Newest Conservative hero Kanye: slavery was a choice

Why isn't he being attacked by Republicans for saying slavery is a choice? I guess they agree.

You shouldn't generalize teenagers on twitter and musicians as encapsulating Democrats. Thinking he said something incredibly stupid is a lot different from "losing control" of culture. Good luck with your twitter culture war.

 

Because he agrees with it. If he disagreed with it then obviously fake news.

 

What a condescending attitude towards blacks

 

You have to choose to be a slave. You can always refuse the master's order and be liberated. It may cost you your life but that's the price of FREEDOM baby!

 

This is why movies like 7 Years a Slave, Queen or Roots show up again and again over time.

Holding that kind of power over another life would breed the most twisted thoughts out of the purest of individuals. Once you have it and enjoy its conveniences, you'd do anything to maintain it. Cruelty with impunity is an affordable luxury. Just pray never to see the day you lose it and you're forced to pay it all back.

I can see why there's reflexive anxieties against white guilt over slavery. The "innovation" compared to how it was practiced elsewhere in history was the implicit assumption of inheritance. Slavery then could've been seen as contractual between two parties or spoil of war. The children usually became retainer of the slave owner but the default assumption wasn't to treat them like cattle to be bred.

It was more of a class issue where they were like or below serfs and generally weren't self sufficient even if they were freed. With American slaves, they were classless...3/5 human who couldn't think for themselves.

 

Are you, in fact, a dipsh!t?

 

They didn't enslave white people who were prisoners. They could have enslaved them.

No, they did not, because even a white criminal was seen as a higher form as life than a black villager in Africa.

You're really stooping to new lows here. Comparing slavery to Chinese factory workers. Those factory conditions were once allowed (actually worse) until REGULATIONS which people like you rail against were put into place. Go back to the days when industry policed themselves right? That's China.

 

White slavery did exist, not so much in the Americas.

Again, Africans were not picked because of some hereditary predisposition in whites to hate blacks as you're implying. Africans lived in villages spread all across Africa. They did not have a centralized form of government to protect them.

What whites did to the Native American was just as brutal, if not more. Africans were brought over as slaves. Native Americans were systematically killed and/or relocated.

Naturally you want to turn this into a race argument. The reality is about dominance. By the Medieval times, the independent village age was largely removed from Europe and Asia due to the vast conquests of previous empires. All of those groups of people had gone though the same brutality that the Americas and Africa saw centuries later.

I was not comparing Chinese workers to slaves, regardless of how similar or different the situations were. My point is people across the world decry the inhumane conditions of the said examples yet happily participate in the fruit of their harsh labor.

 

Mali empire, Songhai empire, Kanem Bornu, Wolof empire, Benin empire, Oyo empire etc... ( This is only W. Africa)

The idea that Africans only lived in huts and had no organized government is patently false and it is a product of cultural bias.

A multiple of African societies were highly advanced and innovative.

 

Because it's an accurate statement even if it is an overly simplistic way of stating it.

 

I don't want to get into this conversation. I do want to observe, however, that no one is talking about the timeline. Early colonial slavery was different from early-American slavery and different again after the cotton gin. If you want to say slavery was like this or like that, at least give an indication of when you think that was true.

Regardless, Kanye is still an idiot. Even if he never said anything about slavery.

 

Kind of funny and sad how the only folks left defending the dotard (here and nationally) are idiots.

 

Naturally you want to deny race and absolve yourself of any kind of guilt.

Africans were looked down upon as sub-human - you only have to read the writers of the time to know that. You think Europeans didn't know slavery was going on? You say it's about dominance but the British didn't send irish over to work the fields all chained up.

And Native Americans were by far killed by disease brought over over anything else.

Your historical knowledge is just really poor.

 

Those were advanced civilizations for their day. You're right. Going by memory, they also had slaves. Much later, of course, a tribe might raid a neighbor to capture slaves to sell to the Europeans on the coast. That wasn't uncommon. The blame lies with the slave traders, who turned a relatively "minor" slave trade between African societies into a big business, with a huge increase in slavery. It's what I recall reading years ago, being someone who enjoys history. As an aside, the slave trade wasn't fixated on African slaves for millennia. One of this republic's first conflicts was to respond to attacks on Mediterranean shipping by "pirates" (many were actually not pirates, but rather ships sent from the small countries that lined parts of North Africa's shoreline) to acquire White slaves. Africa's role in the slave trade covers centuries and is very complicated.

 

Slavery was definitely nothing new in Africa....although it wasn’t chattel slavery. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head but one of the Mansa (King) of Mali was a slave in Mali earlier in his life.

There is plenty of blame to go around with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade but it’s important to maintain a proper historical perspective when examining it.

 

White slavery.

Naturally after the whites enslaved the blacks you want to play to race card. Little did you know that the whites didn't have a hereditary predisposition to hate the blacks, they hated all the browns and the blacks and the reds by choice.

Did I mention white slavery?

You can only detest slavery if you don't buy Chinese electronics.

Space Ghoooooooooooost!

 

What kind of guilt should I have? That I am white?

I would love to hear your response to this.

I never stated Europeans didnt know about slavery. I stated western Europeans had an extreme distaste for the thought of slavery during this time period, and pretty much throughout most of post Axial Age. They were apathetic to what was happening in the Americas as it was bring them cheap goods.

 

I am not in your head and can't explain why you feel the need to deny history in order for you to feel good about yourself. That's for you to answer, not me.

Western Europeans saw other people (non-white) as inferior during the period of the 1600's. If you don't think this is true just pick up any book written on that time regarding other people and start reading.

 

I think another point as to what he said is that he's talking about those who go on about "400 years of slavery" which would imply that American slavery started earlier than it did and is still ongoing. The first slaves got to America in 1619, 399 years ago. If people go on about 400 years of slavery, they are suggesting that black people remained enslaved for the 153 years since the practice ended in America. In that case, not only was it absolutely a choice, it's a really stupid choice.

 

Everytime a youngin starts talking about their worship of Kanye I realize how vapid and stupid they really are.