9.29.2005

Are we morally superior to slave-owners?

I love provoking moral and theological self-examination. Of course, that gets me in trouble sometimes...

This quote's context is an historical analysis of USA southern slavery, pre-Civil War. Why do we assume we are morally superior today?

"Perhaps we should just limit this question to children in the wombs of black women today. If you were a black fetus in Atlanta, Georgia, what were you[r] odds of ever seeing the light of day in 1858? What are your odds in 2005? A lot of kids died back then, but not because the vile democracy they had the misfortune to be conceived in had somehow taken to the belief that to suck someone else's brains out with a vacuum cleaner was a high and noble constitutional right. When and how did the Constitution come to mean that? . . . So here it is. No, we are not better off. We murder lots and lots of people, just like Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler and Mao did. On the bright side, we have lots of flat screen plasma televisions and cell phones readily available" (Black and Tan, pp. 106-107).

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