Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” [as South Carolina’s Governor Nikki Haley said today] in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.
Examine those contents Coates does, in a dozen paragraphs, with the same number of citations and links to source documents, most of them despicable in their claims of white superiority, their claim to a Southern way of life far better than that of Northerners, and even a claim that the treatment of their “employees” was far more humane than that of Northern businessmen.
The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.
I find that justification for the continuation of slavery almost unbelievably delusional, but it was typical. The author was James Henry Hammond, Governor and Senator of South Carolina prior to the Civil War.
Read the entire article Coates has written. It’s well argued, as always, and the quotations are enlightening.