Transcription
The United States of America, as a country, had slavery for like 90 years. That's it. Then we're comparing this to countries that had it for 900 years or longer.
It was announced recently that President Trump would be doing a review of the Smithsonian's museum exhibits to make sure that they, uh, quote, "celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions," which, yes, that is what our publicly funded museum exhibits should do. So that's very good.
And they talked about this on CNN last night. Um, and you could only imagine what their take was. Jillian Michaels was a guest and, um, so, and, and but she's the one person on the panel who, uh, was did not see this move by Trump to be some great, horrific act. And so here's how that conversation went.
"Listen, have you looked at some of the things that were being," "Slavery? Yeah, slavery was a bad thing that we should talk about. Okay. Like, he forgives, he's not whitewashing slavery. So, he's not, he's not." "No, he's, he's not. And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does. But let's talk about the fact that when you slaver, slavery in America was white supremacy. Less than 2% of white Americans own slaves, but it was a system of white supremacy. Slavery is thousands of years old. White people were slave owners, and it was the first race. I didn't realize this was controversial. I'm very surprised an extraordinary exercise in historical revisionism. Racism, do you realize Jillian, I'm surprised that you're trying to litigate, um, who was the beneficiary of slavery and not in the context of American history. In the context of American history, what are you saying is incorrect by, by saying that it was white people oppressing black people? Every single thing is like, 'Oh, no, no, no. This is all because white people bad.' And that's just not the truth. Like, for example, exhibit, I have a list of every single one. Like, people migrated from Cuba because white people bad, not because of pastor. Yes. No, it's in there. That's what I'm saying. You don't actually know what's in there. Do you know that when you walk in the front door, the first thing you see?"
"All right. So, Jillian is completely correct. Of course, the other people on the panel are looking at her dumbfounded, and that's not a put-on, by the way. They, they, uh, they're not feigning ignorance. They really just have never heard anything that she's saying. The, the things that she's saying, they've, they've never, when they're looking at her stupified, right? They can't even, they can't process it. Well, that's because they've actually never heard it before. The level of sheer, sheer overwhelming historical ignorance of most of most quote educated Americans these days just cannot be understated. And that's not to let them off the hook or to excuse it. Uh, but the fact is that if you went to public school any time over the past 40 years, your education was effectively worthless. Your American history education was especially worthless. And that's why you never even heard some of the most basic facts of the world's, you know, you've never heard a lot. There's a lot of basic facts you never heard. And you certainly didn't hear some of the most basic facts about one of the world's longest running and most prevalent institutions, which is slavery. An institution so prevalent that when two sides of the world that had been out of contact with each other for thousands of years, when they finally met, they both had independently come up with this idea of forcing other people to work for free, right? And that's one of the reasons why, and I always talk about, I love reading about explorers and and these stories of people who made first contact with tribes in far-flung corners of the world. Um, and I, I'm endlessly fascinated by these kinds of stories. And one of the reasons is that I, I, I'm just, I think it's really interesting to see the universals, right? You have, you have all the differences. There are a lot of very, uh, significant differences, of course, but there are certain things that you've got these cultures that were separated thousands and thousands and thousands of years, had no contact with each other whatsoever. They didn't even know each other existed. And you, there are certain things that they, like certain conclusions that they had had arrived, uh, at and, um, you know, it's the same thing when you read about, you know, Captain Cook or any European explorer stumbling upon tribes on small Pacific islands, or you hear about the British explorers who, uh, were exploring the interior of Africa, you know, in the 19th century, um, 18th and 19th century tribes so isolated, you know, that they believe they were the only people on earth. And, and then you look at the areas where they had reached kind of similar conclusions independently on a number of things, and slavery is one of them, unfortunately. And that's a, that's a sad statement. It's a sad, it's a statement about human nature. It's one of the, it's a troubling statement about human nature. We have a fallen nature as human beings. We know that as Christians. So it shouldn't be a great shock. But either way, um, one of the primary things that humans across the world had in common with each other for thousands of years is that they all had figured out that it's a lot easier to get stuff done if you force someone else to do it. So, it's like you have these, these two cultures and they're trying to communicate, trying to relate, not understanding each other, and then they see each other's slaves and they go, 'Oh, you have those too? Oh, that's so neat. We're twins. Slave twins.' That's actually a direct quote, by the way. That's, uh, that's from one of Vasco Da Gama's expeditions, I believe. Anyway, so this was universal. Okay. And yet universal. Now, there are a lot, we'll talk about, there were a lot of differences in how these institutions, uh, were, how they operated, and there were a lot of differences in how long these various different cultures had slavery. But the universal is that everybody throughout the world for a long period of time had slavery, and it was, and, and they got the slaves different ways. Maybe they had the slaves, but, but slavery is okay. You have to work, you have to perform some sort of labor for you, and we're not going to pay you, and you're not, you don't have a choice. Like, that's slavery, and it was everywhere. It was everywhere. Every single place on the globe where there were people had this. Um, and yet somehow this fact has escaped most of the educated people in our country today. This really, I think, fascinating fact. There's so much to be learned from that, right? That's, there's so much we can learn about human nature. Important things that we should learn about human nature. Could learn if we would just face this fact. Um, and yet we don't because we have a lot of people today who don't even, they truly don't know. You, grown adults that went to, you know, went to, uh, went to universities and and everything else, and they don't even know this. And that's again, it's not to let them off the hook. Yes, their education failed them. Their schools failed them, but so did mine. I went to public school and then I dropped out of community college, and that's the extent of my formal education. Yet I know these basic things about world history. You probably know them as well. Uh, so we know them. And yet you have people that have like a decade of formal higher education, uh, under their belt, and they've got degrees and masters and everything else, and, and they don't even know this basic stuff. And that's because if you know this stuff, and if I know it, it's because we are curious about things and we like to keep learning. And these people, the kinds of people on that CNN panel are totally incurious. Just absolutely empty-headed, incurious, jellorained ignoramuses who really just don't know anything. They, they, they really don't know anything at all. Their, their base of knowledge is as deep as a thimble. They don't know anything at all. Um, and now that they've been told the truth, they certainly won't follow up. Not going to follow up on it. No, they'll climb back into their intellectual shells because these truths about slavery are very startling, very scary to them. They threaten to dismantle the entire artifice of, uh, of white guilt. The whole narrative, I mean, the whole narrative of white guilt depends on the idea that white people are uniquely guilty for things like slavery. It, it, it completely depends on that. And if that is not the case, then the whole thing breaks down. So, they run away screaming. They don't want to hear anymore. They certainly don't want to hear that, you know, every predominantly white nation on earth had abolished slavery by the mid-1800s. Meanwhile, slavery persisted, legal, institutional slavery persisted in, uh, Arabic and African countries for another century, sometimes much longer. Slavery was not fully criminalized across the African continent. Okay, get this. Slavery was not fully criminalized across the African continent until 2007. Yes, 2007. They were on like season six of American Idol when Africa finally got around to fully criminalizing slavery. That, that's how recent it was. Okay? And it's the same in the Middle East. And that's why I've, I've said so many times, the only thing unique about the relationship between, uh, white Western society and slavery, the only thing unique about it is that those societies practiced it for a much, much, much shorter period of time, and also a much less brutal form of it because the other thing that you're going to hear about, well, the other, yes, but slavery, chattel slavery in the United States was so much more brutal than what they did in other parts of the. You have no clue what you're talking about. First of all, it's like, like as if chattel, there's something distinct. Oh, well, this was chattel as opposed to what do you think they were doing? What do you, what do you think the Arabic slave traders were doing? What do you think that was a nice and gentle? You think when they captured slaves and like dragged them across the Saharan desert, it was, it was nice and friendly? No. The Arabic slavers were, again, if you have even a the smallest bit of knowledge about this, you know that that, uh, slavery in Africa, slavery in Arabic countries was often much more brutal, much more, um, things like, you know, just routinely as a matter of course, uh, castrating male slaves. This was, this was a routine. This was the, this was the custom. This is what they did. It wasn't like there were a few horrific cases of it. This is just what they did. And, um, and that's, and that's only the beginning of it. So this was absolutely brutal. And, uh, and on top of that, they, it went on for so much longer. It went on for a hundred years longer. And the only reason that it even stopped is because, uh, they were forced to stop. It's because the European powers, uh, put it, abolished slavery, and then eventually they said, you know what, we're not gonna let anyone else do it. Like, this is, we're done with this, guys. We're moving on. We're, you know, we're going to be civilized people now. We're not doing slavery anymore. And so slavery was abolished, that the, uh, the, the, the slave trade, the Atlantic slave, it was abolished over the objections of Arabic and African countries who wanted it to continue. Um, and that is just the fact. So, and as much as anyone on the left might want to say, "What is that's got nothing to do with that's irrelevant." That's got everything to do with it because your whole narrative is that white Americans are uniquely guilty for that's your whole narrative. And it's just not true. Um, and if the, you know, the history of slavery in Africa, if the, if the history of slavery in the Middle East, if the history of slavery in Asia is irrelevant now because it was a long time ago, even though, you know, in Africa it's like a long time ago was 2007. Uh, but if it's irrelevant now because it was a long time ago, then it's then it's also irrelevant, you know, then then the form of slavery practiced in the United States, which by the way, only 1 to 2% of Americans ever own slaves. Like the tiniest little fraction of Americans ever even own slaves. 99% of Americans never had anything to do with it. So, and yet this is our, somehow, somehow this, this thing, slavery was an, slavery was an institution in the United States of like America. As a United States of America, as a country, had slavery for like 90 years. That's it. And we're comparing this to countries that had it for 900 years or longer. Ugh, the whole thing's absurd."
If you'd like to see what else I have to say, you can access my full show by going to dailywire.com or by going to the Matt Walsh Show Twitter page. Hope to see you there.