Bullet #1 of the pledge:
"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."
But never mind that obvious "misstatment" by Bachmann about missing that part of the pledge, what's really jaw-droppingly stupefying is that the document would make such an assertion. "In fact, the statement contained NO truth. Slaves, considered property, not people, did not really have families. Any slave could be sold at any time - not to mention raped, assaulted or killed. To claim that free contemporary African-American children, with the highest rate of survival and education ever (despite being well-behind that of white children) are worse off than slaves is ludicrous. Ever since slavery ended they tried to buy their own land, start their own businesses, move into nice homes, go to good schools and colleges and get good jobs. Do you know who stopped them up until maybe 30 years ago? Racists."
But like her doppelganger, Sarah Palin, Bachmann appears to be a history ignoramus. And even if Bachmann doesn't know anything about the history of slavery in this country, why bother with stuff that happened over a hundred years ago? Get over it! There's no slavery now!
Anyone who claims that September 22, 1862, saw the end of slavery and everything after that was all unicorns and rainbows is, of course, a simpleton. One would have to ignore the Jim Crow era, and all the laws passed to deny African Americans their civil rights--even the right to marry the person they loved if that person had a different skin color. Civil rights for African Americans is recent history.
That Bachmann signed a document that mischaracterized the lives of African-American slaves before emancipation as a model of family harmony reveals her bottomless stupidity and crass dismissal of the suffering endured by African-Americans and their families. She's done that before; and no doubt, she'll do it again.
As Albert Einstein once stated: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Or Michele Bachmann.
