18155181

Posted by
u/JHopeHoe
4 hours ago

2 2 2 3

TIL James Derham was a black man who

worked as an assistant under several doctors
who owned him in the 1700s. He learned
about medicine from them which lead him to
open his own practice after he was freed. He
was the first African-American to practice
medicine in the U.S.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

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level 1
throbbingliberal
3 hours ago
Several doctors who “owned” him. Wow times were different.
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level 2
whiteshaq52
3 hours ago
Yeah that's weird, but at least they taught him something I guess. Silver lining!
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level 3
Vandechoz
1 hour ago
shit, I can't even get that level of on-the-job training today
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level 4
AbsentThatDay
14 minutes ago
Have you tried being completely unpromotable via social contract?
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level 3
visorian
1 hour ago
Such a weird thing to acknowledge despite it being true.
Some slavers were definitely "better" than others.
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level 4
zatch14
5 minutes ago
yep... Some slave owners treated their slaves the way people nowadays would treat their
housecleaner or maid and other slave owners raped their slaves and used the children as
alligator bait.
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level 1
lepusblanca
3 hours ago
That's a weird way of saying that James Derham was a slave who became a doctor after being
freed.
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level 2
JHopeHoe
2 hours ago
My first post had slave in the title, but it didn't stay up. IDK 🤷‍♀️
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level 3
geminimindtricks
2 hours ago·edited 1 hour ago
"Slave" can be construed as an offensive term because it defines the person as an object; many
prefer to say "an enslaved person" rather than "a slave". So there's 2 cents for ya.
Edit: the fact that I'm being downvoted for this hot take just shows how racism is alive and well
on reddit.
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level 4
JHopeHoe
2 hours ago
Well, I guess I should tell my family to stop saying my great grandparents were slaves and tell
them to call them enslaved people instead.
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level 5
Messiahbolical5
1 hour ago
Changing the words doesnt change the past. Good point
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level 6
goboatmen
29 minutes ago
Changing the words doesnt change the past.
But it does shape our understanding of the past. Op's grandparents didn't have some
transcendent property that made them slaves, that was forced upon them - they were
enslaved people
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level 6
Crumb-Free
13 minutes ago
Are you white? I feel like you are, and you're encouraging more people to be angry about shit
that doesn't matter.
Irregardless. This is a CLASSWAR guised as a race war. Stop dividing for color and religion and
start banding together as people against those ultra rich fucking us all in the ass with their
hands in ALL of our pockets.
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level 7
Ethically_Bland
8 minutes ago
The fuck? Who the hell is even mentioning race war?
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level 7
Atiopos
3 minutes ago
The importance of class doesn’t diminish the relevance of race. What you’re doing is called
class reductionism and it’s a thing that white leftists do to dismiss the valid concerns of black
people in leftist spaces
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level 5
geminimindtricks
2 hours ago
It's up to you and what you feel comfortable with.
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level 4
Aleythai
2 hours ago·edited 2 hours ago
I don't mean to sound argumentative and it's not a hill I want to die on but I can't quite grok
this perspective. If you refer to someone as a slave, you are not objectifying them, the
condition of being owned is what objectifies them. "Slave" is just the descriptor we assign to
the condition of being owned.
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level 5
geminimindtricks
2 hours ago
I see your point and I did say it was just my 2 cents, BUT look at it this way: language is
obviously complex, and the way we choose to put things into words affects how you
unconsciously think about that subject. Describing someone as "a slave" makes you think of
them in a certain way. It's easy to picture masses of faceless "slaves" who were born into a life
of being owned. If you describe them as "enslaved people" you must think of them as people,
people in a predicament. Just as you are not defined by your job, they are not defined by what
they did for work. I am not "a bartender" any more than I am also a number of things
unrelated to my job. It humanizes them and forces us to remember that they were not objects
or robotic humans born to serve one purpose only, no matter how unfortunate. They were
humans and fathers and mothers and musicians and fabricators and numbers of other things
besides happening to have been forced into a horrific system of servitude.
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level 6
Aleythai
2 hours ago
You make a compelling argument and I can see where you're coming from but I would assume
(hope) that those of us who see slavery as an abomination don't need to be reminded of their
humanity while those who don't think slavery was that big a deal (or worse, see it as a good
thing) aren't going to have their hearts and minds changed by reading the words "an enslaved
person" instead of "slave."
I think in this case, I'm going to say that context matters. I don't think either is right or wrong
but one or the other may have more impact depending on how they're being used.
Does that sound fair to you?
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level 7
geminimindtricks
2 hours ago
Yes; again, this is all just an opinion based on things I have heard from people who care about
the semantics a lot more than I do. I love the study of language though, and the way nuances
in our language affect our psychology subliminally. When I heard the argument for "enslaved"
instead of "slave" it made a lot of sense to me. But I'm not a person of color and as far as I
know, had no enslaved ancestors. Well, we probably all did way back at some point, but
nothing that would make me sensitive on the subject. I just don't want to inadvertently hurt
someone's feelings who might be more sensitive to the term. It doesn't affect me negatively at
all to make the slight adjustment, but it might affect someone else positively. Idk.
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level 6
91seejay
1 hour ago
A slave and enslaved people don't make me think any different. Obviously others might think
different and I'm fine with using whatever doesn't offend people I just don't personally see it.
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level 4
throwawayedm2
2 hours ago
"Slave" can be construed as an offensive term because it defines the person as an object;
I think it's understood that they're a person, at least certainly it is now.
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level 5
geminimindtricks
2 hours ago
Read my other comment. We all know they were people. I'm saying the term "slave" defines
them by the work they did and makes it easier to think of them en masse instead of as
individuals with varieties of skills, passions, and personalities.
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level 6
throwawayedm2
2 hours ago
Ah I see. An interesting argument.
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level 4
SoJenniferSays
36 minutes ago
People can mock this but I heard it for the first time a few months ago and replacing it in my
mind when I read things really has brought my focus more to the person than the situation.
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level 4
sir_snufflepants
1 hour ago·edited 6 minutes ago
“Slave” is and should be offensive because, you fucking know what? Slavery was offensive to
every notion of equality, fairness and humanity.
Watering down slavery to a temporary or transient characteristic (E.G., “a person at one time
who was enslaved by others”) diminishes the extent and horror of slavery by regulating it to
toothache status.
Direct language about directly harmful things is more impactful than pussy footing around
with it.
It’s the difference between saying, “He was put in a bad position,” and, “He got fucked.”
Nobody, and I mean nobody, reads the word “slave” and thinks, “this non person object was a
thing to be owned”. The fear about dehumanizing slaves comes at the expense of diminishing
the fact that they were dehumanized as slaves by taking the focus away from their
enslavement — I.E., their being slaves.
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level 4
lord_ne
33 minutes ago
Edit: the fact that I'm being downvoted for this hot take just shows how racism is alive and well
on reddit.
Ironically I was going to upvote you before reading the edit, but saying that you're being
downvoted because of racism is a bit much
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level 4
xSiberianKhatru
5 minutes ago
That edit is kinda cringe, disagreeing that someone should not used the term “slave” in
reference to an enslaved person is not racist
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level 2
Transpatials
10 minutes ago
Weird how?
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level 2
Crowbarmagic
6 minutes ago
I suppose some people might find it surprising that there were some well educated slaves.
After all, I guess most people associate slavery with manual labor that doesn't require much (if
any) education. And in a lot of cases this was true, but not always.
Same was true of slavery in ancient Rome by the way. Some Greek slaves were teachers that
people would buy to educate their children.
Anyway, I don't think OP should've left out that he was a slave to several doctors in the
title. "was a slave who became a doctor after being freed" would kinda suggest he went to medical
school after he was freed, and learned how to become a doctor there.
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level 1
TitaniumDragon
2 hours ago·edited 2 hours ago
A lot of people are surprised by stuff like this, but it was actually pretty common back in the
day.
A lot of slaves were taught or learned trades. Indeed, a number of these slaves would do work
for other people and get paid for it, splitting the pay with their master, eventually saving up
enough money to be freed. Others would be freed at some point or other. Indeed, slaves who
learned trades were massively more likely to be manumitted (freed) than field slaves, because
they were seen as a cut above by their masters and "able to take care of themselves".
One thing a lot of modern day people don't understand is that there was actually a lot of
disagreement within people who owned slaves about how it should be done.
Some of them felt like this was the right way to do slavery, and it was very lucrative - you made
a lot more money off of a trained, skilled slave than one who can't do anything but pick cotton.
It also was more ethical, and meant that slaves could eventually earn their freedom, basically
turning slavery into a form of indentured servitude. If a slave saw that they could work for X
many years for their master and be freed, that would make them feel better about working for
them, and make them less likely to rebel or try and run away when they would be able to
legally leave (possibly with money to help them get on their feet), and learning a trade from
them would help them on down the line and make them more of a boss than a master.
On the other hand, you had the people who felt that these more educated, skilled slaves would
be much more likely to rebel, or, once freed, work to free other black people from slavery and
lead slave rebellions. They felt like the idea that some slaves could earn their freedom made
them look bad to their own field slaves, who were intentionally kept illiterate and unskilled so
that even if they ran off they had no realistic economic prospects. They felt like large number
of free black people would also eventually undermine the institution of slavery in general
politically, eventually leading to its abolition, and they were concerned that the freed black
people would try to kill them.
Indeed, the Haitian Revolution did end with the slaves committing genocide against the white
people on the island, one of many reasons why Haiti was so shunned and why paranoia about
slave rebellions ramped up after that happened.
Thus, there was a constant back and forth between the various groups, which had different
ideas about what should be done, with some trying to pass legislation banning teaching slaves
how to read or other advanced skills or even freeing them and restricting them as much as
possible out of fear of fomenting rebellion while others fought back against it because it made
them more money and they saw it as more ethical.
Many of the Founding Fathers thought that slavery was slowly becoming obsolete around the
time of the American Revolution and would eventually be abolished both due to moral
repugnancy and because it didn't make any economic sense anymore. However, the invention
of the cotton gin, among other things, led to an increased demand for unskilled manual labor
in the South, whereas in the North, slavery was ended as the industrial era began.
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level 2
sonographic
1 hour ago
it was also more ethical
That's like arguing it's more ethical to wear a condom while you rape a ten year old.
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level 3
bluntymctokems
57 minutes ago
Like a nazi concentration camp guard that sneaks the Jews a little extra food. Not 100%
terrible, just 99.9%.
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level 1
Kaffee192
3 hours ago
That's pretty cool :)
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level 1
elmonoenano
1 hour ago
There's some semantic issues with calling him the first to practice. Black people in America
were practicing their medicine informally as best they could and as long as they'd been here.
They just weren't formally recognized. But if you were an ill slave, the odds that you were
going to get taken to the doctor before it was serious is going to be pretty low. There's a cost
benefit calculus that has to make it worth money. It's probably cheaper to just force you to
work sick and hope you get better soon, or maybe give you a little extra rest time or food.
Slaves needed to care for each other if it wasn't cost effective to get them treated. So there
would always be this informal level of medicine among that community to take care of
themselves. And some people were better at it than others and would have the respect of their
community, and in essence would become the midwife or the doctor for that community.
There were people like Onesimus that were around. They were just ignored. Onesimus, who
was enslaved by Cotton Mather, understood an early form of inoculation called variolation
from his time with Muslim doctors before he was sold into slavery. He explained inoculation to
Mather and Mather got a doctor, Boylston, to inoculate some of the residents of Boston. Most
Bostonians refused. Boylston had significant success. I think 1/40 of his patients died versus
1/7 who refused the inoculation. This was about 40 years before Derham. And Mather
rewarded Onesimus by not freeing him and keeping him a slave throughout his life. Because
of his status as a slave, and b/c his knowledge was filtered through Boylston and Mather, he's
not considered to have "practiced".
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level 2
MeridianHilltop
1 hour ago
I came here to make this point.
Seriously doubt he was the first to practice. Seems like an insult.
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level 1
WorldsBestGranddad22
2 points·1 hour ago0 children

level 1
Peudejou
40 minutes ago
Von Hoenheim of the Light
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level 2
Donseanelly
31 minutes ago
Van was on another level
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level 1
A40
2 hours ago
led
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level 2
half_centurion
2 hours ago
zeppelin
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level 3
plumbthumbs
6 minutes ago
houses
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level 4
half_centurion
just now
of
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level 1
Psych_Riot
10 minutes ago
I'm surprised I can't find a movie about his life. I would watch the hell out of this man's journey
from slavery to medical doctor
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level 1
keegums
6 minutes ago
We learned about him in school! My aunt is a teacher who posted about Rosa Parks for BHM,
so i'll comment about Mr. Durham, so he continues to be honored
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level 1
User5920
Score hidden·1 hour ago0 children

level 1
davidml1023
31 minutes ago·edited 5 minutes ago
Today we'd call this an unpaid internship
Edit: unpaid internship is pretty fucking immoral. Just so people don't get the impression that
I'm saying slavery was ok.
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level 1
ForkShirtUp
-18 points·3 hours ago0 children
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