TresSugar

Should the Media Stay Away From Michelle Obama's Heritage?

TresSugar — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a piece on Michelle Obama's connection to slavery. Using old public records, fading photos, and recollections of older family members, the New York Times, along with genealogist Megan Smolenyak, uncovered details that fully connect the first lady to the history of slavery for the first time. While the piece was captivating, some worry that it was not appropriate.

The issue of race in America's past and present is undoubtedly a sensitive subject. Many Americans, including African-Americans, want to celebrate the Obamas' path to the White House, and the story about Michelle Obama's slave roots helps shed light on just how far our society has come. In addition, the fact that Michelle's great-great-great-grandfather was white might remind this diverse country that we share a common past. Yet other people feel that the independent piece on her heritage violates her privacy or focuses on her race when the Obamas have made it clear that they want to move past it.

The first lady has declined to comment on the article due to its personal nature. Now that Michelle Obama is first lady, is it fair for the public to take an interest in her genealogy, or was this piece in bad taste?

New York Times Traces First Lady's Slave Roots

TresSugar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

The New York Times ran a captivating historical piece today about a six-year-old slave named Melvinia. The paper traces her family's five-generation journey from slavery to modern success.

It's a fascinating American story that just so happens to be part of first lady Michelle Obama's story, too. Using old public records, fading photos, and recollections of older family members, the New York Times, along with genealogist Megan Smolenyak, have uncovered Melvinia's story, which fully connects the first lady to the history of slavery for the first time.

To see an excerpt from the piece, read more.

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475. In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of nearly two centuries.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, marked the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

To many, Michelle's family story powerfully represents African-American advancement. But her mixed background is also representative of Americans in general, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explored in his definitive documentary on genealogy called African American Lives. A historian who discovered that he had black relatives when he researched his memoir tells the New York Times: "We’ve all mingled, and we have done so for generations."

US Moves to Apologize For Slavery 145 Years Later

TresSugar — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:30:00 -0700

2009 just might be the year the United States officially apologizes for slavery, which was abolished in 1863. Yesterday, the US Senate approved a resolution that acknowledges the wrongs of slavery.

Words can never take back this shameful part of American history or repair its enduring effects, but an official apology can focus attention on injustices, and perhaps impact present government policies and modern moral obligations. The US government has offered apologies and monetary compensation to another group of Americans - in 1988, Congress voted to apologize to Japanese Americans interned during World War II and granted $20,000 to each person who survived internment.

The current resolution closes the door on reparations for the descendants of slaves. President Obama agrees. While explaining his opposition to monetary reparations on the campaign trail last year, Obama said the best way to combat the legacy of slavery was to provide good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.

Do you think an apology will have any impact?

Child Slavery in the US? Wealthy Immigrants Bring "Hired" Help

LibertySugar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:00:42 -0800

Well, this is just great. Behind the gated and planned communities of Southern California housewives aren't just employing children as drug dealers, they're smuggling children into the US to work.

As affluent immigrants move here from Africa, where the rich think nothing of employing children for little to no money, many bring children with them to employ for meager wages ($30-per-month meager). The US State Department found that in the past year, children from at least 10 African countries were sent to the US and Europe to work as maids.

To learn about one former child slave who found justice, if that's even possible, read more.

The family that brought Shyima over when she was 10 from Egypt was reported by a neighbor. After a long court battle - where the couple tried to claim her as their child - they pleaded guilty to forced labor and slavery. They were ordered to pay $76,000, which hardly seems like enough but is the amount she would have earned at minimum wage; sentenced to 22 months (wife) and three years (husband) in prison; and deported upon release. Shyima was adopted, finished high school, and at 19 now wants to become a police officer.

If it's possible to call Shyima lucky, it could be said. Because child slaves are cloaked behind the curtains of private homes, her case is an exception. Tasks like sorting laundry, taking out the garbage, and ironing shirts can easily be mistaken as chores, so nobody can even estimate how many children are enslaved. And since none of it is considered abusive (at least not physically), cases are rarely prosecuted.

People who keep child slaves not only see themselves as employers but also as benefactors, giving poor children opportunities. Sure, if you call 12-hour work days and no education in a nice American home an opportunity. And many in Africa, including Shyima's parents, do.

Source

Immigrants the New Slave Labor? FBI Probes Treatment

LibertySugar — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:00:31 -0800

Mexican guest workers at the center of an FBI investigation say that their boss treated them like animals.

Charles "Bimbo" Relan, the Louisiana farmer who employs the immigrants, allegedly confiscated the workers' passports, kept them working hunched over for hours, fired his shot gun over the workers' heads, killed the stray dog the workers kept as a pet, and sometimes paid them only $2 an hour. He also exposed the immigrants to dangerous pesticides.

Some of the immigrants, who had obtained visas to legally work on the strawberry farm, left without their passports. They organized, protested, and caught the FBI's attention. Do you think more should be done to make sure non-American workers are treated with dignity and have the same civil rights as American workers?

Source

Website Lets Public Track Slave Trade Voyages

LibertySugar — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:00:40 -0800

This year marks 200 years since the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, one of the largest, and most tragic, migrations of humans in history. To mark the anniversary, Emory University launched "Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database," a project that allows the public to search information about 35,000 trips and 70,000 slaves traded from the 1500s to the 1800s. In the introduction to the project, David Eltis of Emory writes:

It is difficult to believe in the first decade of the twenty-first century that just over two centuries ago, for those Europeans who thought about the issue, the shipping of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic was morally indistinguishable from shipping textiles, wheat, or even sugar.

Many of European ancestry can search records kept at Ellis Island or other entry points, if they want to know more about their ancestry. Now those of African slave descent can fill in details regarding the voyages of previously anonymous ancestors.

Source

Niger Found Guilty of Allowing Slavery By West African Court

LibertySugar — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:50 -0700

An ex-slave in Niger, who was sold at the age of 12, made to worked for 10 years, and forced to bear the children of her master, has won a case against her country, which now must pay her $19,750 in damages. A West African Court found the Niger government guilty of failing to protect Hadijatou Mani from slavery, sending a message loud and clear that Niger must do more than nominally outlaw slavery. Activists hope the case will improve the lives of thousands kept in slavery throughout the region.

According to BBC, after her master freed her in 2005, Hadijatou tried to marry. To find out how that got her in jail, read more.

After she married, her marriage was overturned, as her master said she was married to him. Hadijatou was then sentenced to six months in prison for bigamy. She appealed her sentence to a regional court, accusing her government of failing to enforce the five-year-old law against slavery.

Despite the sad truth that Hadijatou lost a decade of her life, and that many others still live in slavery, this specific story has a happy ending. Hadijatou said of the judgment: "With the compensation I will be able to build a house, raise animals and farm land to support my family. I will also be able to send my children to school so they can have the education I was never allowed."

Source

Does Congress's Apology For Jim Crow and Slavery Matter?

CitizenSugar — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:45:35 -0700

As part of Congress's whirlwind-meets-marathon pace (like voting on 10 amendments in one minute at a pace of six seconds per) in order to finish up before the end of session, votes have been fast and furious. The votes aren't on trivial matters either: Whether people should be allowed to register to vote on election days and if Massachusetts can allow out-of-state gay couples to marry are on the agenda. Part of the voting frenzy included a key apology.

The House voted Tuesday to apologize to black Americans for wrongs committed under slavery and Jim Crow laws. The resolution was fronted by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), the only white lawmaker representing a mostly black district (who's also facing a black challenger in a primary next week.) It's not the first time Congress has apologized - they've said sorry to Japanese-Americans for their treatment in WW II and native Hawaiians for the overthrow of their King, but this the first national apology for slavery.

Five states have issued apologies, but Congressional efforts have stalled previously because they've included reparations. The Cohen resolution says that Africans forced into slavery "were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage." The move is largely symbolic, and given that reparations weren't mentioned, some think the apology is meaningless. "If you don't follow the apology with action, talk is cheap. Talk is less expensive than reparations."

Should Congress have apologized? Are reparations necessary for it to be meaningful?

Source

Got a Stop Watch? It Only Takes 10 Hours to Buy a Child Slave

LibertySugar — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:00:13 -0700

It takes just 10 hours for someone in New York City to travel to Haiti and buy a child. ABC News reporter Dan Harris found that out when he set out to test the ease of securing a child slave. For as little as $150 one trafficker guaranteed Harris a "trained" 11-year-old. Another child salesman asked $10,000 for a pretty 11-year-old, for which Harris could do whatever he wanted with the girl.

Still hidden in a cloak of charity, this modern travesty began less tragically. Traditionally, poor rural families gave their children to wealthy city dwellers. The child did domestic work for an education. But now, these young innocents face a nightmare of hard labor, beatings, and sexual abuse without even a glimmer of hope for an education. Harris explains that a happy ending for Haitian children of poverty seems to be leaving their families to live in an orphanage where they are safe and educated, a much better fate than that of Haiti's 300,000 child slaves.

Sadly Haiti, a country founded on an 1804 slave revolt, has little means to stop this abuse. Check out these suggestions of how you can help put an end to modern slavery.

Source

Front Page: Airlines Grounded, FL on Slavery, North Korea

CitizenSugar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:02:10 -0700

The two Democratic candidates are both giving speeches on the economy this morning. Obama is speaking in New York now, Clinton to follow in North Carolina. More to come as the speeches develop.
Delta Air Lines became the second major airline in two days to announce cancellations in service. Delta grounded about 325 flights to let engineers inspect two types of planes in its fleet in what they're calling a "voluntary" safety review. The day before, American Airlines halted 200 flights for similar reasons, prompted by questions raised by the FAA and American safety officials about how a certain bundle of wires is secured to the MD-80 aircraft. Hundreds of passengers have been affected.

In Florida, the Legislature has formally apologized for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery. Florida joins five other states that have expressed public regret for the practice. The resolution passed overwhelmingly in both houses in an emotional vote. Governor Charlie Crist quoted Edmund Burke saying, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing. I think we are reminded of that today because it takes courage to do the right thing, and it’s not always easy.”
North Korea expelled all but two of the South Korean managers from a joint industrial park. The park is on the border of the two countries and has been a key symbol of reconciliation. No reason was given for the expulsion, but South Korea has recently said it would link progress at the park with progress on the North's denuclearization effort. Both the US and South Korea have warned North Korea that time was running out for it to declare the full extent of its nuclear capabilities.