Repression Isn’t “The Answer”

In 1822 the Denmark Vesey slave insurrection was planned in Charleston but was thwarted. Nearly three dozen people were executed. Erskine informed us that “thirty-five Blacks were hanged and more than forty sent to the Caribbean or to Africa.” (40) Historian Lacy K. Ford added that the Vesey insurrection revitalized the “colonization movement” among Southern whites, as a possible means of colonizing free Blacks and troublesome slaves as a way to enhance white security.(41) The net effect of the Vesey revolt changed many white Charlestonians views of management of the enslaved. As Stampp said “After the Vesey conspiracy, Charlestonians expressed disillusionment with the idea that by generous treatment their enslaved ‘would become more satisfied with their conditions and more attached to whites.”’(42) In other words, enslavers ramped up greater repressive actions dropping the paternalistic pretense that slaves were family. Berlin noted that “white supremacy manifested itself in every aspect of antebellum society, from the ballot box to the bedrooms.

MARSE: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slavemaster and his Legacy of White Supremacy: H.D. Kirkpatrick, p.151–2

I see clear parallels as to how denials of and retaliation against “socialists” and Black People are framed today with paternalistic moralism.

A more vivid parallel exists with the Israeli “Settlers”, Government military, and police responding to actions related to Palestinian People. Blowing up houses, indefinitely holding people without…