I don’t expect much from Michelle Bachmann. Anyone who claims to understand U.S. history but states that the “founding fathers” did not care about skin color is clearly a deluded revisionist. Yes, Bachmann actually said, “It didn’t matter the color of their skin. It didn’t matter their language. It didn’t matter their economic status,” Bachmann told the audience while describing the experience of early settlers in America. “It didn’t matter whether they descended from known royalty or are of a higher class or a lower class. It made no difference. Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn’t that remarkable? It is absolutely remarkable.” While I understand that Mrs. Bachmann is not the most astute historian, she and other tea partiers who recently signed a document which made  a mockery of slavery and its impact on Black families should be censured.
Michelle Bachman trying to rewrite history
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8kDG94kb8
I guess we were better off during slavery (yeah right)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC4LkajU5PM
A few weeks ago high profile right wingers and a few Republican presidential hopefuls, like Bachmann, signed the “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family”. Among other things, this decree stated, “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.” Moreover, it suggested that the reason for higher Black incarceration rates is because of family structures that deviate from the 2 parent heteronormative paradigm. Essentially, these signatories believe that if Black men can just start tying the knot after they knock someone up everything will be all good and little Black kids won’t go to jail anymore. 

What if life was really that easy? What if structural inequalities ceased to exist once people got married? Oh what a joyous day it would be (clearly a joke).

For eons and eons our brother and sisters of the lighter hue have sought to control and analyze the Black family structure. Black women were raped and violated by slaveowners, families were separated, and even if couples were allowed to stay together, a “master” had more say in their home than they did. If you don’t believe me ask Strom Thurmond’s daughter. Then, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the good ole “bleeding heart liberal” from New York argued that the federal government needed to restructure the Negro family. Now Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, and their cronies are saying that our “black kids were better off during slavery” (this must be the case because they claim lack of family structure is the reason for poverty and violence). Give me a break!

*This section has since been removed, but as those tea partiers always say, “I’m going on original intent”