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By now, Orlando Shaw and the 14 women who gave birth to his 22 children probably have Harriet Tubman turning over in her grave.

That’s because Shaw and his baby mamas are doing what abolitionists like Tubman tried to help other slaves escape from being forced to do: To become nothing more than breeders – and reinforce racist notions that black people are more animalistic than human.

“Durin’ slavery there was stockmen [males used for breeding],” recalled Maggie Stenhouse, a former slave, in the book “African-American Studies: Voices of African-American Women in Slavery”.

“They was weighed and tested. A man would rent the stockman and put him in a room with some young women he wanted to raise children from.”

Today, though, the stockmen have been replaced by men like Shaw, who recently made headlines when he was hauled into court in Nashville for failing to pay child support. The only difference is that now, the system that once viewed them as chattel now treats them as expendable.

Instead of working on a plantation, Shaw will likely wind up doing some measure of free labor if he is ultimately incarcerated for not paying child support. Desmond Hatchett, another Tennessee man who made headlines last year for fathering 24 children with numerous women, already sits in prison for his failure to pay child support.

And what’s sad is that they – nor their baby’s mamas – have not a clue as to how bad that is.

A recent television news story about Shaw included a chart that broke down the $7,000 a month that the state will have to pay to care for Shaw’s offspring. But what was really cringe-inducing was the way in which the white reporter treated him like an imbecile.

Even worse is that it didn’t seem to bother him.

Shaw: “Well, I wanted 50 kids.”

Reporter: “Well, you’re almost halfway there.”

People can be heard laughing in the background at that answer; at how the reporter, instead of asking a question that attempted to get at a serious answer as to what circumstances led Shaw to have so many children without having the means to care for them, only egged him on in his cluelessness.

It got worse.

Orlando Shaw Needs a History Lesson – Along With a Box of Condoms  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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