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I don't think it's about age. As a twenty something year old, I still have a desire to know my ancestry. I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "young". I have my own philosophies on how Black people could and perhaps should completely emancipate themselves from slavery, but I'll keep them to myself since this isn't the politics forum.
I agree. What I meant to say was some other young people who are not black feel disconnected to the whole idea and get defensive about a topic like this. Young old or otherwise, any one should feel the need and desire to explore their ancestry.
Identities stripped? I think black culture in America is extremely their own. From language to cars to dress and body image, black identity is clear and entrenched.
Before anyone goes off on a tangent I'm not asking who's had it worse or who's suffered the most persecution, I'm simply asking about ancestry and heritage. Are there any other races in history that have had their identities completely stripped from them like Black people? Meaning not knowing where their people are originally from and not knowing their true ethnicity/real last names?
No, no I'm sure there haven't been. After reading a few pages of posts and your answers to them I believe the Answer you're looking for is: NO.
The Ten Northern Tribes of Israel have disappeared from History and no one knows what happenned to them. The remaining Israelites are the Jews--but they no longer know which tribe they're from. Most were from Judah, quite a few from Benjamain, Levi, and Simeon, and a sprinkling from other tribes, but they don't know which tribe any of them are from now. I personally know two women who recently learned they were Jewish but their families hid that from them to avoid persecution.
The American Indians have by and large lost their languages and most speak only the White Man's tongue. They lost much of their culture and heritage and must turn to the White Man to learn what they once were. A Boy Scout knows almost as much about living off the land as many Indians do. Most Reservations are not even on the land their ancestors once lived on.
Nobody knows who the Gypsies--also known and the Romani--are or where they came from. Best guess is that they started out as some kind of military expedition from India that wound up on the losing side of a war and have been wandering around ever since with nowhere to call home.
The Vikings were called North Men or Nor Men and were given an area of northern France that became known as Normandy. They speak French and think of themselves as French, but in reality they are Scandinavians.
Nobody knows what happenned to the Hittites. In ancient times they were a Great Power rivaling Egypt and Babylon--but then they simply disappeared.
The Celtic people of Cornwall have become totally absorbed into England.
I could go on, but very clearly the Answer you're looking for is: NO. Nobody has lost their identity as Blacks have. Only they have suffered. Only they have been disadvantaged. Only they have been beaten, robbed, and persecuted. Only they have had who they are slapped out of them. This has never happenned before to anyone else in all of human history. Let us all be mournful, wail, and cry.
I'll probably have an egg salad sandwich for lunch. Gotta get stuff used up before it spoils.
Aside from feeling some shame for humanity about slavery and its legacy (and that it still exists) I don't feel any guilt over it because I had nothing to do with it. No one I ever met had anything to do with it and because none of my people were even living in the US before 1880.
I just didn't like the "white people are corrupt and greedy" garbage . . . and the OP is most certainly drawing a line of "evil people throughout history" and putting all white people on it.
^
True! Some of family members suffered through An Gorta Mór; starvation partly because of a blight, but primarily due to the English control of lands. Irish names were Anglicized, altered, and Irish Gaelic considered a gutter language. I have family who was beside Michael Collins (his name is in the history books) and a family divided -- some were on the English side during the troubles, others the Irish. My grandparents came here during the Irish Civil War.
My great grandparents came here from Puerto Rico in 1917 following the Jones-Shafroth Act granting Puerto Ricans citizenship. I've just recently sent my DNA sample in, which I am sure will show some African ancestry given the nature of indigenous, slave, and European mixing in Puerto Rico.
If it does, does that allow me to have an attitude, like the OP, when a response doesn't fall within his desired parameters? Will I eternally struggle with whether am I black or white Hispanic?
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I don't really believe some people are interested in putting it behind them. For them it's just fuel for their hate game.
My family came over her long after the emancipation of the slaves. They dealt with bigotry and racism. Even as a child we had a neighbor who was hurling racist insults at my mother, who would call and spew venom, who left terrible notes on the door, who would deliberately call the neighborhood children into her yard to play and hand them popcicles, leaving my sister and me outside the fence to watch.
While I won't forget the hurt this woman caused my family and me, I won't allow it to fester in me, nor will I allow it to jade my children's outlook on people. There have been so many atrocities and genocides throughout the ages; civilization tries to move passed it. It's time that African Americans try to do the same. We have a black POTUS, black AG, black politicians, astronauts, scientists, doctors, etc., and programs in place to help impoverished inner city children get college educations. It stinks that there are limits to black genealogy, but the sky's the limit come the future. 200 years from now, a young black person will look back at a gggg grandparent who was a lawyer, or a military commander and see what they rose up from.
We can't fix the past, but we can build on the future.
Over the past 400+ years, I'm sure there are some groups who were stripped of their identity completely in other parts of the world but I doubt on the level of African-American and Black Caribbeans/Black West Indians and Black Latin Americans have experienced. No other groups were forcefully transported to another continent in sheer numbers and completely converted to a new life that was not of their choosing and forced to convert to a new language, new religion, and to completely sever ties to their families, tribe/clan of origin, their past history, and former native customs and traditions. My answer to your question is NO.
Does torture during the Spanish Inquisition not count? Loss of religion, having your name changed (yes, Jews took on Spanish surnames.)
The Russian Jews forced to leave their homes for other countries? And what of those who happened to chose countries in which the Nazis came to power? We all know how that ended.
What about those who suffered defeat at the hands of the Ottomans and were enslaved?
I had a Jewish classmate who was unable to do a family tree project. His family perished in the work camps. A parent (as a toddler) was saved as she was secreted out of Europe. She had no idea who her family was or where they were from. All she had was her religion. Short of being beaten, this, to me, is as bad as what blacks endured.
Does torture during the Spanish Inquisition not count? Loss of religion, having your name changed (yes, Jews took on Spanish surnames.)
The Russian Jews forced to leave their homes for other countries? And what of those who happened to chose countries in which the Nazis came to power? We all know how that ended.
What about those who suffered defeat at the hands of the Ottomans and were enslaved?
I had a Jewish classmate who was unable to do a family tree project. His family perished in the work camps. A parent (as a toddler) was saved as she was secreted out of Europe. She had no idea who her family was or where they were from. All she had was her religion. Short of being beaten, this, to me, is as bad as what blacks endured.
Again, people keep going back to torture and how people have been treated. Even though African slaves were treated horribly, that's not my question. I know that some Jews were forced to take Spanish names, that they were treated with unspeakable cruelty, and that some had their ancestry destroyed by White people. Most Jewish people I know have Jewish last names. I don't know any African Americans with African sur-names (Unless it's a woman who married an African man from Africa) or that even know what country in Africa their ancestors were from.
Before anyone goes off on a tangent I'm not asking who's had it worse or who's suffered the most persecution, I'm simply asking about ancestry and heritage.
This is hard to believe considering you argued with examples offered by other posters in an attempt to corroborate your (implied) hypothesis that this has only ever happened to the one group. As others have said, you posed a statement as a question and then got mad when you were called out for doing so.
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Originally Posted by NoGMO
I really don't want to get too deep into this line of arguing, but stating simple historical fact is racist or bigoted. All I will say is White corruption and White greed continues to this day.
Yes white corruption and greed do continue - as they do everywhere with everyone. Why don't you do some research on places where blacks have been in charge and then get back to me - some of the most corrupt places and situations imaginable.
Case in point: virtually the entire continent of Africa. The mentality of the African continent is that once you get into a position of authority, you milk it for all its worth. That's why the vast amounts of humanitarian aid sent to the continent haven't had much of an impact.
You might find this graphic of interest:
Last edited by War Beagle; 07-09-2014 at 11:33 AM..
The key is how well they are able to adapt and progress. Some races do a good job of surviving and thriving, while other wallow in blame and entitlement, essentially dooming their own people through a cultural lack of adaptation.
Jews who were slaughtered by the millions in recent history are a good example of a race that chooses progress and thriving over blame and self-victimization. Every white race has also been a victim of historical atrocities, but it is currently not the popular PC thing to do to acknowledge it.
Africans are still capturing, killing, and enslaving their own people to this day, while offering them for sale to the highest bidder, yet we are taught to ignore this and blame the white man for every cultural failure within the black community. They should take a lesson from the Jews or every other enslaved and persecuted race (lots of white people too) from history that went on to survive and thrive.
Europe is full of examples, to say nothing of the who knows how many tribes and traditions that were wiped away by the Christian menace during the dark ages. The celts are a good example.
It happened in China too, as the Han people spread out across east Asia and again under the mongols. In Japan, it was the native Ainu who were subjugated.
In Australia, the Aborigines were absolutely devestated and the native Tasmanians were completely wiped out.
Even in the Americas entire tribes were snuffed out by more powerful tribes and the great mesoamerican civilizations were built over the bones of earlier subjugated civilizations, only to be destroyed in turn by the Europeans.
In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a corner of the world where it didn't happen. You might say cultural genocide is one of humanity's favorite hobbies...
This.
And it is still going on today, all over.
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