Carry Me Back to Old Virginny

A couple of days ago in class we were discussing the implications of Israel coming out of slavery in Egypt and continuing to own slaves themselves. We focused on Ex. 1:13: "The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites." We observed that in this case, the Israelites are distinguishing the distance between their slavery and Egyptian slavery: namely, that Israelites were not ruthless. The implication here is that their slavery was "better."

This reminded me about the controversy toward the end of the 1990s over the Virginia State Song.
The previous state song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" linked above, was written by an African American, named James Bland, and describes Virginia nostalgically from the perspective of a slave who was sold to the deep south. While as a native Virginian I can sympathize and long nostalgically for "the state where I was born," I would argue that the point of where slavery is better is moot because slavery is slavery. It's bad in Alabama, it's bad in Virginia.

It's bad in Egypt, it's bad in Israel.

-Wyatt