Should African Americans today be grateful for slave traders?

Quit trolling and stop making this your personal attack forum.

 

No.

Nobody should ever be happy that their ancestors got chained to a boat and made to toil away as a slave for the white man. That was an atrocity, as I have already said.

 

That would kind of be like saying, Jews who live in Israel (Whole Country of Israel really) should be happy about their ancestors being in the holocaust because now Israel is the untouchable darlings of the Middle East.

 

Is it a troll if he's legitimately this stupid?

 

watch out for the land mines!

 

His post is very clear in denouncing the slave trade -- he is also very accurate regarding the positive things that have happened for blacks in America in the past 200+ years.

Evil that occurred in past does not mean it will continue -- failures of humanity are frequent, but you have to look no further than the changes in Germany over the past 60 years to see how quickly we can change for the better.

 

Good things can come from horrible events.

 

What is there to debate?

 

this

the left maligning anyone who disagrees with them as racist is so tiresome

 

This pretty much sums it up

/thread

 

It's no accident that bigtexxx is consistently labeled a bigot. His fascination with white guilt, racism by blacks but not against blacks, and now this positive effects of slavery issue is a pretty big bulletin board that screams I have a problem.

 

there are no long-term benefits to slavery that could not have been captured with voluntary immigration, point blank. There isn't a long-term benefit to slavery, period, and saying otherwise is whitewashing slavery, plain and simple.

And if America wants to assure that keeps on being the case, then a rethink of the current "closed-border" mentality would be nice.

http://www.cgdev.org/files/1425376_file_Clemens_Economics_and_Emigration_FINAL.pdf

 

False comparison. It was not realistic to assume voluntary African immigration during that period.

 

people in the present and recent past could have immigrated, and captured those same "benefits" as you list right now, and not have had their ancestors shipped off, murdered, brutalized, and raped for one bit, then delegated to the lower castes of American society for the next bit.

of course, your mind would say that too, because in the historical narrative, Africans could only choose to be enslaved, as opposed to being empowered to choosing to cross the oceans---the boats were there in any case.

I'd also question your assumption of Africa as hellhole vs. the poorer parts of America, I don't think it's as black and white as can be (pun kinda intended).

You want to argue that "it's a good thing" for African Americans to be around by virtue of slavery, rather than immigrating here freely? Guess the airplane ticket (if we assume the boats carrying slaves couldn't carry free people) is worth generations of your ancestors being held back from their full potential through sheer brutalization, and having a nation being built on their backs. you can get a quarter of a mulligan for nonsensical immigration rules from a nation of immigrants and "immigrants" as you so tactfully put it, though I hope you use that quarter to reform those laws---to ensure that you don't need slavery to capture the full potential of wealth, justice, and prosperity for everybody involved.

 

If one does some research, the slave trade was far, far worse than "simply" importing slaves to America to work in agriculture. For every slave who made it to these shores, there are estimates I've seen that that represented a tiny fraction of those Africans who perished due to the slave trade. It wasn't only the horrific death toll from shipping them to America, where they experienced much worse conditions on the slave ships than cattle would have experienced back then. Huge numbers of Africans died attempting to fight off the people capturing them for shipment. Huge numbers died being marched to the coast after they were captured. I've read first hand accounts that curdle the blood. Babies ripped from their mother's arms and tossed into the bush. Sickly captives just killed on the spot because the slave traders didn't think they would make it, and attempting to help them get well considered an expense they didn't want to incur.

Anyone not believe me? Try reading The Sultan's Shadow, by Christiane Bird. It is about the Omani royal family's history, and they were deeply involved in the slave trade. Hundreds of thousands of slaves. I've read a lot about the subject over the years, but she quotes sources, like letters written by American traders about the practice. Truly shocking stuff. Anyone who seriously thinks it was a "benefit" to have the practice needs to have their head examined, with all due respect.

To be even more clear, I'm not aiming my post at texxx, but as a comment in general. During my life I've heard people make that kind of comment, as in, "They're damn lucky they were shipped over here! Look how things are today in Africa, as opposed to the conditions in America for Black Americans." Yes, there are people that stupid.

 

Everyone has slaves in their ancestory - nature of humanity, sadly.

DD

 

So your big insight is "it would have been better if they had chosen to immigrate?" Well no schit. Thanks for that. Very insightful.

And then you claim that Africa is better than some of the poorer parts of the US? Please compare and contrast their per capita incomes and report back to me.

Not one of your better posts, friend.

 

you're conflating issues

I haven't found anybody who thinks African slavery was anything but an atrocity.

 

Though I've heard people say it was a fortunate atrocity.