The take: “Slavery was not that bad. Slaves were fed and housed. Some slave owners were kind. It was a different time.”
Who said it: Various apologists, Lost Cause mythologizers, and a shocking number of American politicians who should know better (but choose not to).
Why it is wrong: This take requires ignoring every primary source from enslaved people themselves. The narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Solomon Northup describe systematic torture, family separation (children sold away from parents, try sitting with that for a second), sexual violence, and the constant threat of death. The “kind master” was not the norm. He was the exception, and even the “kind master” owned human beings as property, which is a crime against humanity regardless of how many meals he provided (a low bar that some of you are still failing to clear).
The “different time” argument is also nonsense because plenty of people at the time knew slavery was wrong and said so. The abolitionist movement existed. The enslaved people themselves knew it was wrong (you do not need a philosophy degree to know being owned is bad). It was not a mystery. It was a choice.
Book recommendation: The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist. The economic history of American slavery and why it was not just morally wrong but also economically brutal.
Coming soon: “Iraq Has WMDs”