Why Did Florida Governor de Santis Choose This Week to Dignify Slavery

It goes without saying that Florida Governor Ron de Santis never studied African history. Nor is he known for devotion to self-reflection.   But the subconscious mind can at times be an eery path to truth.  Could that be the real reason he has chosen the week when the American public has been mesmerized with horror by "The Sound of Freedom"?  to glorify the most monstrous episodes of human trafficking in recorded history -- the transatlantic slave trade.

De Santis should not bear the full weight of blame for sanitizing that period in American history.  After all, even most textbooks refer to that institution as "chattel slavery".  However, female slaves in the ante-bellum south were both agricultural laborers and sex slaves as would be defined by today's  Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action and in contemporary times tabulated by UNESCO.  That is, they were locked into sexual servitude for which non-consensual sexual activity or forced prostitution was imposed without legal remedy.  

In addition, coerced reproduction was used as a means of increasing slave assets, while slave owners who found themselves in financial straits sold their mulatto daughters to brothels because they commanded higher prices as “fancy girls”. 

Is this what Governor de Santis describes as the "personal benefits" of slavery?

Sexual exploitation of the enslaved

Comments

Goodman said…
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