc Thanh since 1935, has been launching democratic propaganda activities. The spread of anti-French sentiments occurs in the Catholic school where Pol Pot studied in 1936-1942. A Khmer-language newspaper, Nagarawatta, is distributed to Buddhist universities and schools, criticizing the French colonialists and calling for a national awakening. [9] The newspaper was widely distributed and clearly could be read and read Later, given his commitment to the study of reality, which he showed in school. The national movement was then developing alongside the communist one, and they then had the same class interests-the liberation of Cambodia from colonial dependence. With the beginning of the world crisis of capitalism, the contradictions between the imperialist Powers and the colonies are growing stronger, which are expressed in the rise of national liberation movements and the growth of nationalism in the oppressed countries. Similarly, in Cambodia, the nation led by the communist movement is beginning to grow in opposition to the monarchy. As the struggle between these classes becomes more acute, so does the variety of ways in which class positions are spread. Since the bourgeoisie and the Communists were fighting together, and since their class interests in overthrowing the monarchy coincided at the moment, democratic and anti-colonial sentiments spread among Cambodians, and Pol Pot also developed them as he participated in the class struggle. Pol Pot's revolutionary-democratic views before the war were shaped by his stories about the political struggle against the French colonialists and reading progressive books. During this time, Pol Pot developed a patriotic attitude towards Cambodia, a love for the Cambodian people, and a hatred for the enemies of his people. After the outbreak of World War II in 1937 and the Franco-Thai War in 1941, Cambodian nationalist sentiment increased, as, on the one hand, Cambodia entered a state of economic crisis, as a result of which the material situation of the proletariat, peasants, Cambodian bourgeoisie and bureaucracy worsened, and on the other hand, the weakness of the French bourgeoisie manifested itself in a loss in the 1940 campaign of the year, and then, under pressure from Japan, and in the surrender to Thailand of part of the northern territories of Cambodia and Laos in January 1941. The weakening influence of French capital was a prerequisite for the growth of the Cambodian national liberation movement. On August 7, 1941, Japan invades Indochina and Cambodia. The Japanese imperialists were a lifeline for the Khmer nationalists, because of their hopes that the Japanese bourgeoisie and the army would help establish the power of the national bourgeoisie in Cambodia. But Japanese troops and ministers similarly pursued colonial objectives in Indochina and did little to help the Khmer nationalists in the struggle, which led them to be harassed by the French police. In the same year, a new king, Norodom Sihanouk, is appointed by the Governor of Jan-Deku in Cambodia, as a distraction from the war to suppress their class consciousness in overthrowing absolutism. Due to the Japanese imperialist occupation of Cambodia, the Khmer nationalists hoped for their support from Japan. On July 22, 1942, Khmer nationalists held the first anti-French demonstration in the last 20 years, which became widespread in Cambodia. The demonstration was not supported by Japanese troops, and its leaders were detained by French police. Pol Pot had graduated from Catholic high school and entered Norodom Sihanouk College. News of the demonstration spread through his college and many students were drawn into the demonstration. |
2024.01.30 17:45 Glitchy_32 What do you guys think of my apush teacher, teaching methods?
So every single class. He talks about whatever we were supposed to read. On google classroom he post the chapters we're covering in a unit. Sometimes he prints letters or stuff like a sharecropping contract. And that's it. Half the class is on their phone, a few are asleep, and only 1-3 are actively listening. Is my teacher valid in his methods, can he do more?
submitted by Glitchy_32 to APStudents [link] [comments]
2024.01.10 22:12 Neat-Fig-5764 AITAH for not backing down
A little pretext first. For the last year my husband and I have been living with my in laws. I lost my career during covid and had been really suffering some deep depression from it. We have been working as a family in the same business, but the in laws have been trying to help us start our own. They ask for nothing in return, but I can't help wanting to cook and clean the home in appreciation for what they do for us.
Five nights ago, my little brother (14) called to see if my husband and I would be willing to let him work for us in our business. He wanted to make some cash to get a laptop and we both thought that was a fantastic idea. Something simple for minimum wage. He was stoked and immediately went to ask his parents...
This is where He called us back upset. Told us that the parents said no. I asked why the no? And he immediately told me in a confused voice. "They said you wouldn't actually pay me; they said your husband would ruin me like him and his parents ruined you." and he said, " they called you a sharecropper and that your husbands' parents don't pay??"
My mind was honestly so confused. I couldn't even register what they could have been insinuating about my in laws and myself. I had to googl what Sharecropper was, my little brother did too as he was confused too, and immediately became very embarrassed.
He is expressing his frustration at this, and his mom walks into his room to do some damage control for what she said. Tells him they need to talk as she had been listening to him talk to us. He said I don't want to talk with a frustrated tone, and she took that as enough reason to take his phone away then and there.
I decided that I would not push the situation and hope my parents will send me something. My husband decides that he needs to step in. He was way more civil than I was going to be and told them we would shrug off the insults to ourselves. But we were putting our foot down regarding the insults to the in laws who have done nothing but try to help and are essentially being called slave drivers.
His text was brilliant and even expressed how much we still love and care for them and will continue doing so next time we see them. Unfortunately, it was met with crickets...
More damage control was done by having my little brother work with his mom in what they see as a legit job/business. My stepmom also had her boss not only give him a check, but also try and explain what his mom meant about sharecropping and how its beneficial. (My dad and stepmom have been racist towards my husband and family to know where they were really coming from.)
At this point they have already asked my 14yr old brother to ask us to stop because they can't handle it. After the only response we have received was.
"Your information is coming from a 14yr old boy."
We have put up with a lot of made-up drama from my parents.an example would be how they accused my husband of not being a legal citizen, and it took me shoving his passport in their face to back off. This has been years of these kind of things, and I just want us to be respected.
AITAH??
Edit: Made it shorter and easier to read.
Tldr: My parents insulted my in laws and my husband tried to be civil letting them know how they can hate him, but he cant shrug the insults about the people they denied meeting even before/after we got married. There have been years of insults and accusations built up and they insist that he's the crazy one by trying to start a dialogue. I can't sit by and watch my parents insult and then ignore those who they insulted.
submitted by Neat-Fig-5764 to AITAH [link] [comments]
Five nights ago, my little brother (14) called to see if my husband and I would be willing to let him work for us in our business. He wanted to make some cash to get a laptop and we both thought that was a fantastic idea. Something simple for minimum wage. He was stoked and immediately went to ask his parents...
This is where He called us back upset. Told us that the parents said no. I asked why the no? And he immediately told me in a confused voice. "They said you wouldn't actually pay me; they said your husband would ruin me like him and his parents ruined you." and he said, " they called you a sharecropper and that your husbands' parents don't pay??"
My mind was honestly so confused. I couldn't even register what they could have been insinuating about my in laws and myself. I had to googl what Sharecropper was, my little brother did too as he was confused too, and immediately became very embarrassed.
He is expressing his frustration at this, and his mom walks into his room to do some damage control for what she said. Tells him they need to talk as she had been listening to him talk to us. He said I don't want to talk with a frustrated tone, and she took that as enough reason to take his phone away then and there.
I decided that I would not push the situation and hope my parents will send me something. My husband decides that he needs to step in. He was way more civil than I was going to be and told them we would shrug off the insults to ourselves. But we were putting our foot down regarding the insults to the in laws who have done nothing but try to help and are essentially being called slave drivers.
His text was brilliant and even expressed how much we still love and care for them and will continue doing so next time we see them. Unfortunately, it was met with crickets...
More damage control was done by having my little brother work with his mom in what they see as a legit job/business. My stepmom also had her boss not only give him a check, but also try and explain what his mom meant about sharecropping and how its beneficial. (My dad and stepmom have been racist towards my husband and family to know where they were really coming from.)
At this point they have already asked my 14yr old brother to ask us to stop because they can't handle it. After the only response we have received was.
"Your information is coming from a 14yr old boy."
We have put up with a lot of made-up drama from my parents.an example would be how they accused my husband of not being a legal citizen, and it took me shoving his passport in their face to back off. This has been years of these kind of things, and I just want us to be respected.
AITAH??
Edit: Made it shorter and easier to read.
Tldr: My parents insulted my in laws and my husband tried to be civil letting them know how they can hate him, but he cant shrug the insults about the people they denied meeting even before/after we got married. There have been years of insults and accusations built up and they insist that he's the crazy one by trying to start a dialogue. I can't sit by and watch my parents insult and then ignore those who they insulted.
2023.12.07 03:32 one-broke-person Rural life on a farm
I read this book years ago and I can't remember the details well or the title. Here's what I remember. *,Book was set in rural setting. At one point they talk about having cabbages in the cellar and good preserved in an ash pit. *The family is sharecropping or renting their property from a man who has a thing for the oldest daughter. *The fathefarmer doesn't want his oldest to get with the property owner. *The father died and the kids don't mention it? *Eventually the oldest married the property owner. *It was a fiction book, I believe set in a mountain community.
I wish I could remember more. Hopefully someone else has stumbled across it.
submitted by one-broke-person to whatsthatbook [link] [comments]
I wish I could remember more. Hopefully someone else has stumbled across it.
2023.11.07 11:04 yellowbai Why didn’t feudalism occur earlier in Roman history?
I was reading Runcimans "History of the Crusades". He described the breakdown of the last vestiges of Roman soldiery tradition in the Byzantine empire. It was seen in Anatolia when the previous landed peasantry who served as the core of the professional soldier class either died in battle in massive battles like Mazinkert and were whittled down by successive emperors to avoid a place coups. The farmer slowly got evicted over time by the richer nobility who replaced the sharecropping system with sheep and goats on the Anatolian plains.
Then the emergence of Turkish nomadic raids caused migration to the Greek speaking coast.
Alexios I Komnenos became forced to dole out land grants to the landed aristocracy to buy their loyalty and use the coinage generated by trade, fines and concessions to the Italian merchant states to hire mercenaries like the Norman’s and the Pechnegs.
Eventually it replaced loyalty to the state to loyalty to a magnate.
Also the Byzantine’s granted vast estates as compensation to their enemies if they annexed a region to keep the peace. It creates a perpetual "land hunger".
Seems in the early Republic all those ingredients existed in Italy?
submitted by yellowbai to AskHistorians [link] [comments]
Then the emergence of Turkish nomadic raids caused migration to the Greek speaking coast.
Alexios I Komnenos became forced to dole out land grants to the landed aristocracy to buy their loyalty and use the coinage generated by trade, fines and concessions to the Italian merchant states to hire mercenaries like the Norman’s and the Pechnegs.
Eventually it replaced loyalty to the state to loyalty to a magnate.
Also the Byzantine’s granted vast estates as compensation to their enemies if they annexed a region to keep the peace. It creates a perpetual "land hunger".
Seems in the early Republic all those ingredients existed in Italy?
- lower peasant class preyed on by parasitic Senatorial class.
- land tension and military disaster. Graachus, Cannae, Italian wars.
- militarized lower nobility who are intensely upwardly mobile.
- Builllon crisis where there were shortages of gold (but lots of land).
2023.10.29 21:21 maximum_horkheimer When did historians first begin considering convict leasing and sharecropping to be a continuation of chattel slavery in the United States?
Hope it's okay to ask more of a historiographic question than a historical question as such. My book club just read Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson and somebody objected to the absolutist tenor of how the book describes the abolition of slavery--"secession and slavery were killed, never to be revived during the century and a quarter since Appomattox" (859)--in light of the later advent of other racialized forced labor systems like convict leasing, sharecropping, and debt peonage. I basically agree with the core of the critique but it seemed kind of ahistorical to me to say this about a broad historical survey published in the late 1980s; my understanding is that Douglas Blackmon's 2008 book Slavery by Another Name is really what shifted mainstream historical opinion to seeing these as a direct continuation of chattel slavery in many respects, with antecedents in the work of historians like Matthew Mancini (One Dies, Get Another, 1996), David Oshinsky (Worse than Slavery, also 1996), and Alex Lichtenstein (Twice the Work of Free Labor, which as also published in 1996! what's up with that!?). (N.B.: Of these, I've only read Blackmon). So I guess I guess I have a few interrelated questions about where the scholarship was when McPherson was writing:
submitted by maximum_horkheimer to AskHistorians [link] [comments]
- When did historians start seeing these forced labor systems as a continuation or revival of chattel slavery? When did it first emerge as a minority position, and how/when did it develop into a mainstream view? (If this is what happened in the field).
- A lot of the scholarship on convict leasing in particular seems to have been published after Battle Cry. Was there scholarship that McPherson could have drawn on which problematizes his conception of abolition in this way?
- Are later historians of slavery or historians of the Civil War critical of this aspect of McPherson's work? My understanding is that Battle Cry is still generally recommended as the go-to single volume history of the period. What is the book's reputation like among contemporary historians, particularly with respect to its treatment of abolition?
2023.10.29 02:11 throwaway4what_ I just want to hear her to tell me how ridiculous I'm being over this.
I want to apologize in advance because I might get a little verbose. Also, this is on a throwaway because I know one of my parents follows my main.
My grandmother passed away earlier this year. There are not enough words to sum up the kind of person she was... this woman grew up sharecropping in the 40s & 50s and took one look at the community she grew up in & decided she deserved better opportunities then packed up and moved far away to escape the poverty & substance abuse rampant around her. It felt like she had more of a hand in raising me than my own parents were able to... to the point, I told my spouse if he had to ask for my hand in marriage at all to ask her first. Nana was no nonsense, especially to the point of defending her family; I lost count of how many stories I've heard and/or witnessed of this 5'4", 150 lb soaking wet woman telling someone off or promising to lay hands- and I ain't talking in prayer- over what somebody had done to my mom, my sister, or me. I have so many of her personality quirks, I see her every time I look in the mirror, she gave me an ounce of her work ethic, I chose my major because she made her job look mentally exciting... I'm still not sure how hard her being gone has hit me and I don't think I will be for years.
Within twenty-four hours of her death, arrangements were setup with the funeral home my family has used for at least four generations and I got a picture of my Nana that I'd never seen from before she married Grampaw. I sat there in my work uniform because I hadn't been able to cry at all until I got up for work that morning and just couldn't stop so I tagged along to the funeral home. I don't think I'd left the funeral home before that picture became my phone wallpaper. Whenever I was powerless to do anything else- couldn't read, couldn't listen to my music, couldn't watch my shows, nothing- I could turn on my phone and she was there. My phone will light up on its own sometimes and I feel like it might be her nudging me into gear from the other side.
Now that I've gotten through the better part of this year without her... I could change my wallpaper but I feel guilty for even thinking about it. It's not like I don't have the picture elsewhere; it's just this one follows me literally everywhere. I know how this is all gonna sound but I've got a folder of my favorite characters as wallpapers stored on the cloud that I just cannot touch and when I thought about changing it to my favorite character from Baldur's Gate 3 (this game has made me feel more human in the last four weeks than I have in months), I feel so guilty.
And I know she'd have strong opinions about that. I just wish I could hear Nana's voice giving me an earful for feeling that way for no good reason.
submitted by throwaway4what_ to GriefSupport [link] [comments]
My grandmother passed away earlier this year. There are not enough words to sum up the kind of person she was... this woman grew up sharecropping in the 40s & 50s and took one look at the community she grew up in & decided she deserved better opportunities then packed up and moved far away to escape the poverty & substance abuse rampant around her. It felt like she had more of a hand in raising me than my own parents were able to... to the point, I told my spouse if he had to ask for my hand in marriage at all to ask her first. Nana was no nonsense, especially to the point of defending her family; I lost count of how many stories I've heard and/or witnessed of this 5'4", 150 lb soaking wet woman telling someone off or promising to lay hands- and I ain't talking in prayer- over what somebody had done to my mom, my sister, or me. I have so many of her personality quirks, I see her every time I look in the mirror, she gave me an ounce of her work ethic, I chose my major because she made her job look mentally exciting... I'm still not sure how hard her being gone has hit me and I don't think I will be for years.
Within twenty-four hours of her death, arrangements were setup with the funeral home my family has used for at least four generations and I got a picture of my Nana that I'd never seen from before she married Grampaw. I sat there in my work uniform because I hadn't been able to cry at all until I got up for work that morning and just couldn't stop so I tagged along to the funeral home. I don't think I'd left the funeral home before that picture became my phone wallpaper. Whenever I was powerless to do anything else- couldn't read, couldn't listen to my music, couldn't watch my shows, nothing- I could turn on my phone and she was there. My phone will light up on its own sometimes and I feel like it might be her nudging me into gear from the other side.
Now that I've gotten through the better part of this year without her... I could change my wallpaper but I feel guilty for even thinking about it. It's not like I don't have the picture elsewhere; it's just this one follows me literally everywhere. I know how this is all gonna sound but I've got a folder of my favorite characters as wallpapers stored on the cloud that I just cannot touch and when I thought about changing it to my favorite character from Baldur's Gate 3 (this game has made me feel more human in the last four weeks than I have in months), I feel so guilty.
And I know she'd have strong opinions about that. I just wish I could hear Nana's voice giving me an earful for feeling that way for no good reason.
2023.10.27 17:49 Arsteel8 After 10 years - rereading Elantris and Warbreaker
To preface, my first two Sanderson novels were Warbreaker, than Elantris. First was Warbreaker because I thought the cover looked cool, second Elantris because it's my mother's favorite Sanderson book.
I remember enjoying both quite well, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my fond memories of the novels were largely due to rose-colored glasses. In the end, I was only partially correct, now having read them again for the first time in 10 years.
I'm going to start with a brief tidbit on Warbreaker before really digging into Elantris.___________________
Warbreaker___________________
This book was a wonderful surprise to re-read. The romance was fun, Lightsong was entertaining. I was very impressed with how well this book held up in my memory. The twists are good, made sense, and had proper foreshadowing.
I don't have much to say because the book was so bloody good. My one nitpick was that the powers of Nightblood felt out of the blue in the resolution of the story. A sword that blows holes in walls at a touch? I wasn't ready for that.
___________________
Elantris___________________
Elantris, however... was showing its age. When I first read it, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Warbreaker. Now, it's the other way around.
In this read, the first half of the novel was dry and I considered setting it down to read something else instead. However, the second half really picked up and I enjoyed the remainder.
First, the amount of change to the society in 10 years was staggering. I thought the entire country should have died after Elantris fell. Sanderson comes out to tell us that (almost) no one knew how to farm because Elantris provided food for all the people. When Elantris fell, a massive portion of the population should have starved to death, or at least had it severely affect the entire nation.
Then there's the problem of Raoden (and most characters) seeming very ignorant of pre-Reod Elantris, despite being alive for more time with pre-Reod Elantris than post-Reod.
Many sections feel like exposition hidden as dialogue, especially the first half. It felt like I was constantly getting hit in the face with a rotting Elantrian board full of exposition. Then oftentimes the characters say what's going to happen, and then it happens! Crazy!
Lastly, the timeline of the plot seemed crazy to me. In the first two weeks or so, Raoden has started a new society within Elantris, Sarene has completely turned the court on its head and snuck into Raoden's group *and* taken it over, and Hrathen has managed to 10x the number of people showing up for Derethi sermons. If this had been over the course of 6 months (or a year) I could have believed it, but this was too fast. It's insane to remember that this entire book took place over two months.
I do understand that part of the reason for the condensed timeline is Hrathen's deadline, but I think I would have preferred him being sent to convert, staying in Arelon for a few months, then being given a 3 month deadline partway through the story.
Oh, and a sidenote: everyone dies. Jeez. Poor Hrathen, Karata, Roial, Iadon, Telrii, Eondel, Eshen... I'm sure I'm missing a few.
Sarene
Sarene's ability to wiggle her way into Raoden's group of nobles irked me immensely, as it struck me as wildly unrealistic. Her viewpoint in particular bothered me; the political intrigue generally felt weak and unrealistic. Her plans were overly broad and high level.
"Let's try sharecropping and make everyone want to work for us!" made little sense, and convincing the other merchants to go along with her plan with hardly a fight made no sense to me.
"Hrathen wants people to hate Elantrians, so I'm going to make people pity them instead!" when she had no idea what he was doing.
"They only say Raoden is dead, I bet there's something more going on here" when I felt there was little reason for her not to believe them. She immediately assumed subterfuge without what I felt counted as a reason to.
"I'll act like a total idiot to fool the king!" when her acting was so bad that only one person fell for it (the king). The only reason I thought this worked was pure luck / plot armor. How did she not realize her acting skills were terrible?
Her infiltration of Raoden's friend group seemed off to me. There was essentially no pushback from people like Roial, literally the second most powerful person in the kingdom, and the other nobles.
Why on earth did they randomly drop that she was previously engaged? Especially after making such a big deal out of no one wanting to be with her. It felt unnecessary and made me very uneasy about Sarene.
Also, the court women felt very... fake. Like, literally all they do in life is gossip and embroider? If that's true, their sudden excitement about fencing surprised me. It didn't make much sense. There was very little hesitance, without the foreshadowing to make the lack of hesitance realistic. It's not easy to make a group of people uniformly change their preferred hobby.
She seems like she's supposed to be a borderline Mary Sue. "I'm good at everything... except art / embroidery" felt like "See, I'm not a Mary Sue! I can't do everything perfectly!" but then seems super clueless so often. It felt very odd to me.
Raoden
In the first readthrough he was my favorite viewpoint. Originally it was Raoden > Sarene > Hrathen. This time was Hrathen > Raoden > Sarene.
More of a Mary Sue than Sarene, wow. Beloved by the people, didn't pick up any bad habits from his father, so incredibly optimistic that it's practically a caricature. Takes over Elantris in a matter of weeks, starts a new society. Has solutions to every problem. Did anyone else in Elantris come up with solutions, or was it only him?
Also, he consistently assumes the worst in people. He won't tell his friends that it's him because he's scared they'll hate an Elantrian. He won't let Shaor's men to the foodcart even in limited numbers. He doesn't explain the situation with Shaor to Sarene because he's scared.
"Why don't they just talk it out" is a critique often leveled at books or characters, but most often I feel there is a reason they don't talk it out. In this book, I really felt those reasons were lacking.
Oh, and Taan's conversion to Raoden's side seemed really weird. He's suddenly sobbing tearlessly about the beauty of Elantris after Raoden scrubs a table a little bit. He seemed extremely naive.
Hrathen
I thought he was dry and boring 10 years ago, but now he's my favorite. Some of his viewpoint chapters are a little over the top, but that's more due to Dilaf being clinically insane than anything else.
My favorite part was how Hrathen's attempt to convert the artistocracy instead of the people made so much sense. It reminds me of the creation of the Anglican church. This was great as I really felt like what he did and his reactions made sense. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely a highlight.
And then Fjon jumps out of nowhere and murders Hrathen. Oh how they massacred my boy...
Conclusion
This was mostly a critique of Elantris, and I want to clarify that I really enjoyed the second half of the book. However, I really struggled through the first half. I don't think I'd recommend it to people unless they've read most of Sanderson's other cosmere works already, or really like the premise of the book.
submitted by Arsteel8 to Cosmere [link] [comments]
I remember enjoying both quite well, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my fond memories of the novels were largely due to rose-colored glasses. In the end, I was only partially correct, now having read them again for the first time in 10 years.
I'm going to start with a brief tidbit on Warbreaker before really digging into Elantris.___________________
Warbreaker___________________
This book was a wonderful surprise to re-read. The romance was fun, Lightsong was entertaining. I was very impressed with how well this book held up in my memory. The twists are good, made sense, and had proper foreshadowing.
I don't have much to say because the book was so bloody good. My one nitpick was that the powers of Nightblood felt out of the blue in the resolution of the story. A sword that blows holes in walls at a touch? I wasn't ready for that.
___________________
Elantris___________________
Elantris, however... was showing its age. When I first read it, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Warbreaker. Now, it's the other way around.
In this read, the first half of the novel was dry and I considered setting it down to read something else instead. However, the second half really picked up and I enjoyed the remainder.
First, the amount of change to the society in 10 years was staggering. I thought the entire country should have died after Elantris fell. Sanderson comes out to tell us that (almost) no one knew how to farm because Elantris provided food for all the people. When Elantris fell, a massive portion of the population should have starved to death, or at least had it severely affect the entire nation.
Then there's the problem of Raoden (and most characters) seeming very ignorant of pre-Reod Elantris, despite being alive for more time with pre-Reod Elantris than post-Reod.
Many sections feel like exposition hidden as dialogue, especially the first half. It felt like I was constantly getting hit in the face with a rotting Elantrian board full of exposition. Then oftentimes the characters say what's going to happen, and then it happens! Crazy!
Lastly, the timeline of the plot seemed crazy to me. In the first two weeks or so, Raoden has started a new society within Elantris, Sarene has completely turned the court on its head and snuck into Raoden's group *and* taken it over, and Hrathen has managed to 10x the number of people showing up for Derethi sermons. If this had been over the course of 6 months (or a year) I could have believed it, but this was too fast. It's insane to remember that this entire book took place over two months.
I do understand that part of the reason for the condensed timeline is Hrathen's deadline, but I think I would have preferred him being sent to convert, staying in Arelon for a few months, then being given a 3 month deadline partway through the story.
Oh, and a sidenote: everyone dies. Jeez. Poor Hrathen, Karata, Roial, Iadon, Telrii, Eondel, Eshen... I'm sure I'm missing a few.
Sarene
Sarene's ability to wiggle her way into Raoden's group of nobles irked me immensely, as it struck me as wildly unrealistic. Her viewpoint in particular bothered me; the political intrigue generally felt weak and unrealistic. Her plans were overly broad and high level.
"Let's try sharecropping and make everyone want to work for us!" made little sense, and convincing the other merchants to go along with her plan with hardly a fight made no sense to me.
"Hrathen wants people to hate Elantrians, so I'm going to make people pity them instead!" when she had no idea what he was doing.
"They only say Raoden is dead, I bet there's something more going on here" when I felt there was little reason for her not to believe them. She immediately assumed subterfuge without what I felt counted as a reason to.
"I'll act like a total idiot to fool the king!" when her acting was so bad that only one person fell for it (the king). The only reason I thought this worked was pure luck / plot armor. How did she not realize her acting skills were terrible?
Her infiltration of Raoden's friend group seemed off to me. There was essentially no pushback from people like Roial, literally the second most powerful person in the kingdom, and the other nobles.
Why on earth did they randomly drop that she was previously engaged? Especially after making such a big deal out of no one wanting to be with her. It felt unnecessary and made me very uneasy about Sarene.
Also, the court women felt very... fake. Like, literally all they do in life is gossip and embroider? If that's true, their sudden excitement about fencing surprised me. It didn't make much sense. There was very little hesitance, without the foreshadowing to make the lack of hesitance realistic. It's not easy to make a group of people uniformly change their preferred hobby.
She seems like she's supposed to be a borderline Mary Sue. "I'm good at everything... except art / embroidery" felt like "See, I'm not a Mary Sue! I can't do everything perfectly!" but then seems super clueless so often. It felt very odd to me.
Raoden
In the first readthrough he was my favorite viewpoint. Originally it was Raoden > Sarene > Hrathen. This time was Hrathen > Raoden > Sarene.
More of a Mary Sue than Sarene, wow. Beloved by the people, didn't pick up any bad habits from his father, so incredibly optimistic that it's practically a caricature. Takes over Elantris in a matter of weeks, starts a new society. Has solutions to every problem. Did anyone else in Elantris come up with solutions, or was it only him?
Also, he consistently assumes the worst in people. He won't tell his friends that it's him because he's scared they'll hate an Elantrian. He won't let Shaor's men to the foodcart even in limited numbers. He doesn't explain the situation with Shaor to Sarene because he's scared.
"Why don't they just talk it out" is a critique often leveled at books or characters, but most often I feel there is a reason they don't talk it out. In this book, I really felt those reasons were lacking.
Oh, and Taan's conversion to Raoden's side seemed really weird. He's suddenly sobbing tearlessly about the beauty of Elantris after Raoden scrubs a table a little bit. He seemed extremely naive.
Hrathen
I thought he was dry and boring 10 years ago, but now he's my favorite. Some of his viewpoint chapters are a little over the top, but that's more due to Dilaf being clinically insane than anything else.
My favorite part was how Hrathen's attempt to convert the artistocracy instead of the people made so much sense. It reminds me of the creation of the Anglican church. This was great as I really felt like what he did and his reactions made sense. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely a highlight.
And then Fjon jumps out of nowhere and murders Hrathen. Oh how they massacred my boy...
Conclusion
This was mostly a critique of Elantris, and I want to clarify that I really enjoyed the second half of the book. However, I really struggled through the first half. I don't think I'd recommend it to people unless they've read most of Sanderson's other cosmere works already, or really like the premise of the book.
2023.09.29 18:25 Tatem1961 Were sharecroppers more productive than slave labor? Was it more profitable for plantation/land owners?
One thing that comes up when reading about the lead up to the American Civil War is the abolitionist stance that free labor is more efficient than slave labor. Putting aside whether sharecropping can be truly considered "free" labor, was sharecropping actually more profitable / productive than using enslaved laborers?
submitted by Tatem1961 to AskHistorians [link] [comments]
2023.09.08 07:21 tjweaver24 Tips on reviving the use of spoken Kreyòl in my family?
I (22m) am the eldest out of 5 siblings. I am from an African-American family, and born and raised in California.
My dad's side of my family has always wondered where we came from; there were lots of theories but none of them really held any weight bc we had no real proof to corroborate them. After doing extensive research on Ancestry though, I finally found out that the entire maternal side of my dad's family is originally from Haiti. Our ancestor(s) were shipped off to a Louisiana plantation by their owner (who apparently saw the writing on the wall early and decided to get the heck out of Dodge with his 'property' while he still could) in the months before the violence of the Revolution reached their plantation in Haiti. There were one or two of this person's relatives (also slaves) on the same plantation who escaped, and likely joined up with some maroons afterward, but we dont know for sure. But whomever was not so lucky were removed from the island in a rush and brought to the American Deep South, where conditions were even stricte far less lenient to the ideas of 'equality' and 'liberty' being floated around by slaves.
After the civil war, chattel slavery was abolished, and the family went into sharecropping.
My great-grandpa (born 1913 in Louisiana) was one of the first people in our family to move west from there to Oakland, California. He left most of his family in Louisiana to set himself up in California financially, and meant to send for them all to come out west to join him once he was stable enough to support them. Meanwhile the children stayed in Louisiana with his in-laws (their grandparents). My paternal grandmother (born in 1949) is one of those children; the 2nd youngest out of 6.
A few years after their dad left, the older two boys (who were almost adults) followed their father out west after getting into some 'trouble' with the 'authorities'. In all actuality, they had intervened in an incident where they sternly confronted some white boys harassing a black girl who was walking on the side of the road, and sent them on their way; those same white boys later went and cried wolf to the proper people after the fact. No sooner had they done this, then was it decided by the white community of New Iberia that these two upstart negro boys should be lynched on sight. He and his brother hitched a ride on a train going westward, evading their pursuers and barely escaping with their lives. They would later reunite with their father in Oakland. He advised them never to go back South, and they strictly heeded that advice, starting up their own families here in California instead.
Back in now-late 1950s Louisiana, my grandmother and her sisters went through grade school. She always told stories of living with her grandparents and the people from the generation above them. Certain stories she tells never made sense, until finding out about our heritage. A good example is when she'd recount the times where she remembered being told to go outside and play so that 'the adults could speak'. What was always interesting about these anecdotes of her's was that she said she could never understand what they were talking about when she would try to stay close to the house and 'be nosy'. She said that when the children were busy outside, the adults would begin freely speaking 'with words that sounded more like French, and not like the English they taught us in school'.
In light of the Ancestry information, it now becomes clear that the adults in my grandmother's family were speaking Kreyòl amongst each other. But ufortunately, because they wanted their children and grandchildren to easily assimilate into English-speaking society, free of the stigma that came with their heavy accents, they did not allow the children to learn Kreyòl or really be around them when they spoke it to one another, instead opting to exclusively speak 'proper English' whenever the children of the family were in earshot.
Unfortunately, because of this gatekeeping, Kreyòl as a spoken language in our family effectively died out with them. No one, from my grandmother onward, ever learned it. With the loss of the language came the loss of our family history and shallowed our connection to Haiti and its culture, hence the reason why we even had to 'rediscover' our Haitian heritage anyway.
It's weird. I always wondered why I could understand and relate to my friends and acquaintances who are of Haitian descent more than normal. Even though we don't speak the language, I've found that the overall culture of my family still has many of the quintessential qualities that other Haitians I know always speak about when talking of dealing with their family dynamics. Now it makes sense.
My grandmother finally reunited with her parents and brothers when she came to Dos Palos, CA for secondary school, and ended up meeting my grandad here. They got married right after graduating and established their roots in CA as well. Our family's been out here ever since.
I would like to resurrect spoken Kreyòl in my family to further reconnect us to our heritage. I am learning now, at an ok pace for a beginner (I think). As of right now, I'm using Duolingo. If I can, I'd like to be proficient by the time I decide to settle down and have my own kids, so that they will be able to have the privilege of growing up in a bilingual household. I am also trying to get my siblings (who are younger than me) to do the same and start learning early, in the hopes that we can revive the usage of our mother tongue within a single generation.
Thanks to all who decide to read or comment. Any helpful suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated!
submitted by tjweaver24 to haiti [link] [comments]
My dad's side of my family has always wondered where we came from; there were lots of theories but none of them really held any weight bc we had no real proof to corroborate them. After doing extensive research on Ancestry though, I finally found out that the entire maternal side of my dad's family is originally from Haiti. Our ancestor(s) were shipped off to a Louisiana plantation by their owner (who apparently saw the writing on the wall early and decided to get the heck out of Dodge with his 'property' while he still could) in the months before the violence of the Revolution reached their plantation in Haiti. There were one or two of this person's relatives (also slaves) on the same plantation who escaped, and likely joined up with some maroons afterward, but we dont know for sure. But whomever was not so lucky were removed from the island in a rush and brought to the American Deep South, where conditions were even stricte far less lenient to the ideas of 'equality' and 'liberty' being floated around by slaves.
After the civil war, chattel slavery was abolished, and the family went into sharecropping.
My great-grandpa (born 1913 in Louisiana) was one of the first people in our family to move west from there to Oakland, California. He left most of his family in Louisiana to set himself up in California financially, and meant to send for them all to come out west to join him once he was stable enough to support them. Meanwhile the children stayed in Louisiana with his in-laws (their grandparents). My paternal grandmother (born in 1949) is one of those children; the 2nd youngest out of 6.
A few years after their dad left, the older two boys (who were almost adults) followed their father out west after getting into some 'trouble' with the 'authorities'. In all actuality, they had intervened in an incident where they sternly confronted some white boys harassing a black girl who was walking on the side of the road, and sent them on their way; those same white boys later went and cried wolf to the proper people after the fact. No sooner had they done this, then was it decided by the white community of New Iberia that these two upstart negro boys should be lynched on sight. He and his brother hitched a ride on a train going westward, evading their pursuers and barely escaping with their lives. They would later reunite with their father in Oakland. He advised them never to go back South, and they strictly heeded that advice, starting up their own families here in California instead.
Back in now-late 1950s Louisiana, my grandmother and her sisters went through grade school. She always told stories of living with her grandparents and the people from the generation above them. Certain stories she tells never made sense, until finding out about our heritage. A good example is when she'd recount the times where she remembered being told to go outside and play so that 'the adults could speak'. What was always interesting about these anecdotes of her's was that she said she could never understand what they were talking about when she would try to stay close to the house and 'be nosy'. She said that when the children were busy outside, the adults would begin freely speaking 'with words that sounded more like French, and not like the English they taught us in school'.
In light of the Ancestry information, it now becomes clear that the adults in my grandmother's family were speaking Kreyòl amongst each other. But ufortunately, because they wanted their children and grandchildren to easily assimilate into English-speaking society, free of the stigma that came with their heavy accents, they did not allow the children to learn Kreyòl or really be around them when they spoke it to one another, instead opting to exclusively speak 'proper English' whenever the children of the family were in earshot.
Unfortunately, because of this gatekeeping, Kreyòl as a spoken language in our family effectively died out with them. No one, from my grandmother onward, ever learned it. With the loss of the language came the loss of our family history and shallowed our connection to Haiti and its culture, hence the reason why we even had to 'rediscover' our Haitian heritage anyway.
It's weird. I always wondered why I could understand and relate to my friends and acquaintances who are of Haitian descent more than normal. Even though we don't speak the language, I've found that the overall culture of my family still has many of the quintessential qualities that other Haitians I know always speak about when talking of dealing with their family dynamics. Now it makes sense.
My grandmother finally reunited with her parents and brothers when she came to Dos Palos, CA for secondary school, and ended up meeting my grandad here. They got married right after graduating and established their roots in CA as well. Our family's been out here ever since.
I would like to resurrect spoken Kreyòl in my family to further reconnect us to our heritage. I am learning now, at an ok pace for a beginner (I think). As of right now, I'm using Duolingo. If I can, I'd like to be proficient by the time I decide to settle down and have my own kids, so that they will be able to have the privilege of growing up in a bilingual household. I am also trying to get my siblings (who are younger than me) to do the same and start learning early, in the hopes that we can revive the usage of our mother tongue within a single generation.
Thanks to all who decide to read or comment. Any helpful suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated!
2023.07.02 16:59 RingoCross99 File 184: John Henry (Section 2)
 | submitted by RingoCross99 to u/RingoCross99 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/qq3agf45gk9b1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=201d287dda65ec5a4c98a3335fc9ccc761a24d59 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Chapter 3 Interregnum Two deputies ushered John Henry into the interrogation room with us. His handcuffs were chained to the restraining bar on the table. They left his shackles on, along with the spit mask, which concealed the lower half of his face. The sheriff thanked his terrified deputies and told them they could wait outside the room. Before we could begin, I informed the sheriff that I would need his mask removed. Otherwise, it would hamper our communication. He agreed but warned me that it was for our own good. I browsed over the suspect’s file while waiting for him to undo the straps. The process took much longer than usual. When he did finally finish, I thanked the sheriff and then addressed Mr. Henry: “Greetings. I’m Special Agent Harris, and this is my partner, Special Agent Adams.” He said nothing. Instead, he stared into my eyes with a vacant expression. Seeing that I wasn’t about to back down, he finally spoke. His voice was heavy and steady. It matched his burly lumberjack frame: “Your first name?” “Michelle. Anything else?” “There’s always more.” “Oh really? Like what?” “(13) Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: (14) But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” (James. 1:13-14 KJV). “What are you getting at?” I asked. “Be careful of the company you keep.” “Humph. Why’s that, Mr. Henry?” “Let me pray for you?” “Beg your pardon?” “You are in the serpent’s den,” he said as his eyes wondered over to my partner, Agent Adams. Then he added, “I know an evil spirit when I see one.” “Sure. You can pray for me.” “What! No!” Agent Adams blurted. “Why not? If it’ll make him feel more comfortable. And besides, maybe he’s right. Maybe I am in the serpent’s den,” I told my partner with a keen eye. “(34) You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (35) A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” (Matthew. 12:34-35 NIV). Agent Adams got up from the table in disgust. He flailed his arms around and said, “What the hell? Where’s my freaking vape pen? Every time I try to quit, somebody does something stupid to tick me off.” “Try to ignore him,” I told Mr. Henry. “With pleasure,” he nodded before bowing his head and beginning his prayer. “Father God. Keep Michelle safe during these tumultuous times. Her faith will be tested, but only through you will she find the peace and salvation she so desperately seeks. Better to be blind and of faith, than see and be ignorant of faith. Those serpents who walk amongst you. Do not be fooled by their slithering lies. Walk with the Word of God. Let his divine Word carry you in stride to the gates of the promised land. Let the light of commandment and judgement overcome the darkness and wickedness that surrounds you.” “That was quite an interesting prayer, Mr. Henry.” “Good. I was afraid I may be getting rusty.” “Once a man of the cloth always a man of the cloth. I’m sure your flock misses you.” “I’m sure they do. Now. What do you really want?” he asked with a suspicious eye. “I’m glad you asked. Before we can formally begin the interrogation, I must state for the record to any individual suspected, detained, or in your case, arrested and charged with a crime, that we do not use recorders due to the classified nature and sensitivity of our work. We rely solely on pen and paper to assess the merits of each case under review. How we choose to classify yours will determine what course of action is taken in any future criminal litigation against you. The Department of Paranormal Investigation is an autonomous division within DHS. We fall under the Protocol 7 Initiative, which was signed into existence via Secret Executive Order 1300P7 under the American Governmental Observation and Assistance Program. Even though we are part of DHS we are not subject to any DHS laws or operational procedures due to this initiative. Anything said by you or anyone else in this room is considered classified and cannot leave this room. You do not have the right to an attorney. Anything you say will be used to properly classify your case. You may end the interview at any time, but we reserve the right to proceed with the investigation using emergency countermeasures. The violation of UDHR is part of NWGO Action Code 11: per world order agreement and a separate arrangement: the Treaty of Concord, which is signed by the acting president of the United States every year. This treaty allows us to void the civil rights of any citizen, noncitizen, or unidentified entity upon US soil. Now, if you were indeed contacted by the Devil, we’ll get to the bottom of it. As a DPI agent, I will do my utmost to see that it is done, and that your case is classified properly. We hope that you will fully cooperate with our investigation. It is in your best interest to do so and will help expedite our decision. The information I just shared with you was a mandatory reading of the Treatise on Discourse and Disclosure. This is a diplomatic ex parte that denies legal counsel to anyone we investigate. Do you understand, Mr. Henry?” “I’m not quite sure I do.” Agent Adams blew a large cloud of mist into his face after taking a hit from his vape pen. “I’ll tell you what it all means. It means you have the right to remain silent, but it will be held against you.” “What agency is this again?” “DPI,” he grumbled gruffly. “And you’ve seen this before?” “Tch. What do you think?” “Wouldn’t have asked if I knew.” I quickly chimed in, “Don’t worry, Mr. Henry. We’re the good guys. You have nothing to fear. Just tell us the truth about what happened. If your story checks out, you’ll be free and clear. You have my word.” The Sheriff gave him a pat on the back before telling him, “See. Told ya I’d bring in some folks who could help with this. And I kept my word. Don’t worry, John, you’ll be cleared of this mess in no time.” “Let’s not get too hasty, not until we finish our investigation,” I told him. “He might not look it, but old Henry here wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s been a solid pillar of our community for as long as I been buck hunting.” I put on my reading glasses. A few things in his file stood out. Not wanting to start questioning him just yet, I made more small talk. I wanted to gage his temperament, so I said, “You know my dad used to be a pastor.” “Used to?” “That’s right, ‘used to.’” “Did he lose faith?” “Something like that.” “Very unfortunate.” “His first name is also John,” I mentioned before turning my attention to the crime scene photos. I had to admit they were stomach turning. I placed a finger to his arrest photo and said: “John Lucas Henry. Age 47. Of African American descent. Two kids: Moe and Lauren Henry. Husband of Suzette Henry. Pastor of the Second Flint River Missionary Baptist Church. Veteran, farmer, coal miner, railroad worker, faith healer. Not one person in town has a bad thing to say about you.” Sheriff Giles butted in, “He’s a good man, I tell ya. Ain’t no way he did this.” “Humph. I wonder now. How did a good man wind up murdering his entire family?” He stared silently into my eyes for a moment before speaking, “(29) If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown to hell. (30) And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew. 5:29-30 NIV). Agent Adams let out a very audile groan. He had been standing in the corner, vaping away up until that point. After Mr. Henry had quoted yet another bible verse, he began to impatiently pace back and forth, checking his wristwatch periodically. When I looked over at him, to see if he had anything to add, he gave me an annoyed expression. The one he always gave when he wasn’t getting his way. Then he turned his attention to Mr. Henry and grunted, “Ugh. Looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while. Should I grab a Snickers while we’re at it? Huh, Mr. Henry?” He simply shrugged and said, “Do as you will, evildoer.” “Wow. Isn’t that grand, the pot just called the kettle black,” Agent Adams muttered. “Don’t mind him, he’s always this fussy,” I informed Mr. Henry and the sheriff. The sheriff seemed surprised by Agent Adams’ conduct. After computing it in his head for a while, he had what he thought was an “ah-ha” moment. He thought we were using the tried and true “good cop bad cop” routine. I let him believe it. Even though I knew our tactics weren’t a ruse, it was better this way. Knowing that Agent Adams was always this indecorous would’ve just made the investigation that much harder. So, with that in mind, I began reading from the report, adding a decorous touch as I did so, to really drive home my role as the good cop. “You seem like a good guy. But these crimes... I don’t know... Says here you savagely murdered your wife and children with a sledgehammer. That true? I mean, I’m sure a big-strong guy like you had no problem swinging that thing around like a broomstick.” Mr. Henry growled but said nothing. He just stared at me as if I had no clue. Agent Adams chuckled. “He did what?” “You didn’t read the report?” “No. I only glanced over it. Did he really kill his family with a sledgehammer?” “That’s what the report says.” Agent Adams stopped pacing and vaping long enough to glance over at Mr. Henry. He just shook his head and smiled derisively at him. “Tsk, tsk, Mr. Henry. You’re the demonic version of the legendary John Henry.” This was how the interview pretty much went. With me trying to pry valuable information out of the suspect while my partner did nothing but make snide remarks. His antics aside, the gist of what I was able to gather from his story went a little something like this: John Lucas Henry was born in 1972 in Savanah Georgia. He is the youngest of seven. Their family grew up impoverished by all metrics, or what he likes to call, and I quote, “poorer than a poor man’s rainy day.” He did share a few stories about his childhood but claims not to remember much about his formative years. He didn’t speak too highly of his late father but loves his mother dearly. He shone with pride when he told me that she was still hanging around in the “swamps of the living,” as he called it. His fondest memories from childhood stem from helping the local church. He recalled going there almost every day to help keep “God’s temple” pristine. Later, when he was a fair bit older, he told me about his fondness for bible study, and about the first time he got to lead the opening prayer for Thursday evening church service. His parents worked as sharecroppers all the way up until the practice was phased out of Georgia sometime in the mid to late fifties. He smiled when recalling the day his family packed up everything they owned and threw it in the back of the rusty old-beat-up Forrester Green truck his dad had owned for as long as he could remember the sun shining. They wanted better for their children and traded in a hard life of sharecropping for a one room shack in the bucolic town of Mauk when he was a young boy. He is an avid hunter and fisherman and misses doing both with his four brothers. The only trouble prior to this incident came when he was sixteen. He got caught by the sheriff illegally scrapping metal and junk parts to help put food on the table. He told me this is why he enlisted in the army, so he could help feed his family. He joined when he was seventeen. Served with honor and distinct for four years, before returning home to Georgia to help bury his father who died after a long battle with lung cancer. He’s spent time as a drifter, coal miner, and railroad worker. He settled back in Mauk when he was twenty-nine, married his childhood sweetheart, and rebuilt the same old church he grew up attending. The place is a glorified shack, but his ministry and faith healing bring in enough to carve out a modest living. The only noteworthy thing to come out of the interview happened at the end when I asked him “Why did he do it? Why did he take a hammer to his loved ones?” He replied with “the devil made me.” Mr. Henry never denied killing his family just that it wasn’t his fault. He swore up and down that he loved them and would never hurt them. He was thoroughly convinced that it was the voice inside his head that had compelled him to commit his vile deeds. Agent Adams got a good snicker out of his assertion and repeated, “The devil made me do it,” loud and grand enough to get under everyone’s skin. That was pretty much it. I thanked the sheriff for his hospitality and Mr. Henry for giving me the information I needed to finish my report. The drive back to our hotel wasn’t too bad. We did stop to pick up some Chinese from the eatery the sheriff mentioned. My partner was livid for most of the ride. He cursed the resource department for assigning us to a bogus case and claimed that they were amateurs. I held my opinion in reserve. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to him double down on his crude remarks with even cruder ones. We stopped at the local shop to pick up supplies. Adams’ foul mood changed for the better almost as soon as we walked in. He immediately gravitated towards the sweets and grabbed a pack of candy cigarettes. “Wow. I haven’t seen these since I was a kid.” His comment intrigued me. I asked him to elaborate, and he told me, “Jacob and Rosalyn would get me these all the time. Every time we’d go fishing, we’d stop by the general store, grab some bait, and I would ask Jacob to buy me a box of these. Oh man. They’re the exact same ones. I have to buy some,” he expressed a bit exasperated and stupefied by the delightful coincidence. I never heard someone refer to their real parents by their first names, but when I asked, he confirmed that they were indeed his biological parents. He wasn’t surprised by my question. I wanted to dig deeper, but the moment had already passed. All it took was for the clerk to politely mention that they did not carry any vaping products for him to be back to his glum old self. When we left the store, he offered to drive the rest of the way. He told me he needed something to do to keep his mind off the thought of nicotine. I didn’t mind. In fact, I gave him a few words of encouragement along with the keys. I told him that he did right by not giving in to his vice and jokingly suggested that the candy cigarettes could act as a temporary replacement if he closed his eyes and tried hard enough. He scoffed at my attempt at humor but thanked me halfheartedly for the kind words in the same scoff. Then he grumbled obscenities to himself about the summer heat and how unfair it was that he would have to dip into his vaping reserves. I tried to review my notes during the car ride, but his singing was awful. He kept asking if I enjoyed this or that song, and I kept saying no. When he asked if I liked the Wallflowers, I told him they stunk, which nearly drove him off the ledge, which I found moderately amusing. Much more amusing than his dreadful singing. When we made it back to our hotel, before getting out the vehicle, he coldly looked over at me and said, “Look, Michelle, I know you. Just hear me out. You don’t have to say anything. Ok? You think there’s more to the case, but there isn’t. You’re not going to find anything if you dig deeper. What I need from you, right now, is for you to go to your room and enjoy your Chinese. Listen to some good music while you finish your report and pack. You’re for sure going to classify this as a nonparanormal event and forward your findings over to that gullible sheriff, so we can hop on the next plane out here, first thing in the morning. Got it?” “Shouldn’t we at least get our field coordinator to sign off on my report? You know, before we hand the case over all willy-nilly? “Willy-nilly,” he chuckled and groaned incredulously before saying, “Just do it, Michelle. I’ll deal with him when we get back.” I told him I would consider it. And if he didn’t like my response, I was more than happy to forward over my notes so he could share in the task. He of course declined and quickly changed the subject. As soon as I made it to my room. I jumped into my work. After reviewing all the evidence, I concluded that John Henry’s case was indeed a severe case of dissociative identity disorder. It was once called multiple personality disorder, but we do not use this name anymore, given its negative and distorted connotation. What I concluded was that a part of Mr. Henry was completely unaware of what the other part was doing. This was suspected from the beginning, but it wasn’t made evident to me until the interview. I say this because Mr. Henry demonstrated traits typical of the disorder, such as dissociation and deep depersonalization. He barely spoke or responded to questioning. And when he did, his remarks were often unfitting. His bizarre unsocialization may have spawned shortly before or after murdering his entire family. This is atypical but can be triggered during one of the three phases of psychosis. In my opinion, Mr. Henry should be transferred to a mental facility for proper treatment. His inability to control his behavior in certain mental states, combined with his difficulty understanding that what he thinks and feels effects how he behaves and acts, is extremely concerning, making him, in my professional opinion, an extreme danger to the public at large. I took a deep sigh after finishing my report. Not because I was relieved that it was over, but because I didn’t receive that usual sense of fulfillment I got whenever rapping up a case. A thought lingered in my head as I ate what was now cold cuisine. Something wasn’t right. And whenever I had a gut feeling that was this strong, I was never wrong. I closed my laptop and asked myself, “What am I missing? Come on, Michelle, think.” I knew it wasn’t a case of possession because this wasn’t how possession worked. I found this out when my sister passed away. Possession is a very haphazard affair that needs an object, which in turn, works as a conduit between the possessor (spirit) and possessed (person). In my sister’s case, it was an antique mirror from the Victorian era that did the trick. I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. The televangelist on the television screen caught my attention with his evangelizing. The image drove me crazy. What were my instincts trying to tell me. “Come on, think, Michelle. Think! This isn’t right and you know it.” That’s when it hit me. As I sat there twirling cold noodles with my fork, pondering something Mr. Henry said. I didn’t think it was anything of note at the time, but when he talked about the voice in his head, he claimed that it was, and I quote, “That tricky old serpent loves to play. Disguising his voice as a woman’s so I wouldn’t think it was him. Once a trickster always a trickster.” This innocuous detail almost went right over my head. The memory and moment when it all clicked still haunts me to this day. Because if I would’ve caught it sooner, maybe the case would’ve had a different outcome. Sadly, it all makes sense now. Ok. What am I talking about? I want you to picture “the Devil.” Whatever you’re thinking is probably wrong. Forget the banal images of a jester, jokester, or horned demon. Not even my partner knows much about him, and he always has a beat or two on the occult. I think he’s met just about all the heavy hitters except for him. He wasn’t the type you wanted to meet. The last thing he’d do is be the voice inside your head. He simply wasn’t the type to play charades. He preferred to get his hands dirty. But, alas, his story is one for another day. I called Agent Adams and asked him to hear me out. I said this because I already knew he wasn’t expecting to hear from me until tomorrow. He reluctantly agreed and I reluctantly shared my theory. When I told him everything I mentioned prior, he agreed that it was odd. And then, to my surprise, he mumbled a few expletives before insisting that he had to make a few phone calls. He refused to explain anything further and said that he’d call me back. I paced up and down my cramped room while waiting for his return call. Even though I would never do it, I could see why he vaped. Times like this really wreaked havoc on my nerves. I’d say about fifteen minutes later, he was at my door, banging on it like a madman. He was still putting on his suit jacket when I opened it. He didn’t even wait, he just blurted out that we had to leave. When I asked where, he said back to the jailhouse. |
2023.05.05 02:50 Warm_Difference_389 Can someone please grade my LEQ response?
I'm nervous that I'm writing it entirely wrong and the AP test is tomorrow...
Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the Civil War fostered change in the United States economy in the period from 1861 to 1900.
Essay: From when the Civil War started compared to the beginning of the 20th century, the United States economy changed entirely. Before the Civil War, the southern economy had completely relied on slavery. This was because of farming. The employment of slaves allowed for the tobacco and cotton industries of the South to thrive. However, unlike the South, the North had no farming and relied entirely on manufacturing. When Abraham Lincoln became president in the Election of 1860, everything started to change. As the abolitionist movement grew, Lincoln was faced with more and more pressure to abolish slavery. To protect their economy, the South seceded from the Union, causing the Civil War, during which Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves. After a few years the North won and America remained united. In the period of 1861 to 1900, the Civil War caused significant change in the United States economy through the abolishment of slavery; allowing for the boom of industrialization in the North.
Although they were “free,” after the Civil War ended, many former slaves were stuck in the South. Because it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write, the vast majority of former slaves were entirely illiterate. As a result, many continued to work on plantations for their former owners. They were employed under a system called sharecropping. Instead of working for free like before, former slaves were allowed to keep and sell a minuscule percentage of the crops they produce. The system of sharecropping did not differ largely from slavery, however, as sharecropping paid very little and for the most part African-Americans were treated the same as when they were enslaved.
Contradictory to the South, the Northern economy thrived. Beginning around the early 1870s, industrialization in the North boomed. Factories sprung up in cities everywhere, inviting an influx of immigrants to work there. The owners of these corporations also hired women and children with the idea that, just like immigrants, the owners could force them to work exceptionally long hours for very unfair wages. These ruthless business practices allowed for trusts and monopolies to form. The owners of these monopolies, often called robber barons, lived lavishly, despite the struggles of the employees that work for them.
In conclusion, results from the Civil War allowed for America to thrive for a prolonged period of time. The significant change in the United States economy from 1861 to 1900 is comparable to the Era of Good Feelings as political strife and sectionalism largely decreased throughout the time period and there was a development of industry.
If someone could grade this asap it would be much appreciated!
Here is the rubric: http://www.sultztonianinstitute.com/uploads/7/8/5/5/7855396/leq-rubric.pdf
submitted by Warm_Difference_389 to APUSH [link] [comments]
Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the Civil War fostered change in the United States economy in the period from 1861 to 1900.
Essay: From when the Civil War started compared to the beginning of the 20th century, the United States economy changed entirely. Before the Civil War, the southern economy had completely relied on slavery. This was because of farming. The employment of slaves allowed for the tobacco and cotton industries of the South to thrive. However, unlike the South, the North had no farming and relied entirely on manufacturing. When Abraham Lincoln became president in the Election of 1860, everything started to change. As the abolitionist movement grew, Lincoln was faced with more and more pressure to abolish slavery. To protect their economy, the South seceded from the Union, causing the Civil War, during which Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves. After a few years the North won and America remained united. In the period of 1861 to 1900, the Civil War caused significant change in the United States economy through the abolishment of slavery; allowing for the boom of industrialization in the North.
Although they were “free,” after the Civil War ended, many former slaves were stuck in the South. Because it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write, the vast majority of former slaves were entirely illiterate. As a result, many continued to work on plantations for their former owners. They were employed under a system called sharecropping. Instead of working for free like before, former slaves were allowed to keep and sell a minuscule percentage of the crops they produce. The system of sharecropping did not differ largely from slavery, however, as sharecropping paid very little and for the most part African-Americans were treated the same as when they were enslaved.
Contradictory to the South, the Northern economy thrived. Beginning around the early 1870s, industrialization in the North boomed. Factories sprung up in cities everywhere, inviting an influx of immigrants to work there. The owners of these corporations also hired women and children with the idea that, just like immigrants, the owners could force them to work exceptionally long hours for very unfair wages. These ruthless business practices allowed for trusts and monopolies to form. The owners of these monopolies, often called robber barons, lived lavishly, despite the struggles of the employees that work for them.
In conclusion, results from the Civil War allowed for America to thrive for a prolonged period of time. The significant change in the United States economy from 1861 to 1900 is comparable to the Era of Good Feelings as political strife and sectionalism largely decreased throughout the time period and there was a development of industry.
If someone could grade this asap it would be much appreciated!
Here is the rubric: http://www.sultztonianinstitute.com/uploads/7/8/5/5/7855396/leq-rubric.pdf
2023.02.28 22:50 Amazing-Barracuda496 Draft response for AskHistorians, in progress
I mean, I had assumed your question pertained to chattel slavery in the United States specifically, but if you wanted to go further back in history, and discuss slavery in the broader sense of the word than just chattel slavery, we could also discuss indentured servitude, and how some people were actually forced into indentured servitude, or lured in by fraud. Indentured servitude, unlikely chattel slavery in the antebellum USA, could legally (not just illegally) apply to people considered to be "white". Although, again, this dates back to earlier in the history of the United States, including before the United States had actually been formed, and some of the land that is now part of the United States was instead part of British colonies. Three significant things to note about this are:
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
And this is the definition of slavery from the ancient Roman jurist Florentinus,
So, although both can chattel slavery and involuntary indentured servitude be considered slavery under present-day international law (and other some other definitions, e.g. the definition of the ancient Roman jurist Florentinus), the following examples highlight some of the differences between chattel slavery and indentured servitude (including involuntary indentured servitude). Essentially, we're looking at an institution (chattel slavery) where enslavers had nearly unlimited control over the enslaved (except during periods of gradual abolition), versus another institution (involuntary indentured servitude, which was under the same laws as voluntary or allegedly voluntary indentured servitude) where the enslavers had much more limited control over the enslaved (but could still legally inflict some degree of torture).
So, this is with respect to chattel slavery, and is from a decision written by Judge Thomas Ruffin circa 1829,
You can see a statue of Thomas Ruffin here:
https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/152/
And this is from a 1662 law from Virginia which attempted to limit the degree of cruelty that the "masters" of indentured servants could inflict on said indentured servants. Note that it did not prohibit all cruelty, and still allowed "moderate correction", most likely a euphemism for whipping,
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeb02virg/page/116/mode/2up?q=cruell
Both indentured servitude and chattel slavery were institutions which evolved over time and varied from one location to another, and tracking those changes and differences would be a much longer discussion, but what I am trying to communicate was that a) people could be tortured under both institutions, but also, b) chattel slavery was a much harsher institution overall. But then again, if a rapist argued in court that he had only engaged in "mild non-consensual sex", we would not expect a modern jury to let him go. If a human trafficker told a court he had only used "mild torture" to force his victims to work, we would not expect a modern jury to buy that and let him go. It's generally understood that crimes such as "rape", "human trafficking", etc, are broader terms intended to hold criminals accountable, not narrow terms intended to apply exclusively to the worst case scenarios.
It's worth noting that quote unquote "moderate correction" was still potentially lethal, and this has implications for understanding the cruelty of both chattel slavery and indentured servitude (including involuntary indentured servitude).
According to medical knowledge dating back to around 1846, it is apparently possible for a person to die of flogging nearly a month after the flogging actually happened. Such was apparently the case of the death of Frederick John White, a British army private who was flogged on 15 June 1846 and died on 11 July. There were multiple autopsies performed by multiple medical professionals who had multiple opinions on the matter, but eventually one Erasmus Wilson was able to convince an inquest jury that Frederick John White had indeed died of flogging.
See for example:
"On the skin of a soldier: The story of flogging" by Diana Garrisi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clindermatol.2014.12.018
"What actually happens when you get flogged" by Diana Garrisi https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/what-actually-happens-when-you-get-flogged-death
If you want to see a photo of Frederick John White's grave, you can look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mualphachi/4857272434
The following is from the following is from the 1878 trial of a Brazilian enslaver, who legally owned a coffee plantation. For context, this was 10 years before the the end of legal chattel slavery in Brazil, and the abolitionist movement was growing in strength. So, basically, by the time this argument was made, gradual abolition was already in progress. Anyway, in this argument, the person admits that even so-called "moderate" punishment (read: torture) was still potentially lethal,
https://archive.org/details/childrenofgodsfi0000conpage/312/mode/2up?q=moderate
Concerning how indentured servitude was sometimes involuntary, this could happen by both legal and illegal methods. Concerning illegal methods, consider Captain Azariah Daniel, who in the 1600s confessed to kidnapping about 150 children and selling them abroad, presumably, to become indentured servants (involuntarily) in Barbados. It's difficult to say with any degree of certainty how often such things happened, or how many such people ended up in the colonies that would later form the United States (as opposed to other places like Barbados). However, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh note that in that time period, the theft of horses was, in England, punished more severely than the theft of people. E.g., in 1680, Ann Servant confessed to physically attacking a woman named Alice Flax and selling her abroad. Ann Servant was fined only 13 shillings, whereas a horse thief would have been hanged. Another author, Gail Collins, confirms the story about Ann Servant and Alice Flax.
https://archive.org/details/whitecargoforgot0000jord/page/132/mode/2up?q=azariah
https://books.google.ch/books/about/The_Grand_Kidnapper_at_Last_Taken_Or_a_F.html?id=wFWmAQAACAAJ
https://www.proquest.com/docview/2264217159
https://archive.org/details/whitecargoforgot0000jord/page/134/mode/2up?q=horse
https://archive.org/details/americaswomen00gail/page/8/mode/2up?q=flax
Regarding the legal methods people could be forced into indentured servitude back then, England at the time had some very unjust laws, both in England itself and in conquered territories like Ireland. So, for example, in The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, John Patrick Prendergast notes that circa 1654, various English governors in Ireland "had orders to arrest and deliver to Captain Thomas Morgan, Dudley North, and John Johnson, English merchants, all wanderers, men and women, and such other Irish within their precincts as should not prove they had such settled course of industry as yielded them a means of their own to maintain them, all such children as were in hospitals or workhouses, all prisoners, men and women, to be transported to the West Indies." Given the context, the social and economic upheaval in the wake of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, there would have been a lot of "wanderers".
https://archive.org/details/cromwelliansettl01pren/page/90/mode/2up?q=wanderers
Also of interest:
https://archive.org/details/irishabroadrecor00odon/page/26/mode/2up?q=pouncing
https://archive.org/details/whiteservitudein00ballrich/page/94/mode/2up?q=slaves
Anyway, the insistence of some people on using what are essentially slaveocrat definitions of slavery has unfortunate implications when we look at the gradual abolition process of racial slavery, as it occurred in many places. Two give two examples, consider convict leasing in the USA and various things done to so-called "free womb captives" in Columbia. Basically, a narrow definition of slavery that doesn't include involuntary indentured servitude would also be too narrow to cover convict leasing in the USA and various things done to so-called "free womb captives" in Columbia. If we use such a narrow definition, then we fail to appreciate how long racial slavery continued.
In the United States, after the Civil War, racial slavery persisted in the form of "convict leasing", which met the international legal definition of slavery, or, if you prefer, Florentinus's definition of slavery, but didn't meet the full definition of chattel slavery (not for life if you lived long enough, not hereditary, and so on). Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon discusses, among other topics, how in the post-US Civil War period, people, generally black people, were arrested for alleged "crimes" such as "changing employers without permission", "selling cotton after sunset", "using abusive language in the presence of a white woman", and even "not given", convicted without due process, and sentenced to a form of slavery known as "convict leasing" where they were forced to work in places like coal mines and cotton plantations. Also, the threat of convict leasing served to keep people stuck in what might be considered lesser forms of slavery, like sharecropping. (Like, if your reason for staying in a sharecropping arrangement is that you're afraid of being sent to a coal mine, that's basically a type of slavery, yes?)
You can read Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon on archive dot org.
https://archive.org/details/slaverybyanother00blac_0
Another example is Columbia. The "gradual abolition" process of Columbia included a number of forms of unfree labor that met the international legal definition of slavery, or, if you prefer, Florentinus's definition of slavery, including various things done to so-called free womb captives, but did not meet the full definition of chattel slavery. This is discussed in the book Freedom's Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Columbian Black Pacific by Yesenia Barragan.
submitted by Amazing-Barracuda496 to u/Amazing-Barracuda496 [link] [comments]
- indentured servitude, including involuntary indentured servitude, was distinct and separate from the institution of chattel slavery -- usually not hereditary, generally not for life if you lived long enough, more recognized legal rights relative to people in chattel slavery (although still not enough to save them from being whipped), plus also indentured servants got preferential treatment relative to people in chattel slavery in at least some cases, etc,
- under the laws of the time period, indentured servitude wasn't classified as slavery, though it should be remembered that said laws were written by slaveocrats, and thus their definitions should be considered suspect in the same way a definition of rape written by rapists should be considered suspect,
- if such a thing happened today (that is, people being kidnapped, by fraud or by outright physical force, into a temporary, non-hereditary form of forced labor), we would classify it as slavery under present-day international law (as well as many national laws). Sometimes, we might call it "human trafficking". And it's not only modern-day international law, such a thing would also be classified as slavery using older definitions, e.g. the definition of the ancient Roman jurist Florentinus is also broad enough to include such things. So, if some people forced into indentured servitude considered themselves enslaved, it wasn't mere metaphor, it was just them rejecting definitions written by slaveocrats. Basically, the narrow definitions of slavery written by slaveocrats are part of a repeating historical pattern of slaveocrats trying to get away with slavery by instituting some reforms (sometimes known as "gradual abolition") and re-writing the dictionary.
Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised."For more information about the international legal definition of slavery and how to interpret it, please see "The Bellagio–Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery"
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
And this is the definition of slavery from the ancient Roman jurist Florentinus,
Slavery is an institution of the Law of Nations by means of which anyone may subject one man to the control of another, contrary to nature.https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fAnglica/D1_Scott.htm
So, although both can chattel slavery and involuntary indentured servitude be considered slavery under present-day international law (and other some other definitions, e.g. the definition of the ancient Roman jurist Florentinus), the following examples highlight some of the differences between chattel slavery and indentured servitude (including involuntary indentured servitude). Essentially, we're looking at an institution (chattel slavery) where enslavers had nearly unlimited control over the enslaved (except during periods of gradual abolition), versus another institution (involuntary indentured servitude, which was under the same laws as voluntary or allegedly voluntary indentured servitude) where the enslavers had much more limited control over the enslaved (but could still legally inflict some degree of torture).
So, this is with respect to chattel slavery, and is from a decision written by Judge Thomas Ruffin circa 1829,
Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.https://archive.org/details/americanslavecod00gooduoft/page/156/mode/2up?q=uncontrolled
You can see a statue of Thomas Ruffin here:
https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/152/
And this is from a 1662 law from Virginia which attempted to limit the degree of cruelty that the "masters" of indentured servants could inflict on said indentured servants. Note that it did not prohibit all cruelty, and still allowed "moderate correction", most likely a euphemism for whipping,
WHEREAS the barbarous usuage of some servants by cruell masters bring soe much scandall and infamy to the country in generall, that people who would willingly adventure themselves hither, are through feare thereof diverted, and by that meanes the supplies of particuler men and the well seating his majesties country very much obstructed, Be it therefore enacted that every master shall provide for his servants compotent dyett, clothing and lodging, and that he shall not exceed the bounds of moderation in correcting them beyond the meritt of their offences; and that it shalbe lawfull for any servant giving notice to their masters (haveing just cause of complaint against them) for harsh and bad usage, or else for want of dyett or convenient necessaries to repaire to the next commissioner to make his or their complaint, and if the said commissioner shall find by just proofes that the said servants cause of complaint is just the said commissioner is hereby required to give order for the warning of such master to the next county court where the matter in difference shalbe determined, and the servant have remedy for his grievances.https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/cruelty-of-masters-prohibited-1662/
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeb02virg/page/116/mode/2up?q=cruell
Both indentured servitude and chattel slavery were institutions which evolved over time and varied from one location to another, and tracking those changes and differences would be a much longer discussion, but what I am trying to communicate was that a) people could be tortured under both institutions, but also, b) chattel slavery was a much harsher institution overall. But then again, if a rapist argued in court that he had only engaged in "mild non-consensual sex", we would not expect a modern jury to let him go. If a human trafficker told a court he had only used "mild torture" to force his victims to work, we would not expect a modern jury to buy that and let him go. It's generally understood that crimes such as "rape", "human trafficking", etc, are broader terms intended to hold criminals accountable, not narrow terms intended to apply exclusively to the worst case scenarios.
It's worth noting that quote unquote "moderate correction" was still potentially lethal, and this has implications for understanding the cruelty of both chattel slavery and indentured servitude (including involuntary indentured servitude).
According to medical knowledge dating back to around 1846, it is apparently possible for a person to die of flogging nearly a month after the flogging actually happened. Such was apparently the case of the death of Frederick John White, a British army private who was flogged on 15 June 1846 and died on 11 July. There were multiple autopsies performed by multiple medical professionals who had multiple opinions on the matter, but eventually one Erasmus Wilson was able to convince an inquest jury that Frederick John White had indeed died of flogging.
See for example:
"On the skin of a soldier: The story of flogging" by Diana Garrisi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clindermatol.2014.12.018
"What actually happens when you get flogged" by Diana Garrisi https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/what-actually-happens-when-you-get-flogged-death
If you want to see a photo of Frederick John White's grave, you can look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mualphachi/4857272434
The following is from the following is from the 1878 trial of a Brazilian enslaver, who legally owned a coffee plantation. For context, this was 10 years before the the end of legal chattel slavery in Brazil, and the abolitionist movement was growing in strength. So, basically, by the time this argument was made, gradual abolition was already in progress. Anyway, in this argument, the person admits that even so-called "moderate" punishment (read: torture) was still potentially lethal,
If we were to regard the accused as criminals because they have punished slaves, there would be two possible conclusions: either all the planters would be criminals, or no punishments at all would be possible, however moderate they might be.Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil, edited by Robert Edgar Conrad. Section 7.6 "This, Then, Is Not a Crime": The Trial of a Coffee Planter Accused of Brutal Punishment (1878)
We say "however moderate they might be" because a few lashes, or even one, will cause bruises, which can result in tetanus or gangrene and bring about serious health problems and even death.
As long as we have slaves, our system of justice must guarantee this right to the masters, just as it must guarantee his right to his machines. In a conflict between the master and the slave, in the present order of things our system of justice must take the side of the master, if the latter is not convicted of uncommon perversity or of premeditated murder. Otherwise the reins of discipline will go slack, and we will be incapable of holding back the waves of disobedience.
https://archive.org/details/childrenofgodsfi0000conpage/312/mode/2up?q=moderate
Concerning how indentured servitude was sometimes involuntary, this could happen by both legal and illegal methods. Concerning illegal methods, consider Captain Azariah Daniel, who in the 1600s confessed to kidnapping about 150 children and selling them abroad, presumably, to become indentured servants (involuntarily) in Barbados. It's difficult to say with any degree of certainty how often such things happened, or how many such people ended up in the colonies that would later form the United States (as opposed to other places like Barbados). However, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh note that in that time period, the theft of horses was, in England, punished more severely than the theft of people. E.g., in 1680, Ann Servant confessed to physically attacking a woman named Alice Flax and selling her abroad. Ann Servant was fined only 13 shillings, whereas a horse thief would have been hanged. Another author, Gail Collins, confirms the story about Ann Servant and Alice Flax.
https://archive.org/details/whitecargoforgot0000jord/page/132/mode/2up?q=azariah
https://books.google.ch/books/about/The_Grand_Kidnapper_at_Last_Taken_Or_a_F.html?id=wFWmAQAACAAJ
https://www.proquest.com/docview/2264217159
https://archive.org/details/whitecargoforgot0000jord/page/134/mode/2up?q=horse
https://archive.org/details/americaswomen00gail/page/8/mode/2up?q=flax
Regarding the legal methods people could be forced into indentured servitude back then, England at the time had some very unjust laws, both in England itself and in conquered territories like Ireland. So, for example, in The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, John Patrick Prendergast notes that circa 1654, various English governors in Ireland "had orders to arrest and deliver to Captain Thomas Morgan, Dudley North, and John Johnson, English merchants, all wanderers, men and women, and such other Irish within their precincts as should not prove they had such settled course of industry as yielded them a means of their own to maintain them, all such children as were in hospitals or workhouses, all prisoners, men and women, to be transported to the West Indies." Given the context, the social and economic upheaval in the wake of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, there would have been a lot of "wanderers".
https://archive.org/details/cromwelliansettl01pren/page/90/mode/2up?q=wanderers
Also of interest:
https://archive.org/details/irishabroadrecor00odon/page/26/mode/2up?q=pouncing
https://archive.org/details/whiteservitudein00ballrich/page/94/mode/2up?q=slaves
Anyway, the insistence of some people on using what are essentially slaveocrat definitions of slavery has unfortunate implications when we look at the gradual abolition process of racial slavery, as it occurred in many places. Two give two examples, consider convict leasing in the USA and various things done to so-called "free womb captives" in Columbia. Basically, a narrow definition of slavery that doesn't include involuntary indentured servitude would also be too narrow to cover convict leasing in the USA and various things done to so-called "free womb captives" in Columbia. If we use such a narrow definition, then we fail to appreciate how long racial slavery continued.
In the United States, after the Civil War, racial slavery persisted in the form of "convict leasing", which met the international legal definition of slavery, or, if you prefer, Florentinus's definition of slavery, but didn't meet the full definition of chattel slavery (not for life if you lived long enough, not hereditary, and so on). Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon discusses, among other topics, how in the post-US Civil War period, people, generally black people, were arrested for alleged "crimes" such as "changing employers without permission", "selling cotton after sunset", "using abusive language in the presence of a white woman", and even "not given", convicted without due process, and sentenced to a form of slavery known as "convict leasing" where they were forced to work in places like coal mines and cotton plantations. Also, the threat of convict leasing served to keep people stuck in what might be considered lesser forms of slavery, like sharecropping. (Like, if your reason for staying in a sharecropping arrangement is that you're afraid of being sent to a coal mine, that's basically a type of slavery, yes?)
You can read Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon on archive dot org.
https://archive.org/details/slaverybyanother00blac_0
Another example is Columbia. The "gradual abolition" process of Columbia included a number of forms of unfree labor that met the international legal definition of slavery, or, if you prefer, Florentinus's definition of slavery, including various things done to so-called free womb captives, but did not meet the full definition of chattel slavery. This is discussed in the book Freedom's Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Columbian Black Pacific by Yesenia Barragan.
2023.01.15 04:42 RememberRossetti Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, A Review
This book is the latest work of Dierdre McCloskey, an economic historian who was recently affiliated with the IDW-adjacent University of Austin, and her co-author Art Carden. Both identify themselves as classical liberals, and their book makes the case that the spread of certain “bourgeois values”, the values of pro-innovation liberalism, is responsible for the massive surge in economic growth the world has experienced since 1800. Before proceeding, I should note an important point from their preface. This book is admittedly a breezier summation of McCloskey’s three much larger, more detailed works on economic history; the author’s compare it to the Ancient Greek satyr play, a comical fourth performance that would cap off three more serious ones. At times, that leads to arguments that feel excessively truncated. For instance, though this book is supposedly about how liberal ideas produced economic development, that topic truly only covers section three of the book, consisting of about 40 pages. I’ll address the four sections of the book below, which cover the following topics: 1. The scale of society’s economic development since 1800; 2. Things that did not cause that aforementioned development; 3. The ideas that did; and 4. A defense of humanist liberalism.
The first section is a retread of optimistic works like Hans Rolling’s Factfulness and the books of Stephen Pinker. It explains that, contrary to the opinions of society’s pessimists, things have gotten a lot better over the last two hundred years and are still getting better now. The section begins with the admittedly astonishing fact that total global economic growth has topped 3000% since 1800. This is undeniably an incredible feat that demands explanation (which we’ll get to later). This fact is also accompanied by some more dubious ones. For example, the authors report that consumption per person in 1800 was $3/day, but is now $33/day on average. This could be an accurate reporting of the mean (I couldn’t trace it), but the median is far lower. Half of the world’s people still live on $5.50 per day or less. And these statistics ignore the fact that much of the goods needed to furnish a living in 1800 were not yet bought and sold as commodities (and were thus excluded from these calculations entirely or sold at prices much higher than their market price would otherwise have been had everyone acquired said goods in the market). They also fail to note the many ways in which living standards have declined in the last half century, which largely animates the belief that things are no longer improving. The authors instead note that median weekly wages in the United States are currently at records highs. And that is true, thanks to the economic recovery and currently tight labor market, but it’s also true that those median weekly earnings saw no growth at all between 1979 (when the Fed began collecting this piece of data) and 2014. To summarize, the world has gotten a lot better since 1800, even if not quite as better as the authors would like us to believe. In the last half-century, some economic metrics have improved, many stagnated, and a few worsened. But that’s the smallest of the problems with this book.
In order to fixate on ideas as the primary cause of economic growth, all other potential causes must be discredited. Sometimes this is done in strange ways. For example, the rise of China (and the Soviet Union and Brazil) is a big reason for the rise in global living standards that the author’s rightly celebrate, yet the only explanation we get for China’s growth is a brief sentence that attributes the nation’s success to reformers who were inspired by Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” They also dismiss Marxist theories about capital accumulation driving growth by pointing out that wealth has always been accumulated through savings and empire, but never before produced the sort of growth under discussion. But this ignores the fact that Marx did not equate wealth with capital and did not consider all wealthy persons to be capitalists. Marx himself acknowledged that through the capitalist process of production enromous growth could be achieved through capitalists’ continuous efforts to gain that ephemeral bit of surplus value through the more productive use of his resources. This is what Capital, his main life’s work, is all about. It even explicitly spells out the differences between the capitalist and the miser. Where Marx differs from the authors is that he attributes the attaining of that surplus value to the valorization of capital through the appropriation of surplus value, not the spread of liberal ideas.
The authors then go on to argue that railroads were not an “engine of growth” because in 1890 they carried half of American freight at half the normal transportation cost but accounted for only 10% GDP. But of course transportation did not facilitate growth by generating huge profits or making up an increasingly large share of the economy, but by rapidly shrinking transportation costs and allowing businesses to grow economies of scale by reaching consumers in more distant markets. As an example of an innovative city, the authors cite Chicago and its reconstruction after the 1871 fire. Thankfully, they mention that the railroad was significant to Chicago’s rise as a major city, but claim that if Chicago hadn’t risen, some other city would have, even without a railroad. But we’re not given any explanation why this would happen, other than some vague reference to peoples’ naturally entrepreneurial spirit.
Next slavery is dismissed as a cause of economic growth because during the American Civil War the Union simply bought their cotton from elsewhere. That’s true, but it fails to acknowledge that the price of cotton rose by more than a factor of 10 between the 1840s and the height of the Civil War. Obviously, cotton needed to be sufficiently cheap to support northern industrialization, and without slavery it’s not at all apparent that it would have been. They also argue that slavery was unnecessary because cotton production returned to pre-war levels in the 1870s, but ignore the system of sharecropping that developed to keep nearly all freed slaves on the plantation. These are major omissions even for a book that’s meant to be a bit breezy.
They also dismiss the role of institutions and property rights by noting that England had strong protection for property rights for centuries before 1800 without experiencing an onset of growth. On this narrow point I find agreement with the authors: Property rights are a necessary but not sufficient condition for development. That said, I don’t know of any economists that would disagree with this. Even institutionalists like Daren Acemoglu recognize that strong institutions alone can’t make an economy.
With all these other causes set aside, it’s now time to discuss the ideas the authors credit with the world’s economic rise. First, we’ll lay out what those ideas are and then how exactly they allegedly promoted growth. Then, we’ll talk about how these beliefs shape the authors’ economic views and their policy prescriptions.
In opening section three, the authors inform us that in the early days of development “The borgeousie itself did not become greedier, or thriftier, or more hardworking, or more law-abiding.” Instead, what happened is that “In the eyes of the rest of society, businesspeople acquired a new dignity” resulting in a “borgeouis equality” under which all are treated as equals in the marketplace, expanding opportunity and the production of new innovations. Around this time “People gradually stopped attributing this man’s riches or that woman’s poverty to fate or politics or witchcraft” and the “dishonor tax” once suffered by merchants began to disappear.
This version of history erases the traditional story of English industrialization. Gone from sight are the ravages of enclosure, the brutality of the Poor Laws, the interventionist Speedanhamland system, and the rigid management of child labor that remained pervasaive until the Factory Acts. Instead of being forced from his land and forced to sell his labor, it turns out the Englishman who moved to the city and toiled his life away in the factory was actually doing so out of respect for the great dignity of the factory manager. The beginning of the great enrichment that the authors celebrate was a period of incredibly tense class relations, where the ideas of democracy and equality were far from realized. Most capitalist historians would argue that this period was a bitter but necessary pill to swallow in order for us to enjoy its bounty generations later. These authors simply ignore it.
Furthermore, the authors’ explanation entirely ignores the commercial systems of the Dutch and the Italian city-states. Both prioritized merchants and afforded them great privileges in society -often waging wars according to their needs-. They were afforded great dignity, and maintained their high status across society by serving as patrons of the arts. I would put forward that it’s laughable to suggest that an enrichment failed to occur simply because some Italian peasants (that could have easily been avoided) might not have felt excited enough about the Medici’s latest round of lending. Also, the shift from commercial trading (buying low and selling dear) to industrial production is ignored by the authors.
Because of their beliefs about the world’s historic course of development, the authors have an incredibly business-friendly set of economic prescriptions which are tossed throughout the book. They tout their desire to be free from all masters, but this fails to include the masters of business. Their decisions are reframed as our choices. “Markets in fact provide a voice for the voiceless. Money talks and the poor man’s dollar bill speaks as loudly as the rich man’s. In aggregate, ordinary people in rich modern economies speak loudly, lavishing profit on Walmart and Disney and other purveyors of ordinary life.” Of course, the idea of money as a democratic voice is somewhat discredited by the simple fact that some people have so little of it relative to others. It’s ironic the authors fail to consider this point, when they did take the time to launch a rather random and unrelated tangent against Michael Sandel’s work regarding inequality. Additionally, consumers often don’t choose who dominates a market. After an initial round of competition, industry tends to consolidate and, in market after market, you’ll find that we face precisely the same choices that our grandparents did. In bourgeois democracy, you can vote with your measly dollar, but that’s at best a half-assed form of democracy. There’s also the paradox that individual freedom can lead to involuntary masters: think, for example, how our choices are constrained by capitalists’ decisions to relocate their production to China.
The authors lump together most people they disagree with as “statists”, with Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren serving as prime examples. The authors lament statists’ supposed paternalism, arguing that “people are ready for liberal autonomy.” This ignores the idea that people may just have different preferences that they express through the democratic process. Maybe people are voting for things like drug safety regulations, a social safety net, and tarrifs. Maybe they don’t wholeheartedly share the authors’ belief that the private sector is always more capable of planning over long time horizons than government. Ironically, the authors cite the iPhone as evidence of capital’s efficiency, while failing to note the much-remarked-upon fact that all of the iPhone’s major technologies were developed by the federal government.
The authors’ worship of the free market also leads them to make some highly dubious arguments, including the folliowing noteworthy ones:
In reviewing this work, I might have put forth more effort than the authors’ did in writing it. I’ve engaged their two-page arguments about slavery and climate change with far more rigor than deserved. I’ve chased down their skewed growth stats and their misleading narrative around cotton prices. I’ve actually read Marx, instead of pretending that wealth and capital were synonyms to him. And I’ve contended with their horribly dated arguments about self-regulation and Luddites. I went through all of this for a few reasons. First, this work represents economic history at its most shallow. Its idealism, binary thinking, and simplistic narratives are everything I hate in non-fiction writing. It is particularly bad at adequately representing the arguments that it's trying to take down. Second, a well-meaning uninformed person could easily fall prey to the authors’ tricks (which I’ve done my best to outline above). Third, this book’s acknowledgements page is a who’s who of influential libertarian think tanks. Here’s a sampling: Charles Koch Foundation, Mercatus Center, American Enterprise Institute, Institute for Human Studies, Libertarian Christian Institute, Fraser Institute. To put it more succinctly, I reviewed this book because its ideas are bad, its argumentation poor (and at times exceedingly ignorant or dishonest), and its funders inordinately rich. I don’t think I tackled all of the authors’ shenanigans in this book, but I tried to address as many as possible while keeping this readable. If you got to this point, I guess I succeeded.
submitted by RememberRossetti to IntellectualDarkWeb [link] [comments]
The first section is a retread of optimistic works like Hans Rolling’s Factfulness and the books of Stephen Pinker. It explains that, contrary to the opinions of society’s pessimists, things have gotten a lot better over the last two hundred years and are still getting better now. The section begins with the admittedly astonishing fact that total global economic growth has topped 3000% since 1800. This is undeniably an incredible feat that demands explanation (which we’ll get to later). This fact is also accompanied by some more dubious ones. For example, the authors report that consumption per person in 1800 was $3/day, but is now $33/day on average. This could be an accurate reporting of the mean (I couldn’t trace it), but the median is far lower. Half of the world’s people still live on $5.50 per day or less. And these statistics ignore the fact that much of the goods needed to furnish a living in 1800 were not yet bought and sold as commodities (and were thus excluded from these calculations entirely or sold at prices much higher than their market price would otherwise have been had everyone acquired said goods in the market). They also fail to note the many ways in which living standards have declined in the last half century, which largely animates the belief that things are no longer improving. The authors instead note that median weekly wages in the United States are currently at records highs. And that is true, thanks to the economic recovery and currently tight labor market, but it’s also true that those median weekly earnings saw no growth at all between 1979 (when the Fed began collecting this piece of data) and 2014. To summarize, the world has gotten a lot better since 1800, even if not quite as better as the authors would like us to believe. In the last half-century, some economic metrics have improved, many stagnated, and a few worsened. But that’s the smallest of the problems with this book.
In order to fixate on ideas as the primary cause of economic growth, all other potential causes must be discredited. Sometimes this is done in strange ways. For example, the rise of China (and the Soviet Union and Brazil) is a big reason for the rise in global living standards that the author’s rightly celebrate, yet the only explanation we get for China’s growth is a brief sentence that attributes the nation’s success to reformers who were inspired by Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” They also dismiss Marxist theories about capital accumulation driving growth by pointing out that wealth has always been accumulated through savings and empire, but never before produced the sort of growth under discussion. But this ignores the fact that Marx did not equate wealth with capital and did not consider all wealthy persons to be capitalists. Marx himself acknowledged that through the capitalist process of production enromous growth could be achieved through capitalists’ continuous efforts to gain that ephemeral bit of surplus value through the more productive use of his resources. This is what Capital, his main life’s work, is all about. It even explicitly spells out the differences between the capitalist and the miser. Where Marx differs from the authors is that he attributes the attaining of that surplus value to the valorization of capital through the appropriation of surplus value, not the spread of liberal ideas.
The authors then go on to argue that railroads were not an “engine of growth” because in 1890 they carried half of American freight at half the normal transportation cost but accounted for only 10% GDP. But of course transportation did not facilitate growth by generating huge profits or making up an increasingly large share of the economy, but by rapidly shrinking transportation costs and allowing businesses to grow economies of scale by reaching consumers in more distant markets. As an example of an innovative city, the authors cite Chicago and its reconstruction after the 1871 fire. Thankfully, they mention that the railroad was significant to Chicago’s rise as a major city, but claim that if Chicago hadn’t risen, some other city would have, even without a railroad. But we’re not given any explanation why this would happen, other than some vague reference to peoples’ naturally entrepreneurial spirit.
Next slavery is dismissed as a cause of economic growth because during the American Civil War the Union simply bought their cotton from elsewhere. That’s true, but it fails to acknowledge that the price of cotton rose by more than a factor of 10 between the 1840s and the height of the Civil War. Obviously, cotton needed to be sufficiently cheap to support northern industrialization, and without slavery it’s not at all apparent that it would have been. They also argue that slavery was unnecessary because cotton production returned to pre-war levels in the 1870s, but ignore the system of sharecropping that developed to keep nearly all freed slaves on the plantation. These are major omissions even for a book that’s meant to be a bit breezy.
They also dismiss the role of institutions and property rights by noting that England had strong protection for property rights for centuries before 1800 without experiencing an onset of growth. On this narrow point I find agreement with the authors: Property rights are a necessary but not sufficient condition for development. That said, I don’t know of any economists that would disagree with this. Even institutionalists like Daren Acemoglu recognize that strong institutions alone can’t make an economy.
With all these other causes set aside, it’s now time to discuss the ideas the authors credit with the world’s economic rise. First, we’ll lay out what those ideas are and then how exactly they allegedly promoted growth. Then, we’ll talk about how these beliefs shape the authors’ economic views and their policy prescriptions.
In opening section three, the authors inform us that in the early days of development “The borgeousie itself did not become greedier, or thriftier, or more hardworking, or more law-abiding.” Instead, what happened is that “In the eyes of the rest of society, businesspeople acquired a new dignity” resulting in a “borgeouis equality” under which all are treated as equals in the marketplace, expanding opportunity and the production of new innovations. Around this time “People gradually stopped attributing this man’s riches or that woman’s poverty to fate or politics or witchcraft” and the “dishonor tax” once suffered by merchants began to disappear.
This version of history erases the traditional story of English industrialization. Gone from sight are the ravages of enclosure, the brutality of the Poor Laws, the interventionist Speedanhamland system, and the rigid management of child labor that remained pervasaive until the Factory Acts. Instead of being forced from his land and forced to sell his labor, it turns out the Englishman who moved to the city and toiled his life away in the factory was actually doing so out of respect for the great dignity of the factory manager. The beginning of the great enrichment that the authors celebrate was a period of incredibly tense class relations, where the ideas of democracy and equality were far from realized. Most capitalist historians would argue that this period was a bitter but necessary pill to swallow in order for us to enjoy its bounty generations later. These authors simply ignore it.
Furthermore, the authors’ explanation entirely ignores the commercial systems of the Dutch and the Italian city-states. Both prioritized merchants and afforded them great privileges in society -often waging wars according to their needs-. They were afforded great dignity, and maintained their high status across society by serving as patrons of the arts. I would put forward that it’s laughable to suggest that an enrichment failed to occur simply because some Italian peasants (that could have easily been avoided) might not have felt excited enough about the Medici’s latest round of lending. Also, the shift from commercial trading (buying low and selling dear) to industrial production is ignored by the authors.
Because of their beliefs about the world’s historic course of development, the authors have an incredibly business-friendly set of economic prescriptions which are tossed throughout the book. They tout their desire to be free from all masters, but this fails to include the masters of business. Their decisions are reframed as our choices. “Markets in fact provide a voice for the voiceless. Money talks and the poor man’s dollar bill speaks as loudly as the rich man’s. In aggregate, ordinary people in rich modern economies speak loudly, lavishing profit on Walmart and Disney and other purveyors of ordinary life.” Of course, the idea of money as a democratic voice is somewhat discredited by the simple fact that some people have so little of it relative to others. It’s ironic the authors fail to consider this point, when they did take the time to launch a rather random and unrelated tangent against Michael Sandel’s work regarding inequality. Additionally, consumers often don’t choose who dominates a market. After an initial round of competition, industry tends to consolidate and, in market after market, you’ll find that we face precisely the same choices that our grandparents did. In bourgeois democracy, you can vote with your measly dollar, but that’s at best a half-assed form of democracy. There’s also the paradox that individual freedom can lead to involuntary masters: think, for example, how our choices are constrained by capitalists’ decisions to relocate their production to China.
The authors lump together most people they disagree with as “statists”, with Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren serving as prime examples. The authors lament statists’ supposed paternalism, arguing that “people are ready for liberal autonomy.” This ignores the idea that people may just have different preferences that they express through the democratic process. Maybe people are voting for things like drug safety regulations, a social safety net, and tarrifs. Maybe they don’t wholeheartedly share the authors’ belief that the private sector is always more capable of planning over long time horizons than government. Ironically, the authors cite the iPhone as evidence of capital’s efficiency, while failing to note the much-remarked-upon fact that all of the iPhone’s major technologies were developed by the federal government.
The authors’ worship of the free market also leads them to make some highly dubious arguments, including the folliowing noteworthy ones:
- Climate change is handwaved away: “It can reasonably be expected to be overcome by serious engineers and entrepreneurs implementing serious technologies, such as carbon capture and growing vegetable “meat” and expanding nuclear power” There’s no talk of how this will happen when so much industry is locked into fossil fuels. The authors cite the reduction in chloroflourocarbons as a positive example, but carefully avoid mentioning the role of governments in hastening their decline. The authors also mention that people in Miami can vote against mayors who ignore rising sea levels. But what’s the point of voting if every solution to the problem is dismissed as statist?
- “Americans are made better off when Japan or China “defeats” us at car making or TV assembling…. Because “we” -really, but individuals making decisions about what to do-… then go something “we” are comparatively good at”. This understanding of comparative advantage is childish. We know there are losers from trade, that deindustrialization can have awful effects on society as a whole, and that even David Ricardo’s model of free trade assumed capital immobility across national borders.
- The authors treat people concerned with domestic job loss as Luddites: “it is not “capitalism” that people are complaining about when a machinist is made unemployed by a laser-guided cutter. It’s “progress.” The progress…. Helps mainly the poor”. I’m reminded of a quote by Marx: “Since machinery in itself shortens the hours of labor, but when employed by capital it lengthens them, since in itself it lightens labor, but when employed by capital it heightens its intensity, since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of nature, but in the hands of capital makes man the slave of those forces, since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital It makes them into paupers, the bourgeious economist simply states that the contemplation of machinery in itself demonstrates with exactitude that all these contradictions are a mere semblance in everyday reality, thus he manages to avoid racking his brains anymore and in addition applies that his opponent is guilty of the stupidity of contending not against the capitalist application of machinery, but against machinery itself.”
- The authors also deride taxation as slavery and praise self-regulation as sufficent for governing modern economic society. Both ideas are so dumb that I will not address them here.
In reviewing this work, I might have put forth more effort than the authors’ did in writing it. I’ve engaged their two-page arguments about slavery and climate change with far more rigor than deserved. I’ve chased down their skewed growth stats and their misleading narrative around cotton prices. I’ve actually read Marx, instead of pretending that wealth and capital were synonyms to him. And I’ve contended with their horribly dated arguments about self-regulation and Luddites. I went through all of this for a few reasons. First, this work represents economic history at its most shallow. Its idealism, binary thinking, and simplistic narratives are everything I hate in non-fiction writing. It is particularly bad at adequately representing the arguments that it's trying to take down. Second, a well-meaning uninformed person could easily fall prey to the authors’ tricks (which I’ve done my best to outline above). Third, this book’s acknowledgements page is a who’s who of influential libertarian think tanks. Here’s a sampling: Charles Koch Foundation, Mercatus Center, American Enterprise Institute, Institute for Human Studies, Libertarian Christian Institute, Fraser Institute. To put it more succinctly, I reviewed this book because its ideas are bad, its argumentation poor (and at times exceedingly ignorant or dishonest), and its funders inordinately rich. I don’t think I tackled all of the authors’ shenanigans in this book, but I tried to address as many as possible while keeping this readable. If you got to this point, I guess I succeeded.
2022.09.13 03:24 choudebu YA book, based in England peasantry, son was a bastard and mom died
Trying to remember a YA novel I read in elementary or middle school (2004~2008). It was based in England probably 1600-1700's about a young man/teen whose mother recently passed away. She was a part of an aristocracy at one point (?), she knew how to read and taught her son how to read the bible which was uncommon at the time. They were shunned in their village because he was a bastard (maybe it was his dad that was aristocracy?), they harvested grain/sharecropping, there was something about the grain mill/landlord. He ran away from the village, I remember something about him bundling books or something and falling into mud as he ran away and it was to do with finding his father?
submitted by choudebu to whatsthatbook [link] [comments]
2022.08.15 14:45 bluebelle236 [Scheduled] Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – H - Willie
Welcome to the third discussion of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
Here are a few links that you may find interesting:
Homegoing (Gyasi novel))
What is Homegoing?
Cape Coast Castle
I have pulled together some highlight of the history of Ghana and slavery from Wikipedia that you may find interesting in the context of the book.
History of Ghana
· The first European colonizers arrived in the late 15th century
· The Dutch West India Company operated throughout most of the 18th century. The British African Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the successor to several earlier organizations of this type.
· In the late 17th century, the shift from being a gold exporting and slave importing economy to being a major local slave exporting economy.
· Most rulers, such as the kings of various Akan states engaged in the slave trade, as well as individual local merchants.
· The Danes remained until 1850, when they withdrew from the Gold Coast. The British gained possession of all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the 19th century, thus making them the dominant European power on the Gold Coast.
· Ghana's current borders took shape, encompassing four separate British colonial territories: Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland. These were unified as an independent dominion within the Commonwealth of Nations on 6 March 1957, becoming the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty.
· Ghana subsequently became influential in decolonisation efforts and the Pan-African movement
The end of slavery
· The Quakers publicly declared themselves against slavery as early as 1727. Later in the century, the Danes stopped trading in slaves; Sweden and the Netherlands soon followed.
· In 1807, Britain used its naval power and its diplomatic muscle to outlaw trade in slaves by its citizens and to begin a campaign to stop the international trade in slaves. The British withdrawal helped to decrease external slave trade.
· The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in 1808. These efforts, however, were not successful until the 1860s because of the continued demand for plantation labour in the New World.
Chapter summary is taken from SparkNotes
H is released from the mines in 1889. He first stops at a bar for a drink, though he is judged when people recognize him as a convict from his whip scars. H moves to Pratt City, a town consisting of white and Black former convicts. There, he finds his friend Joecy from the mines, living with his wife and children. Joecy offers to have his son write to Ethe on H’s behalf, but H refuses. H gets a job working in a mine and builds his own house on Joecy’s plot of land. Joecy convinces H to join the union, where H argues for more money. Aware of his own mortality due to diseases men get from working in the mines, H has Joecy’s son write a letter to Ethe telling her where he is.
At the next union meeting, the white and Black workers agree to strike, demanding more pay and better conditions. When the bosses refuse to agree to the union’s terms, they bring in a group of Black teenage convicts. When one boy breaks off while waiting for the shaft, he is shot, and the strikers swarm the white bosses. After six months of the workers striking, the bosses give in and agree to a raise of fifty cents. H returns to his house to find Ethe. She explains that all she has left of her family is the name given to her by her mother, and it pained her when H called her by another woman’s name. Ethe didn’t know how to forgive him until hearing that he was in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. H embraces her as she cleans a pot.
Akua recalls growing up in the Christian missionary school. The missionary told Akua that she was a sinner like her mother and that the British would help her and other Africans give up their heathenism and turn to God. The missionary wouldn’t let Akua leave the school to marry Asamoah and eventually revealed that Abena drowned while he tried to baptize her. The missionary burned Abena’s body and destroyed everything that belonged to her. After hearing this, Akua left the school.
Now, Akua, who is pregnant, continues to have nightmares of the woman made of fire. Noticing Akua’s fatigue, Nana Serwah assumes Akua is sick and sends her away to rest in her hut away from her daughters. Nana Serwah refuses to let Akua leave her hut for a week until Asamoah returns. Over the next few months, the war ends, and Akua is unable to sleep. The villagers have begun calling Akua “Crazy Woman” as she no longer speaks. A few weeks later, she gives birth to her son, Yaw, whom she feels will be okay. Akua begins talking more and sleeping some, though she wanders in her sleep.
One night, Akua falls asleep and dreams of being on the beach near Cape Coast Castle, breathing fire into the ocean, which turns into the fire woman holding two children. Akua reaches out to them, her hands turning into fire as she takes the children. Akua awakens to shouts of “Crazy Woman” as she is carried by a crowd and sees that her hands and feet are burned. Akua asks what is happening and is told that because she was raised by white men, she will die like one. The crowd ties her to the tree where they burned the white traveler. Asamoah pleads with the crowd, though they ask why he would side with the woman who killed his children. Akua is confused, and Asamoah explains that he was only able to save Yaw. Eventually, the villagers release Akua.
One night, Willie went into the men’s room at the Jazzing to clean up and almost did not recognize Robert standing at the sink. Two white men with Robert walked in and suspected something was happening between Willie and Robert. One of the men told Robert to kiss and touch Willie while he touched himself. After the incident, both men told Robert not to come to work the next day. Robert told Willie he would leave that night. Willie eventually started going to church, though she stopped after she met a poet named Eli. Eli often called Carson “sonny” like Robert did, though Willie would snap at him to stop. Eli began disappearing for days at a time after Willie gave birth to their daughter, Josephine. Willie joined the church choir but would move her lips silently instead of singing.
On their walk, Willie and Carson reach the limits of Harlem, where she knows they should turn around, but they keep going. As they are surrounded by more white people, Willie sees Robert tying the shoe of a little boy holding a white woman’s hand. After Robert stands and kisses the woman, he and Willie lock eyes. They smile at each other, and Willie realizes she has forgiven him. That Sunday during church, Willie thinks of H coming home from the mines, happy to have his wife and daughters waiting for him. Willie looks out to see Carson and Josephine and finally begins singing again.
Link to schedule
Link to marginalia
See you next Monday for the last section.
submitted by bluebelle236 to bookclub [link] [comments]
Here are a few links that you may find interesting:
Homegoing (Gyasi novel))
What is Homegoing?
Cape Coast Castle
I have pulled together some highlight of the history of Ghana and slavery from Wikipedia that you may find interesting in the context of the book.
History of Ghana
· The first European colonizers arrived in the late 15th century
· The Dutch West India Company operated throughout most of the 18th century. The British African Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the successor to several earlier organizations of this type.
· In the late 17th century, the shift from being a gold exporting and slave importing economy to being a major local slave exporting economy.
· Most rulers, such as the kings of various Akan states engaged in the slave trade, as well as individual local merchants.
· The Danes remained until 1850, when they withdrew from the Gold Coast. The British gained possession of all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the 19th century, thus making them the dominant European power on the Gold Coast.
· Ghana's current borders took shape, encompassing four separate British colonial territories: Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland. These were unified as an independent dominion within the Commonwealth of Nations on 6 March 1957, becoming the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty.
· Ghana subsequently became influential in decolonisation efforts and the Pan-African movement
The end of slavery
· The Quakers publicly declared themselves against slavery as early as 1727. Later in the century, the Danes stopped trading in slaves; Sweden and the Netherlands soon followed.
· In 1807, Britain used its naval power and its diplomatic muscle to outlaw trade in slaves by its citizens and to begin a campaign to stop the international trade in slaves. The British withdrawal helped to decrease external slave trade.
· The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in 1808. These efforts, however, were not successful until the 1860s because of the continued demand for plantation labour in the New World.
Chapter summary is taken from SparkNotes
H
H is arrested and thrown in jail for allegedly looking at a white woman, though he knows this is a false charge. His cellmate reminds H that, though the Civil War ended years ago, slavery still persists in other ways. H is unable to afford the ten-dollar jail fine, as he has saved five dollars in ten years of sharecropping, and so is sent to work in the coal mines in Birmingham, Alabama. There, H and the other prisoners must shovel twelve tons of coal each day, facing injury or death if they don’t meet that quota. At night, H thinks of the brief time when he was free and of his wife Ethe, who left him after he called her by another woman’s name. While most of the other convicts are Black, occasionally a white man is brought in who first thinks he is better than the Black men and then relies on their help. One white man H partners with, Thomas, is unable to lift a shovel of coal, so H uses both of his hands to fill his and Thomas’s quotas. When Thomas thanks him, he asks about H’s name, and H explains that his mother refused to give him a proper name before killing herself.H is released from the mines in 1889. He first stops at a bar for a drink, though he is judged when people recognize him as a convict from his whip scars. H moves to Pratt City, a town consisting of white and Black former convicts. There, he finds his friend Joecy from the mines, living with his wife and children. Joecy offers to have his son write to Ethe on H’s behalf, but H refuses. H gets a job working in a mine and builds his own house on Joecy’s plot of land. Joecy convinces H to join the union, where H argues for more money. Aware of his own mortality due to diseases men get from working in the mines, H has Joecy’s son write a letter to Ethe telling her where he is.
At the next union meeting, the white and Black workers agree to strike, demanding more pay and better conditions. When the bosses refuse to agree to the union’s terms, they bring in a group of Black teenage convicts. When one boy breaks off while waiting for the shaft, he is shot, and the strikers swarm the white bosses. After six months of the workers striking, the bosses give in and agree to a raise of fifty cents. H returns to his house to find Ethe. She explains that all she has left of her family is the name given to her by her mother, and it pained her when H called her by another woman’s name. Ethe didn’t know how to forgive him until hearing that he was in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. H embraces her as she cleans a pot.
Akua
Akua has been unable to stop her nightmares of a woman made of fire holding two babies. One night, Akua’s husband, Asamoah, wakes her from a nightmare, and she tells him that he shouldn’t have burned the white man in retribution for the British arresting and exiling the Asante king. This event was what started Akua’s dreams at the age of sixteen. Akua spends her days doing chores with her mother-in-law, Nana Serwah, and her daughters. Akua often stops on the way to the market to stare at the spot where the white man was burned, a traveler who was resting under a tree until children began shouting, alerting others to his presence. The villagers took out the rage that had been brewing for months by burning him as he begged for his life, explaining that he was not from the government. When Akua returns to the compound, she learns that the Asante are going to war with the British, and Asamoah leaves with the other men.Akua recalls growing up in the Christian missionary school. The missionary told Akua that she was a sinner like her mother and that the British would help her and other Africans give up their heathenism and turn to God. The missionary wouldn’t let Akua leave the school to marry Asamoah and eventually revealed that Abena drowned while he tried to baptize her. The missionary burned Abena’s body and destroyed everything that belonged to her. After hearing this, Akua left the school.
Now, Akua, who is pregnant, continues to have nightmares of the woman made of fire. Noticing Akua’s fatigue, Nana Serwah assumes Akua is sick and sends her away to rest in her hut away from her daughters. Nana Serwah refuses to let Akua leave her hut for a week until Asamoah returns. Over the next few months, the war ends, and Akua is unable to sleep. The villagers have begun calling Akua “Crazy Woman” as she no longer speaks. A few weeks later, she gives birth to her son, Yaw, whom she feels will be okay. Akua begins talking more and sleeping some, though she wanders in her sleep.
One night, Akua falls asleep and dreams of being on the beach near Cape Coast Castle, breathing fire into the ocean, which turns into the fire woman holding two children. Akua reaches out to them, her hands turning into fire as she takes the children. Akua awakens to shouts of “Crazy Woman” as she is carried by a crowd and sees that her hands and feet are burned. Akua asks what is happening and is told that because she was raised by white men, she will die like one. The crowd ties her to the tree where they burned the white traveler. Asamoah pleads with the crowd, though they ask why he would side with the woman who killed his children. Akua is confused, and Asamoah explains that he was only able to save Yaw. Eventually, the villagers release Akua.
Willie
After church choir, Willie walks around Harlem with her son, Carson, who has been filled with anger and hatred. Willie recalls her past. Willie used to sing at her father H’s union meetings, which was how she met Robert, the lightest-skinned Black boy Willie had ever seen. Willie and Robert dated and then married and had Carson. After both of Willie’s parents died, Willie and Robert moved to New York, staying with Joecy’s son Joe, who lived in Harlem. While they looked for work together, people assumed Robert was white, but he could not get a job if he was seen with Willie. They began looking for jobs separately. Willie found work as a housekeeper during the day and as a cleaner at a jazz club, the Jazzing, at night, hoping it would lead to singing gigs. Robert found a job that paid well, though he did not share the details with Willie.One night, Willie went into the men’s room at the Jazzing to clean up and almost did not recognize Robert standing at the sink. Two white men with Robert walked in and suspected something was happening between Willie and Robert. One of the men told Robert to kiss and touch Willie while he touched himself. After the incident, both men told Robert not to come to work the next day. Robert told Willie he would leave that night. Willie eventually started going to church, though she stopped after she met a poet named Eli. Eli often called Carson “sonny” like Robert did, though Willie would snap at him to stop. Eli began disappearing for days at a time after Willie gave birth to their daughter, Josephine. Willie joined the church choir but would move her lips silently instead of singing.
On their walk, Willie and Carson reach the limits of Harlem, where she knows they should turn around, but they keep going. As they are surrounded by more white people, Willie sees Robert tying the shoe of a little boy holding a white woman’s hand. After Robert stands and kisses the woman, he and Willie lock eyes. They smile at each other, and Willie realizes she has forgiven him. That Sunday during church, Willie thinks of H coming home from the mines, happy to have his wife and daughters waiting for him. Willie looks out to see Carson and Josephine and finally begins singing again.
Link to schedule
Link to marginalia
See you next Monday for the last section.
2022.07.17 07:37 heyuiuitsme 25
so, after i left the furniture store, i ended up at this resort/convention center. privately owned, not a corporation. and, my manager was someone i kinda, sorta knew. just from working at other jobs with him, you know, from around town.
and, at the job, like this one, during my downtime they didn't care what i was doing on the internet. but, more than that. one of the managers, would say things to me. you know, feed me information about skanka. like, she makes friends super easy, like gets all the way up in someone news life, and then can't maintain long term. but, he's telling me this story about her.
you know, someone new came to town and she's like a one person welcoming committee and makes friends with them, and that new person wanted to see the town. so, they go downtown to walk around and see the sights. and, then, the new woman, smells something. something bad, and it was clearly obvious that skanka had shit herself.
now, here's what i really think, i think those people with a scat fetish probably have stomach issues all the time. that's probably the root cause of your issue, but skanka's plumbing is all kinda twisted up and don't work right, and that's just cause of the multiple generations of inbreeding
but, the woman was like, um, are you feeling ok, do you need to go home, and trying to gracefully giver her a way out of what to most people would be the most embarrassing moment of their whole like, but skanka was just like, "i'm fine, let's go get ice cream" and skanka drove them there, and the woman was like, shocked by that point, but stuck and they just went into one of those little ice cream stores and ordered and then skanka made a scene because the cashier told her she couldn't sit down in the store. and, that woman said she was just humiliated by being with her, but didn't have another option to get back to her car.
but, as it turns out, that woman was some sort of relative to the people who owned the resort that i was working at, and skanka told her all sorts of stuff, like, how they stole a trust fund and her own identity was a dead girl's and just some real crazy fucking shit, which caused ... well, you know. that was kind of the turning point of anyone, i guess, um. taking their side in this
so, their side is that i'm crazy and irresponsible and can't be trusted with money and that's why they have to do this. like, i'm a fucking burden to them. that's how they make it out to be. so, during my childhood they used kkk reject and skanka to commit a fraud.
she's mentally handicapped and flat fucking crazy, but not so retarded that you'd notice it right off. like, just smart enough to fit in for a short period of time, like, a few hours, but then after any surface level chat about pop culture and normal polite conversational topics, she no longer has any sort of filter. and, she'll tell all. everything. which has opened them up to multiple blackmailings by others. like, a lot of people find out and are just like, cut me in.
but, that woman wasn't like that. and, also, since i was working for someone she personally knew, she started asking around, about who i actually was. what i'm really like, and, my job performance has never in any way suggested that i'm mentally challenged . also, while i am at times difficult and sarcastic, i've never not once thrown myself on the ground in front of an ice cream store and had a toddler level temper tantrum, which is what she did in front of that woman when she was forced to leave the store. laid down on the sidewalk and started kicking and screaming like a toddler.
so, to cover their asses they send mark to my work, cause these people are asking a lot of questions and also pretty pissed off about the whole thing, you know, cause their quite wealthy and upset that this sort of thing might happen to their kids or grandkids concerning their property. how did this happen.
well, here's how it happened. fraud. the reason for kkk reject is skanka. she is mentally challenged. like, an iq hovering around 70. like, just on the line. so, during my childhood they would present skanka as me for competency testing, which she repeatedly failed. and, then used her medical records with my name on them to justify the conservatorship. so, as far as the conservatorship is concerned, i'm classified as a vulnerable adult unable to care for myself.
which is absolutely not true and it's kind of embarrassing for me. and, since they've committed this fraud using this other woman for decades our medical records are all jumbled up. she has diabetes. i don't have diabetes. but, at that point they were caught, got fucking caught, so they were trying to pay off this, she wasn't a doctor, but instead, a pa, but trying to pay her off to get my medical records to all match. there's a lot of discrepancies.
i mean, height alone. i'm like 4 or 5 inches taller than her. but, in a large part, thanks to that little fit she threw and then people trying to pay off that woman that didn't want to be paid off, you know, they're caught by my employer and they actually are good people and they're pretty disgusted and, did what the wealthy do when they see something they don't quite agree with.
you know, went to the authorities. and, while this was something the authorities knew, they couldn't puzzle together the structure and who does what. but, in an effort to cover their asses, mark went to my work, used his real ass credentials, told them that i had amnesia and forgot who i was and they were trying to help me and had everyone there sign a nda. but, idk, when i was alone with their computers, i checked all my coworkers search histories.
they had the real actual truth, like, what the real truth is and they'd googled and purple linked down five pages. like, looking me up. this probably happened two weeks after i started. that's when my coworkers shifted their attitudes towards me. like, from what they were told. and, you can tell who's heard what
so, at the furniture store. pornstar heiress. that's the one where i was a sex addict and i gave up the money so i could make porn instead. well, that was the first lie, that's what they said when i was 17, that i walked away from the money to make porn. that's the lie they told to explain my absence. oh, but where's the porn. there's not any. there's not any adult porn of me that i've consented to. even though they tried several times to get me to. multiple times. and, i just wasn't going to do that. you know. so, then, they told people that i'd developed agoraphobia because i was so ashamed of the porn.
that's where i was, that i was comfortable and safe and they were taking care of me, however i wouldn't talk on the phone or use any technology and that to talk to me, you had to go through them. and, this is at businesses. places where people knew me, so they couldn't tell the same lie they told in court, that i was mentally retarded and not capable. so, in court they're saying too retarded and to people who actually know me they're saying i'm agoraphobic and won't see any other people but them.
and, then started just erasing me from my life. it's not like i was ever fully in anyway, i was always kept a secret "for my protection" but, they really started removing me and then gnat started using my backstory, the money parts, as her's but not saying any names. it's very convoluted and there are a lot of people involved.
it's a lot to untangle. and, people really did think i was crazy. you know. like, i gave up that money cause i preferred working and being poor. so, how you know me, is what lie you're gonna hear. and, i can't do anything about any of that.
i can't stop them telling lies about me, so the only i can resist is just do the opposite of whatever they're saying or not patriciate at all. i didn't quit, they threw me out. moved, changed the location of the business and the phone number. just wasn't there anymore. and, then got rid of everyone who didn't want to go along with their bullshit.
and, used a fucking court order to do it. but, that's only if people know about the conservatorship, if people don't know, they say they're a management company that i hired. so, the lie you hear is based off of what you already know.
and, to me. nothing. or, you're worthless. you can't do this. or, my personal fav. that n-word bitch don't deserve that kind of money. and, these people are like real super racists and practice some kind of cult religion that they're the master race and that's why they have to inbreed cause they're the only ones that's pure and everyone but them is a "hard r"
those fucking people. so, this didn't start with me, they were actually trying to scam something else. that land grant land. so, this is a pretty small community, but at the turn of the centrury it was kind of a boomtown due to the mining and the other bussineese that were here to support the mining folks that were here. prior to prohibition, tennessee had these blue laws and liquor was only allowed to be sold in three cities in the whole state. memphis, chattanooga, and here.
it's because they're border cities and you can get out of state sales that way, we're on the ky/va border. and, there was a saloon in town and a train station. now, my people lived up at the top on the mountain, on the land that was being mined and share cropped what the mine's weren't using. they were living on the land that they had handed down to them through generations from the land grant.
they were still living on the land grant land and sharecropping, but, they weren't very nice people and they weren't really sharecropping so much as whoremongering. they also sold walnuts, mail order. that's what they called mail order brides so they could place the ads in newspapers across the country. walnut. english or regular.
english means she can read and write and math and regular means she can't
now, i'm aware that they were not very nice people and these things are wrong. i know. they'd been doing it for generations. walnuts and whores. so, they'd take on these women and then train them to one or the other, idk what criteria was used, but that's what happened.
and, kkk reject's mother was a whore. she's just some whore. that's it. that's all. and, then she somehow got pregnant and the rumor is by her brother, and claimed that her son, kkk reject, was my great grandfather's son. and, she tried to use him to lay claim to the land. so, this has been going on since the 40's. you see. maybe even earlier.
and, it's not exactly the kind of tale you want to tell on yourself so my family doesn't really like to talk about all of that. quit doing that sort of thing, round about the 60s. early 60s, stopped that. or, maybe, idk, didn't do it in the 70s, most definitely.
submitted by heyuiuitsme to LackOfModeration [link] [comments]
and, at the job, like this one, during my downtime they didn't care what i was doing on the internet. but, more than that. one of the managers, would say things to me. you know, feed me information about skanka. like, she makes friends super easy, like gets all the way up in someone news life, and then can't maintain long term. but, he's telling me this story about her.
you know, someone new came to town and she's like a one person welcoming committee and makes friends with them, and that new person wanted to see the town. so, they go downtown to walk around and see the sights. and, then, the new woman, smells something. something bad, and it was clearly obvious that skanka had shit herself.
now, here's what i really think, i think those people with a scat fetish probably have stomach issues all the time. that's probably the root cause of your issue, but skanka's plumbing is all kinda twisted up and don't work right, and that's just cause of the multiple generations of inbreeding
but, the woman was like, um, are you feeling ok, do you need to go home, and trying to gracefully giver her a way out of what to most people would be the most embarrassing moment of their whole like, but skanka was just like, "i'm fine, let's go get ice cream" and skanka drove them there, and the woman was like, shocked by that point, but stuck and they just went into one of those little ice cream stores and ordered and then skanka made a scene because the cashier told her she couldn't sit down in the store. and, that woman said she was just humiliated by being with her, but didn't have another option to get back to her car.
but, as it turns out, that woman was some sort of relative to the people who owned the resort that i was working at, and skanka told her all sorts of stuff, like, how they stole a trust fund and her own identity was a dead girl's and just some real crazy fucking shit, which caused ... well, you know. that was kind of the turning point of anyone, i guess, um. taking their side in this
so, their side is that i'm crazy and irresponsible and can't be trusted with money and that's why they have to do this. like, i'm a fucking burden to them. that's how they make it out to be. so, during my childhood they used kkk reject and skanka to commit a fraud.
she's mentally handicapped and flat fucking crazy, but not so retarded that you'd notice it right off. like, just smart enough to fit in for a short period of time, like, a few hours, but then after any surface level chat about pop culture and normal polite conversational topics, she no longer has any sort of filter. and, she'll tell all. everything. which has opened them up to multiple blackmailings by others. like, a lot of people find out and are just like, cut me in.
but, that woman wasn't like that. and, also, since i was working for someone she personally knew, she started asking around, about who i actually was. what i'm really like, and, my job performance has never in any way suggested that i'm mentally challenged . also, while i am at times difficult and sarcastic, i've never not once thrown myself on the ground in front of an ice cream store and had a toddler level temper tantrum, which is what she did in front of that woman when she was forced to leave the store. laid down on the sidewalk and started kicking and screaming like a toddler.
so, to cover their asses they send mark to my work, cause these people are asking a lot of questions and also pretty pissed off about the whole thing, you know, cause their quite wealthy and upset that this sort of thing might happen to their kids or grandkids concerning their property. how did this happen.
well, here's how it happened. fraud. the reason for kkk reject is skanka. she is mentally challenged. like, an iq hovering around 70. like, just on the line. so, during my childhood they would present skanka as me for competency testing, which she repeatedly failed. and, then used her medical records with my name on them to justify the conservatorship. so, as far as the conservatorship is concerned, i'm classified as a vulnerable adult unable to care for myself.
which is absolutely not true and it's kind of embarrassing for me. and, since they've committed this fraud using this other woman for decades our medical records are all jumbled up. she has diabetes. i don't have diabetes. but, at that point they were caught, got fucking caught, so they were trying to pay off this, she wasn't a doctor, but instead, a pa, but trying to pay her off to get my medical records to all match. there's a lot of discrepancies.
i mean, height alone. i'm like 4 or 5 inches taller than her. but, in a large part, thanks to that little fit she threw and then people trying to pay off that woman that didn't want to be paid off, you know, they're caught by my employer and they actually are good people and they're pretty disgusted and, did what the wealthy do when they see something they don't quite agree with.
you know, went to the authorities. and, while this was something the authorities knew, they couldn't puzzle together the structure and who does what. but, in an effort to cover their asses, mark went to my work, used his real ass credentials, told them that i had amnesia and forgot who i was and they were trying to help me and had everyone there sign a nda. but, idk, when i was alone with their computers, i checked all my coworkers search histories.
they had the real actual truth, like, what the real truth is and they'd googled and purple linked down five pages. like, looking me up. this probably happened two weeks after i started. that's when my coworkers shifted their attitudes towards me. like, from what they were told. and, you can tell who's heard what
so, at the furniture store. pornstar heiress. that's the one where i was a sex addict and i gave up the money so i could make porn instead. well, that was the first lie, that's what they said when i was 17, that i walked away from the money to make porn. that's the lie they told to explain my absence. oh, but where's the porn. there's not any. there's not any adult porn of me that i've consented to. even though they tried several times to get me to. multiple times. and, i just wasn't going to do that. you know. so, then, they told people that i'd developed agoraphobia because i was so ashamed of the porn.
that's where i was, that i was comfortable and safe and they were taking care of me, however i wouldn't talk on the phone or use any technology and that to talk to me, you had to go through them. and, this is at businesses. places where people knew me, so they couldn't tell the same lie they told in court, that i was mentally retarded and not capable. so, in court they're saying too retarded and to people who actually know me they're saying i'm agoraphobic and won't see any other people but them.
and, then started just erasing me from my life. it's not like i was ever fully in anyway, i was always kept a secret "for my protection" but, they really started removing me and then gnat started using my backstory, the money parts, as her's but not saying any names. it's very convoluted and there are a lot of people involved.
it's a lot to untangle. and, people really did think i was crazy. you know. like, i gave up that money cause i preferred working and being poor. so, how you know me, is what lie you're gonna hear. and, i can't do anything about any of that.
i can't stop them telling lies about me, so the only i can resist is just do the opposite of whatever they're saying or not patriciate at all. i didn't quit, they threw me out. moved, changed the location of the business and the phone number. just wasn't there anymore. and, then got rid of everyone who didn't want to go along with their bullshit.
and, used a fucking court order to do it. but, that's only if people know about the conservatorship, if people don't know, they say they're a management company that i hired. so, the lie you hear is based off of what you already know.
and, to me. nothing. or, you're worthless. you can't do this. or, my personal fav. that n-word bitch don't deserve that kind of money. and, these people are like real super racists and practice some kind of cult religion that they're the master race and that's why they have to inbreed cause they're the only ones that's pure and everyone but them is a "hard r"
those fucking people. so, this didn't start with me, they were actually trying to scam something else. that land grant land. so, this is a pretty small community, but at the turn of the centrury it was kind of a boomtown due to the mining and the other bussineese that were here to support the mining folks that were here. prior to prohibition, tennessee had these blue laws and liquor was only allowed to be sold in three cities in the whole state. memphis, chattanooga, and here.
it's because they're border cities and you can get out of state sales that way, we're on the ky/va border. and, there was a saloon in town and a train station. now, my people lived up at the top on the mountain, on the land that was being mined and share cropped what the mine's weren't using. they were living on the land that they had handed down to them through generations from the land grant.
they were still living on the land grant land and sharecropping, but, they weren't very nice people and they weren't really sharecropping so much as whoremongering. they also sold walnuts, mail order. that's what they called mail order brides so they could place the ads in newspapers across the country. walnut. english or regular.
english means she can read and write and math and regular means she can't
now, i'm aware that they were not very nice people and these things are wrong. i know. they'd been doing it for generations. walnuts and whores. so, they'd take on these women and then train them to one or the other, idk what criteria was used, but that's what happened.
and, kkk reject's mother was a whore. she's just some whore. that's it. that's all. and, then she somehow got pregnant and the rumor is by her brother, and claimed that her son, kkk reject, was my great grandfather's son. and, she tried to use him to lay claim to the land. so, this has been going on since the 40's. you see. maybe even earlier.
and, it's not exactly the kind of tale you want to tell on yourself so my family doesn't really like to talk about all of that. quit doing that sort of thing, round about the 60s. early 60s, stopped that. or, maybe, idk, didn't do it in the 70s, most definitely.
2022.05.31 10:51 30phil1 I'm planning a surprise villain for my players. How bad of an idea is it?
My players know my reddit account so if you're in a game with an asexual grandpa and a royal pig, don't read this lol
(Sorry if this is long. Tl;Dr at the bottom) I'm the GM for a game set at the very start of the Hundred Year War, meaning that it coincides with the Air Nomad Genocide. During campaign creation, my players created a scenario where one of their hometowns named Cabbage Island was invaded by a cartoonish Firebender squad led by a guy who looks like Waluigi. Cool. Standard RPG stuff.
The thing is that, due to the era and implications of what happened on day one, some major problems start popping up. The first is that this goofball of a character honestly would get old fast if on stage too much but that's not really an issue. The second is that this implies that, to solve the underlying issues that led to the initial raid on Cabbage Island, the players would eventually need to go toe-to-toe with the Fire Nation military. That wouldn't technically be a problem except that my group have all specifically said that they want to stick with canon as much as possible and having a group possibly winning through whatever incredible ideas that they can come up with presents it's own concerns. The last issue is just not having really any way to potentially keep the story going past Season One, culminating in doing whatever to get the island back.
So here's what I'm considering and have already begun implementing. In order to make a more interesting background for certain events, I'm planning on eventually revealing that the firebenders led by Waluigi we're actually deserters working as mercenaries for an opportunistic capitalist named Mok Wai. (The name being a combination of two significant daofei within the actual canon.) The idea is that this guy strongarms people into what is effectively sharecropping and wage slavery by using mafia tactics. Due to the war, people have had their homes and livelihoods destroyed so this guy would swoop in and offer to fix their property and give them a steady work, but pay them a fraction of what they're worth and send a hit squad if they step out of line. So basically, he's Walmart.
What I'm hoping to get out of this guy's introduction is for the focus to be eventually shifted away from a very canon-breaking plot to something that can be approached in any way without significantly altering things. Currently, I've already had my players find a torn letter in a burned house signed by a mysterious "M.W." (Mok Wai). (I spent a concerning amount of time in Photoshop on that lol). As opportunities present themselves, I'm planning on reusing a stamp I made for the letter to mark the buildings under Mok Wai's control. I'll likely only reveal who Mol Wai is after they take back their island though.
So, here's the big question: Should I continue with this idea? I'm afraid that it could be interpreted as throwing out the player's ideas for the campaign or just a breach of the GM guidelines/baselines. By it's very nature, I can't directly ask my players about it. I've just told them that there's something more behind the scenes and to trust me, which they all seem to be okay with. What do you think?
Tl;Dr Players made a cartoon villain for season one but don't want to change canon events. I made a mysterious BBEG behind the scenes to shift the focus and make a more fleshed out character.
submitted by 30phil1 to AvatarLegendsTTRPG [link] [comments]
(Sorry if this is long. Tl;Dr at the bottom) I'm the GM for a game set at the very start of the Hundred Year War, meaning that it coincides with the Air Nomad Genocide. During campaign creation, my players created a scenario where one of their hometowns named Cabbage Island was invaded by a cartoonish Firebender squad led by a guy who looks like Waluigi. Cool. Standard RPG stuff.
The thing is that, due to the era and implications of what happened on day one, some major problems start popping up. The first is that this goofball of a character honestly would get old fast if on stage too much but that's not really an issue. The second is that this implies that, to solve the underlying issues that led to the initial raid on Cabbage Island, the players would eventually need to go toe-to-toe with the Fire Nation military. That wouldn't technically be a problem except that my group have all specifically said that they want to stick with canon as much as possible and having a group possibly winning through whatever incredible ideas that they can come up with presents it's own concerns. The last issue is just not having really any way to potentially keep the story going past Season One, culminating in doing whatever to get the island back.
So here's what I'm considering and have already begun implementing. In order to make a more interesting background for certain events, I'm planning on eventually revealing that the firebenders led by Waluigi we're actually deserters working as mercenaries for an opportunistic capitalist named Mok Wai. (The name being a combination of two significant daofei within the actual canon.) The idea is that this guy strongarms people into what is effectively sharecropping and wage slavery by using mafia tactics. Due to the war, people have had their homes and livelihoods destroyed so this guy would swoop in and offer to fix their property and give them a steady work, but pay them a fraction of what they're worth and send a hit squad if they step out of line. So basically, he's Walmart.
What I'm hoping to get out of this guy's introduction is for the focus to be eventually shifted away from a very canon-breaking plot to something that can be approached in any way without significantly altering things. Currently, I've already had my players find a torn letter in a burned house signed by a mysterious "M.W." (Mok Wai). (I spent a concerning amount of time in Photoshop on that lol). As opportunities present themselves, I'm planning on reusing a stamp I made for the letter to mark the buildings under Mok Wai's control. I'll likely only reveal who Mol Wai is after they take back their island though.
So, here's the big question: Should I continue with this idea? I'm afraid that it could be interpreted as throwing out the player's ideas for the campaign or just a breach of the GM guidelines/baselines. By it's very nature, I can't directly ask my players about it. I've just told them that there's something more behind the scenes and to trust me, which they all seem to be okay with. What do you think?
Tl;Dr Players made a cartoon villain for season one but don't want to change canon events. I made a mysterious BBEG behind the scenes to shift the focus and make a more fleshed out character.
2022.05.27 23:58 NotTerriblyHelpful The Church uses Joseph's seven years of feast and seven years of famine as an example to justify building a massive hoard of money. People who use this example don't seem to realize that Joseph used Egypt's "savings" to purchase an entire country of slaves.
When asked today about the Church's massive wealth, David Bednar responded:
This seems like an unwise comparison, given that Joseph of Egypt used Egypt's seven years of plenty to force all of Egypt into slavery.
As recounted beginning in Genesis 47:13, when the people of Egypt needed food, Joseph took all of their money, then he took all of their livestock:
Edit: u/blackblades made an important point below and noted that the text indicates that the Egyptians were purchased into some kind of sharecropping arrangement rather than what we generally think of as full slavery. The text in my post is copied from the NRSV translation. The King James Version uses the word “servant” instead of “slave.” In any event, my point remains the same.
submitted by NotTerriblyHelpful to mormon [link] [comments]
“You can read in the Old Testament about seven years of famine and seven years of plenty. … If things are different in the future than they are now, we think it’s provident and wise to prepare to maintain that kind of support in an uncertain economic environment.”https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/05/26/apostle-david-bedna
This seems like an unwise comparison, given that Joseph of Egypt used Egypt's seven years of plenty to force all of Egypt into slavery.
As recounted beginning in Genesis 47:13, when the people of Egypt needed food, Joseph took all of their money, then he took all of their livestock:
And Joseph answered, “Give me your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.”Once their livestock was gone, the Egyptians sold their land and themselves for food.
"Shall we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land in exchange for food. We with our land will become slaves to Pharaoh; just give us seed, so that we may live and not die and that the land may not become desolate.” So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them, and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.Joseph of Egypt was history's most vile hoarder. He used scarcity to purchase an entire country of land and slaves. Is this really the best example the Church can find in the scriptures to justify its immense greed - someone who used famine as an excuse to force people into slavery?
Edit: u/blackblades made an important point below and noted that the text indicates that the Egyptians were purchased into some kind of sharecropping arrangement rather than what we generally think of as full slavery. The text in my post is copied from the NRSV translation. The King James Version uses the word “servant” instead of “slave.” In any event, my point remains the same.
2022.03.25 19:01 Blizzard854 Interpretation of the Season 3 Opening Scene
The same way season 2s opening scene set us up for Robbin’ Season I really think Season 3s opening scene will set us up to take a look at international racism and violence.
As soon as I saw the two of them on the boat I was like “hell nah” because every season has started off with a murder (or at least something that looks like it with Al in season 1) and you had this immediate creeping feeling the black dude was gonna get killed.
A lot of people have noted the connection between this scene and Earn’s dream from Season 1 Ep 1, I think some people forget that Earn starts saying “I think it’s about society…” before Van cuts him off and asks about the girl in the dream.
I really do think Glover wrote this scene to reflect American society and elaborate on that dream though. To me the horror violence of that scene is a direct allegory for the racial violence that created US power structures and racial hierarchy.
It’s set in Lake Lanier right outside of Atlanta which is a real man made lake that flooded and destroyed the black town of Oscarville - which was home to over 1100 formerly enslaved black people after they fought in the Civil War. The white dude connects the violent displacement of that black community to the idea of whiteness. He talks about how whiteness is socially constructed and not based in reality, that through economic development and self sufficiency those black people were on their way to being “white” and that, “With enough blood and money anyone can be white”.
As I interpret it, Donald Glover is making a commentary on what the construction of race really is and how it functions in the U.S. It’s an excuse to exploit, subjugate and violently displace other groups of people so you can reap the economic benefits and gain power. To paraphrase the white dude in the scene, the status of whiteness only comes from violently subjugating other races and making money off of it.
It’s an acknowledgment that white supremacist power structures that benefit and are shaped by wealthy whites are built on racist institutions of economic exploitation like slavery, sharecropping, the exclusion of blacks in the GI bill, redlining, the war on drugs and prison industrial complex and the destruction of prosperous black communities for white projects or retribution like Lake Lanier, the Tulsa massacre or Central Park. Glover’s tryna say that race is man made, but it has real consequences for how we live our lives we can’t wish away or escape.
You can see that scene as a surreal horror murder, you can see it as a horror dramatization of hate crimes and murders that have happened to black people since they were brought to this country, you can see it as a thesis for how American racism kills black people structurally. What’s great about shows like Atlanta and the Boondocks is that if you want you can enjoy their scenes at face value and enjoy the acting, direction, comedy and action and if you want you can try to interpret the message that Glover’s tryna get across without being hit over the head with it. Or you can do both and get infinite rewatch value out of a great show.
This scene reminded me a lot of the opening scene of The Wire where there’s a commentary on the American dream that serves as a thesis for the show, we’ll see if Season 3’s opening scene does the same for the rest of the season.
Obviously these are just my thoughts and interpretations so if you’ve read this far and there’s something you think I missed, am reading too much into or you wanna add something I’d love to hear all your thoughts. This one of the most thoughtful Reddit communities I check in on and would love to hear other interpretations on this crazy opening scene.
submitted by Blizzard854 to AtlantaTV [link] [comments]
As soon as I saw the two of them on the boat I was like “hell nah” because every season has started off with a murder (or at least something that looks like it with Al in season 1) and you had this immediate creeping feeling the black dude was gonna get killed.
A lot of people have noted the connection between this scene and Earn’s dream from Season 1 Ep 1, I think some people forget that Earn starts saying “I think it’s about society…” before Van cuts him off and asks about the girl in the dream.
I really do think Glover wrote this scene to reflect American society and elaborate on that dream though. To me the horror violence of that scene is a direct allegory for the racial violence that created US power structures and racial hierarchy.
It’s set in Lake Lanier right outside of Atlanta which is a real man made lake that flooded and destroyed the black town of Oscarville - which was home to over 1100 formerly enslaved black people after they fought in the Civil War. The white dude connects the violent displacement of that black community to the idea of whiteness. He talks about how whiteness is socially constructed and not based in reality, that through economic development and self sufficiency those black people were on their way to being “white” and that, “With enough blood and money anyone can be white”.
As I interpret it, Donald Glover is making a commentary on what the construction of race really is and how it functions in the U.S. It’s an excuse to exploit, subjugate and violently displace other groups of people so you can reap the economic benefits and gain power. To paraphrase the white dude in the scene, the status of whiteness only comes from violently subjugating other races and making money off of it.
It’s an acknowledgment that white supremacist power structures that benefit and are shaped by wealthy whites are built on racist institutions of economic exploitation like slavery, sharecropping, the exclusion of blacks in the GI bill, redlining, the war on drugs and prison industrial complex and the destruction of prosperous black communities for white projects or retribution like Lake Lanier, the Tulsa massacre or Central Park. Glover’s tryna say that race is man made, but it has real consequences for how we live our lives we can’t wish away or escape.
You can see that scene as a surreal horror murder, you can see it as a horror dramatization of hate crimes and murders that have happened to black people since they were brought to this country, you can see it as a thesis for how American racism kills black people structurally. What’s great about shows like Atlanta and the Boondocks is that if you want you can enjoy their scenes at face value and enjoy the acting, direction, comedy and action and if you want you can try to interpret the message that Glover’s tryna get across without being hit over the head with it. Or you can do both and get infinite rewatch value out of a great show.
This scene reminded me a lot of the opening scene of The Wire where there’s a commentary on the American dream that serves as a thesis for the show, we’ll see if Season 3’s opening scene does the same for the rest of the season.
Obviously these are just my thoughts and interpretations so if you’ve read this far and there’s something you think I missed, am reading too much into or you wanna add something I’d love to hear all your thoughts. This one of the most thoughtful Reddit communities I check in on and would love to hear other interpretations on this crazy opening scene.
2022.02.28 06:02 showtimeallday Increased Total Comp from 70k --> 300k at 26 w/ No College Degree. Below is a detailed reflection of my process and the advice I would've loved prior. Any questions?
I will put some FAQs below:
I currently am a Product Manager at a public company (making 300k). Previously I was a senior analyst at a small startup (making 70k). Before that I was on and eventually led the startup’s customer support team (making 50k). Before that I started a failed startup and did a bunch of random internships.
What company is it?
Company is a well known public company (not faang but close). You’ve certainly heard of it and chances are you’ve used it at some point.
How are you currently paid
70% salary & 30% RSUs
Why are you posting this?
At end of the day, this is the kind of post I would’ve wanted several years ago. On one side, I want to show more people what is possible. My dad grew up in sharecropping…he literally picked cotton. My mom was unemployed most of my childhood. As a result, I didn’t know my worth or what was even possible for me. Nobody in my immediate or distant family has a successful career. Making hundreds of thousands of dollars felt like something only certain people with perfect Ivy League backgrounds w/ special connections could achieve. So for me, as a college dropout who didn’t go to an Ivy League or have any special connections, to be where I’m at means a lot.
Additionally, I hope this post sheds some light on the specific details and processes I followed in order to get where I’m at.
DISCLAIMER: this is not a magical step by step guide to doing exactly what I did. As with all of our journeys, there’s luck and a level of randomness that is unique to our story. But what I focus on here is providing the specific things I did and the ways I approached problem solving so you can find something that is relevant for you. I’ve broken my story into chapters containing what I did as well as a brief reflection for each chapter.
The last thing I ask is that if you’re just going to hate, please go elsewhere. I want this to be a productive space for growth and conversation. There are plenty of spaces to complain and be negative elsewhere. So without further ado, let’s get into it….
What’s your story?
My story is a whirlwind so I’ll break it into sections…
Went to a top-25 college on a full merit scholarship and dropped out due to severe mental health issues and family death. It was the first time that I had spent time away from family and lost my close cousin, grandpa, and grandma all while I was away at school. I had no ability to cope with the depression and it took me to a very dark place. After dropping out, I tried to start a startup with friends but my close friend who also was our cto lied about everything and startup failed.
This was a really dark period for me because I had no money, no degree, and no hope. I attempted to apply for some product management jobs however no company would take me seriously. So I lowered my bar and had two opportunities.
So I started working at the startup from level 0. I worked my ass off, regularly working unpaid overtime. I did this so that I could complete my daily job functions and then also have time to contribute in other areas outside of my job. For example, creating improved processes for my team, developing macros for communication, or researching specific issues. I went above and beyond in client interactions and quickly developed the reputation as a hard worker who went above and beyond at every opportunity.
During my time here, I really became passionate about working with data and started building and owning tableau reports and analysis for my team. My manager was incredibly important in this because he saw my potential and created opportunities for me to have more ownership. This validated my decision to choose the startup w/ my manager.
After 2 long hard years, I had risen to the lead for my team and my manager transitioned into a different role. My new manager was far less supportive and career growth appeared to stall. So as a result, I made an extremely risky decision to quit my job and re-enroll in college and move across the country to finish my degree
At the crux of this decision was a belief that I never wanted to feel like I was just waiting for an opportunity to emerge. I wanted to drive my career and when I felt stagnant, I wanted to always be willing to move.
Going back to college
When I went to college, I committed to studying data science. I applied for 100+ campus jobs and most were basic, admin jobs and got all rejections or ghosts. Finally got an email to interview for an analyst intern role. Did the interview and they asked if I had any tableau portfolio work I could share even though they used powerbi. The company (very big non-tech company) was trying to move to power bi (away from excel / PowerPoint) and j had data viz experience. My tableau work was all at my previous company and therefore not shareable but I told the interviewer I’d check and see what I could do. That night I stayed up all night installing powerbi on a Mac (needed to setup a virtual machine which is a whole ordeal in and of itself), learning how powerbi works, and doing a sample powerbi project. I sent them the work and an overview at 6am and they were blown away. I got the job!
Learnings:
After two months into the job, I returned home for winter vacation and scheduled several meetings with people from my previous job. I leveraged the fact that I had an analyst internship now and spoke about possibility of them opening up a full time analyst role. The company loved me and was incredibly sad when I left and also happened to be opening up an analyst role. They initially wanted to start interviews in February, but since I was there in December and had great relationships, they agreed to interview me in December before I left back to school
I prepared extensively for the interview and even prepared a document of all of the things I felt the company needed. Given I’d be the first data hire, I wanted it to be clear that I had a plan. After the interview process, I got the job!!
After much deliberation, I accepted the job, dropped out (again), quit internship, and moved across country again to start this new job at my old startup. Fortunately this was right before the pandemic started and had I waited at my previous company I would’ve likely been laid off with no ability to find a great job in the midst of the pandemic.
My key learnings:
At my new analyst job, I worked my ass off to partner with the new COO to help him with mission critical problems. The trust grew and over time he started giving me more and more ownership. I leverages the fact that I had a unique set of data skills with a strong understanding of the business to provide the coo with regular insights that he needed in order to be solving the right problem.
After a year, I negotiated and became a senior analyst (instead of analyst 2) even though I didn’t get much salary bump (62–>72k). The title was important for me. More important than salary. I knew this company would never be my big payday but having the right title could open the door for the company that would be.I also won employee of the year for my contributions to mission critical company initiatives that helped generate millions of new revenue.
After being senior analyst for a bit, I discovered a new problem area at company and proposed to ceo and coo that I be the “product owner” for this area. Because of the trust I had built and my track record, they agreed. As a result, I operated in a various ambiguous space for awhile wearing tons of hats and continuing to work 80 hour weeks…
Exploring Product Management
Finally I was looking for a different opportunity that paid more than 72k..i started looking for jobs that would leverage my previous experience. I was really interested in Product Management because it felt like the logical progression of my current work. I'd already indirectly been doing many functions of a PM while also collaborating extremely closely with our PM team. I felt like PM would allow me to use my data, communication, strategy, and execution skills in a blended approach that I'd really enjoy and be good at. The hard part was figuring out how to break in...
My thinking was…I have no product management experience but I do have a ton of customer experience work, data skills, and experience execution as a product owner….and if I could find a pm job that focused in that area, I could compete with someone who had more experience than I did.
I found a few roles that met that criteria (pm roles that focused on the cx space) reached out to the recruiters, applied with tailored resumes (I remade resume at least 15 distinct times using resumesas well as tons of friends) and then waited. Eventually a recruiter reached back out for screening interview. I made it past that stage and then he let me know about the interview process. I had never had a product management interview process before and this was a very formal process (execution and product sense interviews). This was overwhelming as I began to realize all the things that I didn’t know and how much work would be required to simply not make a fool of myself
The interviews
So I took a week off of my vacation time, signed up for a pm course, and spent my entire week long vacation studying. I really enjoyed the process because the frameworks were either very similar to what I was already using in my current role or very applicable. After a week straight of studying (70 hours total), I had the first round and made it to second round.
I then spent another full week doing prep + mock interviews for the second round. So In total two weeks of 70 hour studying, dozens of pages of notes, dozens of mock interviews, and prep, I got the offer!
My biggest takeaways from this process were:
How things are going so far?
Just had first performance review & received superb feedback. In my short time at my new company, I have led a successful product launch, have gotten a ton of great feedback from my peers, and am mid way through developing a multi year roadmap.
My biggest tools for learning have been 1:1s, tons of books, reading documentation, documenting all of my meetings thoroughly, and asking question after question after question. I can elaborate more on this if there are specific questions, but in short, just because I haven’t been a pm before has not led to me having worse performance. I am exceeding expectations across the board.
Can you elaborate on the transferable skills?
Data analysis: this is my bread and butter skill. I am extremely well versed in quantitative and qualitative analysis. This is extremely helpful for discovering what is most important thing to work on, how do we know what success is, and then measuring outcome to understand how accurate hypothesis was.
Stakeholder management: a huge part of my current role is managing stakeholders. Being able to communicate and align a diverse set of stakeholders is a skill I’ve been honing for years
User story mapping: a massive part of my job is understanding the user. With a background in customer support, I have a ton of customer empathy and have a wide array of tools to use for looking at problems from a customer POV
Execution: ultimately my job as a pm is to execute and ship great products. Execution can take many forms and my experience executing my previous roles has prepared me extremely well for my current job
What are the biggest takeaway themes:
I absolutely love it. I love the space, I love the team, and I love the product. If I was paid 70k, I’d still love this job.
Can you help me?
I’m happy to help review resumes, talk strategy, do mock interviews, discuss case studies, or just chat. Just reach out.
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- What is your current job (and job history)
- What company is it?
- Why are you posting this?
- How are you paid?
- What is your story?
- How are you doing so far?
- What are the biggest themes of your story?
- Do you like your job?
- Can you help me?
I currently am a Product Manager at a public company (making 300k). Previously I was a senior analyst at a small startup (making 70k). Before that I was on and eventually led the startup’s customer support team (making 50k). Before that I started a failed startup and did a bunch of random internships.
What company is it?
Company is a well known public company (not faang but close). You’ve certainly heard of it and chances are you’ve used it at some point.
How are you currently paid
70% salary & 30% RSUs
Why are you posting this?
At end of the day, this is the kind of post I would’ve wanted several years ago. On one side, I want to show more people what is possible. My dad grew up in sharecropping…he literally picked cotton. My mom was unemployed most of my childhood. As a result, I didn’t know my worth or what was even possible for me. Nobody in my immediate or distant family has a successful career. Making hundreds of thousands of dollars felt like something only certain people with perfect Ivy League backgrounds w/ special connections could achieve. So for me, as a college dropout who didn’t go to an Ivy League or have any special connections, to be where I’m at means a lot.
Additionally, I hope this post sheds some light on the specific details and processes I followed in order to get where I’m at.
DISCLAIMER: this is not a magical step by step guide to doing exactly what I did. As with all of our journeys, there’s luck and a level of randomness that is unique to our story. But what I focus on here is providing the specific things I did and the ways I approached problem solving so you can find something that is relevant for you. I’ve broken my story into chapters containing what I did as well as a brief reflection for each chapter.
The last thing I ask is that if you’re just going to hate, please go elsewhere. I want this to be a productive space for growth and conversation. There are plenty of spaces to complain and be negative elsewhere. So without further ado, let’s get into it….
What’s your story?
My story is a whirlwind so I’ll break it into sections…
- The dropout
- Minimum wage startup
- Going back to college
- Dropping out, again
- Working as analyst
- Exploring product management
- The interviews
- How it’s going so far
Went to a top-25 college on a full merit scholarship and dropped out due to severe mental health issues and family death. It was the first time that I had spent time away from family and lost my close cousin, grandpa, and grandma all while I was away at school. I had no ability to cope with the depression and it took me to a very dark place. After dropping out, I tried to start a startup with friends but my close friend who also was our cto lied about everything and startup failed.
This was a really dark period for me because I had no money, no degree, and no hope. I attempted to apply for some product management jobs however no company would take me seriously. So I lowered my bar and had two opportunities.
- Work at a small startup with 40 people where I’d be working for minimum wage in a support agent role. I believed that the company was doing really cool things but would be at the bottom level making barely anything
- Work at a larger company in a better role making around 60k. Better benefits and salary but less cool company
- I believed in the company and believed that as they grew, I could grow with it
- The manager was someone I really connected with and felt like he would have my best interest
- While money is important, I felt like I should be maximizing my learning and development, not finances
- I felt like I learn best in entrepreneurial roles where there is a lot of moving pieces. And the startup felt like that. I think that is is incredibly important to know how you best learn and find opportunities that align with that style
So I started working at the startup from level 0. I worked my ass off, regularly working unpaid overtime. I did this so that I could complete my daily job functions and then also have time to contribute in other areas outside of my job. For example, creating improved processes for my team, developing macros for communication, or researching specific issues. I went above and beyond in client interactions and quickly developed the reputation as a hard worker who went above and beyond at every opportunity.
During my time here, I really became passionate about working with data and started building and owning tableau reports and analysis for my team. My manager was incredibly important in this because he saw my potential and created opportunities for me to have more ownership. This validated my decision to choose the startup w/ my manager.
After 2 long hard years, I had risen to the lead for my team and my manager transitioned into a different role. My new manager was far less supportive and career growth appeared to stall. So as a result, I made an extremely risky decision to quit my job and re-enroll in college and move across the country to finish my degree
At the crux of this decision was a belief that I never wanted to feel like I was just waiting for an opportunity to emerge. I wanted to drive my career and when I felt stagnant, I wanted to always be willing to move.
Going back to college
When I went to college, I committed to studying data science. I applied for 100+ campus jobs and most were basic, admin jobs and got all rejections or ghosts. Finally got an email to interview for an analyst intern role. Did the interview and they asked if I had any tableau portfolio work I could share even though they used powerbi. The company (very big non-tech company) was trying to move to power bi (away from excel / PowerPoint) and j had data viz experience. My tableau work was all at my previous company and therefore not shareable but I told the interviewer I’d check and see what I could do. That night I stayed up all night installing powerbi on a Mac (needed to setup a virtual machine which is a whole ordeal in and of itself), learning how powerbi works, and doing a sample powerbi project. I sent them the work and an overview at 6am and they were blown away. I got the job!
Learnings:
- You only need one yes - i got literally hundreds of rejections in a 4-month period, many from jobs I thought were a guarantee. But at the end of the day, I got the one yes that mattered
- When you get an opportunity, don’t let it go. When I got the interview, I was willing to do whatever it took to secure the job. Go over and beyond and make an impression
After two months into the job, I returned home for winter vacation and scheduled several meetings with people from my previous job. I leveraged the fact that I had an analyst internship now and spoke about possibility of them opening up a full time analyst role. The company loved me and was incredibly sad when I left and also happened to be opening up an analyst role. They initially wanted to start interviews in February, but since I was there in December and had great relationships, they agreed to interview me in December before I left back to school
I prepared extensively for the interview and even prepared a document of all of the things I felt the company needed. Given I’d be the first data hire, I wanted it to be clear that I had a plan. After the interview process, I got the job!!
After much deliberation, I accepted the job, dropped out (again), quit internship, and moved across country again to start this new job at my old startup. Fortunately this was right before the pandemic started and had I waited at my previous company I would’ve likely been laid off with no ability to find a great job in the midst of the pandemic.
My key learnings:
- Always be seeking new opportunities proactively. Had I just waited, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job but because I reached out, the doors were open
- Build great relationships. Even as I left the company, I maintained great relationships which were key in the company bending backwards to bring me back
- Always go above and beyond in interviews. Find something you can do that no one else would to give you a differentiating factor
At my new analyst job, I worked my ass off to partner with the new COO to help him with mission critical problems. The trust grew and over time he started giving me more and more ownership. I leverages the fact that I had a unique set of data skills with a strong understanding of the business to provide the coo with regular insights that he needed in order to be solving the right problem.
After a year, I negotiated and became a senior analyst (instead of analyst 2) even though I didn’t get much salary bump (62–>72k). The title was important for me. More important than salary. I knew this company would never be my big payday but having the right title could open the door for the company that would be.I also won employee of the year for my contributions to mission critical company initiatives that helped generate millions of new revenue.
After being senior analyst for a bit, I discovered a new problem area at company and proposed to ceo and coo that I be the “product owner” for this area. Because of the trust I had built and my track record, they agreed. As a result, I operated in a various ambiguous space for awhile wearing tons of hats and continuing to work 80 hour weeks…
Exploring Product Management
Finally I was looking for a different opportunity that paid more than 72k..i started looking for jobs that would leverage my previous experience. I was really interested in Product Management because it felt like the logical progression of my current work. I'd already indirectly been doing many functions of a PM while also collaborating extremely closely with our PM team. I felt like PM would allow me to use my data, communication, strategy, and execution skills in a blended approach that I'd really enjoy and be good at. The hard part was figuring out how to break in...
My thinking was…I have no product management experience but I do have a ton of customer experience work, data skills, and experience execution as a product owner….and if I could find a pm job that focused in that area, I could compete with someone who had more experience than I did.
I found a few roles that met that criteria (pm roles that focused on the cx space) reached out to the recruiters, applied with tailored resumes (I remade resume at least 15 distinct times using resumesas well as tons of friends) and then waited. Eventually a recruiter reached back out for screening interview. I made it past that stage and then he let me know about the interview process. I had never had a product management interview process before and this was a very formal process (execution and product sense interviews). This was overwhelming as I began to realize all the things that I didn’t know and how much work would be required to simply not make a fool of myself
The interviews
So I took a week off of my vacation time, signed up for a pm course, and spent my entire week long vacation studying. I really enjoyed the process because the frameworks were either very similar to what I was already using in my current role or very applicable. After a week straight of studying (70 hours total), I had the first round and made it to second round.
I then spent another full week doing prep + mock interviews for the second round. So In total two weeks of 70 hour studying, dozens of pages of notes, dozens of mock interviews, and prep, I got the offer!
My biggest takeaways from this process were:
- Set yourself up for pm opportunities at your current job by finding ways to identify opportunities, scope solutions, and execute. It doesn’t have to be a product, but performing those steps, especially across spaces that require high stakeholder management, is incredibly useful and you can easily package that experience for product roles
- To get in door, find opportunities that leverage your unique experience
- Study, study, study. Product management interviews are hard and irregardless of what you think, almost everyone is studying extensively for them.
- Mock interviews are amazing. Do them early and do them often.
- Your recruiter is your friend. They win by finding successful candidates. Therefore ask them about the types of interviews you’re having, the personalities of the interviewers, common pitfalls, and feedback. Use your recruiter as much as you can!!
- Research the hell out of the company and interview process. For larger companies, interview process is well documented. So nothing should come as a surprise to you
- Don’t look at interview prep as just interviewing for a job. Think about how you could apply the lessons you’re learning to your current role. For me, that made all the difference in my ability to retain information
How things are going so far?
Just had first performance review & received superb feedback. In my short time at my new company, I have led a successful product launch, have gotten a ton of great feedback from my peers, and am mid way through developing a multi year roadmap.
My biggest tools for learning have been 1:1s, tons of books, reading documentation, documenting all of my meetings thoroughly, and asking question after question after question. I can elaborate more on this if there are specific questions, but in short, just because I haven’t been a pm before has not led to me having worse performance. I am exceeding expectations across the board.
Can you elaborate on the transferable skills?
Data analysis: this is my bread and butter skill. I am extremely well versed in quantitative and qualitative analysis. This is extremely helpful for discovering what is most important thing to work on, how do we know what success is, and then measuring outcome to understand how accurate hypothesis was.
Stakeholder management: a huge part of my current role is managing stakeholders. Being able to communicate and align a diverse set of stakeholders is a skill I’ve been honing for years
User story mapping: a massive part of my job is understanding the user. With a background in customer support, I have a ton of customer empathy and have a wide array of tools to use for looking at problems from a customer POV
Execution: ultimately my job as a pm is to execute and ship great products. Execution can take many forms and my experience executing my previous roles has prepared me extremely well for my current job
What are the biggest takeaway themes:
- Work extremely hard. For basically 4 years straight I worked 60-80 hour weeks and rarely took vacation. This is not a very healthy system and I know there is more to life than work. But I’d be lying if I said that a large percentage of my accelerated growth wasn’t attributed to the fact that I was willing to work twice the hours as my peers for over 4 years straight
- Take risks and don’t wait. When I got the chance to work on a support team, it wasn’t perfect job but I figured it’d be better than nothing and took opportunity. When I felt like career growth was stagnant, I didn’t wait and instead I just moved my entire life across the country. When I got a new offer back across the country, I didn’t hesitate. To grow faster than everyone you can’t do what everyone is doing. It’s going to be extremely scary at times but you have to be willing to take calculated risks
- Find an area of interest and go deep. For me that was SaaS customer experience problems. I started on customer success team. Then I moved to data team where I was still working on customer success problems. Then I moved to product owner where I was still working with customer experience problems even if my “product” didn’t involve a product team/engineer. That is what enabled me to get my product management job…the fact that even though I hadn’t been a pm, I had a deep experience in cx space
- Choose the right manager. Managers can accelerate your career or completely ruin them. Never allow yourself to have a bad manager. And if you do. Run.
- Maximize Learning and Development early on: There were plenty of opportunities I had to increase my salary by 20-30%. Whether that was taking a less exciting job or trading off a new title for a salary bump. For me, I always wanted to keep a clear line of sight on the true "prize". I felt like if I just focus strictly on prioritizing my learning and development, even at the expense of some short-term financial wins, it'd put me in the best overall position to capitalize down the line.
I absolutely love it. I love the space, I love the team, and I love the product. If I was paid 70k, I’d still love this job.
Can you help me?
I’m happy to help review resumes, talk strategy, do mock interviews, discuss case studies, or just chat. Just reach out.