Posca and the Jackson character represent this role. They are the co-opted, the race traitors, the collaborators. They are the capos that helped run the NAZI death camps. In societies that no longer practice full chattel slavery, this role survives in the administrative/bureaucratic/managerial/executive castes–IOW, the middle class.

Convince them you’re on their side, skim off their talent and employ it to
extend your control over their brothers, let them believe they too can be entrepreneurs, owners, bosses, businessmen. And let just enough of them succeed to make the whole fairy tale believable.

Django Unchained’: Samuel L. Jackson on playing a ‘hateful negro’

He essentially takes care of the house and all the property for slave owner Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo De Caprio in an outstanding performance). Stephen is the guy who makes that plantation run. He writes the checks. Within those 75 miles that are Candieland, he understands he’s king. He can do anything he wants to there. Even the white people obey him. But if he steps foot outside that 75 miles, he’s just another slave in the South. He’s smart enough to know he needs to keep up his own kingdom. The institution of slavery works for him. His father did that job, his grandfather did that job. And he inherits the job of taking care of the Candie family. He’s never been in the field, never been touched. Nobody has ever laid a hand on him.

The slave women in the house have a better life than the people working out in the field. Women who cook are the granddaughters or daughters of women who have been cooking there all their lives. The girls who serve the tables were taught the serving ceremony by their mothers or grandmothers. The only itinerant or transient people on that plantation are the people in the field. They come and go. They get whipped, they get beaten, and they die. And the Mandingos, who fight and die. But the life inside that house is an ongoing thing that always was and always will be…

Worth reading the rest of the article of Jackson’s interview, and watching the movie.

Remember the Greek Posca in the HBO TV series ‘Rome’? Posca was Julius Caesar’s slave. He managed Caesar’s household and his affairs, spied for him, kept his records and accounts, represented him in negotiations and was a trusted advisor. And Caesar listened to and appreciated his counsel (although he didn’t always take it!). He was still a slave, but he was still a man. He had his dignity. I realize not all slaves held such a position, but it was still possible.

I just don’t see that happening on the plantation.

North America was settled by religious fanatics and political outcasts. They had no intention of ever going back, and they brought their families with them. They planned to stay from the start.

Rudy feels that somehow this has led to the relative political and civic stability of Northern Anglo-Saxon America compared to the fractured and anarchic Southern Hispanic continent. He also feels this may have had something to do with the different responses of both continents to the post African slavery period.

I tend to be suspicious of sweeping generalizations like this one, but I must confess this one makes a lot of sense.

Then again, maybe its just a difference between the Catholic and Protestant view of the world.

Similar economic motivating factors occurred in South America under Spanish and Portuguese rule, but nowhere has racial conflict persisted as long or as violently as it has in North America, particularly (but not exclusively) in the old Confederacy. The exception is, of course, Canada; but the Canadians have always had the Quebecois to pick on. Perhaps its just that the Northern European, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Nordic races are just naturally more racist than other European stock. Its in the blood.

I explained why definitions are important: So as not to diminish the true nature of atrocities. I don’t like Hitler comparisons for the same reason. As bad as he is, calling Trump “Hitler” diminishes the monster that Hitler was.

Capitalism, it has many benefits, too, but it must be regulated and reformed and that requires criticism and debate and compromise. Its negative aspects can be softened and made more humane. The history of human civilization is primarily a record of our doing that successfully…

This is the exact point I have made numerous times.

As for the “mechanism always eluding me”, I know when I’m getting screwed, it matters little to me to know my rapist is wearing a condom.

The Jews were never enslaved because of race. In fact, they were never enslaved at all (except in Egypt and Babylon, and we know nothing of those episodes except what the Jews themselves wrote down). They were exiled by the Romans because they rebelled, segregated by the Christians because they allegedly killed Christ, and killed by the NAZIs because they were convenient. Are you saying what happened to the Jews was OK because “after all, they were never TECHNICALLY enslaved”? As for the Neanderthals, we don’t know why they disappeared. Modern anthropology admits they and Cro-magnons probably competed for resources, but it was not necessarily a war of extermination. And there is no evidence either group enslaved the other on a mass scale. We also know there is much of that going on in any competing communities of primates. The Cheyenne were always at war with the Blackfoot. Losers in those wars were often enslaved, but it was never organized along industrial, capitalistic lines. It is precisely that mass organization as an industrial institution that became widespread under Capitalism.

Slaves are often mentioned in Homer. They are the losers of wars, or captives taken in raids carried out expressly for the purpose of capturing slaves. People of different culture, language and national origin are mentioned. Race never is. In fact, its not really clear if Homer or his audience even knew that some people had different skin, hair or facial features. Homer mentions travel to Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia, but he never mentions Negroes.

I’m not defending the Bible. I’ve always felt it was all just Bronze Age bullshit. It doesn’t have a Commandment Against Torture, either. So what? True, Christianity or its predecessor Judaism, never specifically prohibited slavery, but Christianity became popular in the Roman world because it didn’t go out of its way to promote it. Christianity was the first religion that ignored the circumstances of your birth, only accepting God mattered.

As always, your objections are disconnected and irrelevant. But they always have one thing in common: to defend the concepts of capitalism, property rights, and accumulating wealth by expropriating the labor of others. You nit-pick to avoid facing the fundamental contradiction. I’m not fundamentally opposed to Capitalism, it has many benefits, too, but it must be regulated and reformed and that requires criticism and debate and compromise. Its negative aspects can be softened and made more humane.
The history of human civilization is primarily a record of our doing that successfully, and Capitalism struggling to frustrate the process.

Quit making excuses for these bastards.

Exploitation and slavery are not the same thing, dude. Human beings being sold and treated like cattle is different from paying people dirt wages. And of course dirt wages are BECAUSE OF unregulated S&D, not because it’s getting “swept under the rug.” But the mechanism of how that works seems to forever elude you and I will NOT attempt to help you understand that again. I won’t argue with someone who, metaphorically speaking, thinks gravity can be turned off and on.

There is considerable debate about the origins of racism. I think the Jews might have some disagreement with you on its post medieval origins. I’ll agree the concepts of race and racism were more fine tuned later, expecially with the trans atlantic slave trade. But the idea of race in the Odyssey of Homer and the storytelling of “others” in Greek and Roman literature plays a large part in how they were represented in ancient discourse. If you go back much further homo sapiens largely killed off neanderthals, even though they were interbreedable. If that wasn’t about race what was it about?

There is nothing specific about Christianity that prohibits slavery. To me the absolute proof that the bible is written by man and not inspired by god is that the 10 commandments, or anything else in the bible, doesn’t forbid slavery. You can own human beings but you can’t eat pork.

You know, like saying Trump’s not a fascist because he hasn’t invaded Poland or rounded up Jews into camps–yet.

Yes, a lot of people throughout history have condemned slavery. Some philosophies and religions (like Christianity and Judaism) have also condemned slavery. That’s not what I was implying. And racism was NOT always there. Is race even mentioned in the Old or New Testaments? Or Homer? Other than maybe the Queen of Sheba. The Romans were not racist, the Greeks were not racist, the concept of race didn’t even exist back then because most everybody in the Mediterranean littoral was Caucasian. Nowhere in any literature or account of the ancient world have I ever read any racist concepts. Of course, in those days people were suspicious of people from other lands, who worshiped other gods, or spoke other languages, or even were from other social classes, but it wasn’t about race. In those day, loyalty was to family, caste, tribe, nation, class, not skin color. The conflation of race and servitude is a thoroughly modern invention. Like I said, look up the Triangle Trade.

And I went way out of my way to say ” Capitalism made wide-scale chattel slavery possible, which is not to say there is a causal connection.” That is, capitalism did NOT invent or cause modern day slavery, it just made it possible to arise. Europeans HAD to dehumanize the blacks because their religion did nor allow slavery.

Of course, in lieu of slavery, there have been a lot of arrangements that substitute nicely for it, in all but name. And yes, our founding fucking fathers took full advantage of that. Indentured servitude, serfdom, apprenticeships, tenant farming, sharecropping, and internships (a modern corporate variation) and of course, regular good old wage slavery. And in the Gilded Age, there were all those Eastern and Southern Europeans, and Chinese, and yes, Irish, so desperate to be exploited. And what about forced military conscription? And what about convict labor (even if its voluntary)? And lets not forget special “minimum wage exemptions” to provide “opportunities” for the disabled, and the underage, and the overaged, and the mentally challenged. Aren’t the bosses GENEROUS? The whole point is to lower the amount you have to pay the workers, that is, avoid that old Glorious Law of Supply and Demand. That gets quickly swept under the rug when it benefits the worker and not the boss. If you look it up in the dictionary its not actually slavery. They always have another name for it.

There is a dividing line, even in our enlightened society. Its the line between owning and renting, front office and shop floor, suit and uniform, officer and enlisted, salary and wage (and now, GIG and contract laborers!), college and high school, management and labor. I know its there because I’ve crossed it several times in my life and there is NEVER any question of which side of it you’re on. They never let you forget it. Trying to get over that line, or trying to not fall back under it, is why people get up in the morning and go to work. Fascism is caused when the working class realizes they’re about to fall below it, or their kids will never get past it. You know immediately whenever you cross it, on the way up, or on the way down. Its not about money, there’s a lot of overlap there, but its about prestige and power and respect and dignity. Of course, there has been some progress in the last few hundred years, things aren’t as bad as they used to be, oh bla di, oh bla da. But let the economy take a bit of a hit and things slide back again real quick. Everybody has folks below him, and folks above him. Like they say, shit rolls down hill. But that line is real and its clear, its as sharp as a knife and you can’t miss it. Especially when you’re on the wrong side of it.

And if you haven’t figured that out by now, pal, you’d better wise up quick.