Most of us remember learning in school about the enslavement of black people prior to the United States Civil War. Society had established that these black slaves were the property of the white families that they worked for. They worked all day with no pay. In the eyes of society, their sole purpose was to serve their white owners.
Now imagine someone walking up to a group of these slaves and giving them the following explanation as to why they actually should thank the white man for all he has done:
You slaves may complain about having to work hard all day under the sun while the white man gets to work less and enjoys more luxurious living accommodations; but have you seen the great things that the white man has done? All great works of literature come from the white man. All scientific and technological innovations in our society come from the white man. If, heaven forbid, you get sick, there are white doctors who can help you get better. Not to mention, the white man has provided for you everything that you have, including the little houses you live in, as well as your clothing and the food that you eat.
Certainly if not for the white man, our society would have so little compared to what it has now. I see none of you writing great works of literature or inventing things. None of you are medical doctors or lawyers. What a sad world it would be if only you black people were in it. There would be no technological innovation, no great works of literature, no medicine…nothing! So I say you should appreciate all that the white man has done, for he has done a lot.
How offensive is that?! It would especially be unfair to make this statement to a group of slaves that are not legally allowed to learn how to read, let alone write. In the context described above, these slaves are being told that they should thank their oppressors for all of the great things they have done, which the slaves were not doing and could not do simply because of the oppression coming from these same oppressors. We know that if not for the enslavement by the white man, these black slaves would have been doing all of the great things that the white man has done. Since slavery became illegal in the main developed world, (and despite some ongoing systemic racism) black people have made great contributions to all facets of society.
Should women thank men for inventing things?
When we think of the greatest inventors in history, we tend to think of men. In addition, most of the famous scientists in history are men, such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Thomas Edison and Max Planck. So, does this mean that women should feel indebted to the male sex for being able to advance science and technology? Or perhaps in an alternate reality where men do not exist, women would have been making all of the same scientific and technological advances.
Around the year 2000, shortly after the controversial remarks made by Larry Summers about women in science, I read an editorial that remarked about how all of the major mathematical, scientific and technological innovations came from men; therefore it would be reasonable to assume that men are inherently better than women in mathematics, science and technology. I was surprised at the grave ignorance of these authors, who seemed to overlook the large gap in educational opportunities between males and females throughout history. Many of us recall watching movies that take place in the olden days, and noticing that sometimes only boys were in the schoolhouse. For much of history, only boys went to school. Even when girls were educated, the last area that they would learn about was science and mathematics. Even an accomplished upper class girl would excel in music, dance and literature before she would learn science.
It is common knowledge among educated people that women were men’s property throughout much of history. In their book Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World, Tim Stretton and Krista Kesselring discuss the legal doctrine of coverture. Below is an excerpt of a review of the book:
Coverture was the legal doctrine that decreed that, upon marriage, a woman’s property passed into the hands of her husband. All her real property (land) came under his control, and while he could not sell it without her consent, he took all the income and profits from it. All her other property, including her future earnings, became his outright. Under coverture a married woman could not enter into a contract, make a will, or bring or defend a lawsuit on her own. Coverture was law throughout the common-law world for about 700 years, and vestiges of it remain. Did you know, for instance, that the custom of taking a husband’s surname on marriage derived from coverture, when, as Sara M. Butler puts it, a woman became “Mrs. Him”? This is one of the many insights that this comprehensive collection provides.
Note that in the marriage ceremony, the bride walks with her father down the aisle to the groom before the bride and groom are married. The ritual of marriage is set up this way for a reason: when women married, the father passed on ownership of his daughter from himself to the groom. By walking his daughter down the aisle to the groom, the father was asserting his approval of the passage of ownership from himself to another man.
This article presents a summary of how women were owned as men’s property across cultures around the world, and throughout history. Often when one nation defeated another nation in war, the winning nation would steal the women from the losing nation as spoils of war. Even today, women are treated as property sometimes, and their utility is in the form of sexual entertainment, as discussed in the excerpt below:
Today we see the same male behavior in modern wars. The Imperial Japanese used Korean “comfort women” to service their soldiers. Nigerian militants seized hundreds of young women from a Chibok school to distribute as sex slaves and wives to their soldiers. The ISIS caliphate slaughtered Yazidi men but kept the Yazidi women for the same sexual purposes. The leaders of these contemporary tribes acted exactly like our primitive forbears when they distributed the spoils of war to their modern warriors. In the United States, women who serve in the army may still be treated as property. Sexual predation toward female soldiers constitutes a major problem not only among the active duty forces, but also within the academies training future officers.
This article discusses how in the middle ages, education was primarily for young men, and it was frowned upon for a young women to pursue an education. While the upper classes received more education than the lower classes, boys received more education than girls.
There are multiple factors that influence how likely a person or group is to make great contributions to science and technology. One major factor is the status of the person or group in society. Common sense would tell us that a group of people who are labeled as property under the law are not as likely to receive an education, and are therefore not as likely to participate in the advancement of science and technology.
Admittedly, men and women do have innate differences. That being said, is it possible that men are inherently more interested in science and technology than women are? It is hard to tell because there are so many other confounding factors, even today.
Should farmed animals thank the farm for their existence?
Today, most of the meat, dairy and eggs at the grocery store comes from factory farms. Factory farming is an unethical practice in which animals in very large numbers are raised on a farm in overcrowded, unsanitary and often inhumane living conditions. They say that the majority of antibiotics go to factory-farmed animals because of the unsanitary living conditions. The animals also are bred and given hormones to make them grow at an unnaturally large rate so that they can be slaughtered sooner and sold for food.
This website from the Humane League discusses factory farming, including what happens on factory farms. Examples include chopping the beaks off of chickens, and cutting the tails off of pigs. While cats and dogs have some rights, these animals have next to no rights. Male baby chicks can be suffocated in black trash bags in large numbers and dumped into the garbage, while a few of them are still alive. No legal action is taken.
However, if factory farming did not exist, then these factory-farmed animals would never have been born! So does this mean that the factory-farmed animals owe a debt of gratitude to the factory farm system, which is the only reason that they were born? Many folks would say no, and would consider anyone to be a horrible person who would even think that these animals should thank the factory farm system for anything.
Should the poor thank the rich for all of the great things that they have done?
The poor tend to rely on the rich for jobs. In addition, the rich are more likely to contribute to advances in science and technology. They are our politicians, our doctors and the leaders of our large corporations. So should the poor be thanking the rich? The poor do not advance science and technology. The poor do not run large businesses. The poor do not create jobs.
So why do the poor not do any of these things? The biggest reason that the poor do not do any of these things is that they are poor! When you have too little money to feed yourself and provide shelter for you and your family, you are not going to be able to start or run a business, let along run a large business. Yes, owning a successful business could bring you out of poverty, but you would have to start the business first, and starting a business requires large amounts of money, and involves the risk of failure. In other words, those deep in poverty run into the problem of needing money in order to bring themselves into a position where they can make money.
When the poor are paid very low wages, they remain poor. They continue to lack the money that is necessary to make more money. The environment they are living in, which makes it hard to work one’s way out of poverty, is created by those in power, who are rich.