Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Because theGrio celebrates the legacy and the past of African America 364 days a year (to appease Ron DeSantis, we take a day off to celebrate white history), it’s always a difficult proposition to find new ways to celebrate Black History Month.
This year, instead of presenting interesting-but-meaningless nuggets of trivia like the first man to slit a piece of fried baloney (Levester Jermaine Robinson in 1823), we decided to explore some of the misconceptions, myths and misunderstandings that created some of the popular, almost true narratives that many people believe.
Here are the 10 biggest myths about slavery.
10. Slavery existed in every society.
I’m sure you’ve heard this one. It is one of the principles in Prager University’s ultra-conservative, pro-white version of American history. Depending on the time and geography, indentured servants, women in arranged marriages, child laborers and prisoners of war were described as “slaves.” While it is true that varying forms of human subjugation, bondage and servitude have existed since time immemorial, there are distinct features unique to America’s human trafficking enterprise:
- It was race-based: This was not the case in ancient Europe, nor was it true in the Caribbean and Latin American New World colonies.
- It was constitutionally protected: Slavery wasn’t just embedded into the foundational document of the nation, even states that rejected the institution were legally required to enforce precepts.
- It reduced human beings to property: In Federalist Paper No. 54, one of the esteemed Founding Fathers notes that the Constitution views the enslaved “in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character.”
- It was inescapable: Not only was it intergenerational and perpetually inheritable,…
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