A Commission on Slavery (*Just what I wanted for Christmas*)
*I KNOW when I think of oppression, I think of Davidson College.*
*And when I think of people who have suffered under oppression, the first name I come up with is that of former Charlotte mayor, former US Transportation secretary and Davidson alum Anthony Foxx.*
Well, those two forces are coming together to finally put an end to slavery and the drivebys are excited:
Davidson College has enlisted one of its highest-profile alumni to lead a study of the school’s ties to slavery.
Anthony Foxx, former U.S. transportation secretary and Charlotte mayor, will chair the new Commission on Race and Slavery, the university announced Friday.
“I am even more proud of Davidson College today than I have ever been – for having the courage to look in the mirror and attempt to understand itself through the prism of history,” said Foxx, a 1993 graduate and member of the Davidson Board of Trustees.
(Hmmm. I wonder what kind of paycheck / stipend comes with this gig. I heard this guy was looking for work.)
[…] Davidson, founded by Presbyterians in 1837, embarks on the quest as America re-examines its racial history. Clashes over symbols of slavery and the Confederacy have flared across the country.
Davidson President Carol Quillen said current events “cast a spotlight on hatred” and add urgency to Davidson’s study.
The small private college, with about 1,900 students, joins a consortium of higher-education giants known as Universities Studying Slavery. All are trying to understand and acknowledge a part of history that has traditionally been suppressed.
Princeton University, for instance, has compiled hundreds of documents related to slavery there. Among the tidbits uncovered: The historic president’s home was the site of a slave auction, the New York Times recently reported.
Harvard University held a symposium on slavery and higher education this spring, featuring writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and an overflow crowd that drew researchers from more than 30 campuses.
And UNC Chapel Hill’s History Task Force is trying to figure out how to deal with campus monuments and buildings that commemorate slave owners and racists.
At Davidson, Quillen announced the creation of a slavery and race commission in September, supported by a $1.2 million grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. The announcement came shortly after a white supremacy rally and counterprotests at University of Virginia in Charlottesville turned violent.
“The recent events in Charlottesville bore witness to hate that is propagated by those who threaten our collective public life and is antithetical to Davidson’s values and our nation’s promise,” Quillen said at the time.
“We have a responsibility as a liberal arts college to demonstrate the crucial value of scholarly inquiry to public life and to fulfilling this country’s promise,” she said. “To seek a full understanding of the college’s history with respect to slavery and race is to honor our commitment to the quest for truth as we strive to prepare students for thoughtful, creative lives of leadership in service to humanity.”
[…]
Foxx “is an exceptional leader who understands how to build inclusive, courageous communities whose honest assessment of the past and present paves the way for a more just and humane future,” Quillen said in a statement released Friday.[…]
How is ANY of this helpful? No one currently walking around above 
the grass was alive when slavery was alive and kicking in America. Nobody.
[You have to wonder if they’ll touch on former student (and Democrat)Woodrow Wilson?]
It’s nothing more than ratcheting up the racial agitation and paving the way for the next political offensive by the radical left. (Meanwhile, while our alleged institutions of higher learning are preoccupied with crap like this, students all over Asia are continuing to excel and leave their American counterparts in the dust in the race for global economic dominance.)
This is a continuation of the Obama themes of Reparations, Retribution and … above all … Redistribution that colored his every decision. It is now the Slavery Industrial Complex that will bleed down into county school apparatuses. BTW, aren’t all white Americans by definition racist? So, white NC tax-payers will fund the Slavery Industrial Complex so it can condemn them and every monument to any white person. Pretty slick, but bereft of any redeeming moral value whatsoever.
The money is private. From the article; “$1.2 million grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation”.
That is just for the commission to complete the sturdy. When it is over it will no doubt be used to push an aggressive narrative for reparations and prospering negro causes – which will then be funded by TAX DOLLARS!!!!!
Davidson has become an academic embarrassment. It’s president is a certified wacko leftist. Sad to see what use to be a decent college descend into such idiocy.
Karl and Saul are smiling. As is BHO.
Browny Douglas
The dedicated Presbyterians who founded Davidson would be horrified to see what has become of their college today. If they were still around, they would vote to shut it down.
Probably the least accurate description of this latest attempt by Davidson College to be relevant is “courageous.”
Typical liberals. Beat any dead horse you can find to stir up division in the country. George Soros must be so proud.
Somehow, I suspect, they will “forget” to cover the Atlantic slave trade very much, since it was run by northerners from New England, and there is no record of any southern based ships being involved. They will also probably neglect to mention that the founder and namesake of Yale Univerity, Elihu Yale, was heavily involved in that Atlantic slave trade. Funny thing that the left wants to take down statues of General Lee, and rename things named for him, when Lee was an opponent of slavery, but they say nothing about the name of yale Univietisty.
Even more, they will almost certainly forget about the southern blacks who were slave owners. Prior to the War Between the States, twenty per cent of southern blacks were free and ten percent of those free blacks owned slaves themselves. That meant that 2 percent of southern blacks were slave owners, not too terribly different from the 3 percent of southern whites who were slave owners.
What is Davidson College’s next dead issue? “54-40 or Fight!”?
If Lee was an opponent of slavery he had a funny way of showing it. He owned slaves.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/robert_e_lee_owned_slaves_and.html
This liberal site blurs the truth that Robert E. Lee freed the slaves he inherited, and long before the war. Now General Grant was another story entirely. Grant also inherited slaves through his wife’s family, but he kept his slaves until they were finally freed by ratification of the 13th amendment 8 months AFTER the surrender at Appamattox. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the slave states still in the Union, and Grant’s slaves were located in one of them, Kentucky.
Lee wrote; “The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race… How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise Merciful Providence,”
HARDLY sounds like an opponent of slavery.
Your comprehension seems to be lacking. When Lee wrote many years before the war that slavery was “a moral and political evil” you just don’t get it.
Yet he owned slaves! His writing must have been fiction.
Lee owned them briefly, from the time of inheriting them to when he freed them, unlike Grant who inherited slaves and NEVER voluntarily freed his.
The fiction is in your comments.
Hmmm. I wonder if those slaves thought that Lee’s ownership of them was “brief”. NOT likely.
These leftist pontificators don’t care a wit about accuracy or the truth; they only care about the narrative.
So exactly how many slave owners do you know? And how many current or former slaves do you know?
NONE? I thought so, so exactly what useful purpose does this ridiculous commission serve? NOTHING AT ALL!
All this will do is create a false history in favor of the self-absorbed negro and their leftist masters in government.
wow. it would appear your entire circulation of FOUR has responded.
Personally I appreciate articles like this as they help me understand the ignorance and myopia of the minority of Americans represented by the likes of Roy Moore and Donald Trump. You allegation that there is some financial incentive for Mr.Foxx and other Trustees is another example of the Fake News continually spewed by your racist in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. You have moved from journalism to the opinion page, where facts are not required.
Bravo.
Funny how you “Bravo” a comment with so many errors. 1. Cannot count 2. Referencing something that has absolutely nothing to do with the original post. Guess that is the typical leftist logic if you just say racism then you are right.
As long as it takes to have a comment moderated on this site (not a criticism) it probably was four comments that Jerry K saw. Also, it seems pretty standard for people to stray way away from the topic at hand. I guess it is okay when someone from the Right does it.
There’s a reason why it’s called the “Right”
You do nothing but argue for the sake of arguing. Not one point that you have “tried to make” is even the least bit true and when you are given the facts, you just ignore them and continue on with your lies. You’re a perfect example of the mindless left! And kroll must be your twin!
Hilarious. Bravo for a comment which is essentially saying, ‘you guys are racists, uh touche!’ You can’t make this stuff up. LOL
I am not sure you are able to count very well Jerry.
As long as it takes to have a comment moderated on this site (not a criticism) it probably was four comments that Jerry K saw.
At least you libs are allowed to comment here, unlike conservatives who get banned at your loony left sites like Blue NC. Conservatives believe in freedom of speech while the left in America is trying to stamp out freedom of speech.
Oh Lord, will the left never tire of destroying memorials to the dead, ripping names off buildings, and assaulting those around them physically and otherwise?
I wonder why those busybodies can’t transform your own lives into their desired wacky state of mind and leave the rest of us alone. And, they go way too far when they impose their hate filled views on our children. That is an assault that will no longer be tolerated.
What exactly is this commission going to find? I doubt with the founding in 1837 there is much to do with slavery in that short 28 years. Maybe they need to research all the northerners and British who set up and profited from the slave trade. Or the Africans who were glad to sell their friends, family, and conquered tribes into slavery.
Maybe this institute should be at Yale University, so they could delve into the heavy involvement of its founder and namesake Elihu Yale in the Atlantic slave trade. I do not see the loony left demanding his name be taken off that university.
Davidson alumni I talk with say this is all the idea of their radical leftist president who spends all her days dreaming up stupid liberal things to do.
Dang, I’ve gotta check back to the Comments more often. This has really been fun!
It’s funny how the LEFT wants to erase the past but they always bring it up to defend their anarchist, socialist ways to destroy our republic. Poor little snowflakes.
EVERY RACE WAS IN SLAVERY AT CERTAIN POINTS, YEARS. EVERYONE STILL IS, [TAXACTION, WHICH IS ILLEGAL, OR EVEN TO ALCOHOL, MATERALISM,DRUGS, THERES A WHOLE HOST OF THINGS, BUT NO ONE HAS IT LIKE THE SMALL CHILDREN, TODDLERS, EVEN INFANTS HAVE IT AT THE HANDS OF THE PEDIFILES, SO THE MOST VOCALE AND VIOLET PROTESTERS NEED TO HANG THEIR HEAD IN SHAME.USUALLY THESE VIOLENT PROTESTERS ARE FULL OF HATE.IT’S BETTER TO CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY FOR EVERYONES BENEFIT. TRY VOLENTEERING I KNOW YOU’LL FEEL A WHOLE LOT BETTER INSIDE.
While it is important to acknowledge sins of the past, we can only act in terms of the present and future. Major oppression today is the very real threat to Liberty, due to illegitimate non-discrimination laws such as Charlotte City Council tried to pass that prompted the legislature to enact HB2..
Unlike Liberty, discrimination is NOT a constitutional principle. Our founders declared Liberty an unalienable (Creator-given, not government given) right. Ergo, government has no legitimate authority to prohibit “individual” Liberty. But this is precisely what most non-discrimination laws do. They protect one class of people by denying all others their Liberty. That’s showing partiality; that’s unjust. Liberty is our constitutional rights as individuals (persons and entities such as a business) TO discriminate.
The only form of discrimination government may legitimately address is “societal”/governmental discrimination because only “societal” discrimination denies Liberty. Example: If a restaurant refuses to serve me because I’m an “old guy”, that is a legitimate exercise of “individual” Liberty. As long as I can readily be served at another restaurant, I am not being denied my Liberty. But for government to compel all restaurants to serve “old guys” is denying Liberty to them.
What I’m calling “societal” discrimination is what Black People experienced before the 1964 Civil Rights Law which justly gave Black People the Liberty they had been denied via Jim Crow/segregation laws. It was not merely “individual” discrimination. What must now be corrected is the mis-framing of subsequent laws around discrimination rather than the constitutional principle of Liberty.
As the colonists decided that (Galatians 5:1) “For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” they had to resist the King of England’s oppression, so should this commission acknowledge the sins of the past but focus their time and energy toward today’s threat of the enslavement of all Americans by prohibiting our constitutional right TO discriminate. If they are not willing to affirm the freedom Christ (and our founders & Constitution) gave us, then they are, in fact, supporting further slavery.