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@TeraWHunter - a professor of history at Princeton University wrote this article in 2017 in response to Ben Carson referring to enslaved Africans as immigrants: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/09/slaves-werent-immigrants-they-were-property/
Tera W. Hunter is the Edwards Professor of American History and Professor of African-American Studies, a specialist in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her research focuses on gender, race, labor, and Southern histories.
https://history.princeton.edu/people/tera-w-hunter
https://history.princeton.edu/people/tera-w-hunter
Professor Hunter explains, “the conditions under which individuals and groups came here on their own accord, or were brought here against their will, have had monumental consequences for our life chances and the evolution of our rights as citizens.”
“Slaves were chattel. Slavery was a violent system of conquest and domination...The “Middle Passage,” as it was called, was a deeply alienating journey into hell. These were one-way voyages with no chance of return.”
“Enslaved people did not work ‘for less.’ Their labor was stolen to enrich their masters. They passed on their legal status in perpetuity...They had unknowingly embarked upon centuries of bondage, one of the longest nightmares in human history.”
”Retrofitting a generic definition of the term ‘immigrant’ to slavery strips both of their historical meaning. Immigrants are people who move in search of refuge and resettlement of their own volition.”
“Enslaved Africans were not [immigrants]. Our nation was built upon multiple patterns of migration that were propelled by variant motivations, including flight from religious persecution and the desire to exploit others for economic greed.”
![“Enslaved Africans were not [immigrants]. Our nation was built upon multiple patterns of migration that were propelled by variant motivations, including flight from religious persecution and the desire to exploit others for economic greed.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ef4XYszXkAAvY6v.jpg "“Enslaved Africans were not [immigrants]. Our nation was built upon multiple patterns of migration that were propelled by variant motivations, including flight from religious persecution and the desire to exploit others for economic greed.”")
“Today, the descendants of the enslaved call ourselves African Americans, not Ghanaian, or Guinean or Sierra Leonean Americans because of this ancestral rupture and exile. We cannot specify what we do not know — unless we are more recent, true immigrants from Africa.”
#ADOS
#ADOS
“By referring to slaves as immigrants, Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, is practicing historical revisionism with a blunt instrument.”
@kerrywashington @BarackObama
@kerrywashington @BarackObama
“In the 1890s, former Confederates tried to rewrite history to extricate the role that slavery had played in the Civil War and to minimize its effect on Southern society, economy and polity. These are not innocent gaffes.”
@DNC @kerrywashington @BarackObama @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden
All of YOU, “do harm by misrepresenting our history to serve political objectives. They are useful to those who wish to exonerate the country of its racist past and its continuing influences.”
All of YOU, “do harm by misrepresenting our history to serve political objectives. They are useful to those who wish to exonerate the country of its racist past and its continuing influences.”
ALL of YOU:
“The excision of the country’s ‘original sin’ from historical narratives renders subsequent patterns of racial discrimination incomprehensible.”
“The excision of the country’s ‘original sin’ from historical narratives renders subsequent patterns of racial discrimination incomprehensible.”
CONCLUSION:
“It is not enough to ‘not forget’ the horrors of the history of slavery, however; how we remember their complex legacies is also crucial...Our nation’s institutions and culture cannot evolve to live up to their full potential based on false narratives.”
“It is not enough to ‘not forget’ the horrors of the history of slavery, however; how we remember their complex legacies is also crucial...Our nation’s institutions and culture cannot evolve to live up to their full potential based on false narratives.”
And, to drill this point home, there was a NATIONAL outrage to Ben Carson’s attempt to classify slaves as immigrants a few years ago - the very SAME thing the @DNC did last night. Here are some receipts:
#1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/ben-carson-refers-to-slaves-as-immigrants-in-first-remarks-to-hud-staff.html
#1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/ben-carson-refers-to-slaves-as-immigrants-in-first-remarks-to-hud-staff.html
#19. @TheDailyShow where you at? https://digg.com/video/trevor-noah-ben-carson-immigrants
#20. 日本 - We have Japan in the House! 
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/07/world/politics-diplomacy-world/carson-first-speech-hud-draws-flak-calling-slaves-immigrants/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/07/world/politics-diplomacy-world/carson-first-speech-hud-draws-flak-calling-slaves-immigrants/
#21. Even LUVVIE reported on this: https://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2017/03/ben-carson-slaves-immigrants.html
#23. Hong Kong even reported this. 
https://hk.appledaily.com/international/20170308/UIYM6JGGFKA6YR636LMF4R32DM/
https://hk.appledaily.com/international/20170308/UIYM6JGGFKA6YR636LMF4R32DM/
