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Teddy

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Teddy is Currently Reading

Teddy is currently reading

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith (Goodreads Author)

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in August 2026

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Teddy said: " a book does doesn't mince words when it comes to talking about slavery and its history. there are many key ideas of this book that stood out to me so I will mention a few.

The first part of the book centers around Monticello and the narrative about J a book does doesn't mince words when it comes to talking about slavery and its history. there are many key ideas of this book that stood out to me so I will mention a few.

The first part of the book centers around Monticello and the narrative about Jefferson. Not quite the false narrative, per say, but the misleading narrative. And that is exactly what this story wishes to confront. The fact that history has misled us not by lying about the truth, but by obscuring it and bending it over time to avoid the uncomfortable past of our nation. This message is first obscured with how Jefferson's legacy is maintained. The blunt narrative of Jefferson as a slave holder was something entirely unknown to me and completely shifts my view on him. He is a found father of great merit, but he is also a slaveholder of great hypocrisy, and makes mistakes like the rest of us.

The biggest speaking point to me was the message on how slavery is centers on the humanity of African Americans. (See Page 67) "The 'language of dehumanization' is misleading because slavery depended upon the human capacities of enslaved people. It depended upon their reproduction. It depended upon their labor. And it depended upon their sentience...". Having spent an entire class considering, particularly, how slavery dehumanizes people who were enslaved, I found this to add a new layer of depth into my understanding of slavery. Like the author notes, it is incredibly tempting to simply mention how slavery "dehumanizes" the people who were enslaved. But, the way I see it, calling it dehumanization was just a rationalization of a clearly irrational and wrong activity. Slavery clearly depended on human nature. You don't see animals working the same way enslaved people were put to work. You don't see farm animals laboring away the same way enslaved people were, you don't have overseers for farm animals the same way people had overseers for enslaved people. The way I understand it now, slavery was always based on human ownership of another human. people who held slaves wanted to dehumanize enslaved people because it would justify their actions, but deep down the institution of slavery is based on the inherent principle of owning another human. The attempt at dehumanizing is irrationally done: people who own slaves claim that enslaved people are inferior by race and closer to animals, yet work them in ways animals can't do. Could it be a repression of the unconscious understanding of how we are all human that gets presented in racist tendencies? Could it be a suppression of the internal conflict that leads to such cruel behaviors? Maybe, maybe not. That is not my place to speculate on. All I contend is that the dehumanization claim about the past has nuance that is very important to understand.

I just thought it was pretty cool lol

great book! ...more "

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(page 0 of 336)
— Aug 07, 2026 06:54AM

Aug 07, 2026 07:33AM · see review

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Sep 12, 2026 09:52AM

Teddy’s Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

tags: books, humor

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“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

tags: ape, digital, earth, galaxy, humour, perspective, primitive, unfashionable, watches

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“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

tags: humour

10149 likes