Slavery Section: Punch Clock Villain

Ok, I've got a rather controversial one. In Punch clock Villian, there is a section on the Real Life folder that includes slavery. It details on the fact that there were slavers, yet many of them were very humane with their slaves, not exactly the way they are depicted (as the article says, as Nazis). Many taught their slaves how to read and write, and allowed their children to play with one another, basically treating slaves as family. This is true...to an extent.

At the same time, a bullet point stated that while there were some indifference on slavery at the time (as slavery was the norm then), that also led to mass mistreatment of African Americans at the time (I cannot speak on other slaves in other times, such as Rome, so I am limiting myself to this subject). A simple recap on a slave shows that many had to eat out of a trough, with barely enough rations. It was also illegal to even teach slaves how to read, and many had to sleep outside (while the lucky ones lived with their masters).

Now, this isn't complaining about slavery, that's not what this topic is about. Nor do I expect to get a history lesson on slavery on a T Vtropes article. Tropes should make you think, but not hit you heavy. That said, I believe it is poorly written, as it doesn't present well researched facts. While slavers certainly weren't Nazis (well, not all of em'), it wasn't the "Disney-fied version of what is basically said there.

TL;DR: To get to the point, I wanted to re-write that portion in one or two short bulletens, rather than the seven or so we had before (there was one section saying how it was akin to having a dog you owned, with losing it as losing a slave. Troper tried, but compared slavery to owning dogs, so I took it out.) One portion showing how it emphasised the troop, which the original post did, yet in the same post (maybe one sentence) stating how it wasn't all perfect, as to not paint the wrong picture.

Opinions?

• While the media and history textbooks have created a classic image of the old American Slave Owner as being sadistic, cruel, and pretty much a Nazi with a Southern accent; the truth is far more sinister. The majority of people buying and selling slaves really bore no ill will towards anyone, white or black. According to some sources, the majority of slave owners were actually quite humane with their slaves, if for no other reason than they considered it "good business" to treat the "staff" well. The ones who raped and beat their slaves were actually frowned upon, and their are records of laws against mistreating slaves. Some owners actually treated their slaves like friends and family, allowed their the slaves' children to play with theirs, taught them to read, and saw to it that their accommodations were almost as good as their own. But if you think that's jarring, consider the black slaves who served as overseers of their fellow slaves, and would actually inform their masters of possible insurrections or escape attempts. Astonishing.
  • Almost all slave owners throughout history were like this, because slaves cost too much to be easily replaced, so it made sense to treat them well.
  • In The Boondocks episode about the main characters' ancestor, the third (and the true) version of the story, treated the slave master as this.
  • Treating slaves well made a lot of sense for a lot of Southern slaveholders, since 1860 census records show that, while 25% of white Southerners owned slaves, less than 1% owned more than fifty of them. Many of those smaller slaveholders had to work in the field beside their slaves, so developing friendships with them was desirable. Also, South Carolina's third largest slaveholder at the time of the War was William Ellison, a black freedman. So, the idea of the typical Southern slaveholder being a sadistic white aristocrat sittin' on the verandah sippin' mint juleps is not quite accurate.
  • Another thing often left out of history is that many of the slaves willingly fought against the Union during the Civil War to protect their homes and masters.
  • With a few exceptions, most civilizations throughout history were actually very civil about slavery. It was invented as a humane alternative to genocide, since early wars were all about eliminating the group you were fighting against. Winning armies would pretty much say, "Well your city doesn't exist anymore, but we don't want to slaughter you, so come back with us and we'll give you a job and a place to live."
  • That said, these indifferent treatments could still lead to horrifying treatment of innocent human beings, from the destruction of families and hideous punishments for minor misdeeds to rape and murder.
    • Also, it's not okay for one human being to own another.
    • Keep in mind that, for a large chunk of human history, this wasn't obvious to everybody. Except maybe to the people actually being enslaved.
      • Not even to them. Many slaves in Ancient Rome were themselves slaveowners, and virtually all freedmen owned slaves. Some of the largest slaveowners in Rome were Imperial freedmen.
        • Not to mention that in Ancient Rome, a large portion of slaves were well educated and occupied some very prestigious professions, such as physicians, lawyers, orators, etc. Senators and nobles would hire slave philosophers to be tutors to their children.

That is awful.

For one thing, it is Completely Missing The Point: a Punch-Clock Villain does bad things but is not a bad guy, it's just a job, right? That is way different from "painted as bad in modern media but weren't actually all that bad", which is possibly not true either! (But irrelevant either way, that is like, Values Dissonance or something.)

For another, that is at least 90% natter. Maybe 100%.

For another, No. Just... No. Civilians working in Nazi death camps? Uh, okay. People who thought it was okay to own people, but nice ones? Uh, no.

edited 4th Nov '10 8:34:25 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I think the intent is "Slave owners owned slaves (a bad thing), but were not bad people even to the slaves"

Scrap it. It's Real Life and a Natter Magnet. When a Real Life section becomes a Natter Magnet it goes away.

edited 4th Nov '10 8:37:01 PM by Madrugada

It is very generous of you to interpret it that way. I think that is a specious argument, and slave owners do not fit the Punch-Clock Villain profile. The trope is about adversarial relationships, not master/slave relationships.

edited 4th Nov '10 8:39:36 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Or more "many slave owners owned slaves because they wanted to make a profit and they were the cheap labor of the day, not necessarily because they were racist, and some were even nice guys about it who treated their slaves as workers instead of almost like animals."

We should probably note that this percentage of slaveowner fluctuated between most when slavery first became the labor system of the colonies, to some, to few, to very few, and in between those last three as time went on.

Other than that input, I'm not touching this one. Or, at least, I'll try not to. I likely won't be able to stay away.

edited 4th Nov '10 8:38:43 PM by KnownUnknown

I gotta say, I thought at best, I'd get no replys, let alone 5. At worst, I'd get a whole bunch of 'ur takein dis 3 seriurly!!!11!. Glad I was wrong.

Yeah, I may just remove the whole section, cause that really droned on. Is that ok? Whie he has a point in sayingthat a few slave owners saw them as cheap labor, it still stands to point that slaves didn't exactly get kosher treatment, at least not as positivley as the OP had stated. More, he spoke on a specific brand of slaves, house slaves. But I won't get into detail, since African American history isn't the point of my thread here anywho.

Yeah, kill it. This is exactly the reason RL sections are expendable. Who cares if slavers were or were not decent people or did or did not fit this trope? We care about tropes in media. If it's not helping to illustrate what the trope is, and it's not explaining why or how some media use it, there's no point to the RL section.

If there were a bunch of shows depicting slaveowner along those lines maybe a note about the historical background would be useful but it's heavily debated whether or not this is even the same trope.

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