NationStates Jolt Archive

All the information to for the title above is on thesese links (No I'm not racist ;))

All of this is important to understanding what is going on today, and anyone who says slavery doesn't matter has fooled themselves

video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VIuOLKt7pV0

http://www.worldfreeinternet.net/archive/arc9.htm


A wise master did not take seriously the belief that Negroes were natural-born slaves. He knew better. He knew that Negroes freshly imported from Africa had to be broken into bondage; that each succeeding generation had to be carefully trained. This was no easy task, for the bondsman rarely submitted willingly. Moreover, he rarely submitted completely. In most cases there was no end to the need for control -- at least not until old age reduced the slave to a condition of helplessness.

The system was psychological and physical at the same time. The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the idea of their own inferiority to "know their place," to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interest with the master's, destroying their own individual needs. To accomplish this there was the discipline of hard labor, the breakup of the slave family, the lulling effects of religion (which sometimes led to "great mischief," as one slaveholder reported), the creation of disunity among slaves by separating them into field slaves and more privileged house slaves, and finally the power of law and the immediate power of the overseer to invoke whipping, burning, mutilation, and death. Dismemberment was provided for in the Virginia Code of 1705. Maryland passed a law in 1723 providing for cutting off the ears of blacks who struck whites, and that for certain serious crimes, slaves should be hanged and the body quartered and exposed.
Still, rebellions took place -- not many, but enough to create constant fear among white planters. The first large-scale revolt in the North American colonies took place in New York in 1712. In New York, slaves were 10 percent of the population, the highest proportion in the northern states, where economic conditions usually did not require large numbers of field slaves. About twenty- five blacks and two Indians set fire to a building, then killed nine whites who came on the scene. They were captured by soldiers, put on trial, and twenty-one were executed. The governor's report to England said: "Some were burnt, others were hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in chains in the town..." One had been burned over a slow fire for eight to ten hours -- all this to serve notice to other slaves.
A letter to London from South Carolina in 1720 reports:

I am now to acquaint you that very lately we have had a very wicked and barbarous plot of the designe of the negroes rising with a designe to destroy all the white people in the country and then to take Charles Town in full body but it pleased God it was discovered and many of them taken prisoners and some burnt and some hang'd and some banish'd.
Around this time there were a number of fires in Boston and New Haven, suspected to be the work of Negro slaves. As a result, one Negro was executed in Boston, and the Boston Council ruled that any slaves who on their own gathered in groups of two or more were to be punished by whipping.

At Stono, South Carolina, in 1739, about twenty slaves rebelled, killed two warehouse guards, stole guns and gunpowder, and headed south, killing people in their way, and burning buildings. They were joined by others, until there were perhaps eighty slaves in all and, according to one account of the time, "they called out Liberty, marched on with Colours displayed, and two Drums beating." The militia found and attacked them. In the ensuing battle perhaps fifty slaves and twenty-five whites were killed before the uprising was crushed.

Herbert Aptheker, who did detailed research on slave resistance in North America for his book American Negro Slave Revolts, found about 250 instances where a minimum of ten slaves joined in a revolt or conspiracy.
From time to time, whites were involved in the slave resistance. As early as 1663, indentured white servants and black slaves in Gloucester County, Virginia, formed a conspiracy to rebel and gain their freedom. The plot was betrayed, and ended with executions. Mullin reports that the newspaper notices of runaways in Virginia often warned "ill-disposed" whites about harboring fugitives. Sometimes slaves and free men ran off together, or cooperated in crimes together. Sometimes, black male slaves ran off and joined white women. From time to time, white ship captains and watermen dealt with runaways, perhaps making the slave a part of the crew.
In New York in 1741, there were ten thousand whites in the city and two thousand black slaves. It had been a hard winter and the poor -- slave and free -- had suffered greatly. When mysterious fires broke out, blacks and whites were accused of conspiring together. Mass hysteria developed against the accused. After a trial full of lurid accusations by informers, and forced confessions, two white men and two white women were executed, eighteen slaves were hanged, and thirteen slaves were burned alive.

Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order. In the early years of slavery, especially, before racism as a way of thinking was firmly ingrained, while white indentured servants were often treated as badly as black slaves, there was a possibility of cooperation. As Edmund Morgan sees it:
There are hints that the two despised groups initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament. It was common, for example, for servants and slaves to run away together, steal hogs together, get drunk together. It was not uncommon for them to make love together. In Bacon's Rebellion, one of the last groups to surrender was a mixed band of eighty negroes and twenty English servants.

As Morgan says, masters, "initially at least, perceived slaves in much the same way they had always perceived servants... shiftless, irresponsible, unfaithful, ungrateful, dishonest..." And "if freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done."
And so, measures were taken. About the same time that slave codes, involving discipline and punishment, were passed by the Virginia Assembly,
Virginia's ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun, while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to get 50 acres of land.

Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests."
We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.

The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.

Around 1700, the Virginia House of Burgesses declared:
The Christian Servants in this country for the most part consists of the Worser Sort of the people of Europe. And since... such numbers of Irish and other Nations have been brought in of which a great many have been soldiers in the late warrs that according to our present Circumstances we can hardly governe them and if they were fitted with Armes and had the Opertunity of meeting together by Musters we have just reason to fears they may rise upon us.

It was a kind of class consciousness, a class fear. There were things happening in early Virginia, and in the other colonies, to warrant it.

Many people point out that Africans practiced slavery as will, this is true but there are different kinds of slavery and the truth is African slavery was not as brutal as colonial European slavery

video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=onlRjeKHsOo


In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts law in the Congo in the early sixteenth century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punished brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted, the idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude. A Congolese leader, told of the Portuguese legal codes, asked a Portuguese once, teasingly: "What is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?"

Slavery existed in the African states, and it was sometimes used by Europeans to justify their own slave trade. But, as Davidson points out, the "slaves" of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe -- in other words, like most of the population of Europe. It was a harsh servitude, but but they had rights which slaves brought to America did not have, and they were "altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations." In the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa, one observer noted that "a slave might marry; own property; himself own a slave; swear an oath; be a competent witness and ultimately become heir to his master... An Ashanti slave, nine cases out of ten, possibly became an adopted member of the family, and in time his descendants so merged and intermarried with the owner's kinsmen that only a few would know their origin."


One slave trader, John Newton (who later became an antislavery leader), wrote about the people of what is now Sierra Leone:

The state of slavery, among these wild barbarous people, as we esteem them, is much milder than in our colonies. For as, on the one hand, they have no land in high cultivation, like our West India plantations, and therefore no call for that excessive, unintermitted labour, which exhausts our slaves: so, on the other hand, no man is permitted to draw blood even from a slave.

African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.

Of course as the excerpt says African on African slavery should not be seen as a good thing

This is from the bbc website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9chapter2.shtml

"In our curriculum, we teach a little part of the history of our land. Because some of the children ask questions about the past history of our grandfather Babatu.

Babatu, and others, didn't see anything wrong with slavery. They didn't have any knowledge of what the people were used for. They were only aware that some of the slaves would serve others of the royal families within the sub-region.

He has done a great deal of harm to the people of Africa. I have studied history and I know the effect of slavery.

I have seen that the slave raids did harm to Africa, but some members of our family feel he was ignorant…we feel that what he did was fine, because it has given the family a great fame within the Dagomba society.

He gave some of the slaves to the Dagombas and then he sent the rest of the slaves to the Salaga market. He didn't know they were going to plantations…he was ignorant…"

This video goes later with what happened after slavery, everyone should watch this

Reconstruction and Jim Crow
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PwM_mmA4YDc

(I haven’t seen the first 9 in that series I'll start watching now)

People here have very short memories. Since slavery has not existed in their living memory, it does not matter.

People here have very short memories. Since slavery has not existed in their living memory, it does not matter.

Memories nowadays are measure in months.

Memories nowadays are measure in months.

Who has the time for that? If it didn't happen within the last week and the news isn't constantly reminding me of it, it's just a lost myth that has no bearing on my life at all.

Methinks the OP could've had the three posts as one.

Also: What's the point?

Methinks the OP could've had the three posts as one.

Also: What's the point?

Slavery is bad.

Slavery is bad.

More than that. His point is that these relationships and what characterize them are not isolated in the past. The effects of the oppressive relationship, and what it has done to black culture and by extension black people still haunts the black community to this day.

Slavery is bad.

Well yeah.

More than that. His point is that these relationships and what characterize them are not isolated in the past. The effects of the oppressive relationship, and what it has done to black culture and by extension black people still haunts the black community to this day.

Mkay. Aaaand what's the point?

More than that. His point is that these relationships and what characterize them are not isolated in the past. The effects of the oppressive relationship, and what it has done to black culture and by extension black people still haunts the black community to this day.

Laws from three centuries ago are still haunting black people today?

The point is that a simple attitude of "Black people are responsible for their own situation" does not cut the mustard, and it is the community's responsibility to undo what slavery has done. The wealth of this nation was built on the backs of African slaves, and as Malcolm X argued, "400 years of slavery cannot be undone by the right to have a cup of coffee in a white cafe. We're here to collect back wages."

So, reparations.

No.

Mkay. Aaaand what's the point?

The point is that a simple attitude of "Black people are responsible for their own situation" does not cut the mustard, and it is the community's responsibility to undo what slavery has done. The wealth of this nation was built on the backs of African slaves, and as Malcolm X argued, "400 years of slavery cannot be undone by the right to have a cup of coffee in a white cafe. We're here to collect back wages."

Well yeah.



Mkay. Aaaand what's the point?



I'd guess that his point is in the OP: Yes, it matters. Which I am sure is directed to the people who would argue otherwise.

Laws from three centuries ago are still haunting black people today?

Yes, obviously all the Jim Crow laws are still in effect, and the Supreme Court has ruled that blacks must be in separate but equal schools...

The point is that a simple attitude of "Black people are responsible for their own situation" does not cut the mustard, and it is the community's responsibility to undo what slavery has done. The wealth of this nation was built on the backs of African slaves, and as Malcolm X argued, "400 years of slavery cannot be undone by the right to have a cup of coffee in a white cafe. We're here to collect back wages."

I'm sorry you can't say that today's current black culture is a result of the oppression of people no one alive ever met. You want to know why "black culture" is fucked up? Because they've got a bunch of people who's biggest aspiration is to grow up and be the next big rap star, people who don't value education and think it's perfectly acceptable to walk around talking ebonics. I'll not deny there's an unhealthy amount of racism still in America, I see it daily, but don't pawn the black community's failure to do anything about their own situation off on a bunch of dead white dudes.

You don't see Koreans whining and bitching about being oppressed, and they definitely have been, they get educated and they get on with their lives.

The wealth of this nation was built on the backs of African slaves

False. Maybe in the South, but that was promptly squashed and burned during the Civil War. The South was in economic ruins after that escapade.

I'm sorry you can't say that today's current black culture is a result of the oppression of people no one alive ever met. You want to know why "black culture" is fucked up? Because they've got a bunch of people who's biggest aspiration is to grow up and be the next big rap star, people who don't value education and think it's perfectly acceptable to walk around talking ebonics. I'll not deny there's an unhealthy amount of racism still in America, I see it daily, but don't pawn the black community's failure to do anything about their own situation off on a bunch of dead white dudes.

You don't see Koreans whining and bitching about being oppressed, and they definitely have been, they get educated and they get on with their lives.

These all have their roots in slavery. Traditionally, black culture has not emphasized education or intelligence because those used to be the things that would get a black man lynched. So, you have an entire group of people, living in serfdom (sharecropping) and abject poverty, with no chance for a real education for at least a century. Obviously, certain attitudes will arise.

The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot just blame black people for the situations of black people. While rap culture is destructive by misleading people and giving them a false hope, you have to understand that false hopes inevitably do arise when the situation people live in is utterly deplorable and there is no seeming way out. For the young black person of the Ghetto, the life of a rap thug is the only seeming way out.

It is downright hypocritical for we who are white to just sit back and say "It's their problem, so they should deal with it," when we live in a country who used their misery and oppression to build the wealth that has industrialized this country, and provided us with our relatively comfortable positions. Without a commitment to put an end to the cycle of poverty that whites created and still benefit from to this day, any other commitment to civil rights and equality is meaningless.

False. Maybe in the South, but that was promptly squashed and burned during the Civil War. The South was in economic ruins after that escapade.

The wealth of Southern plantation owners didn't just stay in the south hidden in some plantation owner's mattress. It was invested, and provided the capital necessary to drive the industrialization of the North, and to a lesser extent the South itself.

These all have their roots in slavery. Traditionally, black culture has not emphasized education or intelligence because those used to be the things that would get a black man lynched. So, you have an entire group of people, living in serfdom (sharecropping) and abject poverty, with no chance for a real education for at least a century. Obviously, certain attitudes will arise.

The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot just blame black people for the situations of black people. While rap culture is destructive by misleading people and giving them a false hope, you have to understand that false hopes inevitably do arise when the situation people live in is utterly deplorable and there is no seeming way out. For the young black person of the Ghetto, the life of a rap thug is the only seeming way out.

It is downright hypocritical for we who are white to just sit back and say "It's their problem, so they should deal with it," when we live in a country who used their misery and oppression to build the wealth that has industrialized this country, and provided us with our relatively comfortable positions. Without a commitment to put an end to the cycle of poverty that whites created and still benefit from to this day, any other commitment to civil rights and equality is meaningless.



The wealth of Southern plantation owners didn't just stay in the south hidden in some plantation owner's mattress. It was invested, and provided the capital necessary to drive the industrialization of the North, and to a lesser extent the South itself.

Well I'm certainly glad a culture that doesn't value intelligence brought us the like of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X. Where are the black leaders today? On MTV with their "bitches" and their "bling". Black culture has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last 20-30 years, you can't blame that on 300 year old archaic laws.

Well I'm certainly glad a culture that doesn't value intelligence brought us the like of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X. Where are the black leaders today? On MTV with their "bitches" and their "bling". Black culture has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last 20-30 years, you can't blame that on 300 year old archaic laws.

What happened when Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were assassinated? The black liberation movement very surely disintegrated. As great leaders they may be, King and X were one in ten million; these charismatic, truly gifted leaders seldom do arise, and when they do, they live tragically short lives.

And yes, I can blame 400 years of institutionalized oppression, domination and coerced inferiority. I never said I hold current black leaders blameless. God knows there is plenty of blame to go around.

Well I'm certainly glad a culture that doesn't value intelligence brought us the like of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X. Where are the black leaders today? On MTV with their "bitches" and their "bling". Black culture has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last 20-30 years, you can't blame that on 300 year old archaic laws.

If you're getting your impression of black culture from MTV then it will be necessarily skewed. From that lens you could also argue that white culture has become equally image obsessed and possession driven, rewarding fashion and wealth to the point that both will excuse any behavior.

You don't see Koreans whining and bitching about being oppressed, and they definitely have been, they get educated and they get on with their lives.

You might not, but I've seen it.

If you're getting your impression of black culture from MTV then it will be necessarily skewed. From that lens you could also argue that white culture has become equally image obsessed and possession driven, rewarding fashion and wealth to the point that both will excuse any behavior.



Sure, but it's glamourous when a white person does it.

But in too many cases, it is true. There is a strong cultural current in the black community that opposes education, success, and hard work and glorifies the kind of negative attitudes and conduct that are responsible for this portrayal in the media. Unfortunately, this same attitude is the one that gets all of the attention and the very real struggles and hard work of people in these communities goes unnoticed.

I want that supported by something other than the anecdotal.

If you're getting your impression of black culture from MTV then it will be necessarily skewed. From that lens you could also argue that white culture has become equally image obsessed and possession driven, rewarding fashion and wealth to the point that both will excuse any behavior.

But in too many cases, it is true. There is a strong cultural current in the black community that opposes education, success, and hard work and glorifies the kind of negative attitudes and conduct that are responsible for this portrayal in the media. Unfortunately, this same attitude is the one that gets all of the attention and the very real struggles and hard work of people in these communities goes unnoticed.

Yes in many cases it is true and one case is one too many. That's not to say that white, hispanic and asian kids from poorer neighborhoods don't fall into the same trap.

These all have their roots in slavery. Traditionally, black culture has not emphasized education or intelligence because those used to be the things that would get a black man lynched. So, you have an entire group of people, living in serfdom (sharecropping) and abject poverty, with no chance for a real education for at least a century. Obviously, certain attitudes will arise.

The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot just blame black people for the situations of black people. While rap culture is destructive by misleading people and giving them a false hope, you have to understand that false hopes inevitably do arise when the situation people live in is utterly deplorable and there is no seeming way out. For the young black person of the Ghetto, the life of a rap thug is the only seeming way out.

It is downright hypocritical for we who are white to just sit back and say "It's their problem, so they should deal with it," when we live in a country who used their misery and oppression to build the wealth that has industrialized this country, and provided us with our relatively comfortable positions. Without a commitment to put an end to the cycle of poverty that whites created and still benefit from to this day, any other commitment to civil rights and equality is meaningless.

Well said, to combat poverty one must understand the historical forces behind it


The wealth of Southern plantation owners didn't just stay in the south hidden in some plantation owner's mattress. It was invested, and provided the capital necessary to drive the industrialization of the North, and to a lesser extent the South itself.

Slavery was a profitable economic institution. Over the years, scholars have debated whether the slave economy was efficient or inefficient-that debate likely will continue. There is no doubt, how- ever, that cotton, the major crop produced by slaves, was by far the most valuable export crop in the United States. Professor James Horton points out that by 1840, cotton was more remunerative as an export than all other exports combined. Not only was the fruit of their labor lucrative, but the laborers, themselves, were quite valuable as investments. Professor Eric Foner notes that by 1860, there was more capital invested in slaves than in all railroads, all factories, and all banks-North and South--combined. So, economically, the institution of slavery was profitable.

Fact: Slavery built Wall Street

Something interesting to note, African immigrants have the highest educational achievement in the country, higher than Asians

Are elite schools padding their racial diversity numbers with black immigrants who do not have a history of American slavery in their families? This development immediately calls into question whether affirmative action admission policies are fulfilling their original intent.

But as Walter Benn Michaels, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes in his book "The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality," the original intent of affirmative action morphed back in the 1970s from reparations for slavery into the promotion of a broader virtue: "diversity." Since then, it no longer seems to matter how many of your college's black students had slavery in their families. It only matters that they are black.

That said, I don't begrudge black immigrants or any other high-achieving immigrants for their impressive achievements. I applaud them. I encourage more native-born American children, particularly my own child, to take similar advantage of this country's hard-won opportunities.

But I also think we need to revisit the meaning of "diversity." Unlike our current system of feel-good game-playing, we need to focus on the deeper question of how education can be improved and opportunities opened up to those who were left behind by the civil rights revolution.

We tend to look too often at every aspect of diversity except economic class. Yet, the dream of upward mobility is an essential part of how we Americans like to think of ourselves.

It's also why a lot more people are trying to get into this country than trying to get out.

Africans have the highest educational attainment rates of any immigrant group in the United States with higher levels of completion than the stereotyped Asian American model minority. It is not only the first generation that does well, as estimates indicate that a highly disproportionate percentage of black students at elite universities are African or the children of African immigrants. Harvard University, for example, has estimated that two-thirds of their black population is not comprised of traditional black Americans. This is true for other universities such as Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Duke and Berkeley. As a result, the benefits of affirmative action are not efficiently serving traditional multi-generational black Americans who are descendents of American slaves. This also includes recent black immigrants from other areas of the African diaspora, like Afro-Caribbean people.

Memories nowadays are measure in months.

I agree you Europians forget the rise of Nazi's and allow your muslim population to take over like the brown shirts did in germany. How about focusing on what matters as concerned with the Islamofacists because if you do not you will see slavery first hand and you will not be the owners this time around.

I agree you Europians forget the rise of Nazi's and allow your muslim population to take over like the brown shirts did in germany. How about focusing on what matters as concerned with the Islamofacists because if you do not you will see slavery first hand and you will not be the owners this time around.

http://www.zagura.ro/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/god-kills-kitten-troll.jpg

I've been hearing people (e.g. Nelson Mandela) say that young black people need to see more positive role models. To be honest, I think that goes for everyone else too. I mean, look at the "celebrities" that fill the media nowadays...

I've been hearing people (e.g. Nelson Mandela) say that young black people need to see more positive role models. To be honest, I think that goes for everyone else too. I mean, look at the "celebrities" that fill the media nowadays...

Thread idea!

More than that. His point is that these relationships and what characterize them are not isolated in the past. The effects of the oppressive relationship, and what it has done to black culture and by extension black people still haunts the black community to this day.

But banging on about it simply creates and environment that instead of actually empowering the African American it turns them into a helpless infant that needs the 'white man' to help them once again. You've turned them from explicit slaves into implicit slaves - dependency on the white man rather than independence and the ability to make their own direction in life.

At the end of the day, we can sit around pissing and moaning about what happened 200-300 years ago, but the simple fact remains that even for most African Americans, it bares no impact on where they are today. It might relieve the white middle class guilt for psuedo intellectuals sitting around to pass apologetics around a discussion table but in the end it doesn't help anyone.

Talk to any successful African American and they'll tell you that the 'legacy of slavery' as nothing to do with it; opportunities are given, its up to you as to whether you take advantage of it.

I'm sorry you can't say that today's current black culture is a result of the oppression of people no one alive ever met. You want to know why "black culture" is fucked up? Because they've got a bunch of people who's biggest aspiration is to grow up and be the next big rap star, people who don't value education and think it's perfectly acceptable to walk around talking ebonics. I'll not deny there's an unhealthy amount of racism still in America, I see it daily, but don't pawn the black community's failure to do anything about their own situation off on a bunch of dead white dudes.

Nor can you reasonably argue that the way things are is unrelated to the way things were. The present originates from the past, so if there's a problem with race and education today, it's probably no coincidence that being black and trying to learn to read used to get you whipped. Laws may have changed, but attitudes are propogated by people and their memories, not the regime of law they live under. The memory of being oppressed will still influence someone a day or a week or a year after you pass a law that professes him equal, and some part of that memory will be inherited for generations. The 'masters' behaviour doesn't dissappear overnight, neither do the 'slaves' attitudes. Unless, that is, you can identify the breaking point where History became irrelevant, became powerless, lost the effects of force, and ceased to be relevant to the present.

You don't see Koreans whining and bitching about being oppressed, and they definitely have been, they get educated and they get on with their lives.

Just wondering, but do you live in environment full of visceral reminders of that oppression? If you don't, and you did, then maybe you'd hear more grievances being aired. I can just as easily say "well I don't hear any black people complaining about racism"; I can say that because, frankly, I don't happen to have any black friends (I live in a WASP nest town, with heavy emphasis on the W, and in the run of a day I don't seem to cross paths with many people of the minority who aren't white), so of course I don't hear it-- I don't hear or know anything about what they talk about or how they feel.

I agree you Europians forget the rise of Nazi's and allow your muslim population to take over like the brown shirts did in germany. How about focusing on what matters as concerned with the Islamofacists because if you do not you will see slavery first hand and you will not be the owners this time around.
good point.
very very good points there.
however to really get your message across, you should have inserted some gun smileys, gunge throwing smileys, headbanging, angry and a couple of the f-you smileys.
Cause that would show us just how relevant and important your message is.

Just a few links. Problem with the editorial writings of Doctors Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell is that they don't tend to use much citation (I guess it's a big problem with most columnists). But I've been reading their works for years and I tend to trust their integrity and knowledge of economics.


http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams102705.asp

http://www.tradeleadshop.com/79312/WaronPovertyRevisitedbyThomasSowellMagazine.php



And if you doubt their credentials...

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/vita.html

http://www.hoover.org/bios/sowell.html

Damn'd uppity negroes...


What? What...? Oh, that's right, I'm black too...

Memories nowadays are measure in months.

Or soundbites. Or administration blunders. Or Paris Hilton calendar appointments and public outings.

Paris Hilton is white. So am I.

That doesn't mean I aspire to become a dumb skank who hauls her pets around in bags.

Also, I think it's interesting that some of you are so quick to presume that these "dead white guys" couldn't have had an effect on the black community today because this all happened so long ago. I mean, of course, how can you argue with that? I'm sure we'd all be in the exact same fucking situation if the pilgrims had never set sail to avoid persecution.

We study the past precisely because it has a direct effect on the present. If you want to argue with that then, by all means, please do. You'll be wrong.

Damn'd uppity negroes...


What? What...? Oh, that's right, I'm black too...

Since when? :eek:

Since when? :eek:

Since he was born I believe. There was a doctor with a can of indelible spray paint...

:p

But seriously, the way things are, it's not law that has to change, or more subsidies, it's attitudes. On both sides of the spectrum.

But banging on about it simply creates and environment that instead of actually empowering the African American it turns them into a helpless infant that needs the 'white man' to help them once again. You've turned them from explicit slaves into implicit slaves - dependency on the white man rather than independence and the ability to make their own direction in life.

Oh bugger me! Suddenly, just because I don't believe that white people can wash their hands of 400 years of institutionalized domination, coercion and oppression I suddenly become the Great White Chauvinist? I guess, in that case, then white shouldn't have marched in the Civil Rights protests, shouldn't have stood along side their black brothers in demanding equality and an end to oppression. With your implicit opinion, seperate but equal is the rule of the day.

At the end of the day, we can sit around pissing and moaning about what happened 200-300 years ago, but the simple fact remains that even for most African Americans, it bares no impact on where they are today. It might relieve the white middle class guilt for psuedo intellectuals sitting around to pass apologetics around a discussion table but in the end it doesn't help anyone.

No impact? No impact?! The chances of someone from a poor inner city neighborhood even rising into middle incomes are heavily stacked against them. Poverty can only ever beget poverty. A person born into poverty will more likely than not die in poverty. Do you want to know why the majority of black americans live in poverty? It was because of slavery and the continued legacy of racism and economic serfdom that continues to haunt them to this day. An emancipated slave has nothing. End result, they end up in a new form of slavery: sharecropping. Even if when they break free from that, where do they end up? The hellish nightmare of decaying inner city slums.

Talk to any successful African American and they'll tell you that the 'legacy of slavery' as nothing to do with it; opportunities are given, its up to you as to whether you take advantage of it.

For every "successful African American", how many people who are just as intelligent and just as deserving get left behind? I'd venture a guess that its at least a dozen. The whole system is flawed for anyone who lives in poverty, regardless of race, and your paean to the "pull yourself up with your own bootstraps" ethic of renunciation will only make the problem worse.

Paris Hilton is white. So am I.

That doesn't mean I aspire to become a dumb skank who hauls her pets around in bags.

Also, I think it's interesting that some of you are so quick to presume that these "dead white guys" couldn't have had an effect on the black community today because this all happened so long ago. I mean, of course, how can you argue with that? I'm sure we'd all be in the exact same fucking situation if the pilgrims had never set sail to avoid persecution.

We study the past precisely because it has a direct effect on the present. If you want to argue with that then, by all means, please do. You'll be wrong.

Congratulations on a well reasoned and thoughtfull first post. :p

You've turned them from explicit slaves into implicit slaves - dependency on the white man rather than independence and the ability to make their own direction in life.

A person whose limbs are bound by ropes is thrown into a river. Should we respect her capability to save herself, and let her drown?

Talk to any successful African American and they'll tell you that the 'legacy of slavery' as nothing to do with it

That's simply not true.

Well slavery was outlawed/ended in 1865 in the US after having been in existence since 1640 (approx, as I'm no expert on US history). Considering the following overt institutional racism - that as far as I'm aware - only really began to be tackled in the late 1950's / 1960's, we are talking quite a short time period in the overall scheme of human history. Its therefore quite understandable that a considerable number of attitudes would still hold over and affect the present negatively.

Well slavery was outlawed/ended in 1865 in the US after having been in existence since 1640 (approx, as I'm no expert on US history). Considering the following overt institutional racism - that as far as I'm aware - only really began to be tackled in the late 1950's / 1960's, we are talking quite a short time period in the overall scheme of human history. Its therefore quite understandable that a considerable number of attitudes would still hold over and affect the present negatively.

No no no, there was a speech and a boycott and everything. It's all magically better now within a generation.

A person whose limbs are bound by ropes is thrown into a river. Should we respect her capability to save herself, and let her drown?

You're forgetting one thing: by getting herself bound by ropes, this woman has obviously demonstrated that she lacks the merit to be a rugged individual and thus can just go hang. ;)

You're forgetting one thing: by getting herself bound by ropes, this woman has obviously demonstrated that she lacks the merit to be a rugged individual and thus can just go hang. ;)

Plus, someone who was wearing the same shirt as her was playing with ropes or seen near ropes or something, so clearly they want it that way.

No impact? No impact?! The chances of someone from a poor inner city neighborhood even rising into middle incomes are heavily stacked against them. Poverty can only ever beget poverty. A person born into poverty will more likely than not die in poverty. Do you want to know why the majority of black americans live in poverty? It was because of slavery and the continued legacy of racism and economic serfdom that continues to haunt them to this day. An emancipated slave has nothing. End result, they end up in a new form of slavery: sharecropping. Even if when they break free from that, where do they end up? The hellish nightmare of decaying inner city slums.
These are all brave assertions yet backed with no fact whatsoever. It may sound good over coffee but here false assertions hold no merit.



For every "successful African American", how many people who are just as intelligent and just as deserving get left behind? I'd venture a guess that its at least a dozen. The whole system is flawed for anyone who lives in poverty, regardless of race, and your paean to the "pull yourself up with your own bootstraps" ethic of renunciation will only make the problem worse.
And I would venture a guess that the number is no different than for any other ethnicity. So do you want to have a battle of the guesses or do you want to actually substantiate yourself? I actually know that odds of someone in the US escaping poverty - regardless of race - do you?

You're forgetting one thing: by getting herself bound by ropes, this woman has obviously demonstrated that she lacks the merit to be a rugged individual and thus can just go hang. ;)

She shouldn't have bound herself in ropes to begin with...

Well slavery was outlawed/ended in 1865 in the US after having been in existence since 1640 (approx, as I'm no expert on US history). Considering the following overt institutional racism - that as far as I'm aware - only really began to be tackled in the late 1950's / 1960's, we are talking quite a short time period in the overall scheme of human history. Its therefore quite understandable that a considerable number of attitudes would still hold over and affect the present negatively.

So are all slaves ancestors in need of assistance or only the black ones? What about black immigrants with no roots in slavery?

People here have very short memories. Since slavery has not existed in their living memory, it does not matter.

http://www.freetheslaves.net/

http://www.freetheslaves.net/slavery/

http://freetheslaves.net/slavery/reports/

Yes, the psychological effects of slavery reamain. But I think we're missing the bigger picture here.

The problem isn't *just* that 200 years ago African-Americans were property. But that lead to other things.

Firstly, I think it does lead to the breakup of the black family. For generations, it was practically normal for a black kid to grow up having no idea who daddy was. Without a role model, where do black kids get the notion that a child needs two parents? The same is true of white kids who's parents run out on 'em. They don't learn how to be parents, they don't learn to be MEN. This is a problem, and it does go back to slavery.

But some problems are not directly from slavery. On example is our school system. In the US, the school systems are funded (largely) by property taxes. So a kid living in the ghetto (whatever his race BTW) probably goes to an overcrowded school. This school probably can't afford enough textbooks to give to each kid -- most likely you share books. And forget about your textbooks being modern, they're probably the same ones that your parents used. Forget those silly notions of a properly equipped science lab, the school can't afford it. And you don't see any computers in your classroom either. Because of the low payscale and impossible conditions, you get the teachers who literally cannot get hired anywhere else -- and your classroom is overcrowded, because your district can't afford to hire enough teachers.

We expect kids to get educated in these schools to the point where they have the chance to compete with rich kids who take home laptop computers and have state of the art science labs. Kids whose teachers are the cream of the crop and who have small enough classes to know each child by name. That's like saying that Kenya is going to take Olympic gold in ice hockey -- they've got so many strikes against them that they KNOW they aren't gonna win.

I think that part of what drives the "wannabe rap star" thing is that given their educational opportunities, Rap and Sports are pretty much it. You aren't going to get to college without a scholarship, and the school is so bad that you're not likely to get a scholarship unless you're good at basketball, football or some other high-ticket sport. Without college, all that really remains are the low-wage jobs that will keep you poor. So why not emulate the rapper -- the one person with your opporunities that isn't struggling to make it on $12 an hour?

So I think its as much current economics as slave psychology. But the other reason that I kinda chafe at the idea of laying the idea of laying it all at the feet of dead slave owners is that is absolves you from all responsibility. If the reason that blacks aren't doing as well as they could, it must be the fault of some dead white guy. No need to look for current discrimination, economic inequalities, or your own attitudes.

Just a few links. Problem with the editorial writings of Doctors Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell is that they don't tend to use much citation (I guess it's a big problem with most columnists). But I've been reading their works for years and I tend to trust their integrity and knowledge of economics.


http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams102705.asp

http://www.tradeleadshop.com/79312/WaronPovertyRevisitedbyThomasSowellMagazine.php



And if you doubt their credentials...

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/vita.html

http://www.hoover.org/bios/sowell.html

Thanks for posting that, I didn't know so much progress was being made before the 60s

So does anyone think the current welfare system might actually be doing more harm than good?

I really don't have a solution; we just need to completely redo American culture for the good of everyone, EXECUTE PARIS HILTON!

These are all brave assertions yet backed with no fact whatsoever. It may sound good over coffee but here false assertions hold no merit.

Except, you know, history. Jim Crow, segregation, 'seperate but equal' etc...


And I would venture a guess that the number is no different than for any other ethnicity. So do you want to have a battle of the guesses or do you want to actually substantiate yourself? I actually know that odds of someone in the US escaping poverty - regardless of race - do you?
Pony up, then. It doesn't do any good to bitch about sources and then only 'hint' that you have some.

Um...guys? I think we seem to be missing out on a whole lot of things here. I'm not sure who any of you are. I've never met any of you in real life. I don't know where you grew up, what kind of accent you speak with, what music you listen to, etc, etc...and to be honest with you, I don't really care. We seem to have a whole lot of generalizations that are race-specific that are not necessarily true.

I am: 23, white/native-american, male.
I grew up: in inner city, non-Detroit Michigan.
I went to: one of the poorest public school systems in the state, funded almost entirely by the lottery. (No, seriously.)

As a child, in my elementary schools, (I moved a lot as a kid, but always in the same city) it was not uncommon for 25-30 kids to share 10 textbooks that were well over 10 years older than we were at the time. Almost every kid was part of the "free lunch" program, because parents couldn't afford to send brown paper bags with pb&j sandwiches with kids to school. For many kids, lunch was the only meal they got during the entire day.

My junior high quite literally had barred windows on both 1st and 2nd floor. You don't put bars on 2nd floor windows to keep people out...

Junior high was also my first experience with: being mugged at gunpoint, 12 year old mothers, chemical explosives, drug-sniffing dogs, gambling in public, kids sneaking alcohol into school, and drug dealing (both from kids AND a teacher or two.)

Let's just say that in high school, there were under-18 mothers of three, almost everyone carried pistols (including the police stationed in the school,) metal detectors were in the works of being installed, and conditions worsened from there (and from above). Most kids were looking to get their diplomas to go work in the factories as temps to pay bills on $7/hr (now about $8-9/hr.) Families of 4 or more often subsisted on less than $20k/year and made too much to be on government assistance.

In JH/HS, everyone had the same culture. They were all ignorant (if not by choice, then by media standard.) All the blacks, hispanics, whites, asians and middle easterners listened to rap. They all talked like, walked like, listened to, and dressed in whatever mass media told them was cool. They all wanted to be rappers, or thugs or whatever these MTV idiots are calling themselves now. It was the only alternative to working themselves to death in the meat markets we call factories.

Even with "education" they learn nothing. Standards are so low that students who cannot understand words longer than two syllables are PASSING high school. These kids cannot grasp remedial reading, have no math skills to speak of, and over 60% of them cannot find their own country on a world map! These media zombies are what the public education system are turning out...thousands, every year.

To get to my long-winded, rambling point: I don't know what slavery was like. No one living in the United States does. I don't know what racial segregation and tension was like. People my parents' age and older do, but we are the adults now. It is time to step up and say no more. The time of hate and intolerance is over. We as a country need to let go and move on...and focus on making this place a little better and more tolerant for our children. I don't want my future kid or kids to grow up with the media telling them that it's okay to be stupid.

The state of ignorance on this planet is unacceptable, no matter what color we are. We have to do something about it.

So are all slaves ancestors in need of assistance or only the black ones? What about black immigrants with no roots in slavery?

I never called for any kind of assistance, or made any remark about same. However it would follow that assistance is required if the effects of slavery and racism are still being felt.

As somebody pointed out earlier, 'Black' immigrants have a very high rate of success academically, so why would they need "assistance"?

She shouldn't have bound herself in ropes to begin with...

Of course, she didn't do that. But you don't care, because it is obviously impossible for anything anyone does to effect anyone else.

Oh bugger me! Suddenly, just because I don't believe that white people can wash their hands of 400 years of institutionalized domination, coercion and oppression I suddenly become the Great White Chauvinist? I guess, in that case, then white shouldn't have marched in the Civil Rights protests, shouldn't have stood along side their black brothers in demanding equality and an end to oppression. With your implicit opinion, seperate but equal is the rule of the day.



No impact? No impact?! The chances of someone from a poor inner city neighborhood even rising into middle incomes are heavily stacked against them. Poverty can only ever beget poverty. A person born into poverty will more likely than not die in poverty. Do you want to know why the majority of black americans live in poverty? It was because of slavery and the continued legacy of racism and economic serfdom that continues to haunt them to this day. An emancipated slave has nothing. End result, they end up in a new form of slavery: sharecropping. Even if when they break free from that, where do they end up? The hellish nightmare of decaying inner city slums.



For every "successful African American", how many people who are just as intelligent and just as deserving get left behind? I'd venture a guess that its at least a dozen. The whole system is flawed for anyone who lives in poverty, regardless of race, and your paean to the "pull yourself up with your own bootstraps" ethic of renunciation will only make the problem worse.



Congratulations on a well reasoned and thoughtfull first post. :p

Considering how many white kids come from exactly the same background...
ever heard of poor white trash?
Its the poverty that prevents not the colour, the colour is used as an excuse for your own failings.

Considering how many white kids come from exactly the same background...
ever heard of poor white trash?
Its the poverty that prevents not the colour, the colour is used as an excuse for your own failings.

Well, you're absolutely right that many white kids are in the same situation. If it were up to me, the first step would be to make the inner-city ghetto schools at least as good as the average middle class school. They should have textbooks -- up-to-date textbooks, a reasonable science lab, and the library at least should have a computer. Until a kid in the ghetto has a reasonable chance to graduate educated, he isn't going to see education as "the way out". Right now, I'd say that estimation is pretty accurate, and I can't blame a kid for not "valueing education" when the best that "education" will buy is a job at a factory for $8 an hour. Heck, you could probably get that as a drop-out, so why put off the inevitable. I'd probably drop out. Not because I'm stupid, but because either way I'm going to the same place -- so sitting at my desk at school is doing exactly nothing.

I don't know how the British system of education works, but it does seem to produce better graduates. Perhaps there's something they do that works better. (unfortunatly my understanding of British schools is limited to reports saying y'all are better educated and Harry Potter. And I don't think you have a sorting hat) But unless we can make public schools work well, we'll continue to throw away generations of bright students, many of them African Americans.

And really, if America does go the reparations route -- I say the reparations would be in the form of college scholarships. That way, instead of simply handing them a check and saying "sorry about the slavery", you invest in them. And I believe that investment would absolutely pay off for everyone. If the minds of these kids were let loose with the tools to become what they want to become, I think you'd see an economic miracle for everyone.