Sarah Palin
[Black Star News Editorial]
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin recently compared the U.S. debt to slavery.
She was harshly blasted by MSNBC host Martin Bashir on his show.
Bashir apologized for his comments. That wasn’t enough. Yesterday he resigned from MSNBC.
This is what Palin had said while discussing the U.S. debt before an audience: “Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. And when that note comes due, and this isn’t racist…so yeah try it, try it anyway, this isn’t racist. But it’s gonna be like slavery when that note is due….”
The manner in which she made the comments — “this isn’t racist”– suggests that the former governor knew she was crossing the line but didn’t care about the consequences anyway; she even used her right hand to wave off the anticipated backlash while speaking.
Bashir attacked Palin’s comments on his MSNBC show. He offered an example of an 18th Century slave plantation overseer named Thomas Thistlewood who developed special ways of punishing enslaved Africans, including those caught merely eating sugar cane.
One punishment included flogging until the victims’ skin broke, then rubbing salt, pickle and lime juice on the wounds and having other enslaved Africans urinate on the victims.
Another punishment was having another enslaved African defecate into the mouth of another enslaved African.
Bashir suggested that, based on her diabolical comparison of the U.S. debt to the genocide of slavery, Palin would be a deserving candidate for these type of punishments inflicted on enslaved Africans.
Of course Bashir did not list all of slavery’s crimes against African people, including: garroting; lynchings; and, disemboweling of pregnant women.
In French Haiti, plantation owners had dynamite inserted into the anus of enslaved Africans and then lit. These are the type of depraved acts that inspired the Haitian Revolution, led by Toussaint Breda and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. There is a great account in C.L.R. James’ “The Black Jacobins.” We doubt that Palin (or many millions of other Americans) know of this book.
Is Palin totally unfamiliar with these macabre practices by some of her forefathers?
She has not yet been sufficiently rebuked for her comments nor has she apologized; she still defends it.
Bashir, in his inelegant way was making the point that if she were familiar with these grotesque and barbaric atrocities she would not have made the comparisons she did.
Her comments offer an indication of her depth of clueless-ness, or callousness, or both.
Yet, unlike Bashir, we don’t wish for Palin to experience Thistlewood’s medicine or the Haitian dynamite.
However, we do recommend that she go and watch 12 Years a Slave based on Solomon Northup’s account.
Then she should say whether she still feels slavery compares to the U.S. debt.
