Not too surprising. Considering that most African families were robbed of their ancestral names and also trying to gain acceptance into mainstream society. Why not pick the name of a man who most American people of that time period loved and adored? Yes, he was a slave-holding bigot but he was adored by many.
Yeah he was a bigot to whom you owe your entire way of life as well as every other person on Earth who lives under or benefits from Democracy on this planet. According to you, everyone in history before 1995 or so is a bigot, right? Since their worldview, particularly ideas on race and society, is going to be different from you (who obviously are absolutely right on every social issue and fit to judge people's belief systems). So yeah, Washington was a bigot. So was Gandhi, who considered himself so above blacks that he joined the South African Indian movement over outrage at being treated as black by an Afrikaner train conductor. Mandela was a terrorist, who colluded to bomb non-military targets, cause civilian deaths and whose group committed "human rights violations" by Mandela's own admission (not only towards whites but to other rival blacks... many of whom were "necklaced" or hacked into pieces). Martin Luther King was an adulterer and a hypocrite who gangbanged 3-4 women at a time in hotel rooms with his preacher friends from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference according to his buddy Ralph Abernathy and multiple other sources all the while hinging his Civil Rights Crusade on moral authority. Let's define the great works of great men by **** we talk about them. Nevermind that pretty much everyone on Earth during that time "believed" in slavery, including Africans themselves who captured and sold other Africans to white slavers to transport. Washington: great self-made man who founded America, secured the concept of democracy, rejected monarchy, paved the way for equality, and freed his own slaves.... what a bigot. Super rant, thread necro FTL but WTF dude. We're talking **** about George Washington now? America Fails.
Dude. It was obviously George Washington. You better be thankful to George Washington if you're in a democratic country anywhere in the world.
1) People who looked like me were held against their will and worked Mr. Washington's lands for his benefit. While he fought for the freedom of some people he denied people of African descent (like me) their freedom. That makes him a hypocrite in my book. You will have to excuse me if I don't admire a man who thought so little of me and my people that he felt it was justifiable to deny them the same rights that he felt others deserved. 2) Obviously everybody born before 1995 was not a bigot. Plenty of people went against the grain and were willing to lay down their lives for what they knew was right. Not everybody made lip service for their beliefs. 3) Your right, Ghandi was a racist. I'm well aware of his statements and I don't admire a man who would have thought so little of me simply because of my ancestry. As for Mandela, I have not read enough about his life to comment on what you have said. As for MLK, I have heard about these assertions. Whether or not they are true, I'm not sure. But there is a big difference between adultery and the kidnapping, murder and dehumanization of millions of people. (Neither is right) 4) The participation of Africans in the enslavement of other Africans does not take away from the brutality of the system. When people make such statement they collapse 3 kinds of people into the same category: victims, collaborators, and perpetrators. This cannot be done. You always have those who participate in such events. There were various Native American scouts who worked with the Federal Government against other Native American groups. Their were East Indians who did not resist the forced movement of other East Indians to the Caribbean in the 1900s and their were African-Americans who supported staying silent about lynchings. None of this, makes any other those events right. The fact that those unscrupulous Africans saw nothing wrong with the enslavement of those that looked like them doesn't mean that "we did it to ourselves" and it doesn't remove the guilt of those in other ethnic groups who were involved. There was plenty of African resistance to enslavement. For example the Songhai empire promised safety to its citizens from this fate. (didn't always happen though) Washington was a "self-made man" who helped to found a nation at the expense of the original inhabitants of the continent and on the backs of African people transported and held against their will. In doing so he help secure freedom and justice for some (provided they were of European descent) in the newly founded nation. In his death, his slaves were freed from their chains (but not free to exercise their rights as citizens of a nation because they were not citizens of any nation) ...while it is better late than never that doesn't change the fact that the man was a hypocrite. *********** The reason for my original reply was because of a post I saw on the first page of this thread. A poster said that he would hope that black people wouldn't want to be named after a slaveholder. So I explained why the Washington name would be appealing to former slaves despite of the obvious fact that he participated in the enslavement of others.
A+ post. I said that I hoped black people were offended by being named after a slaveholder because it seems offensive to me, in the same way that a Jewish person named Hitler would probably change their last name.. No, I'm not saying that Washington was Hitler, but a man responsible for the enslavement and murder of your people hardly seems like something to aspire to, regardless of what he did for his country. Washington led the battle, but countless others did far more in laying the foundation for our country. And they were all slaveholders. I don't get choked up about the beginnings of America because we've been a bloody, brutish country from the start, and none of the pretty language used to justify breaking loose from England because we were tired of them telling us what to do changes that fact. We killed Indians, Chinese, black people, and anybody else we could turn a profit from. I'm embarrassed by the story of our birth. The only redeeming hope for our future lies in our actions from this point forward, and I'm not too optimistic about that, either.
Exactly. The founding fathers borrowed ideas from ancient times, at least that is what I was always taught and read. It's not like they came up with the idea by themselves. I have no doubt that many of the founding father were indeed hypocrites for the professed words but lack of action on those same words. The genius part of their idea was that they left a way that is could be changed by those in the future.
Two provocative questions: 1) Didn't most slaves get treated well by their masters? To the point of feeling like part of the family? 2) Looking back hundreds of years later in hindsight, wasn't it a good thing for Africans that slavery ever happened in the first place? I mean, nowhere else on earth do blacks live as well as they now do in America. Let's be honest -- would you rather be living in the Congo right about now? don't hate -- I'm actually curious about your thoughts on these questions
How can it be pro slavery if I merely asked questions? I'm actually curious as to others' thoughts on this matter.
1) Hell no. Try reading the narratives of enslaved Africans....not a single one says that they were treated "like family". Not one and I've read quite a few. 2) Hell f*****g no. No amount of trinkets or my comfortable life is worth the pain and exploitation of millions of people and entire continent. Any person who thinks that their life is that valuable has some serious issues. Under no circumstances is such an event "okay" and to even suggest such is a dangerous line of thought.
I said Washington secured the concept of democracy. You made your own argument about "Washington inventing democracy" and then you argued against it. Haha. Washington secured Democracy because without Washington the American Revolution would have failed. There would have been no French Revolution. The nation that Washington founded served as the living proof that other forms of governance aside from tyranny or monarchy were viable. Every democracy in the world, and probably even every non-monarchist country in the world owe some debt to Washington for the proof that America provided in the 1800s simply by existing. The Greeks didn't invent Democracy since there are some earlier records of it in some ancient Aryan kingdoms (modern day Iran and India) but the Greeks did have an early form of it. The Democracy that Washington secured however was fundamentally different from any concept that the ancient Greeks had. It was something new. One that had a concept of universal suffrage rather than privilege which eventually paved the way for the emancipation of blacks and the suffrage of women. Yes it took time but 80 years is a short period in the frame of political ideology and the lifespan of nations. The Greeks never freed their own slaves, their "Democracy" never had that in it. Washington's Democracy wasn't perfect to start but at least it had the integrity in the DNA of it which no other form of government had ever had, including Greek Democracy. Lol dude. So shortsighted. No one here is arguing that Slavery is anything but an abomination. But chew on this. Slavery existed before the United States of America. It is not something that the Founding Fathers established, it existed 150 years before anyone had heard of the USA. You argue that Washington "thought so little" of African slaves as if he can be singled out for moral deficit. Africans themselves and even American Indians "thought so little" of black slaves due to their reputation for docility and facility with physical labor that they thought nothing of owning them themselves. Washington freed his own slaves, so it can be argued that he saw their moral rights to some degree, which in itself made him extraordinarily sensitive and moral given the conventions of his time (held not only by whites but by Native Americans and even "superior" Africans about "inferior" American slaves). Even if you reject that argument and say he's a bigot for having a different worldview 250 years ago than you have today, He laid the groundwork for the ultimate emancipation of the slaves by imbuing the structure of his nation with a basic integrity and fairness (both in the documents of Constitution and in his own conduct as President) that ultimately could be used by Christian abolitionists to fight slavery on legal and moral terms. Without those slavery would not have been abolished in 1865. Would you have preferred that Washington not have done anything, and blacks might still be slaves today? Like it or not, you are free as a direct consequence of the actions of Washington, but for him Democracy would not exist. Equal rights of man would not exist. You can be pissed at him or whatever but that is the bottom line. It goes back to a certain level of impartial intellectual honesty like I posted. Obviously Washington wasn't a perfect man, and criticism can be levied against him or anyone. There's been a lot of bull**** language such as "hypocrite" or "bigot" levied at him but any rational man will be honest to himself about the legitimate praise and criticism that can be made at anyone. Aside from the own biases we each hold, what is the sum of the contributions of a man's life. Can you honestly ignore the contributions that Washington made? Going back to my post, if you also go around calling MLK a scumbag, Mandela a ****ing terrorist, then go ahead and call Washington a bigot or whatever. Otherwise you are the one who's being a hypocrite.
most slaves, are you freakin kidding. slavery was a brutal system especially in its earlier form when they were first brought here. as far as treating slaves well, would you treat your car badly after paying for it. no, its not good that thousand lost their lives on brutal journey here, africa also suffered from the lost of population due to slavery.
Probably trolling but... 1) No to have been treated "well" their basic human rights would have to have been respected. If you're treated as chattel and not human there's no way you're being treated "well" no matter what else. As for being "part of the family" we know that the One Drop Rule, which existed precisely to negate any inheritance rights of slaves against his white father/grandfather/ggfather/etc acted directly to exclude blacks "from the family" not the other way around It's true that American slaves generally weren't as brutally treated as some slaves in history... for example they weren't being thrown into pits to be torn part by lions for entertainment, crucified or had their balls or hands hacked off. We also know that some slaves even had some stockholm style affinity towards their masters (as Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about). But they were treated inhumanely: beaten, whipped, starved, segregated and denied any possibility of advancement or livelihood. 2) it wasn't good for the people who were enslaved. those who didn't die in transit lived terrible lives of toil and oppression. talking about blacks in America today is irrelevant. for one thing, those people aren't slaves. they might be descended from slaves but they're totally different people. neither whites nor blacks today can truly understand what it was like. the lifestyle of people today (both white and black) has nothing to do with the historical REALITY of the slaves' mistreatment. in truth both whites and blacks today profit equally from the labor of slaves since (a diminishing) part of America's affluence is based on their labor in the cotton fields.
Yeah the current black american with 10K in debt and a crap job in retail or food service has it so much better. He has the freedom to live in his terrible apartment hoping he doesn't get fired by his white lesbian boss for taking an extra 5 minute break. I think I would rather have permanent job security and my own slave shack.
I was with you up until this point. Talking about blacks today is irrelevant? How so? I'd say that many of the problems that plague black communities today are the results of Jim Crow/segregation laws that were present up until the 1970s in some places and although they're outdated and never enforced they're still in some state's law books. These types of laws and regulations succeeded slavery because, well slavery was outlawed but it was still a way to keep black people as second class citizens and thus lower than whites. I'll agree that nobody today actually has any reality on what slavery was like though. I'll disagree on everybody profiting equally.
