racism

[SabineMaia]

Honestly, I don't understand your logic. People know about racism. It's a very prolific topic.

Sometimes I wonder if people do really understand what's at issue with racism. Too often it's reduced to the use of specific terms and who's allowed to use them and when, but racism is much more than that. It's systemic and social traps that consistently keep certain races from escaping the status quo.

If we can all agree that the only difference between people is skin tone, then why is there a massive disparity between the blacks, hispanics and whites when it comes to income, education and justice issues?

Blacks and hispanics are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to drop out of highschool and less likely to gain post-secondary education. They're less likely to be employed and earn less when employed. They're more likely to be imprisoned, and usually get harsher punishments than whites for similar crimes.

[donkeyhoty]

just as a refresher getting the person's name in the quote works thusly:

  quote="Whomever"  enclosed with these [ ], then whatever text, then /quote also encolsed with [ ].

put it all together and get

blah, blah, blah

makes it much easier to know who's being quoted.

[Mister Joy]

Tigerlilly, you've jumped to several conclusions here. Misread me a couple of times too. I'll skip some parts, since my answers would be more or less the same as ReflectingNarcissist's.

WHAT!? It was definately slavery! ( the holocaust happened too btw) Sure, other Africans did sell out their brothers there, but that is STILL SLAVERY. The ones sold were free men women and children, who had been captured, not slaves. How nice you could foresee and predict what would be going on in 200 years later....

Oh absolutely. I said that imperials didn't do a whole lot of 'enslaving' (ie. capturing people and labelling them as merchandise rather than human beings). Tribal African's pretty much did most of that for them. I was implying that the "which came first? The chicken or the egg?" debate regarding racism/slavery is fairly asinine, since they're totally separate & abstract things in a chaotic and complicated world. It isn't as simple as one race enslaved the other, bad evil white people, poor oppressed black people.

As would Christianity, come to that

BTW-Christians used their religion as "bad justification" for slavery, you know this right? We were 'converting " the slaves is why we told ourselves it was okay to ruin them. And we did so ruin them, tortured them, ripped families apart...their family culture is still recovering from centuries of this horror inflicted upon them.

Yes I was aware of this. Some Christians did indeed use their religion do justify such things (might want to be careful not to 'lump' people, there). Funny thing is, that doesn't actually contradict the overall point of what I was saying... in any way. It's irrelevant in fact.

Incidentally, since you brought it up and even though this is still mozying off the path, do you believe that the world would be a better place now if Christianity had never existed?

It's all far too complicated to pick out one group (eg. the Africans) and say "oh they were wronged in history and we need to make up for it" because frankly their ancestors might have been wronged but they're reaping the spoils of that just as much as we are (&, as you say, Shoruke, we didn't do anything to them

OMG!!! Where do YOU live that balck people have an even playing field????!!! Slavery didn't completely end de-facto, til the 30s and 40s, the blacks you see beside you in school had grandparents that got lynched, fairly legally, and couldn't even vote nor go into white restaurants and stores. Try that idea on for even a minute. But their grandkids should be all completely over it all, just walk it off after 200 years of having their families ripped up into pieces! It DOES take many generations to undo the damge we have done.
Blacks in this country so have a DIFFERENT ROAD to walk than YOU DO. In subtle things and huge things--mortages, wages, opportunities--it IS NOT the same for you as them. It is slowly slowly getting better, but it is a L O N G way to go yet.

You're persisting with the lumpage, and thereby missing the point again. I'm talking in an individual sense, with a fair amount of emphasis. You are not responsible for the actions of other people who happen to be of your race (or nation, or religion for that matter) & it's utterly irrelevant how recent or far off these things happened, in this context (thought I'd make that clear so you don't go galloping off down another highway of fruitless moral outrage). No one has any right to come expecting apologies unless you have done something wrong; and increasingly people are being pressurised into feeling guilty for rubbish like that. Few months ago there was a BBC poll: "should Bristolian's apologise for the slave trade?" Why? I'm not saying "oi, black people, get over yourselves", I'm saying "don't blame me for your problems."

However, since I can now take your response as a separate chain of statements, I don't disagree with you. 'Cept for the bits about 'WE': what WE did & what WE still do et cetera. Dunno about you but I didn't do anything, so I'm not part of your collective WE. And sure racism is bad and I'll always be against it but I'm not going to express this by convincing myself that I am a racist and going around being all sorry for it. That's not going to stop or even slightly hinder anything; it's just pathetic.

And yes, i do feel reparations are due, i can't believe affirmative action is over, after 200 year s of absolute torture, then in one generation, okay, we are even?!!

Do you see how you're over-simplifying things here? 'We are even'? You're mashing whole populations as well as generations into convenient bundles which you can then talk about like they're singular entities which 'owe' each other things. One bundle is bad to another bundle, so we've got to even the score? Well then yay for 'positive' discrimination. It does nothing.

Maybe you did not own a slave, but you are indeed benefitting, the blacks are not reaping these same rewards and i am stunned to hear you imagine this. We can see an injustice that still needs work and want to participate in it's healing even if we did not own a slave ourselves.

You're hitting the wrong buttons, again, for the most part. The only relevant  section of this is "the blacks are not reaping these same rewards and i am stunned to hear you imagine this". Yes they are. Just take a look at how much better the world is now than it was 200 years ago, and for everyone. It wouldn't have been possible for any culture to be vast and self-sustainable enough to stand against slavery if it wasn't built on it in the first place.

The rest I agree with. Participating in the 'healing' of such nasty cuts and bruises is a good thing, but people seem to think that by raving about 'debts', one race owing another, let's all feel ashamed and so on is just as ignorant and futile as racism itself as far as I'm concerned. In fact I believe it's that kind of thinking that gives people the capacity to be racist in the first place. That's what I was trying to convey.

No, acting like racism is not there will not make it go away

Never said it would, or meant to, though I admit my phrasing was slightly askew from my meaning. Since you missed the rest of the post, therefore, it's no surprise you misunderstood me here.

okay, now you are scaring me. this might be a debate similar to talking with a fundy.....you say this--and yet, also wanna act like racism is pretty much over? and harmless?

Now you're really jumping off the boat. I don't recall ever saying that racism is harmless or over. Nor did I imply it. It's an assumption on your part that I believe such things and it would be unsurprising if that derived from your clinging so faithfully to a collection of grand social schemas.

NO, Mister, you are decended from AFRICANS, not slaves, and your path is very different from the grandchildren of slaves that you probably imitate in manner of dress, style, music and dance. YOur right to complain about racism is completely valid, but you cannot for a moment pretend to be the decendent of someone who has survived that centuries long holocaust, nor a current victim of it.

Yep. With you on the whole AFRICANS thing... I am indeed descended from very ancient AFRICANS, as, funnily enough are modern day AFRICANS. What's your point?

I'll say again; everyone is descended from slaves. That's the plain truth. You wont find a single person on the planet who doesn't have a whole lot of slave blood in them. And it's not only centuries long, it's mixed and matched over millennia.

Once again though, you're appealing to heritage, whereas I am rebuking it, which has inevitably led to you going completely off target (trying not to use the word "again" again, again and again here). We are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors. We are, ultimately, separate beings. The only blame should really be placed on people who actually do these unspeakable acts of 'tearing apart families' and so on, not on whatever category they might fall into.

When you say "we" do you mean "we" as Americans or "we" as white people?

Yes, americans did invent fountain pens, pencils, combs and hairbrushes, typewriters, lightbulbs, (so it really woulda been dark without us!) almost everything in the post office from stamps to the machines that sort the mail, amilboxes too, elevators that allow us to build skyscrapers, toliets, trolley cars, air conditioners, electric clothes dryers, the furnace, stethyscopes, traffic lights, refridgerators, air brakes, the electric lamp, many things of the NASA space rockets, space guided missiles, jazz, , fiberoptics, and the cell phone.
YES, AMERICANS INVENTED THESE THINGS. BLACK AMERICANS.

Actually the paragraph you were responding to there was more a side note on colonisation in general, so it wasn't referring to race. And by 'we', I meant Europeans.

And yes, bravo to those black Americans. The point I was making was that without the advancements handed to American peoples by colonies - if the continent was simply on it's own with no initial foreign rule - it would have taken it thousands of years to get to where it is now & there would be no USA. Side note in response to something else, as I say.

Phew, well that was a bit of fun. I feel like I've reached the end of an excruciatingly long tunnel. Hope that filled in a few cracks for you tigerlilly.

[tigerlily46514]

Perhaps I'm reading what you said wrong, but I'm pretty sure that melanin pigment plays the predominant role. Chromosomes, I would think, would only play a factor in genes being passed to offspring.

Darn, you had such a lovely vocabulary in your introduction, i was so impressed, was excited maybe it was a genius !!! but not yet an informed, caring mind. dang it.  Anyway, where do you suppose melanin  'genes' are stored?  On the chromosome..

I believe he was using satire

Of course he was, duh.
And i thought he seemed annoyed that he "wasn't allowed " to use the N word......and he definitely DOES lump people.  But you certainly have a right to think that was clever.  And i have a right to help him try to understand that lumping can be a dangerous pitfall on the way to personal evolution.  Sure we all do that, but still, it is a good thing to be cognizant of.

I certainly believe slavery can be justified

Would you still feel slavery can be justified if it was YOUR MOMMA getting sold away from you?  If it was YOU losing all your freedom and rights and being tortured?  Would it be okay if IT WAS YOU??

The posters who all say that slavery is okay--NO one answered  THAT......
omg, am i the only person here who sees how cruel this kinda  thinking is???
 
This almost feels as frustrating as debating with fundies....you are denying your own humanity as WELL AS your reasoning ability for the sake of being oppositional...?  I totally do not really believe you can truly mean what you just said..i can't believe there are still people of your level of not caring at all about justice.

...cool, i just this minute realized i still DO have my idealistic bone still intact somewhere in this body!  yay for me!
Hope you ever get to experience the wonder of owning an idealistic part of your heart...if you ever do find you have grown one, don't scoff at it, protect it with all your might.  Might even last 50 years if you are lucky....

Africa has always been a warring place. "Elegance" is a very subjective thing, anyway. Many early civilizations could be considered "elegant". They were still hostile

America has had several wars, too, and some pretty non-elegant societies of it's own (pilgrims never ever bathed at all ever..once each spring was all!!)  R.Narc, there have been and still are many elegant societies in Africa.  
Too bad you sound like you are too ethnocentric to appreciate them.  NOt to worry, we are all to some extent.

Not all villages were hostile,not at all!!!   Much of the ensuing hostilities between various villages was BROUGHT ON by the slave trading paying one village to steal actual people from another!!!  You gotta admit, that'd piss you off.

 I don't know how 'early' you are referring to, (are we talking trees here?) but at the time of the Crusades and other slave stealers,
there were many many peaceful and elegant societies, where the people were self governed, free, and respected the value of life.  Sorry you don't really seem to.....

Freedom is in the eye of the beholder. How do you figure they were free people

Self governed, with all basic human rights intact.  Chose their own families, their own occupations, their own homes, etc.  Like if you were right now, abducted and thrown into slavery, someone might say, but he USED to be free...see?  And another mihgt say, nah, the eye of the beholder, he wasn't free anyway.

  WHY DO YOU THINK ALL AFRICANS WERE SLAVES OVER THERE?????   there villages were free there, as you are now, until they came HERE.
And i was worried i, being from Indiana, I would be the redneck entering into a real cool evolved buncha people here.......

see, there i go, lumping people.  Sorry midwesterners. Also-- I have always looked up to atheists, i set a higher bar for them than others-which i readily admit is not right to do----but still, something in me is always disappointed to find narrow-minded, ethnocentric or cruel atheists.....always blows me away.  But that is a stereotype of mine, isn't it?  gotta work on that one

people? Slavery is an abstraction, and the periphery of "slaves" and "men, women, and children who had been captured" is quite thin

Back again to feeling like i am debating a Fundy....same exact feeling.  YOU GOTTA BE FREAKIN KIDDING ME???  Slavery is SO not an abstraction, buddy, it involves torture and rape and completely being ruined....would you say the holocaust was also an "abstraction"  ?


Google it, the estimates vary from around 11 MILLION to 20 MILLION that survived the voyage.  The number who died while shackled to wooden beds for months crossing the ocean is unknown...but hey, they were never "free", in your eyes, their shackles were some kinda 'abstraction'... right?  

I don't know if i can spend more time debating you if you aren't even gonna TRY to  keep it real...and honestly, this is probably a waste of time, similar to debating a fundie..


I'm only bothering with you for the benefit of the chance there might be some OTHER young mind reading this and still having a chance to get THEIR light bulb turned on...it is worth a try for the outside chance of helping some other young person reading...however honestly, posts THIS long, no one much reads 'em anyway i don't think...so i might quit with this....

I'm losing hope you can care enough yet about other humans to get the points i am trying to make.....but you are young yet, there is still hope as you grow you will develop this side of yourself more.  Heck, i was probably some kinda mess when i was your age.  At least you are both curious and brave, points for that.

I'm no historian

so i have noticed.

but I highly disagree with that logic

I'm not entirely convinced you are into logic anyway.

That's lacking justification everywhere, and it's a really despondent way of viewing things. Where are you getting those facts?

Life, baby!  I have seen these stats my entire life...they are always the same, and the blacks are almost always getting the short end of the stick.....unless it is some right wing type 'fact'  thing, they can find a way to twist some facts.  We can always find facts to back ourselves up if we search long enuff...  Honestly, if you did Google this, sooner or later, you could PROBABLY find some stats that say how blacks make more money than whites, get better interest rates, get beat up by cops way less than whites, get higher pay, etc etc,  and are just doing peachy only 50 years outa Jim crow.

Despondent, no, actually i feel naively hopeful about improving things.  

If you need me to post stats on how much different life is for blacks than whites, you might be far too ignorant to even benefit from my effort.  But i could do it, but why not do it yourself for a project?  Google racial discrepancies of mortgages rates, pay scales, hiring deficts, college admissions, etc etc etc..  I still stand by my opinion it is way too soon to lose affirmative action.  i take it you only read 'con' half of that article......

Honestly, I don't understand your logic. People know about racism. It's a very prolific topic. I've never understood people who seek to "raise awareness" on huge, in your face issues like this or global warming or any other multitude of reasons. Education isn't a cure. Education is a treatment course. Or, at the very least, a painkiller.

You for one, do not seem aware of racism.  You seem baffled when i refer to the discrepancies in mortgages, pay scales, opportunities.....  I still disagree, and am not gonna bother reposting why....you can re-read my post all over again.....but i honestly don't think it is gonna help you understand, i sense a wall here...and that is okay, you do have a right to feel the way you do.  but it isn't based on facts. but you have a right to believe whatever you wish.

Actually tho, i think i do agree with your remark, there is no cure, only treatment.  YOu are right, it will never ever go away completely.  But we can still try to keep squashing it down anyway.
 

Also, what are you referring to when you said it has already been tried

Really, you couldn't tell by my post what i meant????
Ignoring racism, as a way of making it go away.

Again, I believe that was meant to be taken with a pinch of salt

Nah, truly, reread it in original context.....he was honked.   i kinda think for one's mind to go where he went with this, he has a rotten spot...eeeeough.  Salt might not be enough for it.

Must have some other good qualities though. we've all got our spots.
well, i feel spent and discouraged...i like to think most young people today are more informed than youths of the 30s..i kinda feel like you either
a) are being oppositional just for fun, like a debate team, and you really do care more about people and are aware of racism's effect on the USA......
/or/
b) you really do not know or care.....

either one, it wasn't fun....might give up. just tired.  I am sorry i do not have your vocabulary, McQ's humorus elegance of speech, or SteveS's patience, or Momma Squid's brevity, or rlRose's humility, (is that the right word, she is kinda sweet) so many others with great intelligence and  qualities i don't have, they coulda made much better responses than mine...but i do have passion.  guess i could benefit from trading out a cup of that for a cup of patience...

   
I really mean what i am trying to tell you, that racism is a strong factor in black people's lives, that slavery was real and brutal, and that we have a long way to go, and i still like to believe that if we all try to help squash it out, it could make a difference.  I really do believe that, all together, we could make a little ripple, that could eventually make yet another small shift happen.  Just a good word here or there, it can make a difference...  sometimes.I truly hope you did NOT mean what you said, but i admit your right to say it.
Keep on thinking.....

[tigerlily46514]

Ah, mister joy, haven't EVEN READ your response yet, which musta got posted same time as i was writing to R.Narc.....too tired to take on another young redneck just yet.  I'll be back in a few days, got company coming.  
If there is any one else out there who'd like to take on these guys, have at it.  I'll be back later...i hope.  i'm kinda getting discouraged, honestly, last week it was some young guys making ignorant sexist remarks...this week it is racist crap....maybe i need a break.  Or maybe this isn't where i belong after all...
  :bang:
 it's not so much fun as i thought anymore....feel almost as philosophically isolated here lately as i do as an atheist in Elkhart....
know what is funny?  i actually went searching myspace for some mature atheist liberals to invite here to round out the forum......hee hee!!  i did!!!
Hope my company is gonna be fun!!!
See ya soon!!

[Tom62]

My 2cts. People should be judged on their acts, not on skin colour, religion, sex or whatever. For that reason I'm against any kind of discrimination (both negative and possitive). Historical mistakes, like slavery and the holocaust, should never be forgotten. On the other hand, how much are "we" to blame on what our forefathers did? Does for example a german child that is born today still has to feel guilty of what happened 3-4 generations ago? That doesn't seem right to me. Another problem that I see is that many people believe that the decendents of the former victims have more moral rights than other people. Since WW-II until now, no german politician would even dare to criticise Israel. This is rather silly, because what ever happens nowadays in Israel is not related to the holocaust.

[rlrose328]

I was going to stay out of this but here goes... <sigh>

I believe slavery is wrong... can never be "right" in any sense.

HOWEVER, I do not believe any further reparations are due.  We have had affirmative action, which did nothing but discriminate against others who did not deserve it because places had to make their "quota" to meet guidelines.

Neither I nor any previous generations of my family have done anything to harm the race in question.  I'm HIDEOUSLY sorry they were wronged so grievously... but it's not my job to ensure that entire races are happy again.

How long do we have to apologize?  Same with what happened with the Nazis... how long does Germany and anyone of German descent have to apologize and pay for the mistakes (HORRIBLE mistakes, yes) made a few generations back?  See, I AM of German descent and I'm caucasian... so I have to make reparations to BOTH of these groups of people?  For how long?  And how many  more generations of my decendants will be required to do so?

With the Japanese, the US paid them money and some are still pissed about the interment camps.  I don't blame them.  But there comes a time when moving on is the best way to fix it.  I don't want to dwell on it any further.  The longer we dwell on the wrongs of previous generations, the more likely we are to repeat them.

I don't believe I'm racist in any way, shape or form.  I was tickled pink when I saw that the new 5th grader in our tiny school (5 kids in 5th grade now!) is black.  We are more diverse because of it.  Our little town is frighteningly pale and I WANT my son to be exposed to as many cultures and people as possible and that will only happen if we are colorblind.

So... to sum up... not racist, LOVE diversity, no more reparations or affirmative action, slavery WRONG no matter how you look at it.

Thank you for your time.  

[rlrose328]

Historical mistakes, like slavery and the holocaust, should never be forgotten. On the other hand, how much are "we" to blame on what our forefathers did?

wow... look there.  Tom said what I wanted to say in fewer words.  That almost NEVER happens.  

These two sentences sum up what I feel.  Thanks, Tom!  

[SabineMaia]

I support you tigerlily, and I'm happy to see someone else gets emotional about these subjects. I just haven't had much time lately for a proper response.

If it isn't our responsibility to re-dress the repercussions of slavery -- economic, educational and justice inequalities -- whose is it? Nobody said we have to be ashamed of being white (this is what I'm hearing in a lot of reponses here. Correct me if I'm wrong), but as a group, whites have an awful lot of economic and political power in America, should we still sit by and wash our hands of the whole shlamazel?

My 2cts. People should be judged on their acts, not on skin colour, religion, sex or whatever. For that reason I'm against any kind of discrimination (both negative and possitive). Historical mistakes, like slavery and the holocaust, should never be forgotten. On the other hand, how much are "we" to blame on what our forefathers did? Does for example a german child that is born today still has to feel guilty of what happened 3-4 generations ago? That doesn't seem right to me. Another problem that I see is that many people believe that the decendents of the former victims have more moral rights than other people. Since WW-II until now, no german politician would even dare to criticise Israel. This is rather silly, because what ever happens nowadays in Israel is not related to the holocaust.

It would be nice if people judged on people's behaviour, but they don't. I'm the child of German immigrants in Canada. I have dual citizenship, I speak the language and grew up in a traditionally German household. I was caled Hitler's daughter, given nazi salutes and, even recently, was tested with probing questions to see what my attitudes are about Jews. I don't think it's fair, but I do think it's my responsibility to keep on my toes when it comes to racism, antisemitism, and sexism, and I make sure that I don't complacently sit by and pass the responsibilty for change to somebody else while uttering the phrase "Don't blame me, I didn't do it."

We may not have committed the original sin, so to speak, but we're all part of the machine that maintains the status quo.

[rlrose328]

But we KEEP redressing the issue... over and over again with each generation... and it becomes expected that the offended group with get MORE equality than the rest of us.  If I keep giving my son a cookie because I don't have time to spend with hiim because I'm busy working, he'll expect the cookie whether I'm working that day or not.  It's a simplistic comparison, granted, but that's my point.

Rather than dealing with the issues they face, they believe they are due MORE because of past wrongs.  And I don't believe that.

I had a friend whose husband was a instructor at a college.  They had to meet "Affirmative Action" goals so he had to re-interview for his job one year (when he HADN'T had to for 6 years running).  He did NOT get his job... because the college had to meet Affirmative Action goals for the state/federal guidelines, the job went to an African American man who had much less experience and was not nearly as good an instructor as my friend's husband.  Is that fair to HIM?  No, it's not... but that's what Affirmative Action has caused.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be aware that inequities exist... we are only human and old habits die hard.  But to give them MORE opportunities than the rest of us have is not right.  That's not equality.

[Mister Joy]

Ah, mister joy, haven't EVEN READ your response yet, which musta got posted same time as i was writing to R.Narc.....too tired to take on another young redneck just yet. I'll be back in a few days, got company coming.
If there is any one else out there who'd like to take on these guys, have at it. I'll be back later...i hope. i'm kinda getting discouraged, honestly, last week it was some young guys making ignorant sexist remarks...this week it is racist crap....maybe i need a break. Or maybe this isn't where i belong after all...
frustrated
it's not so much fun as i thought anymore....feel almost as philosophically isolated here lately as i do as an atheist in Elkhart....
know what is funny? i actually went searching myspace for some mature atheist liberals to invite here to round out the forum......hee hee!! i did!!!
Hope my company is gonna be fun!!!
See ya soon!!

Since you don't understand what point of view you're attacking - which is what I explained in the post that you didn't read but were presumptuous enough to reply to anyway - don't call me a redneck and don't imply that I'm a racist. Stop being so irritatingly self-righteous (and worse, self-pitying) in the face of things you just manifested yourself. Fact is, we probably agree on most of this stuff.



rlrose and tom: That was more or less what I was trying to express before, so I 100% agree.

If it isn't our responsibility to re-dress the repercussions of slavery -- economic, educational and justice inequalities -- whose is it? Nobody said we have to be ashamed of being white (this is what I'm hearing in a lot of reponses here. Correct me if I'm wrong), but as a group, whites have an awful lot of economic and political power in America, should we still sit by and wash our hands of the whole shlamazel?

Easier said than done though. It's plausible, especially with methods like 'affirmative action', that more damage can be done than good. I think people need to take more care in ensuring that their grand political schemes are not dangerously quixotic like that. Lots of little things make the big differences.

[rlrose328]

Ah, mister joy, haven't EVEN READ your response yet, which musta got posted same time as i was writing to R.Narc.....too tired to take on another young redneck just yet.  I'll be back in a few days, got company coming.  
If there is any one else out there who'd like to take on these guys, have at it.  I'll be back later...i hope.  i'm kinda getting discouraged, honestly, last week it was some young guys making ignorant sexist remarks...this week it is racist crap....maybe i need a break.  Or maybe this isn't where i belong after all...
  :bang:
 it's not so much fun as i thought anymore....feel almost as philosophically isolated here lately as i do as an atheist in Elkhart....
know what is funny?  i actually went searching myspace for some mature atheist liberals to invite here to round out the forum......hee hee!!  i did!!!
Hope my company is gonna be fun!!!
See ya soon!!

Jean, I usually agree with everything you post... we've had a good time of that so far...

But calling these guys rednecks and racist because they don't agree with you is pushing the envelope a tad.  They are not in favor of slavery any more than you are.  No thinking adult is.  But they have a different opinion on how we should deal with the topic in current society.  That doesn't make them rednecks or racist.

And the sexist thing last week was all blown out of proportion as well.

We do agree with you philosophically here... I'm sure we do.  But the details are more fuzzy for us than they are for you.  That doesn't make us evil or wrong, just different.

[a_jaynepayne]

someone might have already said this but hasn't every culture at one point in time been repressed or even enslaved?  Shit I've got Scottish in me where the hell is my retribution from England?  I'm just sayin' if we owe one group something then we've got to owe damn near everyone something, it'll never end.

[Mister Joy]

Spot on. You express it better than I do.

[ReflectingNarcissist]

Darn, you had such a lovely vocabulary in your introduction, i was so impressed, was excited maybe it was a genius !!! but not yet an informed, caring mind. dang it.  Anyway, where do you suppose melanin  'genes' are stored?  On the chromosome..

No, I know how genetics work. I just misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that chromosomes exclusively hold ordinance over skin color, which is incorrect.

And i thought he seemed annoyed that he "wasn't allowed " to use the N word......and he definitely DOES lump people.  But you certainly have a right to think that was clever.  And i have a right to help him try to understand that lumping can be a dangerous pitfall on the way to personal evolution.  Sure we all do that, but still, it is a good thing to be cognizant of.

Honestly, I didn't sense that he was lumping people together. And if he was, I'm sure he's cognizant of it and it's ability to be detrimental to, as you call it, personal evolution.

Would you still feel slavery can be justified if it was YOUR MOMMA getting sold away from you?  If it was YOU losing all your freedom and rights and being tortured?  Would it be okay if IT WAS YOU??

This almost feels as frustrating as debating with fundies....you are denying your own humanity as WELL AS your reasoning ability for the sake of being oppositional...?  I totally do not really believe you can truly mean what you just said..i can't believe there are still people of your level of not caring at all about justice.

Does slavery have to involve merchantry and commerce? Do slaves have to lose their freedom and be tortured? Slavery doesn't come in one, single package. People shouldn't be able to buy other people. As well, they shouldn't be able to inflict harm upon them for their social rank. That may be the extent of my libertarianism, but I still believe that. I don't speak of slavery as you seem to perceive it. I meant it in a sense in which I suppose "serfdom" would be a better title. Indeed, I believe justification of slavery through Darwinism is sick and narrow-minded.

...cool, i just this minute realized i still DO have my idealistic bone still intact somewhere in this body!  yay for me!
Hope you ever get to experience the wonder of owning an idealistic part of your heart...if you ever do find you have grown one, don't scoff at it, protect it with all your might.  Might even last 50 years if you are lucky....

Thank you for the concern, but I stay away from those with excessive idealistic personalities. They tend to annoy me. I prefer to surround myself with cynics.

America has had several wars, too, and some pretty non-elegant societies of it's own (pilgrims never ever bathed at all ever..once each spring was all!!)  R.Narc, there have been and still are many elegant societies in Africa.

So personal hygiene dictates who deserves to be enslaved?

Too bad you sound like you are too ethnocentric to appreciate them.

Indeed, only clean, shower-loving whites escape my ire.  :roll:

Not all villages were hostile,not at all!!!   Much of the ensuing hostilities between various villages was BROUGHT ON by the slave trading paying one village to steal actual people from another!!!  You gotta admit, that'd piss you off.

 I don't know how 'early' you are referring to, (are we talking trees here?) but at the time of the Crusades and other slave stealers,
there were many many peaceful and elegant societies, where the people were self governed, free, and respected the value of life.  Sorry you don't really seem to.....

I don't doubt that plenty of African societies were peaceful. There were far too many for there to of not existed some that were. Still, I believe that the majority were indeed warring.  Just off the top of my head, a very large, old, and prolific civilization, Nubia, has been experiencing invasions,civil wars, and unpopular policies for almost it's entire history. It's been in existence for a very long time. It was founded circa 3000 B.C. I believe. The crusades certainly shook things up, but it was by no means the instigator of all the violence there.

Self governed, with all basic human rights intact.  Chose their own families, their own occupations, their own homes, etc.  Like if you were right now, abducted and thrown into slavery, someone might say, but he USED to be free...see?  And another mihgt say, nah, the eye of the beholder, he wasn't free anyway.

Again, I'm pretty certain that Africans were never predominantly self-governed or upheld human rights.

-something in me is always disappointed to find narrow-minded, ethnocentric or cruel atheists.....always blows me away.  But that is a stereotype of mine, isn't it?  gotta work on that one

It's just as disappointing to find an atheist that believes all atheists to be paragons of virtue and goodness.

Back again to feeling like i am debating a Fundy....same exact feeling.  YOU GOTTA BE FREAKIN KIDDING ME???  Slavery is SO not an abstraction, buddy, it involves torture and rape and completely being ruined....would you say the holocaust was also an "abstraction"  ?

Slavery is an abstraction. There is not a single defined set of guidelines or a dogmatic system that slavery follows.
No, I would not call the holocaust an abstraction. There was, in history, a single holocaust. This holocaust followed a set pattern and was orchestrated for the same reason throughout. Genocide is an abstraction. A specific act of genocide is not.

Google it, the estimates vary from around 11 MILLION to 20 MILLION that survived the voyage.  The number who died while shackled to wooden beds for months crossing the ocean is unknown...but hey, they were never "free", in your eyes, their shackles were some kinda 'abstraction'... right?

The Atlantic Slave Trade was not an abstraction.

I'm only bothering with you for the benefit of the chance there might be some OTHER young mind reading this and still having a chance to get THEIR light bulb turned on...it is worth a try for the outside chance of helping some other young person reading...however honestly, posts THIS long, no one much reads 'em anyway i don't think...so i might quit with this....

I'm losing hope you can care enough yet about other humans to get the points i am trying to make.....but you are young yet, there is still hope as you grow you will develop this side of yourself more.  Heck, i was probably some kinda mess when i was your age.  At least you are both curious and brave, points for that.

Again, thank you for the concern, but I'd rather not have my viewpoints and opinions be those instilled into my mind by another person. Specifically, one I currently disagree with.

Life, baby!  I have seen these stats my entire life...they are always the same, and the blacks are almost always getting the short end of the stick.....unless it is some right wing type 'fact'  thing, they can find a way to twist some facts.  We can always find facts to back ourselves up if we search long enuff...  Honestly, if you did Google this, sooner or later, you could PROBABLY find some stats that say how blacks make more money than whites, get better interest rates, get beat up by cops way less than whites, get higher pay, etc etc,  and are just doing peachy only 50 years outa Jim crow.

Despondent, no, actually i feel naively hopeful about improving things.  

If you need me to post stats on how much different life is for blacks than whites, you might be far too ignorant to even benefit from my effort.  But i could do it, but why not do it yourself for a project?  Google racial discrepancies of mortgages rates, pay scales, hiring deficts, college admissions, etc etc etc..  I still stand by my opinion it is way too soon to lose affirmative action.  i take it you only read 'con' half of that article......

I do have knowledge of the stats. And they're not at all as bad as you seem to believe they are. Has the Civil Rights Movement done all it can? No, but it's not done yet. Has the Civil Rights Movement done alot? Yes, by a large amount.
And no, I read and considered all the sides of the argument. (Except, of course, if one of the writers was one of those darn, non-showering Africans. In that case, I ignored it completely).


 

Really, you couldn't tell by my post what i meant????
Ignoring racism, as a way of making it go away.

Yes, I know that. I mean what are you referring to specifically? What event?

Nah, truly, reread it in original context.....he was honked. i kinda think for one's mind to go where he went with this, he has a rotten spot...eeeeough. Salt might not be enough for it.

To each his/her own.

   

I really mean what i am trying to tell you,[/b] that racism is a strong factor in black people's lives, that slavery was real and brutal, and that we have a long way to go, and i still like to believe that if we all try to help squash it out, it could make a difference.  I really do believe that, all together, we could make a little ripple, that could eventually make yet another small shift happen.  Just a good word here or there, it can make a difference...  sometimes.I truly hope you did NOT mean what you said, but i admit your right to say it.
Keep on thinking.....

Racism is a strong factor in black people's lives. Slavery (of blacks) was real and brutal.  We have quite a bit to go, but saying a "long way", and especially bolding and underlining it, is an overstatement.