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Americans (colonists) did NOT start the slave trade.


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1 hour ago, CrakHoBarbie said:

I've made no excuses for the sins of our forefathers. The point I'm making is that we cannot hold people responsible for the sins of their fathers. Or, as in this case, the sins of their great grandfather's. 

It's a question for academics mostly.  What does it mean to us today ?  We have inherited a set of problems.  The important thing is how WE behave and how WE make things better for our country.

Academic discussions are not a good fit for public discussion IMO

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3 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

It's a question for academics mostly.  What does it mean to us today ?  We have inherited a set of problems.  The important thing is how WE behave and how WE make things better for our country.

Academic discussions are not a good fit for public discussion IMO

Well, when reduced to it's essence, we have never held the child responsible for the sins of the Father. It's really that simple.

Edited by CrakHoBarbie
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1 hour ago, robosmith said:

Americans are very wealthy; thanks in part to slaves helping to build it.

There are other issues. For example, are we now to pay reparations to the indigenous peoples for stealing their land? Also, since you advocate making the descendants responsible for the sins of their Fathers, are we to start charging kids for thefts and debts incurred by their ancestors? This is a can of worms that is never ending. There's not enough wealth on the entire planet that can make up for the atrocities performed by our ancestors. I mean, I get where your coming from, but your conclusion isn't viable.... By any stretch of the imagination.

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47 minutes ago, Infidel Dog said:

It's not does anybody here eat people either.

It continues to baffle me how you think Jeffrey Dahmer fits anywhere in this conversation.

Do I honestly have to explain the concept of an analogy? 

I think it was pretty clear, but okay. The point is that just because someone (or someones) was not the first person to do something bad does not mean they bear any less guilt for the action. Hitler didn't invent genocide, but he's still an awful, evil guy. We don't need an article about how Hitler was just a man of his time.

Literally everyone knows that slavery existed prior to the colonization of North America. It's about as useful as posting that the sky is blue.

The problem is why those stories are written and the implications of posting it. The intention is to minimize and excuse the culpability of early Americans in what was a fundamentally heinous evil at the very core of how this country was formed--an original sin that has lingered all the way to the present day. We may not have slavery anymore, but we still live with the effects. Minimizing that history is wrong. It's part of that evil. It's the same sad series excuses that many slave owners made. "Everybody else is doing it!"

George Washington knew and went on record about the evils of slavery, but he didn't free his slaves until after his death. That's commendable in one sense. But why would he wait until his death? Because doing what he knew to be wrong afforded him a lavish lifestyle. The fact that it was customary and his friends and peers owned slaves didn't excuse his ownership, particularly when he knew what was right.

We (nearly) all know that slavery is wrong now. We shouldn't be making any excuses for that history. It was always wrong, whether other people were doing it or not.

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Blah, blah, blah.

Now let me explain to you why your original comment was a false equivalency. Here it is:

Quote

Jeffrey Dahmer didn't invent cannibalism, but it doesn't mean he's blameless, absolved of the evil of his actions.

In order for African American slavery to be equivalent to Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism, modern America would have to have slavery equivalent in horror to the African American slavery of the days when there was such a thing. 

Get it? I don't see why not. It's pretty basic. And then that other guy was outraged that sometimes you guys need to be hit over the head with 'obvious-hammer." It's because you just refuse to get it.

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2 hours ago, Infidel Dog said:

Blah, blah, blah.

Now let me explain to you why your original comment was a false equivalency. Here it is:

In order for African American slavery to be equivalent to Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism, modern America would have to have slavery equivalent in horror to the African American slavery of the days when there was such a thing. 

Get it? I don't see why not. It's pretty basic. And then that other guy was outraged that sometimes you guys need to be hit over the head with 'obvious-hammer." It's because you just refuse to get it.

Um, no. Sorry. That's not how any of that works. You seem to have missed the point rather badly, so I'm not sure what you're on about here.

 

Edited by Hodad
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8 minutes ago, Infidel Dog said:

Blah, blah, blah.

Now let me explain to you why your original comment was a false equivalency. Here it is:

In order for African American slavery to be equivalent to Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism, modern America would have to have slavery equivalent in horror to the African American slavery of the days when there was such a thing. 

Get it? I don't see why not. It's pretty basic. And then that other guy was outraged that sometimes you guys need to be hit over the head with 'obvious-hammer." It's because you just refuse to get it.

An analogy is NOT necessarily an equivalence. 

You see cannibalism of a living person is ALSO murder; obviously not equivalent to slavery.

Maybe you should call it an appeal to emotion FALLACY, cause it was never suggested as an equivalence.

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7 hours ago, CrakHoBarbie said:

Well, when reduced to it's essence, we have never held the child responsible for the sins of the Father. It's really that simple.

I don’t think that’s the issue.

The issue is that we continue to have racism and social inequality today, as a consequence of slavery and the racist legal systems which followed.  We don’t have a color-blind society, and so we should address the sins of today. 

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8 hours ago, reason10 said:

Again, not the subject of the thread, IMBECILE. 

Make a thread about colonists starting America's slave trade.

But Americans (colonists) did NOT start the slave trade.

Oh, and AFRICANS were selling slaves internationally beginning in the 7th Century. The United States of America was created in 1776.

 

Americans started the slave trade in America.  Although who started it is irrelevant; slavery continued in America until 1863~65 and save age institutionalized racism came after that. 

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26 minutes ago, Rebound said:

I don’t think that’s the issue.

The issue is that we continue to have racism and social inequality today, 

This is very true.

27 minutes ago, Rebound said:

,as a consequence of slavery and the racist legal systems which followed.  We don’t have a color-blind society, and so we should address the sins of today. 

Agreed. 

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This whole topic is a sad indictment on the poor education of people in the Western world, especially as regards history. It's also a sorry example of how the progressive narrative in media has turned people's minds to pudding on subjects where only one side of the story is ever told.

Slavery is an institution which was endemic throughout the world going back as far as written languages document. Peoples all over the world took slaves, mostly of the weak or defenseless, the conquered, the unorganized. Africans took other Africans slaves for thousands of years before the coming of Europeans. So did Asians, people on the Indian subcontinent, Polynesians, North and South Americans - again before the coming of Europeans. Nowhere is free from it.

But somehow, poor education and progressive zealotry has convinced a lot of people that slavery is mostly about African slaves being taken to the United States, that it was mostly White people taking slaves of Africans. Well, that's the power of television and culture, I suppose.

The truth is Europe was too poor and disorganized and backward to take slaves from anywhere but Europe for most of its history. In fact, for much of history Europeans were more likely to be grabbed by seafaring slavers and taken to the Barbary Coast for sale in the middle east than they were to take any other peoples slaves. In the darker days of the seventeenth century English fishermen were afraid to put to sea for fear of either being captured by slavers, or of being away when slavers attacked their village. It wasn't until late in the 17th century that Europe saw off the final attempt by Muslim warlords to conquer Europe.

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted about 400 years, which is an eyeblink in the life of the world. The only thing which made it unique was that slaves were transported so far. And, more importantly, it was the first time in history any slave-taking peoples decided it was wrong and - stopped. No one else ever had. Europeans ended slavery for themselves, then forced every other nation to give it up, as well. The Americans, of course, had a bloody war over it. 

The Anglosphere, probably due to Hollywood, seems to be just about the only people on Earth are still banging their heads and wringing their hands about their distant past history. Every other nation honors their ancient ancestors, taking pride in them being powerful and defeating/conquering other nations. The descendents of the Azteks or Incans aren't ashamed of them, nor are the Haida on the west coast who were such big slave takers. The Egyptians are proud of their ancient pharaohs and their conquests. Just as the Italians are proud of ancient Rome and the Chinese are proud of their ancient emperors. 

Why we allow ourselves to feel guilty over harm we never caused and try to make amends to people who never suffered from that harm is beyond me

 

Edited by I am Groot
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43 minutes ago, Rebound said:

I don’t think that’s the issue.

The issue is that we continue to have racism and social inequality today, as a consequence of slavery and the racist legal systems which followed.  We don’t have a color-blind society, and so we should address the sins of today. 

Every place on Earth has racism and social inequality today. And for most of the world it's far worse than in North America or Europe. Do you blame all of it on the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

Edited by I am Groot
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1 hour ago, I am Groot said:

 

Why we allow ourselves to feel guilty over harm we never caused and try to make amends to people who never suffered from that harm is beyond me

 

White American abuse of black people really only substantially ended in the 1960s, so American culture continued to cause HARM until very recently.

And to the point that the US government sanctioned such abuse with legal segregation, it is RESPONSIBLE.

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Let's relate this to something we all agree on. 

Oxycontin was offered on the market as a pain killer. As such, it's popularity grew to dizzying heights. Then we discovered we'd made a bunch of drug addicts.

Question: Did we blame the addicts, or the producers?

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8 hours ago, robosmith said:

White American abuse of black people really only substantially ended in the 1960s, so American culture continued to cause HARM until very recently.

And to the point that the US government sanctioned such abuse with legal segregation, it is RESPONSIBLE.

White abuse of blacks ended in the 1960s?

Explain this.

detroit-hiro.png?fit=716,580&ssl=1

 

Edited by reason10
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3 minutes ago, reason10 said:

This is true.

Did anyone really think the Democrats changed in the late '50's? All they did was substitute physical slavery for economic slavery.

Ladies...gentlemen...bots and CrackHoes...

I give you Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society".

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19 minutes ago, Nationalist said:

Let's relate this to something we all agree on. 

Oxycontin was offered on the market as a pain killer. As such, it's popularity grew to dizzying heights. Then we discovered we'd made a bunch of drug addicts.

Question: Did we blame the addicts, or the producers?

I'm still waiting for someone to hold the prescribing doctors accountable. They are the equivalent of the street pushers.

Edited by reason10
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