<< I didn't say it was bad. I said it was brutal. The queston of brutality vs consent is exactly what is at issue here. Your interpretation of "what I am worried about" is as inaccurate as your claims about the consciousnesses of the slaves.
Neither Genovese nor I deny that it was brutal--unspeakably, horrifically brutal. The question is whether the brutality by itself was enough to maintain slavery in power. You assert that it was, I deny it.
> The slaveowner propaganda against the abolitionists' propaganda was that the slaves were consenting and happy in slavery. So, the coverup of the major and main role of brutality was critical in delaying other whites from opposing slavery.
Consent doesn't mean happiness. Workers consent to capitalism, but are they happy with it?
> Perhaps this: ending racism in the year 2000 does not need to focus on Black people "consenting" to it, rather on changing white people from "consenting" to it.
Both, I think. We have to work on both sides of this, don't we?
> The slaves were ready to overthrow slavery from the beginning.
So thought John Brown, and _he_ ended up on the gallows. Frederick Douglass warned him.
> It was the white masses fighting and dying to end slavery that tipped the balance. It was when the abolitionists obtained major force and fought fire with fire, not the dissolution of consent among the slaves. Fredrick Douglass' life mission was not to dissolve consent to slavery among the slaves. That is a patently false claim. The vast majority of people Douglass propagandized were white. His life mission was to dissolve white people's " consenting" to the enslavement of Black people.
Both here too--I mean Douglass' aims. He was limited in his ability to propagandize slaves, as they mosrly couldn't read and he wasn't going to be allowed to tour the South stirring up trouble. But there si no question that he aimed throughout his life to change black consciousness to the extent that he could.
Of course it was whites--and I am surprised to see you overlook it--blacks too, fighting in the Union Army that overthrew sllavery. But this supports my point. The slaves only finally withdrew consent in the areas where they could bt leaving their masters en masse in the wake of the Union Army. Until they, they put up with it, even when no greater force opposed them.
--jks
>>