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Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the arch-conservative Family Leader, a religious organization that opposes same-sex marriage, got GOP presidential candidates Bachmann and Santorum to sign his pledge asserting that life for African-Americans was better during the era of slavery: “A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

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Say what you will about slavery, at least the ‘peculiar institution’ kept Black families intact.

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ORIGINAL: JeffBC

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Say what you will about slavery, at least the ‘peculiar institution’ kept Black families intact.

I tend to agree. That's pretty much pro-slavery and there's no way to spin it otherwise. To reduce all the inherent horrors of that practice to "say what you will" is horrific. The idea that keeping black families intact somehow would make up for that.... even were it even remotely true.... marks her and anyone who agrees with that statement as unfit for humanity.

Blackman's interpretation seems more realistic.

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ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul

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ORIGINAL: bounty44
that said---good luck finding a reference from her saying exactly what you just said she said, and whats more, if she herself said anything remarkably close to it, be a good boy and see if you can understand in actual context, fully from her position, rather than from the interpretation of the partisan hacks who like nothing better than to demonize people those they don't agree with. so, here's a chance to show both your intellectual capability and your political morality.

She endorsed the statement. It was part of a pledge that she signed, and this statement was the very first tenant of the pledge.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oshadavidson/2011/07/08/michele-bachmann-salutes-the-upside-to-slavery/#4761e64b40c4
Michele Bachmann Salutes the Upside to Slavery

Say what you will about slavery, at least the ‘peculiar institution’ kept Black families intact.

That’s according to a “marriage pledge” signed recently by GOP presidential aspirant, Michele Bachmann.

Representative Bachmann’s grasp of American history has never been firm, particularly when it comes to slavery. She has stated that the founding fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States,” despite the fact that several of our Nation’s founders owned slaves and fought to keep slavery alive in the new republic.

Not that the two positions are necessarily mutually exclusive. Slave owner Thomas Jefferson wanted to use the Declaration of Independence to outlaw slavery. That was a minority opinion among the founders, however, and Bachmann’s generalized assertion is a clear misreading of American history.

The pledge Bachmann signed this week is sponsored by The Family Leader, an Iowa-based group of Christian social conservatives. The “Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family,” attempts to buttress its argument that “the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis” with statistics and scholarly citations. Here’s one such attempt:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

If that sounds questionable to you, there’s a good reason. Leaving aside the implication that President Obama is somehow responsible for all problems within the Black community, the institution of slavery didn’t recognize the very concept of “family” among captive Blacks. Marriage between slaves was, after all, illegal. And parents and children were routinely separated, forever, at the auction block.

The pledge provides a footnote to support their claim, citing a 2005 study, The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans. I decided to ask one of the study’s authors, Dr. Lorraine Blackman, what she thought of The Family Leader’s “pro-family” interpretation of slavery.

“That’s just wrong,” she said. “It is a serious error.”

Blackman, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Social Work, pointed out that she wouldn’t have objected if, instead of 1860, the pledge Bachmann endorsed had selected a year sometime after slavery ended.

“As soon as they could,” Blackman said, “former slaves rushed to get married.” This led to a relatively high — and quickly growing — rate of marriage among African Americans.

According to the study Blackman co-wrote, by 1880, 56.3 percent of Black households were what we now call “nuclear families.” (For Whites, that figure was 66.9 percent.) By 1950, nearly 80 percent of Black families were headed by married couples. By 1996, that figure had dropped to just 34 percent.

This is a serious problem, argues Blackman, but it won’t be solved by rewriting history to make slavery appear to have any redeeming qualities.


(emphasis mine)

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ORIGINAL: JeffBC

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Say what you will about slavery, at least the ‘peculiar institution’ kept Black families intact.

I tend to agree. That's pretty much pro-slavery and there's no way to spin it otherwise. To reduce all the inherent horrors of that practice to "say what you will" is horrific. The idea that keeping black families intact somehow would make up for that.... even were it even remotely true.... marks her and anyone who agrees with that statement as unfit for humanity.

Blackman's interpretation seems more realistic.

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Responding to a growing controversy, an Iowa-based conservative group has removed a passage in a marriage pact signed by two GOP presidential candidates that suggested black families were in better shape during slavery.

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man," said Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader...

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum signed the two-page document entitled "The Marriage Vow - A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family," on Thursday, but their campaigns emphasized that the "candidate vow" portion of the pledge that they put their stamps of approval on didn't mention slavery...

It's not clear whether Bachmann was aware of the slavery passage on the first page. Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for the Bachmann campaign, had told FoxNews.com that the Minnesota congresswoman had no second thoughts about signing the "candidate vow" portion that doesn't mention slavery.../quote]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/09/bachmann-stands-by-marriage-pledge-that-links-slavery-to-black-family-values.html

from dc's link above (same as wayward's post earlier); the actual statement:

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.3"

sorry, I don't get "blacks were better off under slavery" from that.



< Message edited by bounty44 -- 7/3/2016 4:10:59 PM >

(in reply to dcnovice)

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ORIGINAL: bounty44
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President."

is that an untrue statement?

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and does that actually translate into that "blacks had it better under slavery?"

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you are saying she endorsed a document that said specifically that?

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and you pretty much did what I urged/chided Thompson to not do. you took what other people said about her, or in response to her, and not what she her self said or to understand her words/actions in full context.

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sorry, I don't get "blacks were better off under slavery" from that.

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Slave marriages and family ties were not recognized by American law. Any owner was free to sell husbands from wives, parents from children, and brothers from sisters. Many large slaveholders had numerous plantations and frequently shifted slaves, splitting families in the process.

The most conservative estimates indicate that at least 10 to 20 percent of slave marriages were destroyed by sale. The sale of children from parents was even more common. As a result of the sale or death of a father or mother, over a third of all slave children grew up in households from which one or both parents were absent.

On large plantations, one slave father in three had a different owner than his wife, and could visit his family only at his master's discretion. On smaller holdings, divided ownership and mother-headed households occurred even more frequently. Many slaves had to share their single room cabins with relatives or other unrelated slaves. Even on model plantations, children between the ages of 7 and 10 were taken from their parents and sent to live in separate cabins.

Despite the frequent breakup of families by sale, African-Americans managed to forge strong and durable family and kin ties within the institution of slavery. Most slaves married and lived with the same spouse until death, and most slave children grew up in two parent households.

To sustain a sense of family identity, slaves often named their children after parents, grandparents, recently deceased relatives, and other kin. Slaves passed down family names to their children, usually the name of an ancestor's owner rather than their current owner's. The strength of slave families is nowhere more evident than in the advertisements slaveowners posted for runaway slaves. Over a third of the advertisements indicate that fugitives left an owner to visit a spouse, a child, or other relatives.

Ties to an immediate family stretched outward to an involved network of extended kin. Family destruction and dispersal created extended kinship networks stretching across whole counties. Whenever children were sold to neighboring plantations, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins often took on the functions of parents. When blood relatives were not present, strangers cared for and protected children.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44
no wayward---the pledge does not say "blacks had it better under slavery"--and that's what im on about. thompsons saying that Michele Bachmann said that, and believes that.

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being mistaken about the reality, or arguing over the facts of marriage during slavery, while not unimportant, is beside the point for me as concerns what Bachmann actually said.

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however that said, the blackman information you posted didn't actually compare modern nuclear family numbers to those during 1860 either.

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you cannot say its a "serious error" without doing so.

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by contrast, the numbers she gave for 1880 help support the pledge's statement.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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sorry, I don't get "blacks were better off under slavery" from that.

What do you see as the point of the comparison?

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original: wayward:

I didn't say it was a serious error. Blackman did. And as she was the author of the study that the statement was supposedly based on, I would think that she would be the best qualified to say whether or not the statement was erroneous."

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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sorry, I don't get "blacks were better off under slavery" from that.

What do you see as the point of the comparison?