(no subject)

[novapsyche]

You know, I rarely think about slavery, but I do recognize that it indelibly shaped the course of American history. Its effects continue to shape socioeconomic realities today suffered not only by the descendants of slaves but also those who profited from slave labor. So, forgive me for continuing to be shocked when lawmakers (people in positions who should know better) make comments like "our black citizens should get over it," followed up by "[A]re we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"

Comments

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

Ugh! Hanover, Virginia -- what can I say? I derive some consolation that the rest of the assembly seemed as appalled by Hargrove's remarks as you (and I) are.

[vrax.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Yeah. He's not the only WASP who feels that way, and is evidence that racism hasn't changed that much.

[entheo.livejournal.com]

Speaking of black slavery and the descendants of slaves, have you read about the death by Waterboarding of black inmates in NY prisons?

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

Fucking hell. My jaw has literally just dropped.

I feel really condescending when I get angry with people for being racist asshats--- after all, I've probably never suffered direct racism except for the unhappiness I feel that human beings can be so fucking idiotic. But there is no excuse for that level of asshattery, none at all-- and there would be no excuse for not speaking out.

Fucking hell. Thanks for pointing this out.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Wow. Who knew that the "shower-bath" could be a torture device? I mean, it sounds so innocuous.

[techno-shaman.livejournal.com]

See, I think that was a really stupid and insensitive thing to say.
Mostly though, I think it is more political correctness rearing its head.
Another way this could have been said was:
"Though it is true that many African-Americans today are economically disadvantaged, and that many of them can trace this back to roots in slavery that gave them a "bad start", it is also true that there is not a single African-American alive today who has experienced slavery in this nation. Many African-American communities are eviscerated by poverty, but this hardly makes them unique.
Poverty is a problem in our nation, and one that is not exclusive to race.
Our human history is, regrettably, filled to the brim with violence and oppression. This too, is not exclusive to any ethnic group. The African nations enslaved one another long before European settlers arrived, and likewise European nations afflicted great atrocities on one another without any thought to skin pigmentation.
As a representative of Virginia, I oppose a forced official apology as it would signify them as deserving of some kind of special treatment based on their status as a one-time oppressed ethnic group. To make this apology would be akin to snubbing all other oppressed peoples throughout our long human history, who are apparently less deserving of justice.
Therefore, I would instead suggest that we scrap this plan and instead declare this a day where we all reflect upon how the suffering of the slaves makes them no different then the rest of us- indeed, that is unifies us with a common history. Let us reflect upon the wrongs committed by and upon our collective ancestors and seek to redress them in the only significant manner possible- by eliminating the walls that allow such atrocities to occur in the first place."


I suppose it is more sensational however to instead be shocked and horrified that a political figure didnt immediately spout the first politically correct response in his repetoire.
My family was so poor we had to eat from trash cans and couldnt afford toothpaste. Now my teeth are rotted and I overvalue "expensive food" at Panda Express in the mall because we never got it as kids growing up.
I can trace this back through a long line of poverty which can be traced to some bastard exploiting somebody.
This history and poverty is no different than the one spoken by ghosts in L.A ghettos.
*shrugs*
But Im politically incorrect like that. :p
~Zephyr~

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

There is much I am tempted to respond to, but the main thing that pops out is your contention that

Our human history is, regrettably, filled to the brim with violence and oppression. This too, is not exclusive to any ethnic group. The African nations enslaved one another long before European settlers arrived . . . .

I refer you to A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, wherein he writes:

Slavery existed in the African states, and it was sometimes used by Europeans to justify their own slave trade. But, as [Basil] Davidson [in his book The African Slave Trade] points out, the "slaves" of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe--in other words, like most of the population of Europe. It was a harsh servitude, but they had rights which the slaves brought to America did not have, and they were "altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations." In the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa, one observer noted that "a slave might marry; own property; himself own a slave; swear an oath; be a competent witness and ultimately become heir to his master . . . . An Ashanti slave, nine cases out of ten, possibly became an adopted member of the family, and in time his descendants so merged and intermarried with the owner's kinsmen that only a few would know their origin."

One slave trader, John Newton (who later became an antislavery leader), wrote about the peple of what is now Sierra Leone:

The state of slavery, among these wild barbarous people, as we esteem them, is much milder than in our colonies. For as, on the one hand, they have no land in high cultivation, like our West India plantations, and therefore no call for that excessive, unintermitted labour, which exhausts our slaves: so, on the other hand, no man is permitted to draw blood even from a slave.

African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

BTW, this is from pp. 27-28.

[techno-shaman.livejournal.com]

I did not say that African and American slavery were the same.
Though I might direct you to look at the state of Egyptian or Mameluke Sultanate slaves as another example of slaves that were worked quite literally to death.
Nor am I justifying the slavery of the African peoples in the colonial era by saying that there was an historical precedence.
I am saying that their slavery did not make them(or you) unique in their suffering and that to seek special treatment for it many generations after it has been abolished does a great disservice and dishonor to the many other peoples that have suffered- indeed, that it does a disservice to those very slaves.
Would an offical apology be good?
Yes, it would.
Would it REALLY do anything?
No, it would not.
By fixating on crimes committed on people you never met and would probably have nothing in common with (indeed, people you would probably hold in contempt because of values so dramatically different from your own) you only draw furthur attention to racial and cultural differences that in the end are only illusionary.
It constantly reinforces the "otherness" of blacks, which by this point is propagated more by the black community then any other community.
Forgive and let go.
These things didnt happen to you.
I would be very interested in your rebuttals of the many other things I said.. it feels like you took one small element in it to base a rebuttal off of while leaving the many other points unaddressed.
I am a native Hawai'ian. Our people served on sugar plantations every bit as brutal as the ones the Africans served on in the mainland.
Indeed, slavery and exploitation went on for far longer in Hawai'i because it was not granted state status until the Eisenhower administration, at which point labor and slave laws were finally able to be enforced.
Now Honolulu is haunted by the ghosts of its past, with native Hawai'ian prostitution rings running the streets in ethnic gangs just as bad as in any other ghetto.
I dont see that the history of my people is any different from the history of your own.
I have to admit, I get the impression sometimes that you are more focused on skin color then I am. You and I are no different. Both our peoples were oppressed in the past, by each other and by foreigners and that makes us no different from anybody else on the planet.
To me, these things didnt happen to "your" ancestors, or "mine".
They happened to OURS.
~Zephyr~