Should African Americans today be grateful for slave traders?

Of course you're chuckling, you're a well established bigot and a troll so that's what you do. Its pretty difficult to continue to dispute the substance of your own comments when the board is littered with them.

 

I said that slavery was an atrocity several times. Several times.

Your brain just can't separate what happened to your distant ancestors vs. present day. Two different things.

 

I'm not black but since I do have a brain I know that the present is a product of the past. Keep playing your little troll games, that fine.

 

saying that slavery is an atrocity that has benefits is equally disgusting and bigoted.

 

I am REALLY sorry I posted the post he replied to that started this whole mess. I will try to not post in the DnD any more, jeezuz.

 

No, the alternative to slavery is bringing free Africans to America. like, "Hi, we have boats, do you want to come to America?"

Do you think that lowly of your ancestors that they could only have brought Africans to America if they could have murdered, brutalized, exploited, and raped them for a century or so? They were such lowly beings that the only thing they could have thought of was extermination and manipulation of human beings?

This is such a limiting framework. If they could have brought free Africans along, EVERY alleged benefit of slavery now could have captured then---it just would have been the Africans doing some capturing rather than a nation being built on their backs. Food for thought. This is what I mean when I say every benefit of slavery could have been captured with voluntary immigration. You cannot say slavery is partly good because it allowed African Americans to stay in America---when if the Americans of old would have had some common decency, they could have done this without the chains, and it would have amounted to the same thing, or even more, for African Americans and the nation as a whole. There is NO benefit of slavery per say, other than transit---a transit that could have been offered anyways.

In any case, if we're arguing about being in America now (as opposed to pre-1865, which wasn't so roses and daisies for blacks), I wasn't aware that a plane ticket was worth a couple of generations of your ancestors being enslaved.

 

You have no way of proving that but consider that slavery wasn't just a negative to Africa it was a huge benefit to the economies of the Americas since it would've been difficult to develop the massive agriculture and resource extraction that originally built the wealth of the Americas without the free labor provided by slavery. At the same time slavery divided and took out generations of Africans. There is no way of knowing how Africa would turn out if those hadn't occurred.

The argument that modern day African Americans are better off because their ancestors were enslaved is completely dependent on believing that all things would be equal now if slavery didn't happen. Considering that slavery was a big factor in the world that we have now there is absolutely no way to know how things would turn out.

 

If that is the case, then surely there were huge migrations of free Africans to the US, just as there were Irish, Germans, etc. Care to provide some evidence of that happening? During the slave trade there were primarily two groups of Africans, those that came to the US as slaves and those that remained in Africa. You are arguing for a third group that is pure fantasy. You might as well say they would have been better off if they were provided with unicorns.

It is not that I have come up with some imagined limitations for my ancestors, I am talking about what actually happened.

You are choosing to deny the fact that there are tangible, measurable benefits to a person of African ancestry if their forebears were sold as slaves as opposed to remaining free in Africa. No one has argued that they are better off than some hypothetical person whose ancestor was a free African who voluntarily came to the US. No one is arguing that people cannot now immigrate from Africa. No one is arguing that slavery is "worth it" because of the benefits to black Americans now. Just that there are in fact measurable benefits to black Americans now.

See above.

There are other nations settled by white Europeans that did not rely on the slave trade. That would be a good starting point to determine what the US probably would have been like absent slavery (for example New Zealand). As for how Africa would have turned out, the slave trade with the Americas largely involved West Africa. The eastern half of the continent was not likely affected to any great degree. So if America were like NZ and Cote d'Ivoire were like Ethiopia, would that radically change my assessment? Not, really.

 

I'm sorry to have to disagree, but the slave trade was a huge business in East Africa. Hundreds of thousands of slaves came from the region, most through Zanzibar while it was a possession of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, particularly during the first half of the 19th century. As I mentioned earlier, as many as 10 Africans perished for every one that managed to be sold into slavery and delivered to their destination. There are estimates that as many as 200,000 slaves worked on Zanzibar itself, the center of the East African slave trade, most working the enormous and highly profitable clove plantations there. Far more were shipped to other places in different parts of the world. While most East African slaves didn't end up in the Americas, they certainly were being captured, bought, and sold. A good question might be, what would East Africa be like if the slave trade hadn't existed? Its impact there can't be underestimated. People often overlook the fact that the slave trade wasn't just from West Africa to North and South America.

 

What you and Texxx can't seem to get is that there is no inherent benefit to the form of transit being slavery. If your ancestors had decided instead to provide transit for free Africans (as they had for other races), then there would be no benefit of slavery. It's frustrating because I keep on repeating it---there is no benefit slavery could have given that could not have been captured with voluntary immigration, for African Americans.

Of course, it was largely impossible since the Americans of the time decided to systematically enslave a people. However, importantly, the framework was possible. Even the Spanish (no great mercy-granters) had it in mind---

sure, you can debate the irony of overriding violence of the Europeans such that one oppressed group was pitted against another---regardless, there is your voluntary flow.

You keep on being stuck in the historical framework of exactly what happened. My argument is that if things had been slightly different, African Americans would have had the same level of benefits, and even more! Because, if the level of benefits we're talking about is transit (which we seemed to agree on), the difference is transit in chains vs. transit without---that "benefit" could have been captured regardless, as it was for the Spanish expeditionaries.

But if we can't agree on that, can we at least agree that Texxx is displaying a very laughable benefit/cost curve if he keeps on bringing up the fact that a plane ticket is worth generations of justice withheld?

 

There was a time in Africa when there were kingdoms, civilizations, and borders just like everywhere else. During that time there were African slaves of African owners, just like every other major civilization had slaves and slave owners to varying degrees. People seem to think that the continent of Africa was just a bunch of tribal mad men without civilization, and then they were slaves, and now the situation is improving thanks to being liberated by the ideals of other societies.

The truth is that, at the time where everyone in the world was engaged in domestic slave trade, one group of such people went over to Africa and anihilated their communities and kingdoms and societies. Then they turned Africa into an ultra-efficient slave factory and resource bank. This created a market for civilizations who were previously enslaving their own people to stop enslaving their own people and start enslaving Africans at a cheaper price and freeing up their own people for more inventive tasks. This led to African slave owners seeking more profit and fewer expenses by capturing more slaves and selling them to the Spanish, Portugese, Arabs, British, Dutch, Americans, etc. These slaves, if they made it to their destination, were then ridden like non-humans to accomplish incredible feats through the systematic manipulation of the greatest piece of technology known to man: humans. This atrocious behavior resulted in a prosperity boom for non-slaves, which led to greater education and manipulation at the same time.

In short: Africa did not begin as a continent of slaves and slave owners who wasted away its incredible resources. It was turned into that by the insatiable greed of African elites and imperialistic nations.

Africa became the foreign-controlled monopolistic slave salesman, which propelled the buying countries to greater heights than they ever imagined. To think that at the tail end of manipulation - where African continent was demolished and other countries booming thanks to that manipulation - Africans got a great deal by being the surviving members of a generation who had a 1 in 10 chance of getting to be a slave.... is more than sick.

They benefitted nothing from slavery that they didn't deserve by virtue of being born in America - just like any other American. On top of that, many have suffered and do suffer from the remnants of slavery (and the accompanying racism) which still, unfortunately, still infest our societies.

Most important of all, every non-native American is as lucky as anyone else to be American if we hold to this hilarious theory that you should be thankful because of the actions of some anscestor you never met. African Americans are relatively as native to the United States as any non-native American person. In theory, why should they be more thankful than an Irish American or an Italian American? Shouldn't an Irish American be considered MORE lucky because his anscestors' journey to America was likely far more voluntary?

Quite clear that it's an absurd notion. Don't fall for the "I never said that" schtick. We all know that in every generation, racism evolves. In our generation, most racists do not make blatantly racist statements because they simply know to choose their words more carefully. A racist today is much more PC than a racist 50 years ago. So to determine who is actually racist these days, you have to determine who are the people who seem to insist on consistently living in the grey territory of racism. Those are your racists. Not the people who make single racist remark. Not the people who occassionally delve into the grey area to answer philosophical or moral questions. Rather, it's the people who are camped out in the grey territory and toe the line singing "I haven't crossed the line!" that are likeliest to be racist. Beware of those people.

 

Just curious what is your race and how did you vote on this topic?

 

I will look for The Sultan's Shadow. Thank you

Rocket River

 

So what good came out of the Maafa?

 

The fact that millions of African people were denied the right of self-determination is far from irrevelant(sp). Of course there were internal conflicts....conflicts are a part of human nature and...guess what we are human just like anybody else. Why is it that African people must be perfect for us not to be blamed for our exploitation?

 

Remember, they did it for you own good.

*SARCASM*

 

YESSS!!!

This is the "New" Racism. Saying just enough to start your point, and allowing logical inference to hammer it home. Then stating: "I never said that" or "Don't put words into my mouth."

I agree Mathloom, beware of those people.

 

Except those countries were settled much later than the Americas at a time when a global mercantile economy had developed that made trade and resource extraction profitable in far flung colonies. Note that global mercantile economy was largely made possible by the slave trade. For instance consider that much of the wealth of Europe from the 15th to the 17th C. was made possible by massive resource extraction from the Americas with almost all of that labor provided by slaves. By the times the Europeans colonized Australia and NZ they were already much more well off than when the Americas was first colonized. Also consider that the populations of Australia and NZ are much much smaller than the Americas. So it isn't hard to give a decent standard of living in the modern times to such a small population.

Also as Deckard noted slavery affected East Africa and almost all of the rest of the continent. Without the divisions and displacement of people because of slavery there is no way we can say what Africa would be like now.

Slavery is a huge part of the World we live in now and without it we have no idea what the world would be like.

 

Why do people get this notion that the slave trade was by any means good? Serious question too? Why was it good for present day black people living in the U.S.?