She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being ‘of her time’ and ‘just the way she was raised’.

And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.

When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dad’s plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.

This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said “hey, wait a minute, we’re all assholes!” and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.

The more I see this happening–and the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slaves–the more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and they’ve always been the same.

And then you’re in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nation’s early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.

There’s a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.

It’s important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what they’re doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.

tweets by Shaun (shaunvids on bsky) @shaun_vids: liberal defenders of the status quo feel no sadness or anger when the deaths are caused by their guy, their thin platitudes about equality are contingent on which team is in office. if it is theirs they will make excuses and dehumanise the same as any open racist would

they actually feel positive about it. their ability to accept such injustices signals maturity and level-headedness to their fellow monsters. 'ah, but you see, it must be this way' - but of course if the other team were in office they would be crying injustice from the rooftops

When France left Vietnam they poisoned the wells and burned down any buildings they could

In Indonesia the Dutch killed civilians as they retreated from the newly liberated country

When the British army left India they stole everything they could carry on the way out

Western imperialism can't stand seeing their colonial dreams fail, and they always show their true colours by massacring civilians out of spite

Israel will fail too. Just like the rest.