(September 14, 2015 at 2:01 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: As an amateur genealogist, I have learned that many of my ancestors owned slaves. I was re-reading my Great-great grandmother's memoir just the other day. At first, she comes across like a genteel, intelligent, proper xtian wife, who is writing about the 1850's. The prose is just drowned in "the good lord ____" and "the good lord blessed us with ____" ad nauseum. And then there was this statement "After the trip to Texas, the weather turned cold. Thankfully we had plenty of Negroes to help build houses." Further reading shows a woman who has been told all her life that slavery was the will of God, and the natural order of mankind. She believed that Negroes were the "children of Ham" who were cursed by God for disobedience, and that they were an inferior species of human that were happiest when they had the guidance of white xtian masters.First of all, African-Americans are part white so the religion of their ancestors was Christian. You would be hard-pressed to find an African-American in 2015 America who isn't part white.
(Every time I think of this I feel sick.) She was completely brainwashed. This message came from someone who prayed for hours for her children and her husband, trying to be the "holy wife" God intended her to be. It would have been almost impossible for her to think any other way -- it was the culture of her time and place.
What I don't get is why so many African-Americans are STILL Christian. Why isn't it associated with the religion of the slavers, that they were forced to accept? Why haven't more African-Americans gone on a search for the religion of their ancestors? I would think that, if I were a freed slave, one of the first things I would reject would be "the Massa's" god. ???
Second, the Revolutionary War was fought to maintain slavery in America but the propaganda is that it was fought over taxes and representation. So since people are so thoroughly brainwashed about that how can they understand other complex issues?
