Racism - Always and Forever

I don't think you've made any points that Bootsy didn't make. I just think that you forget that TJ has a habit of speaking like a professor and it's not necessarily him TJ speaking so like I knew the humane comment wasn't him speaking like say SuperDave likes to but the view of the people of that time.

 

The art of a good joke is when to say it and what you say. It's the quality and the timing. And I have to say sir, this was fantastically done.

 

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Don't know much about History
Don't know much Biology
Don't know much about a Science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know I'd enjoy having a beer with taos!

 

Y'know what? You think you know things that you do not in fact know.

My ancestors were repeatedly enslaved in the years between 700 and 1000. We are Scots-Irish not because some kilted lad won the heart of a pretty colleen, but because we always lived too close to the water's edge. Every time one side or the other came raiding for prisoners, we were among the handiest. It was prisoner slavery not chattel slavery, and at this distance it is hard to say exactly what the rules were, but it is quite clear that ancestors in multiple generations were torn from home and hearth by bands of armed men and carried off beyond a sea to an unfamiliar land where they worked the rest of their lives as second class citizens. Happened four or five times -- we know this because the name changed noticeably each time. Started out clearly Celtic and wound up obviously Gaelic.

But even more seriously-- my Uncle Yissikhar and his siblings Leo, Avner, Moritz, Rachel, and Leah were all captives at Auschwitz. They all survived, each thinking he or she was the only one who did, and my childhood was charted on a series of reunions as one after another discovered one of the others somewhere. But each of them came away with stories they couldn't or wouldn't tell.

And I could get angry about their experiences, and in a sense I am; but I don't get to claim their experiences as though they were my own. They weren't, and they deserve to remain full strength, unwatered down by the lesser trials I experienced. I have my own, easier tasks in that sphere-- I need to try to prevent it from happening again here.

What you get to claim is the post slavery experience of America right up to date, and I respect that right without reservations. The only barrier I would have temerity enough to place before you is the request that you be a little more prepared to understand exactly what happened beyond "white people suck." Your ancestors' experience deserves more respect than that.

All historical group endeavors and experiences have texture to them. A black man researching slavery taught me that-- or at least how to better formulate what I sort of understood already.

 

The first time I went we were pretty poor. I only gave about $400 in Kenyan shillings. I sent money once or twice without visiting. I gave her money specifically for a cow when we went in 2015, on the condition that she name it Cowlina. Get it? Get it? Cowlina? See, it’s a cow, and I live in Carolina!

I crack me up sometimes

 

There were no raids by the Corsairs/Barbary pirates your family fell victim to after 1609? They raided the coasts of Northern Europe up to Iceland.

British sailors in fights with Barbary pirates– John Fairburn (Publiek Domein – wiki)

 

Great. We are even now, Mr Profesor! Your ancestors spent centuries being enslaved as well. That gives you full authority to comment on black people being enslaved and judge the level of "humanity" of plantation owners.....I am done with that crap. You and your cohorts can keep showing your true colors. Not that I am surprised for some though.

 

Charlie, what exactly are you arguing for here? There were literally millions of southern slaveholders. Literally. Are you saying that studying them isn’t appropriate? Understanding them is useless? I’m being serious here.

What is your argument? Put it into words.

 

Charlie's argument is basically Bootsy argument but with much more conviction and passion. Whereas Bootsy plainly stated that the most humane way possible to be a slave owner is not to be a slave owner at all because slavery in its very senses inhumane.

Charlie's more of the point that regardless of whatever excuse that they gave they are rat f****** and they deserve to be considered rat f****** and any attempt to call them anything else but rat f****** is b***s***. I understand because I also have a degree in history. I didn't have a masters or PhD and it was just my bachelor's but I understand it, in historical context of trying to take off your shades of 2023 when we look at 1823 or 1723. However, where he's coming from is any attempt to justify it or try to explain it away seems to mitigate the inherent racism and evil. The fact that we're even accepting their argument that they were trying to be inhumane gives it more validity than a deserves.

For instance one of the things that has happened or that I've noticed and I've heard from other people is in the Middle East debate of Palestine and Israel. One thing Palestinians and their allies have done is decided they will no longer argue about the need for Palestine to exist. Because in their mind and what they're pushing is we shouldn't need to argue for the fact that there are tens of thousands of people who were there and who do have a home there. It's insulting the fact that we even have to make that argument so we're not they need their own Homeland end of discussion and we'll move on to how we can have a peaceful coexistence but we're not going to debate the need for a Palestinian Homeland.

You move that to Charlie and his argument is we're not going to debate that these people were inherently racist and cruel. You can dress it up with whatever word their motivations or beliefs at the time but it's all nonsense and they were all part of an evil cruel institution no matter what they told themselves. Another metaphor would be if you witness a g******** and never joined in because it was wrong but never turn them in. Are you a good person because you never participated in the game group, sure. But you're still equally as bad because you never reported it or did anything positively to help and those that tried to be humane about their slavery don't get to be viewed as good guys because they still enslaved people.

 

Charlie of course is right, and so is Bootsy when looking at the "owners" in question, but from the pov of the enslaved it makes a hell of a difference if you're in the hands of a "benign owner" or in the hands of a sadistic, quick with the whip, hot iron etc. kind of guy.

 

"Benign owners" post Civil War: "don't worry. we got this thing called sharecropping to keep these n--gers down"

 

Lynch mobs,redlining ,poll taxes,voter suppression,chain gangs,water fountains -whatd I miss?

 

Besides all sense of nuance and individualism and trends and understanding and reality…nothing, really. Nothing.

 

What does this have to do with my post or Taojohn's post?
You're trying to frame me, or who else, into denying racial shithousery being rampant in the (especially southern states of) USA from the abolishment on?

 

When you have to explain the nuance in an untenable position, you're losing. Y'all should just take the L then we can move on to present day racism. We still have a lot.

 

Nobody’s trying to win anything, they’re acknowledging the reality that within the system of slavery some were less cruel than others. And I can’t tell if the responses are trying to deny that reality or just find it distasteful to mention.

Regardless it’s kind of a silly argument to carry on for multiple pages, because it IS just a fact, but isn’t all that relevant to anything that matters right now.

 

Except for those who belittle BLMs efforts with the "look how good BP have it now compared to the olden days of my racist grandparents & great grandparents" They're perfectly fine with racist systems that keep WP on top.

 

Gotta love Pinkerism!

 

Pinkerism has nothing to do with the arguments used.

 

Didn't know him so looked him up. A more intellectual Jordan Peterson perhaps?

On a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict,” Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. “You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I’m very much in Bill’s camp.”

A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker’s soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. “We sent it to his people,” Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...y-scientist-at-the-centre-of-the-culture-wars

 

My first point is that I get the nuance. I will make a second post regarding the implications of slavery in current America. But in regards to the nuance right now, let's look at our current day situation.

When I bought my house there's no fence, like there was no back fence there so me and my neighbor back there have no separation. Me and my wife keeps saying we've been meaning to pay to get the fencing done but other priorities have come up. And now we have some tax return money so we are putting some aside to get the fence put in this summer. In relation to the times of slavery, that fence for a couple might be a strong negro buck named Jim. Now Jim would probably help me in farming, clear the field faster so now I am ahead of schedule. Now if we were a white couple we have never beaten Jim or whipped him; We've just fed him, given him a shed to sleep in and that kind of thing. In modern times I have borrowed my neighbors lawn mower, when I forgot to get mine the tune-up before lawn mower season started. Now in slavery times maybe my neighbor, Jebediah is struggling to harvest his crop before the food goes bad, so I tell him for a couple of cents, he can borrow Jim for the week and he should be able to clear the vegetation and get it to market make his money. We understand that it's a handshake agreement and you know, Jim is my property, so he's to be treated fairly and kindly as I would treat him. Because I've given you my property in good condition and expect my property back in good condition.

So yes I understand that not all slave owners, were brutally oppressive and doing the whole whipping Jim, thing like the notorious photo. But like in 12 years a slave where he had it nice on her first but the guy ran up so much debt, that he had to sell the guy and he ended up selling them to a horrible owner. That happens and that did happen. We also had families torn apart because well I can't afford the mother and child but I'll buy the child or I'll buy the mother. We had women having kids and the children then being sold because the owner's wife need a new furniture or to raise funds. We have documented writings of the issue of growing mulatto children and how they were to be dealt with in class 5. Because the mail owners were obviously raping their female slaves. Outside of Baltimore and I believe Norfolk were slave breeding farms. They were forcing slaves sometimes, through incest to produce more baby slaves.

We have notes from Thomas Jefferson saying a female slave was valuable because she could produce more slaves. And we know Thomas Jefferson was sleeping with one of his slaves and her brothers were working the kitchen and in order for one of the brothers to get his freedom he had to teach the other brother to replace him as chef. But obviously that man requested to work a way out of slavery because he wanted his freedom. We had George Washington with a negro slave chef who would bring them in to Philadelphia and then send them back to Mount Vernon NY, for a few days and bring it back to Philadelphia when he had stayed in Philadelphia because Philadelphia law had it that if your slave stayed in the city a certain amount of months they would then be deemed free by the laws of Philadelphia so he would make his slave leave the area and bring them back. That slave actually escaped and Washington tried to use all this connection to try and find them but never did and after his death they found that slave in New York living as a free man and somebody who was with Washington, white guy, why would you leave such a great setup and he was like because I wanted my freedom.

So all these owners may have thought they were doing the just thing but it goes back to the fact that they were part of a horrible structure and being the tallest midget or the most honorable owner in an evil institution like slavery doesn't stop you from being a bad person.

 

My second point is, all of it is important to know because the largest counties for slave holding are still voting pretty red now. You can tie the current to the past, if there were a large slave owning County in the South they are reliably Republican votes. And our whole racist structure as a nation stems from the inability to recognize the horror and admit it and try some way to positively move on. That's why as soon as affirmative action was created there have been a fight to remove it and now we're fighting even teaching about the horrors of America again which this fighters had before so everything is interconnected because no generation has come up and acknowledged it, in a way to move it forward. There's always been the continual fight to pretend it didn't happen. Similar to the abortion debate where everything is about restricting access there's never been a positive way to embrace the situation and make it better

 

@argentine soccer fan could you delete 8472 and8473 for me. Got interrupted by dad stuff as I went to proofread and edit so I had to repost the edited versions.