Lunkhead DeSantis needs a moral enema
Nothing remotely redeemable about slavery

By JARRETTE FELLOWS, JR., Editor-in Chief

America knows it must atone for slavery. Two actions the US government must implement are, issuing reparations to the descendants of slaves for the grueling labor their forebears suffered for 244 years without recompence; and issuing an official apology for their suffering.

One action that must be rebuked and condemned led by Americans with blackened souls, is that slaves benefitted from slavery by acquiring workable skills like cooking in the master's kitchen, blacksmithing or growing crops.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is proffering this lie, advocating that slavery offered redeemable value to the indentured.

Forced labor at the point of physical reprisal was not a benefit. It was extreme stress, threatening a slave's psychological and mental well-being. We will never know the number of slaves that suffered strokes, cardiac episodes, and mental breakdown under the duress of slavery—both during the transatlantic passage crowded in the dank holds of slave ships, and during nearly two-and-a-half centuries of hell on Earth.

It must be noted that the long voyages at sea bore no likeness to comfort for the prostrate enslaved Africans who were immersed in filth—often their own urine, excrement and vomit.

Slave ships were cargo ships specially built or converted for transporting enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas. Slave ship owners wanted to carry as many slaves as possible and divided the hull into "between decks" or "tween decks". Slave ships were part of the transatlantic slave trade that lasted from 1500 to 1863. Some names of slave ships were Adelaide, Antelope, Aurore, and La Amistad.

DeSantis and the racist perverts in his administration want to teach a "sanitized" version of slavery to middle school children that slavery had a layer of light to it—that slaves acquired important skills in the provision of their daily labor, and they desire to "lighten" the horrid legacy of slavery to children.

But the dark legacy of slavery cannot be white-washed. DeSantis is a man of moral turpitude in need of a moral enema. He is depraved and needs purging. DeSantis is morally and ethically unfit to be Florida's governor, much less president of the United States.

There was no redeemable value in slavery, an atrocity in which human beings were lynched, burned at the stake, branded, disfigured physically, the women and girls raped, families broken into pieces and sold to the highest bidder ... slavery was abject dehumanization.

Toiling in the cotton fields, the "big house" or amid the blacksmith's forge, was not the job corps or employment enrichment. The forced labor—all of it—without a cent of recompence, was driven by the crack of a bull whip, whether by the more severe version akin to flogging, which could kill a man or the use of a whip to goad a man to work harder or to demonstrate power over them.

Slave owners also used the brunt of a hard stick to discipline women and children in the master's house.

According to e-Notes.com, slave owners were beholden to resort to a host of exceedingIy cruel measures to punish slaves that veered from the masters' rule of law. One such brutality was to drive nails into a barrel, where a slave would be forced to enter, and the barrel subsequently rolled down a hill.

Another punitive savagery was the use of thumbscrews in a device that resembled a vice containing sharp spikes. Thumbs (and sometimes toes) were placed in the vice and slowly crushed.

Punishment was not always physical but mental as well. Slaves often saw loved one such as a husband, wife or child sent away never to be seen again as a form of punishment. The separation of family members in front of one another was used as an instrument to punish slaves.

The willful harm of one family member in front of another as a means of getting what the slave owner wanted was another instrument to punish slaves. Additionally, slave owners often punished the adults by whipping their innocent children in place of them.

Using rope to hang slaves was also a cruelty, and later, the use of the gun to repress slaves was used. In some slave narratives, using an axe to cut off a slave's big toe or the entire foot to punish runaway slaves was also a common practice.

In some instances with problem runaways, slaves were publicly burned alive suspended by chains over a large bonfire to discourage other would-be runaways.

Finally, "choosing" different slaves to work in the homes of the master in hopes of dividing and conquering the slave population was a tactic to foil the hopes of collectivizing against the master.

There were also times that slaves were fitted with heavy metal collars around the neck used to keep them in line as well as to serve as an actual restrictive device when connected to a chain.

One thing that was not considered a punishment in the strict sense, but was quite horrible was the relatively constant practice of rape by male slave owners of their female slaves. It was something considered normal with many slave owners. The bastard children of these rapes were also considered slaves unless the owner saw fit to "free" them.

History is history and therefore cannot be undone. America's slave legacy is forever a part of the strata, a smear that ensued for 244 years. DeSantis' governorship cannot erase this. And it will never be sanitized.

Whispers of those tortured souls wrested from the Atlantic seaboard of West Africa, will always remind us in the cold darkness through the howling wind, to never forget.

The truth will stand.