The big topic of: Slavery and Racism in History

[Ken]

Also, despite the history books, legal slavery in the US did not really come to a final end until the 1940s with World War 2. From the 1860s to the 1940s many southern states essentially continued legal slavery for 80 years after the civil war through the prison system and vagrancy laws.

Here are books and documentary films on the topic:

https://www.pbs.org/video/slavery-anoth ... ery-video/


[video][/video]

[Mountain Merle]

Slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation? Everyone should read this book........

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-em ... 1111345250

[temporal1]

OP:

My hope for this topic is to move away from hyper-focus on U.S. slavery and racism, to stretch beyond, to gain a broader view of how these things have played out in time, on all continents.

Comments are reflecting my sense of hyper-focus on U.S. slavery isn’t “just in my head.”

PRESENTISM
Never heard this word before, but this article showed up on a HISTORY FB page i follow.
i read quickly, i intend to read it a few times. (i added some line spacing in the quoted part below to help me read.)

AGAINST PRESENTISM / Lynn Hunt | May 1, 2002
https://www.historians.org/publications ... presentism

Who isn't, you say?
Hardly any "ism" these days has much of a scholarly following.

Yet presentism besets us in two different ways:
(1) the tendency to interpret the past in presentist terms; and
(2) the shift of general historical interest toward the contemporary period and away from the more distant past.
Although the first propensity was implicit in Western historical writing from its beginnings, it took a more problematic turn when the notion of "the modern" began to take root in the 17th century.

Over time, modernity became the standard of judgment against which most of the past, even the Western past, could be found wanting.

The second trend, the shift of interest toward the contemporary period, clearly has a connection to the invention of modernity, but it did not follow as much in lockstep as might be expected.
As late as the end of the 19th century, and in some places even after that, students in history expected to study mainly ancient history and to find therein exemplars for politics in the present.
Ten or fifteen years ago, survey courses routinely stopped at World War II.

French historians still refer to history in the 16th–18th centuries as histoire moderne;
for them "contemporary history" began in 1789, and until recently, it stopped about the time of World War I, the rest of the 20th century being consigned to the province of journalism rather than historical scholarship.
I believe that the 20th century should be part of historical scholarship and teaching, of course, but it should not crowd out everything else. .. ..

It goes on.
This was written in 2002. Not an election year.

A part of Presentism today is how the internet and social media are drastically changing concepts of history. (i sense) lots of people today think of “ancient history” as yesterday’s tweet.
it’s not a comforting thought.

[Szdfan]

PRESENTISM
Never heard this word before, but this article showed up on a HISTORY FB page i follow.
i read quickly, i intend to read it a few times. (i added some line spacing in the quoted part below to help me read.)

I remember you used to have that famous quote from Faulkner in your signature — “The past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.” Isn’t that at type of presentism?

I think the reason why we continue to talk about US slavery rather than slavery in the ancient world, is because we are still dealing with the legacy and impact of slavery in the US. We’re not dealing with slavery in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. The history of racism in the US is an open, festering wound and for many people, the past isn’t past or dead, it’s a lived reality.

[Joy]

There are things we should remember from ancient history, to understand what God has done, and what He will do in our lifetimes. And how today's events can be interpreted by Scriptural history.

Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me,

Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;

Isa. 46:9,10