History's stain, stained again

I don't know what Kylia Carter's boy had to endure as a basketball player at Duke University. But somehow I doubt it involved being chained together with several other African-Americans and thrown overboard in mid-ocean to lighten the ship's ballast.

I also doubt he was packed into said ship like so many pieces of cordwood instead of like human beings. I doubt he was torn from his family, shipped thousand of miles to a strange place, placed on an auction block and transported in chains to a world he could barely comprehend, and which regarded him as nothing more than a line on a ledger sheet, as if he were a plow or a dray horse.

I doubt he was whipped if he failed to set a proper pick or rotate defensively. I doubt if he had an appendage cut off if he failed to show up for practice on time.

In other words ... Kylia's boy, Wendell Carter Jr., was no slave. And intimating that he was diminishes the shameful and enduring legacy of slavery in this country, and gives cover to those who soft-pedal this American Holocaust and say African-Americans should "get over it already." In fact, by comparing playing high-end college basketball to the institution of slavery, she in a sense becomes their fellow traveler.

Which might be unduly harsh, admittedly. It is possible Kylia Carter spoke without thinking about what she was saying. It happens. It's happened to everyone everywhere on occasion.

And her point, horrid analogy aside, was a legitimate one. There is no question, none, that high-end college football and basketball is every bit as much a business as the NBA or NFL is, and is guided by the same corporate ethos. Wendell Carter Jr., all the Wendell Carter Jrs., are brought in not to be college students -- that is a secondary consideration, no matter what cowflop the NCAA likes to serve up -- but to shoot and rebound and defend and otherwise serve the interests of (in Carter's case) Duke Basketball Inc.

In return, they are housed, fed and receive a "free" education that in many cases turns out not to be completely free. That is considered sufficient payment for services rendered to a billion-dollar industry.

It is not. But it is not slavery, either. And to suggest as much, whether wittingly or not, is a crime against history.

Unfortunately, crimes against history -- sugarcoating and out-and-out lies -- tend to be rampant in these strange ugly days in America. I am too far down my own road to remember much about what I was taught in school about slavery, but I'm fairly certain it was as superficial and grossly inaccurate as so much else I do remember. And it seems to be even more so now; just recently, a charter "school" in Texas came under fire for having students list the "positive aspects" of slavery.

Good. God.

Now here comes Kylia Carter, distorting history even further with her grotesque comparison. And here comes Kanye West, claiming slavery was "a choice," that slaves accepted their fate compliantly and thus were collaborators in the system.

Guess the man never heard of the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Or the revolt led by a slave named Gabriel in 1800. Or the revolt in Louisiana led by Charles Deslondes in 1811, the largest and most sophisticated slave revolt in American history. Or Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. Or names such as Denmark Vesey, Toussiant Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, all of whom led revolts against thei masters.

Or, for that matter, the approximately 185,000 men of color who joined the Union Army in the Civil War specifically to break the slave system in America forever.

Speaking of, you know, history. And other matters so many in this country treat so cavalierly these days.