re summing upRe: MDDM Washington & Gershom & Martha

[Doug Millison]

Nowhere in the mass of material I've examined and provided in this
discussion does it suggest that Washington ever considered Africans or
African Americans his equals, which was a point of disagreement in this
thread, they insist instead that he was an elitist with a strong sense of
his social rank and class. These materials also support another point of
disagreement:  history, as well as M&D also draws a clear distinction
between employees who have the right to quit a job and an enslaved person
who is legally the property of the master/owner.  These references also
contradict the speculation that Washington did not make efforts to
recapture slaves who escaped from his benevolent care.  I was taught in
elementary or high school that Washington was a "benevolent" slave owner,
but not the rather shocking fact that he had his slaves whipped, including
female slaves, on occasion.  I also observe that this information was not
presented in the very many web sites that I looked at which had been
designed to present Washington to school children.


At 9:14 AM +1100 7/17/02, jbor:
>While the author of the essay labels GW's attitude as "paternalistic" it
>would be just as accurate to consider it as benevolent and progressive.

We disagree on this, as reasonable people might do.

jbor:
>Semantic quibbles about equality/paternalism and liberty/privilege aside

I don't think it's merely a question of semantics from the point of view of
Gershom, who remains a slave in M&D, or from the point of view of the
historical Washington's slaves, and their millions of fellow slaves.

Pynchon certainly humanizes Washington, vis-a-vis the "official" version,
but it's not a flattering picture, imo.  His Washington points to the
America that might have been, drawing attention to the fact that 200+ years
later, most blacks and whites in the U.S. still can't sit down and have fun
together the way Washington and Gershom and Martha seem to be having fun in
M&D.  Pynchon's portrait highlights, for me at least, the way we humans
tend to forget to treat each other with love and kindness and instead so
often compromise those values in order to secure some idealized, "higher"
good which, in actual practice, only benefits a few at the expense of many.