Should African Americans today be grateful for slave traders?

But the question and the claims that brought it up weren't whether there were some kind of tangible benefits to modern Black Americans thanks to slavery. It's whether they should be grateful for it and whether they are better off from it. To measure that, you have to look at not only the benefits but the drawbacks. You're trying to measure this entirely through economics. But things like life satisfaction, pride, not being discriminated against or feeling like a second class citizen, not having had parents or grandparents treated horribly, etc affect real life happiness. Is person who's miserable in "poverty" in the US always better off than a middle-class happy African, even if the impoverished person here makes more money?

 

This thread reminds me of discussions in the GARM...... if McGrady and Yao had stayed healthy could the Rockets have won a championship......

 

Black folks have already voted with their feet which remain firmly planted on American soil.

 

Then why did you start the topic? And still curious what is your race and how did you vote?

 

Except the question is not whether a black person today is better off in the US than if he moved to Africa. It's whether his whole family and generations of history had been allowed to freely live in Africa, where he would be and what his experience would be like. Nice try, though.

 

That's shortsighted.

 

But you can't posit a silly hypothetical like that. We know happened and it is quite clear that living in the USA in 2013 is generally a helluva lot better than living in Africa in 2013. Nice try, though.

 

Why? Ain't nobody gonna stop em from getting their Marcus Garvey on if that's what makes them happy..

 

If living better is the only thing to the people, there should be no people living in Africa, Middle East, India or China.

Black folks might have voted but I am sure DEAD black folks voted differently.

 

Except that you can. And the original poster did. In case you missed the real world, people discuss hypotheticals all the time.

 

So in other words, even if you don't have any proof, just call everybody racist!

WOO HOO

THAT WAS EASY

think, people, think. please.

 

it would be interesting to see how the US would be today without the economic boost slavery provided and the effects of the civil war.

 

That is my point. There is no way of knowing what things would be like in the Americas and Africa now if slavery hadn't happened.

Anyway as I said in another thread this argument is whitewashing slavery and an ends justify the means argument. It only seems to crop up as an attempt to counter discussions of racism.

 

I think the answer to that is pretty simple, really. There was a big market for cotton exports, and in the American South, conditions were ideal and the quality was very high, in the main. Either Americans would have found a way to farm it for a profit, or they would have grown something else. There was never an intrinsic need for slavery. In fact, slaves were very expensive to purchase, and had to be fed, clothed, and kept healthy enough to work. The practice was not only unnecessary, but caused the depopulation of huge areas of both West, Southwest, and East Africa. And the US was far from the only country deep into a "slave culture." The Civil War would have likely never occurred, and we would have been far better off as a nation. I don't see how a sane person could argue the point.

I'll add that Great Britain, reviled by many for its empire and subjugation of millions, deserves a hell of a lot of credit for almost singlehandedly ending the slave trade. Sure, it took years, and continued on a much smaller scale into the 20th Century, but god knows what would have happened if they hadn't used the Royal Navy to bring the bulk of the slave trade to an end.

 

Personally, as an educated African-American, I am not sure what to think. First of all, my descendants were abused as slaves, but there is another side to the story. Blacks frequently have used the slave trade as an excuse to avoid economic problems and are pushing affirmative action to solve these problems. That is a huge mistake, in my opinion.

 

You mean your ANCESTORS were abused as slaves. If your DESCENDANTS are slaves I'm going to need you to get the hell off of clutchfans and help them.

As for the last sentence......wth are you talking about?

 

Do you even know anything about Marcus Garvey or are you just talking out of your ass?

 

Descendant

2: proceeding from an ancestor or source

Think through a logical argument before posting. Descendant and ancestor are synonymous. My last sentence is referring to the fact that I believe my people are avoiding many of the problems that we face by hiding behind speech codes and affirmative action.

 

Exactly......PROCEEDING meaning they FROM their ancestors not before them.

Descendent: a person or animal that is descended from a specific ancestor; an offspring.

The two are not synonyms. Dude......don't talk to me about logic if you don't know the difference between your ancestors and your descendants lmao :grin:

As for "hiding" behind AA and "speech codes" (whatever the hell you mean by that) I disagree. I don't think AA people are hiding at all.....I honestly don't think you get out very much.

 

They had the chance to go back when Liberia was settled (Sierra Leone for British slaves just across the border). Most didn't want to go back though and the ones who went didn't re-integrate with the local population because they had been separated from African cultures and customs, which is why they lived in a Western manner.

That is one country I wouldn't want to be in by the way. It's not perfect here in the US but there's problems and tension everywhere (like between whites and blacks in South Africa), so there's nowhere to run and hide from drama.

I think most of us US blacks would be horrified to know how much worse the Portuguese treated their slaves in Brazil and how many more were imported there, which is partially a product of how much closer Brazil is to Africa at closest approach compared to the US and Caribbean. In other words, easier travel and it's more likely slaves would survive the Middle Passage to Brazil than they would to North America.

As for the British, well, at least they finished what they didn't really start but certainly pushed to the forefront (remember, the they were the Thirteen Colonies of Britain before becoming US States).

That's true, blacks now days use it as a crutch for not trying to improve their own lives. That doesn't mean that people should forget what happened during slavery AND Jim Crow (with people still living who vividly remember what it was like) and act as if it completely doesn't.

As I said before, I think it's hilarious how we have so many Jewish Holocaust museums here in the US for an event that didn't even take place in this hemisphere and not have Native American and African American Holocaust museums on a grand scale.