Sometimes a shirt is just a shirt

I was going to ignore the topic of this blog entry, but as happens sometimes, one particularly  ignorant person will make a statement so wrong that I just can't let it go.

        Today, it was this photo of Meryl Streep and the women in the cast of her soon to be released Emmeline  Pankhurst biopic, "Suffragette."  They were wearing tee shirts imprinted with a quote from Mrs. Pankhurst " “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” For those (a whole lot) of you who have never even heard the name, Mrs. Pankhurst and several of  her daughters used  civil disobedience  in their fight for the vote in England . She died in 1928, shortly before the Parliament passed a law granting equal suffrage to men and women in the UK. Like Susan B. Anthony, jailed (very briefly) in 1872 in Rochester, NY for trying to vote,  Mrs. Pankhurst spent time in jail. Unlike Ms. Anthony, Mrs. Pankhurst was not treated well. She went on hunger strikes and was force fed several times.

        Now that we actually know a little about the subject. let's address the kerfuffle over the tee shirts. Some have called the shirts, or more precisely, the quotes "unfortunate."  That is the gist of the milder comments I have seen in various media forums.  I am left to suppose that this reflects some belief that this quote, which has been de-contextualized by some seriously and spectacularly ignorant and under informed people, relates to slavery in the sense of the United States and Black servitude.  It does not.  Some have implied that "rebel" and "slave" are meant to relate to the Confederacy. They aren't. 

        By far the most ignorant and  ludicrous comment, however, came from a writer, African American, who actually said,"No white woman in all of history has ever been a slave!"  Really? I would answer with a bit of history and then close with an opinion which will probably piss off some, but you'll have to wait to find out.

         The modern word "slave"   comes from Old  French (sclave) which in turn took it from the Medieval Latin (sclavus)which took it from the  Byzantine Greek (σκλάβος,) which, in turn, comes from the ethnic classification, Slav, because in some early Medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved (all Caucasians, of course!)  

       All that having been said, various forms of slavery existed before written history and in many cultures. Once institutionally recognized by most societies, but has now been outlawed in all countries, the last being Mauritania in 2007. Slavery in many forms continues today in such practices as debt bondage, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, human trafficking and forced marriage. Accordingly, there are still an estimated 20 million to 36 million slaves worldwide, so the statement is still relevant to millions of persons.

        Greeks owned slaves as did the Romans,  predominantly Caucasian also. Biblically, The Hebrews bought and sold slaves, even their own children into slavery (Semites, of course.)  In Medieval England, the majority of persons on landed estates were slaves, even to the extent of being at the landlord's call for sex. They were of course, Caucasian as well. Today, thousands of young  women, of all races are being held in the bondage of sex traffickers. So, the "White women have never been slaves" comment is simply, how shall I say? - Bullshit!   

        Let me say that I consider slavery or human bondage of any kind, race, gender, whatever, to be an abomination. It has been hugely divisive in our nation, which would have been better off had slavery never existed. I can think of no sane argument which can justify the ownership of one human being by another.  As an added aggravating factor, Black slavery in America was race based, and accompanied by the assumption of racial superiority of the master class. It is worthy of a side note here, that Nazi treatment of Jews was based on similar assumptions, and, on a percentage basis was far more deadly, as Jews weren't even valued as property 

        Now the rest. First, because I type poorly, I will use the term "Black" vice "African American" here, for the same reason I say "Indian" vice "Native American" and that is that the majority of both ethnic groups self  refer that way. All the truly angry comments, such as the "no white women, etc" come from Black female writers. It took me a while to reflect on all that factors into that, and I'm left with this: The one thing which some Black Americans seem to cling to as if it were a life raft, is the historical reality of slavery. It seems almost as if some wrap themselves in it as a sort of a fall back when bad things happen, even when such events may actually not be racial in nature.

 I have friends, Black and Caucasian,  who would be quick to say "everything is racial in nature."  I would call bullshit on that as I do on essentially every categorical statement that things are "always" anything. It is no more true that all white Americans are racist than it is to say the same of Blacks. The sad truth is that far too many of both groups harbor biases based on race. Would that it were not so. Hopefully as generations pass, it will become less so.

      In the mean time must we always seek to attach pejorative intent to everything in print? One need ask themselves, what are the real chances that Ms Streep intended to demean  any group? Moreover,  what are the chances that only one group in the world has ever held the franchise on either enslaving or being enslaved?  The historical reality is that both sexes of all the world's ethnic groups have almost assuredly been either slaves or masters at some point.  In the case of women, although more subtle today, some women of all the world's races are still in one form of slavery of another.

         Ask the 12 year old girls in  the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints if they really want to marry a 45 year old man.  Ask the 11 year old Thai girl if she enjoys being a child prostitute.  Ask the young Saudi girls if they would rather have  left their school building when it caught fire even though they were bare  armed and headed  - oh, never mind, they were allowed to burn alive. So maybe some times a tee shirt is just a tee shirt, and a quote in context is just about voting.