That is a fact. Not a justification, not a defense of slavery. Just a fact. Anyone who implies a soft on slavery message is beneath contempt. Obama's very valid points does not diminish the horror of enslavement as these dishonest critics allege. As any honest historian knows in order to keep slaves and free laborers strong, the Washington administration provided meat, bread and other staples, also decent lodging on the grounds of the new presidential building. “It is a given that slavery is an abomination. But reporting the story behind Mrs. O’Reilly’s statement on Tuesday that slaves were “well-fed” and had “decent lodgings” reflects a belief that white on black chattel slavery was a relatively “benign” institution as opposed to a relationship prefaced on interpersonal tyranny, unlimited violence, exploitation, abuse, rape, and murder.Īfter he was criticized for making such comments, O’Reilly responded on Wednesday’s edition of his show with: But even by that low standard, O’Reilly’s corrective to Michelle Obama’s speech is one of the worst moments - and there have been many - in the history of his Fox News TV show. O’Reilly’s comments are par for the course for a man who was surprised that black people use silverware to eat with while dining at restaurants. On Tuesday’s episode of his Fox News TV show, O’Reilly responded with a segment which pointed out that the slaves who built the White House were “well-fed” and had “decent lodgings.” He also emphasized that free blacks, whites, and other immigrants also built the White House. Unable to remain silent or to admire the poignancy and intelligence of Michelle Obama’s comments about African-American slaves and the building of the White House, Fox News personality, professional liar, and race-baiter Bill O’Reilly felt obliged to intervene. History does indeed, on a few occasions, come full circle. If the ghosts of the black slaves who built the White House still wander its halls, tunnels, and grounds, they must look on at First Lady Michelle Obama and her beautiful black family with a mix of wonder, confusion, and pride. Michelle Obama’s allusion to the complicated intersections of freedom and slavery in America also highlights the unique and especially perilous and tenuous space that the black female body occupied both during slavery, and then later on in Jim and Jane Crow, where black women were subjected to arbitrary sexual violence and assault by white men because they were denied the exclusive protections of “white femininity.” As a black woman, her reminding the public that it was slaves who looked like her that built the White House is a signal to the centrality of black women to the black freedom struggle and American history. But, she lives in a building that was built with the blood, labor, sweat - and deaths - of black people. Michelle Obama, as a black American woman, and descendant of black human property, is also the wife of the most powerful black man on the planet. This was a profound moment of vulnerability and strength. That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. As part of that narrative, Michelle Obama decided to offer some teaching about a little-known aspect of American history. On Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, First Lady Michelle Obama delivered an eloquent speech about the long arc of progress in American history and the dangers posed by the proto-fascism, cynicism, and bigotry channeled by Donald Trump.
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