Did you ever play this game in school?
A teacher, one of the ones who thought it was cool to experience the tedium of history rather than just letting it pass over you like a frustrating wave, would split the class in half. Half the class would be slaves, and the other half would be slave owners.
I shit you not, this was something I did in a history class.
The slaves then had to take notes for the slaveowners for the day.
What the fuck was the point of that? To let us know that it was shitty and unfair to be a slave? Because I think I could figure that out using logic and empathy as opposed to having to make two sets of notes about the Teapot Dome Scandal.
Also, it doesn’t really work because I, as a slave, just turned to my owner and said, Not only am I not making notes for you, I’m not even taking notes for myself because I think this is stupid. My owner was a studious young lady, and she was a little outraged that she had an uncooperative slave.
And here’s the problem: In a class simulation of slavery, what is the slave owner going to do? I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to get the old Strip N’ Whip in 8th grade in the year 1999, and I was relatively sure that cutting off part of my foot or getting some farmhands to rough up my wife and rape her was out of the question, so what was the consequence of not doing what I was told?
I don’t know a lot about slavery. My notes from that day were absent. But I’m pretty sure that the whole slavery system falls apart when there’s no punishment. When you say, “Slave, work these fields, but if you don’t there is no real consequence other than possibly doing poorly on an eighth grade test,” I think things start to fall apart.
I’m not going to compare myself to Rosa Parks or anything, and I don’t know enough history to compare myself to any slaves who led uprisings. But I’d like to encourage my brothers in the bondage of this stupid history class game to say, No. Then try and escape to the underground railroad, aka the area in the middle of the school with the pop machines.