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The following blockquote has been removed from this article for cause.
What is the justification for placing this long passage here? Is it online? Can it be linked to? Can it be summarized?
Please cite other examples where passages this long are quoted anywhere in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia. In addition, please provide citations for the following words in the POV introduction to the passage. If it is influential, please state who says that that it is. Please provide documentation that "most historians" accept the following claim. Skywriter 12:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC) In his highly influential essay "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928) Phillips argued that white supremacy was the central theme, a position adopted by most historians ever since. He says: <block quote> "Southernisms did not arise from any selectiveness of migration.... It does not lie in religion or language. It was not created by one-crop tillage, nor did agriculture in the large tend to produce a Southern scheme of life and thought.... The South has never had a focus.... What is its essence? Not state rights -- Calhoun himself was for years a nationalist ... not free trade ... not slavery ... not Democracy.... Yet it is a land with a unity despite its diversity ... the white folk a people with a common resolve indomitably maintained -- that it shall be and remain a white man's country. The consciousness of a function in these premises ... is the cardinal test of a Southerner and the central theme of Southern history. It arose as soon as the negroes became numerous enough to create a problem of race control in the interest of orderly government and the maintenance of Caucasian civilization. Slavery was instituted not merely to provide control of labor but also as a system of racial adjustment and social order.... It was defended not only as a vested interest, but with vigor and vehemence as a guarantee of white supremacy and civilization.... The non-slaveholders of course were diverse in their conditions and sentiments.... Those in the black belts ... had their lives conditioned by the presence of the negros; and they had apparatus of court days, militia musters, and political barbecues as well as neighborhood conversation to keep them abreast of affairs.... The white men's ways must prevail; the negroes must be kept innocuous.... In daily contact with blacks from birth, and often on a friendly basis of patron and retainer, the planters were in a sort of partnership with their slaves ... possessing a sense of security as a fruit of long habituation to fairly serene conditions. But the white toilers lived outside this partnership and suffered somewhat from its competition. H.R. Helper in his Impending Crisis (1857) urged them to wreck the system by destroying slavery.... The whole tier from South Carolina to Texas seceded spontaneously but no other states joined them until after Lincoln's call for troops.... The heavy negro proportions in their black belts, together with immaturity in the social order, made their people more sensitive than those of Virginia to the menace of disturbance outside. Slavery questions, which had never been quite negligible since the framing of the Constitution, gained a febrile activity from the abolition agitation; and the study of the Congressional mathematics focussed the main attention upon the rivalry of the sections in territorial enlargement.... The North now had the strength of a giant; the South should strike for independence before that strength should grow yet greater and be consolidated for crushing purposes.... The tension of 1850 had brought much achievement.... 'Southern rights' had come to mean racial security, self-determination by the whites whether in or out of the Union.... Legal sanction for the spread of slave holding, regardless of geographical potentialities, became the touchstone of Southern rights; and the rapid rise of the Republican party which denied this sanction, equally regardless of geographical potentialities, tipped the balance in lower Southern policy.... Many clergyment gave their aid, particularly by praising slavery as a biblical and benevolent institution.... Various expressions in Northern papers, debates in Congress, and events in Kansas and elsewhere had fanned these flames when the stroke of John Brown fell upon Harper's Ferry. This event was taken as a demonstration that abolitionists had lied in saying they were concerned with moral suasion only, and it stimulated suspicion that Republicans were abolitionists in disguise. In December the South Carolina legislature when expressing sympathy with Virginia intimated that she was ripe for secession and invited all Southern states to meet in convention at once to concert measures for united action.... The October elections brought a virtual certainty of Lincoln's election.... If the Republican party should win the contest, its 'unnatural and feverish vitality' would reach exhaustion within a year or two.... Just before election day George Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote to the Charleston Mercury ... concluding: 'In the Union there is no hope for us. Let us ... quit the Union.' ... The upper South had votaries of independence no less outspoke than those of the cotton belt but ... none of these conventions took a decisive step until Lincoln's call for troops.... The sequel showed that the boundary of predominant Southern loyalty was not Mason and Dixon's line but a curving zone seldom touching that landmark.... The course of the Federal government during the war and after its close alienated so many borderers that in a sense Kentucky joined the Confederacy after the war was over.... Lincoln in his plan of reconstruction had shown unexpected magnanimity; the Republican party, discarding that obnoxious name, had officially styled itself merely Unionist.... Edward A. Pollard, a Virginian critic of Davis, chronicler of the war and bewailer of the 'lost cause', took courage in 1868 to write his most significant book, The Lost cause Regained. The folly of politicians, he said, had made the South defend slavery seemingly 'as a property tenure, or as a peculiar institution of labour; when the true ground of defence was as of a barrier against a contention and war of races.' ... A dozen years sufficed to restore white control.... By Southern hypothesis, exalted into a creed, negroes in the mass were incompetent for any good political purpose and by reason of their inexperience and racial unwisdom were likely to prove subversive.... White Southerners when facing problems real or fancied concerning the ten million negroes in their midst can look to the federal authorities for no more at best than a tacit acquiescence in what their state governments may do.... Political solidarity at the price of provncial status is maintained to keep assurance double, trebly sure that the South shall remain 'a white man's country.'"
These sentences were removed because they are original resarch and POV. Please cite source for these statements or do not return them to the article. "In use of sources and in interretations, he was one of the most influential historians of his era." "The international perspective was an innovation decades ahead of its time. His basic arguments—the duality of slavery as an economic drag on the economy and society," Thank you. Skywriter 05:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
scholars." (p. 11)
The point is-- when undocumented material is added, as this was ---twice-- it is subject to challenge for documentation when it expresses opinion, as this does. Readers can not be expected to guess as to documentation. It must be clearly cited. Skywriter 08:26, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen wrote: "Phillips was no more a believer in white supremacy than other leading contemporary white scholars." Is it possible for you to see outside of the narrow window of white viewpoints -- to see far enough to grasp that others, such as Du Bois and Franklin, both of whom you have openly disparaged on the pages of Wikipedia, do not belong to the white boy POV club?
Then again, here in this very article, Rjensen, you added an extraordinary claim in the final phrase of the following sentence. "In "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928), Phillips maintained that the desire to keep their region "a white man's country" united southerners, a proposition that has largely been accepted by scholars of all viewpoints." That latter phrase, of course, POV in the purest (and most mistaken) sense, is now gone. Skywriter 22:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
No need to quote secondary sourcequoting Gutman. Gutman was quite clear in his 645-page book. Skywriter 23:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what you are doing with that "everybody agrees with Phillips" bit you are trying to reinstate re: Phillips viewpoints united the white south but listen up: it will not stand. Whites are not alone in populating the South. Oh, and by the way, please document where it says you speak for all whites. Cheers. And Thank You. Skywriter 23:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen and I dispute what the lead should be. Rjensen contends that the views of this early 20th century historian continue to influence historical writing. And yet, link after link demonstrates that Phillips's views have been widely rejected because he wrote from a deeply racist perspective, based on plantation manuscripts that ignored but claimed to interpret African American culture. Phillips's point that slaves were happy and that the system of slavery benefited them, and that slave holders allowed the economic slave system to continue because they were benevolent. No serious historian accepts these views anymore. My dispute with Rjensen in this matter is his selective and truncated use of quotes to make the point that Phillips was a great historian still revered today. The cited articles show exactly the opposite. My point is he was influential in his time when racist historiography was acceptable to white textbook purveyors but these views have not survived in the second half of the 20th century and much less the 21st century. At this point, it would be wise to solicit the opinions of other Wikipedia editors to settle how this article should be presented.
It is also my contention that some of the long quotes in this article can be summarized. Skywriter 12:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen's personal attack as exhibited in the last comment does not foster negotiation. I propose that the personal attacks stop right now and that we follow the guidelines in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes Continual reverts are not the way to go. Integrating the various viewpoints is fair. Relegating the viewpoint of the African American journal Rjensen dislikes to near the bottom of the article is not a way to reach concensus. Article after article, except those that are more than 40 years old, conclude that Phillips work is and was racially biased. Rjensen's viewpoint being pressed in this article is to erase evidence of conclusions historians have reached in the last 40 years concerning Phillips and to press the viewpoint that he was a great and influential historian-- based on writings more than 40 years old when segregation was still present and even legal in parts of the United States. The summary paragraph by the North Carolina historian in the Georgia Encylopedia seems fair in its summary of Phillips's strengths and weaknesses, and yet, Rjensen has reverted it twice, calling it "stale." I am willing to work this out directly with Rjensen. I ask that Rjensen stop the condescenion and personal attacks. To suggest someone has "deep animus" toward a long dead historian is ridiculous. Skywriter 12:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem with Dillon's screed is that he is talking about what Phillips did not write about: the inner culture of the slave community. Dillon is of course exaggerating--or else Dillon did not notice that the Blacks on the plantation adopted white traits like language & religion, and after emancipation joined Baptist and Methodist churches and the Republican party. Rjensen 12:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
The scholarly objection to many of your entries in this article, Rjensen, is that you selectively quote to fit your viewpoint. When one goes back to read the entire article, one finds that it is very different from the sentence scraps extracted to fit into the Rjensen viewpoint. It is fair to include the context and intent of the writer, not to abstract from that with ellipses only what you want to present. I repeat that the Georgia Enclyclopedia article seems fair. Claims that you have repeatedly tried to insert in this article that Phillips continues to influence historians is poppycock, and as importantly, that viewpoint is 40 years buried. Skywriter 12:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. All of your citations in the above note are more than 40 years old. One goes all the way back to 1918.(!) Historiography has transformed itself since the era when historians provided the intellectual justifications for slavery and segregation. That transformation began and continued dynamically through the second half of the 20th century. Gutman is deeply critical of Phillips in many places in his book. Your wrongful quotation of Gutman via a tertiary source is suspect, primarily because you have taken so many quotes out of context. Frederickson and Lasch make the point that both Phillips and his critics were asking the wrong questions. Historians have refocused since then. I don't know why you are trying to make this fellow into more than he was in the context of his time. Do you contend that the Georgia Encyclopedia article is unfair? If it is fair, then may I suggest that this article stay close in depiction, not using the same material but in terms of judgment of his place in history without the exaggeration you seem to favor. You appear to be so emotionally involved in building support for Phillips's point of view that you are reaching the point of unfairness in depiction. The Wikipedia article on arbitration suggests stepping back. May I suggest that happen at this point, and that other editors be invited to review this article and its talk page for comment. Can you live with that suggestion? Skywriter 13:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjsensen has returned to this article numerous times to change the fact that Genovese is a well-known conservative historian who dallied with Marxism when he was much younger. As the Wikipedia article on Genovese documents, this man is not a Marxist. Rjensen's continued reverts to his POV claim that Genovese is a Marxist underlines my doubts that Rjensen is pushing his own viewpoint, which is avowedly conservative. Accuracy is important and facts are not just matters of convenience. The fact that Rjensen repeatedly reverts and deletes the correction that Genovese is and has been a conservative for 40 years is in part the basis of the fact and POV tags on this article. When other editors come to this page, I hope this will be looked at. Skywriter 13:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
==The current version-- The current version of this article is unacceptable. For example, the following sentence represents rjensen's opinin and is not true-- "African American historians expressed disappointment that his emphasis on the material well being of the slaves diverted attention from the slaves' own cultural constructs and efforts to achieve freedom." Many more than African American historians are critical of Phillips and Jensen's suppression of this information causes serious problems in the truth of this article. The lead of the article is too long and unencyclopedic. That Rjensen continues to engage in personal attacks instead of trying to reach consensus is noted. Rjensen's opinions on who is and is not the leading historian of slavery are mistaken, and off point of this article. Leon Litwack and Ira Berlin, are giants in this field. Genovese's views are controversial. The point of the comment about Genovese was to support the edit that he has not been a Marxist for 40 years. Jensen does not address that point or accept it. Rjensen's rants on editing are what they are. Skywriter 04:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Here's my draft for an introduction: does anyone see a problem?? Skywriter says it's too favorable toward a conservative historian.
Here is the alernative introduction copied from an encyclopedia. Does anyine think it tells us more?
Rjensen 05:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
It is rjensen's personal, immodest opinion that his own rant is "richer, more detailed, more helpful." In fact, it is hagiography and unencyclopedic in approach. Readers do not favor long first paragraphs. Wikipedia favors short summary paragraphs. The above offering is entirely inappropriate, and rjensen's ravings concerning a fellow editor are, of course, out of line. Skywriter 10:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
![]() | It is requested that an image or photograph of Ulrich B. Phillips be
included in this article to
improve its quality. Please replace this template with a more specific
media request template where possible.
The Free Image Search Tool or Openverse Creative Commons Search may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The following blockquote has been removed from this article for cause.
What is the justification for placing this long passage here? Is it online? Can it be linked to? Can it be summarized?
Please cite other examples where passages this long are quoted anywhere in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia. In addition, please provide citations for the following words in the POV introduction to the passage. If it is influential, please state who says that that it is. Please provide documentation that "most historians" accept the following claim. Skywriter 12:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC) In his highly influential essay "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928) Phillips argued that white supremacy was the central theme, a position adopted by most historians ever since. He says: <block quote> "Southernisms did not arise from any selectiveness of migration.... It does not lie in religion or language. It was not created by one-crop tillage, nor did agriculture in the large tend to produce a Southern scheme of life and thought.... The South has never had a focus.... What is its essence? Not state rights -- Calhoun himself was for years a nationalist ... not free trade ... not slavery ... not Democracy.... Yet it is a land with a unity despite its diversity ... the white folk a people with a common resolve indomitably maintained -- that it shall be and remain a white man's country. The consciousness of a function in these premises ... is the cardinal test of a Southerner and the central theme of Southern history. It arose as soon as the negroes became numerous enough to create a problem of race control in the interest of orderly government and the maintenance of Caucasian civilization. Slavery was instituted not merely to provide control of labor but also as a system of racial adjustment and social order.... It was defended not only as a vested interest, but with vigor and vehemence as a guarantee of white supremacy and civilization.... The non-slaveholders of course were diverse in their conditions and sentiments.... Those in the black belts ... had their lives conditioned by the presence of the negros; and they had apparatus of court days, militia musters, and political barbecues as well as neighborhood conversation to keep them abreast of affairs.... The white men's ways must prevail; the negroes must be kept innocuous.... In daily contact with blacks from birth, and often on a friendly basis of patron and retainer, the planters were in a sort of partnership with their slaves ... possessing a sense of security as a fruit of long habituation to fairly serene conditions. But the white toilers lived outside this partnership and suffered somewhat from its competition. H.R. Helper in his Impending Crisis (1857) urged them to wreck the system by destroying slavery.... The whole tier from South Carolina to Texas seceded spontaneously but no other states joined them until after Lincoln's call for troops.... The heavy negro proportions in their black belts, together with immaturity in the social order, made their people more sensitive than those of Virginia to the menace of disturbance outside. Slavery questions, which had never been quite negligible since the framing of the Constitution, gained a febrile activity from the abolition agitation; and the study of the Congressional mathematics focussed the main attention upon the rivalry of the sections in territorial enlargement.... The North now had the strength of a giant; the South should strike for independence before that strength should grow yet greater and be consolidated for crushing purposes.... The tension of 1850 had brought much achievement.... 'Southern rights' had come to mean racial security, self-determination by the whites whether in or out of the Union.... Legal sanction for the spread of slave holding, regardless of geographical potentialities, became the touchstone of Southern rights; and the rapid rise of the Republican party which denied this sanction, equally regardless of geographical potentialities, tipped the balance in lower Southern policy.... Many clergyment gave their aid, particularly by praising slavery as a biblical and benevolent institution.... Various expressions in Northern papers, debates in Congress, and events in Kansas and elsewhere had fanned these flames when the stroke of John Brown fell upon Harper's Ferry. This event was taken as a demonstration that abolitionists had lied in saying they were concerned with moral suasion only, and it stimulated suspicion that Republicans were abolitionists in disguise. In December the South Carolina legislature when expressing sympathy with Virginia intimated that she was ripe for secession and invited all Southern states to meet in convention at once to concert measures for united action.... The October elections brought a virtual certainty of Lincoln's election.... If the Republican party should win the contest, its 'unnatural and feverish vitality' would reach exhaustion within a year or two.... Just before election day George Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote to the Charleston Mercury ... concluding: 'In the Union there is no hope for us. Let us ... quit the Union.' ... The upper South had votaries of independence no less outspoke than those of the cotton belt but ... none of these conventions took a decisive step until Lincoln's call for troops.... The sequel showed that the boundary of predominant Southern loyalty was not Mason and Dixon's line but a curving zone seldom touching that landmark.... The course of the Federal government during the war and after its close alienated so many borderers that in a sense Kentucky joined the Confederacy after the war was over.... Lincoln in his plan of reconstruction had shown unexpected magnanimity; the Republican party, discarding that obnoxious name, had officially styled itself merely Unionist.... Edward A. Pollard, a Virginian critic of Davis, chronicler of the war and bewailer of the 'lost cause', took courage in 1868 to write his most significant book, The Lost cause Regained. The folly of politicians, he said, had made the South defend slavery seemingly 'as a property tenure, or as a peculiar institution of labour; when the true ground of defence was as of a barrier against a contention and war of races.' ... A dozen years sufficed to restore white control.... By Southern hypothesis, exalted into a creed, negroes in the mass were incompetent for any good political purpose and by reason of their inexperience and racial unwisdom were likely to prove subversive.... White Southerners when facing problems real or fancied concerning the ten million negroes in their midst can look to the federal authorities for no more at best than a tacit acquiescence in what their state governments may do.... Political solidarity at the price of provncial status is maintained to keep assurance double, trebly sure that the South shall remain 'a white man's country.'"
These sentences were removed because they are original resarch and POV. Please cite source for these statements or do not return them to the article. "In use of sources and in interretations, he was one of the most influential historians of his era." "The international perspective was an innovation decades ahead of its time. His basic arguments—the duality of slavery as an economic drag on the economy and society," Thank you. Skywriter 05:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
scholars." (p. 11)
The point is-- when undocumented material is added, as this was ---twice-- it is subject to challenge for documentation when it expresses opinion, as this does. Readers can not be expected to guess as to documentation. It must be clearly cited. Skywriter 08:26, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen wrote: "Phillips was no more a believer in white supremacy than other leading contemporary white scholars." Is it possible for you to see outside of the narrow window of white viewpoints -- to see far enough to grasp that others, such as Du Bois and Franklin, both of whom you have openly disparaged on the pages of Wikipedia, do not belong to the white boy POV club?
Then again, here in this very article, Rjensen, you added an extraordinary claim in the final phrase of the following sentence. "In "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928), Phillips maintained that the desire to keep their region "a white man's country" united southerners, a proposition that has largely been accepted by scholars of all viewpoints." That latter phrase, of course, POV in the purest (and most mistaken) sense, is now gone. Skywriter 22:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
No need to quote secondary sourcequoting Gutman. Gutman was quite clear in his 645-page book. Skywriter 23:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what you are doing with that "everybody agrees with Phillips" bit you are trying to reinstate re: Phillips viewpoints united the white south but listen up: it will not stand. Whites are not alone in populating the South. Oh, and by the way, please document where it says you speak for all whites. Cheers. And Thank You. Skywriter 23:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen and I dispute what the lead should be. Rjensen contends that the views of this early 20th century historian continue to influence historical writing. And yet, link after link demonstrates that Phillips's views have been widely rejected because he wrote from a deeply racist perspective, based on plantation manuscripts that ignored but claimed to interpret African American culture. Phillips's point that slaves were happy and that the system of slavery benefited them, and that slave holders allowed the economic slave system to continue because they were benevolent. No serious historian accepts these views anymore. My dispute with Rjensen in this matter is his selective and truncated use of quotes to make the point that Phillips was a great historian still revered today. The cited articles show exactly the opposite. My point is he was influential in his time when racist historiography was acceptable to white textbook purveyors but these views have not survived in the second half of the 20th century and much less the 21st century. At this point, it would be wise to solicit the opinions of other Wikipedia editors to settle how this article should be presented.
It is also my contention that some of the long quotes in this article can be summarized. Skywriter 12:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjensen's personal attack as exhibited in the last comment does not foster negotiation. I propose that the personal attacks stop right now and that we follow the guidelines in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes Continual reverts are not the way to go. Integrating the various viewpoints is fair. Relegating the viewpoint of the African American journal Rjensen dislikes to near the bottom of the article is not a way to reach concensus. Article after article, except those that are more than 40 years old, conclude that Phillips work is and was racially biased. Rjensen's viewpoint being pressed in this article is to erase evidence of conclusions historians have reached in the last 40 years concerning Phillips and to press the viewpoint that he was a great and influential historian-- based on writings more than 40 years old when segregation was still present and even legal in parts of the United States. The summary paragraph by the North Carolina historian in the Georgia Encylopedia seems fair in its summary of Phillips's strengths and weaknesses, and yet, Rjensen has reverted it twice, calling it "stale." I am willing to work this out directly with Rjensen. I ask that Rjensen stop the condescenion and personal attacks. To suggest someone has "deep animus" toward a long dead historian is ridiculous. Skywriter 12:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem with Dillon's screed is that he is talking about what Phillips did not write about: the inner culture of the slave community. Dillon is of course exaggerating--or else Dillon did not notice that the Blacks on the plantation adopted white traits like language & religion, and after emancipation joined Baptist and Methodist churches and the Republican party. Rjensen 12:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
The scholarly objection to many of your entries in this article, Rjensen, is that you selectively quote to fit your viewpoint. When one goes back to read the entire article, one finds that it is very different from the sentence scraps extracted to fit into the Rjensen viewpoint. It is fair to include the context and intent of the writer, not to abstract from that with ellipses only what you want to present. I repeat that the Georgia Enclyclopedia article seems fair. Claims that you have repeatedly tried to insert in this article that Phillips continues to influence historians is poppycock, and as importantly, that viewpoint is 40 years buried. Skywriter 12:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. All of your citations in the above note are more than 40 years old. One goes all the way back to 1918.(!) Historiography has transformed itself since the era when historians provided the intellectual justifications for slavery and segregation. That transformation began and continued dynamically through the second half of the 20th century. Gutman is deeply critical of Phillips in many places in his book. Your wrongful quotation of Gutman via a tertiary source is suspect, primarily because you have taken so many quotes out of context. Frederickson and Lasch make the point that both Phillips and his critics were asking the wrong questions. Historians have refocused since then. I don't know why you are trying to make this fellow into more than he was in the context of his time. Do you contend that the Georgia Encyclopedia article is unfair? If it is fair, then may I suggest that this article stay close in depiction, not using the same material but in terms of judgment of his place in history without the exaggeration you seem to favor. You appear to be so emotionally involved in building support for Phillips's point of view that you are reaching the point of unfairness in depiction. The Wikipedia article on arbitration suggests stepping back. May I suggest that happen at this point, and that other editors be invited to review this article and its talk page for comment. Can you live with that suggestion? Skywriter 13:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Rjsensen has returned to this article numerous times to change the fact that Genovese is a well-known conservative historian who dallied with Marxism when he was much younger. As the Wikipedia article on Genovese documents, this man is not a Marxist. Rjensen's continued reverts to his POV claim that Genovese is a Marxist underlines my doubts that Rjensen is pushing his own viewpoint, which is avowedly conservative. Accuracy is important and facts are not just matters of convenience. The fact that Rjensen repeatedly reverts and deletes the correction that Genovese is and has been a conservative for 40 years is in part the basis of the fact and POV tags on this article. When other editors come to this page, I hope this will be looked at. Skywriter 13:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
==The current version-- The current version of this article is unacceptable. For example, the following sentence represents rjensen's opinin and is not true-- "African American historians expressed disappointment that his emphasis on the material well being of the slaves diverted attention from the slaves' own cultural constructs and efforts to achieve freedom." Many more than African American historians are critical of Phillips and Jensen's suppression of this information causes serious problems in the truth of this article. The lead of the article is too long and unencyclopedic. That Rjensen continues to engage in personal attacks instead of trying to reach consensus is noted. Rjensen's opinions on who is and is not the leading historian of slavery are mistaken, and off point of this article. Leon Litwack and Ira Berlin, are giants in this field. Genovese's views are controversial. The point of the comment about Genovese was to support the edit that he has not been a Marxist for 40 years. Jensen does not address that point or accept it. Rjensen's rants on editing are what they are. Skywriter 04:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Here's my draft for an introduction: does anyone see a problem?? Skywriter says it's too favorable toward a conservative historian.
Here is the alernative introduction copied from an encyclopedia. Does anyine think it tells us more?
Rjensen 05:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
It is rjensen's personal, immodest opinion that his own rant is "richer, more detailed, more helpful." In fact, it is hagiography and unencyclopedic in approach. Readers do not favor long first paragraphs. Wikipedia favors short summary paragraphs. The above offering is entirely inappropriate, and rjensen's ravings concerning a fellow editor are, of course, out of line. Skywriter 10:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)