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Is he that paranoid? Anyhow soon awaiting the twitter/internet message from Ben, the sorrowful admission that yes, he had some ancestors who did some terrible things, etc. etc. etc.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade involved west and central Africans almost exclusively. Obama's paternal side consists of Kenyans from the Luo tribe in East Africa.
My understanding is that his mother's side actually has some African blood (presumably west/central), so it's possible that his slave trading and slave owning ancestors are on one side of the tree.
Slavery is endemic in human history, and it's pure Eurocentrism to think only whites were slave owners and only blacks were slaves. It's possible Obama's paternal ancestors were slaves or slave owners, or both, in Kenya.
Arabs were heavily involved in slave trading on the east coast of Africa, so it's possible Obama's paternal ancestors were owned by Arabs, or sold other blacks to the Arabs. We may never know.
I think the whole flap is ridiculous - and I think that Ben Affleck is an idiot. He brought all this on himself. Honestly, I've watched several interviews with this guy and I don't think he is all that bright. All looks and no brain apparently.
This reminds me of a situation I had once before I met my husband. I was dating this guy who was really good looking and very passionate, but who had some really dumb ideas and values. Once, right before we broke up (haha!), he was going on and on about something and I was so opposed to whatever it was he was talking about that suddenly I couldn't take it anymore and I suddenly blurted out, "Hey, why don't you just shut up? I like you so much better when you're not talking."
It does depend on how you interpret the statistics.
According to the 1860 census, about 5% of Southerners owned slaves.
But remember that the slave would have been officially owned by only one person, which would primarily have been a man. When you factor in his wife and children, who constituted the "family," then the percentage of Southern families who own slaves is probably around a quarter. The vast majority of slaveowners only owned a handful of slaves. The number of slaveowners with more than 20 slaves, let alone 100 slaves, was very small. The typical slaveowner was a mildly prosperous farmer who owned 1-3 slaves to help out in the fields.
There would have been regional variations, of course. I believe in South Carolina over half of white families owned slaves. Other parts of the South had very few slaves. Virginia is a good example of this divide between the slaveholding south and the yeomanry south.
As for ancestry, if you go back enough generations odds are very good you'll run into an ancestor who came from a slaveowning family, whether it was a grand tidewater Virginia or a rich cotton baron of Alabama, or a small yeoman farmer who only owned 1-2 slaves. If you go back far enough you will certainly hit a Biblical-era slaveowner!
As it is, I have slaveowning ancestors, and some of them were large slaveowners. The family has never kept it a secret, nor do we boast about it. It is what it is and cannot be changed. It's all in the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ConeyGirl52
Can you give source for that ratio please?
One side of my family was centered in Halifax County, Virginia in the 1750s. According to Census records, only 1 man, a Doctor (surname) Jacobs, owned slaves in the whole county. The county was much larger than it appears on a map today. He had a man, woman and a child as slaves on that census.
Poor people back then mostly farmed. Very few owned more than 48 acres. Their workforce was their children. It was not uncommon for them to have 12 or more of them, being that their was no reliable birth control - but why would they want a reliable form of birth control anyway? Children had value to families back then.
Your point is what? Slavery was an immoral act and the Maafa was the greatest crime against humanity in the past few hundred years. "Punishing" people for their relatives past misdeeds and knowing history & understanding history's affect on the world today are two very different things... Tea Party people might not be able to differentiate between the two, but every one else can...
Sorry, Shabazz, but your comment, "you're damn right that we expect everyone to recognize the evil "your" ancestors did, and the lingering effects", outed you.
It's perfectly clear to any perceptive person that you are angry, resentful, and are expecting at least some white people (preferably all) in this day and age to feel guilty about slavery and do something to "apologize" and try to make up for it.
Last edited by Luvvarkansas; 04-22-2015 at 10:03 AM..
As I pointed out, in the antebellum American South, about 1/3 of white families owned slaves. Not 1%, 33%. I agree with the other point you make, which is that you might have 16 or 64 branches in your family tree in that era, and that if they reach to the south then you likely descend from slave owners.
And if they extend to the early eighteenth century in the north in all probability they include ancestors who participated in or profited from the international slave trade. And Queen Elizabeth II is a descendant of the preeminent international slave traffickers of their age.
This is not supported by any relevant census records. Owning a slave was expensive and far beyond the means of anyone who wasn't in business or owned a considerable amount of land. They were also considered investments where companies were setup to own them then they were "rented" out. Finally the biggest financial beneficiaries of the slave trade were not the people who owned them in the south, but rather the NYC bankers who financed the whole thing. They financed the slave ships, sales houses and even the purchases.
Owning *lots of* slaves was beyond the means of most people. But the United States was less unequal in the mid-19th century than it is today. Owning a small number of slaves was clearly within the means of a major portion of the population.
I agree with you that people that did not own slaves benefited financially from slavery, absolutely. Not just New York financiers, but northern manufacturing companies that relied on southern raw materials, as well.
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Originally Posted by katygirl68
I know very well why black people descended from slave-owners was bad. It would help if people would read my post and also the post I was responding to.
As to the one in three white families owning slaves, I have no clue if that's true. It more than likely wouldn't include my family as they weren't all from the south and/or didn't come here until after the civil war.
Your post said, "Most people were not rich enough to own slaves, ergo most people are not descendants of slave owners. Ironically, many black people descended from slaves are also descended from slave owners." I don't think there is anything ironic about the descent of black people from slave-owners who had forced sexual relationships with slaves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ConeyGirl52
I have yet to see a black person show any 'guilt' at all over the topic. Have you?
One would think they didnt play any role at all in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to listen to them talk, when history shows that a black slave owner took indentured servitude from a set amount of years for both blacks and whites alike, to a permanent status situation for the black indentured servant.
The article I quoted above is from "The Root"
Did Black People Own Slaves? By Henry Lewis Gates Jr.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root.
Reality is anyone that could afford a slave owned one. But, given the price, most people of any race could not afford them. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was the Big Business of its day, and just like our modern day Stock Market, anyone that had no moral misgivings about such a thing particpated.
We will all have a better situation in the US when everyone faces the truth, and doesnt just bend the truth to serve a particular agenda, imho.
It would also be nice if we didnt have to depend on revisionist history as a basis of 'fact' in public schools. It would be better for everyone if students were simply taught facts. Even in Public Colleges you will get the professor who looks at his black students and says to the class, "You are all descended from Slaves", when he hasnt seen their pedigree and really doesnt know.
I would say that that is the biggest disservice any teacher could do to child or young adult, or even the entire country. The bulk of the US is middle class or below in income, and the top 3% only benefit politcally by keeping us all divided and conquered.
Why help them keep us all down? *shrugs*
You are distorting Dr. Gates' article on the subject.
So it is not ironic. Tragic, complicated, and brutal would be better descriptions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ConeyGirl52
Can you give source for that ratio please?
One side of my family was centered in Halifax County, Virginia in the 1750s. According to Census records, only 1 man, a Doctor (surname) Jacobs, owned slaves in the whole county. The county was much larger than it appears on a map today. He had a man, woman and a child as slaves on that census.
Poor people back then mostly farmed. Very few owned more than 48 acres. Their workforce was their children. It was not uncommon for them to have 12 or more of them, being that their was no reliable birth control - but why would they want a reliable form of birth control anyway? Children had value to families back then.
Remove the free states from the equation. You get 393,975 slave-owning families out of 1,515,605 total families--or 26% ownership. Looking just at the South, you get 333,399 slave-owning families out of 1,117,507 families, or 29.8% ownership (I'm taking Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia as "the South").
As you can see, 26% of free Virginia families owned slaves (in 1860). The 1750s had very different statistics than the 1860s. Slavery was booming in the mid 19th century. In 1790, there were just under 700,000 slaves in the United States. By 1860, there were nearly 4 million. In 1820, there were about 1.5 million.
Sorry if I'm repeating, but this week's Who Do You Think You Are?, a similar show, featured Bill Paxton, who also found that his ancestors owned slaves. He was not happy to learn this, but it was handled forthrightly and with sensitivity. By the time of his ancestor's death in MO, his slaves were given their freedom and 20 acres of land.
What happened with Ben Affleck is so typical of the Limousine Liberals. This incident will make it harder for him to finger point at some of his favorite targets. It makes no difference to most people, what someone's ancestors did, as they had no control over it, so why would he lie? I guess bad publicity is better than no publicity.
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