ariel brooks

“John F. Couts, member of a prominent Middle Tennessee planter family, confirmed that for many whites the Bureau’s presence was a humiliation: The Agent of the Bureau … requires citizens (former owners) to make and enter into written contracts for the hire of their own negroes… . When a negro is not properly paid or fairly dealt with and reports the facts, then a squad of Negro soldiers is sent after the offender, who is escorted to town to be dealt with as per the negro testimony. In the name of God how long is such things to last?”
― Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction

“The writer Warwick Cairns calculated that if you wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, you’d have to leave the child outside and unattended for 750,000 years.211”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

“Our current moral understanding does not seek to balance the interests of a woman not to be raped, the interests of the men who may wish to rape her, and the interests of the husband and fathers who want to monopolize her sexuality. In an upending of the traditional valuation, the woman’s ownership of her body counts for everything, and the interests of all other claimants count for nothing.”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined