Should African Americans today be grateful for slave traders?

Sorry for the confusion. I was saying that I have yet to hear an African-American say that they "hate" being called African American.

 

You do realize that there was an internal African slave trade as well. West to East to central etc.

 

Well no **** there are differences lol.

I'm just making the point that its not full of people running around in loin cloths with bones through their noses like some people would like to have us believe.

 

While I appreciate the meme of your father, you didn't answer the question.

BTW went to Tru again recently, very disapointing. If you are in the Chicago area I would avoid the establishment. The food was over cooked, and this is the second bad experience there in the last month.

 

I am just saying that I don't think that the poster was assuming that the whole continent was people running around in loin cloth and bones through their noses.

Africa is probably the most impressive place on the earth I have been to.

 

I haven't been to Tru. The last decent restaurant I ate at in Chicago was Ria, and then I heard it just closed.

 

Ria wasn't bad. Yes, it closed about a year ago.

 

i know that but the only cosmopolitan places I can think of are in South Africa.

 

No.

They should be thankful for being here and thankful to their ancestors who endeared hardships beyond what anyone should suffer through.

 

Evidence exists showing human life began in Africa and we are all therefore decendants of Africans.

 

All you ninjas is from the motha land.

 

KS was a neutral state during the civil war and did not fight for either side. Hence the nickname "the b*stard state"

 

oh so his family was in Kansas only during slave-owning times?

 

A world without borders and fair trade is a world without a middle class.

 

Correct, however as our species ( There have been multiple human species in earth's history) migrated out of Africa there were genetic changes.

These genetic changes are large enough for us to be able to determine somebody whose recent ancestors came from Europe (like a caucasian) from another person whose recent ancestors came from Africa (like a black/African person).

The African gene pool is the largest and the oldest. I remember hearing that all Europeans are the descendants of 50k or so "ancient" Africans who left the African continent. I will have to see if I can't track down a source for that because I don't remember it off hand.

In the case of African people, the slight changes in mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA can be used to determine which ethnic groups a particular person shares ancestry with. (I'm sure this could be done for other racial groups but I haven't looked into that).

 

This may be true but it's also true that she was actually born in Africa while I wasn't. It's one of those that goes either way, hence why she was upset.

 

The hypothetical involves only the slave trade with the US, not the elimination of slavery from history, or even African slavery from the last millennium. The vast majority of slaves imported to the US came from west Africa (which is only logical, what with America being west of Africa). If the slave trade to America never existed, east Africa would be largely unchanged.

I understand it just fine, as I expect Texxx does as well. The problem is you are arguing against a straw man. No one is saying that bringing free Africans to the US would not have been better than slavery. No one. The only thing being discussed is whether there is some hereditary benefit to one's ancestors having been slaves as opposed to remaining free in Africa. I don't think it can be refuted that the average African American is better off than the average African, which would seem to indicate that there is such a benefit. It has nothing to do with plane tickets, hypothectical alternate histories in which there was a mass migration of free Africans to the US, or the provision of Unicorns to anyone whose name ends in -be.

 

I think the divergence in our arguments is due to my economic mode of thinking.

Can a modern African not capture most of the benefits African Americans enjoy, and then some, with a plane ticket, and more sensical immigration laws?

Could not an ancestral African have captured the same benefits of transit without chains on?

You haven't quite posited a benefit to African Americans other than transit. Now that you know that such transit was given to free Africans, and now that we can agree that that transit is available to modern Africans, can we agree that it is as idiotic and heartless to make the assertion that "slavery had some benefits" based on this notion as it is to make the assertion that "the Holocaust had some benefits"---because, well, it formed the impetus for Israel to be formed, and I suppose some soap was made too?

I don't think I can quite get you to think in terms of realistic economic opportunity costs, but if you still want to go on about how slavery did have a benefit---what's the point of bringing it up compared to the terrible costs?

 

*A North America and Europe without the bloated conception of what a middle class is.

The rest of the world will fare well enough, quite a bit better in fact---a global middle class, rather than one based largely on where you are born.

This is one of the great injustices of our times.