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For a lot of black people there wasn't a book mark between the two. Slavery , Jim Crow, segregation, and discrimination were the different names for the same set of circumstances. in some respects I don't think black people would chose one over the other. They all involved legislating the class status of black people in America. They are all part of the same continuum.
The point you raise is a fair one, but it also needs to be understood that the Civil war was a total war. The South had lost everything and impoverished and subjugated itself in the process. You can't get blood from a stone, and any further reprisals might have ignited a partisan-stye war of attrition in the occupied regions (perhaps not that far removed from what is going on in Gaza today).
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Even today we have to watch out for legislation intended to keep lower class people from being full participants in society. America went from; Christian vs non Christian, to free vs non free, to black vs white and finally to rich vs poor all along the same continuum.
Some "lower-class people" tend to have some not-so-endearing qualities ..... and to resort to some pretty ugly tactics. Fortunately for all of us, they tend to be outnumbered by those who climb he ladder while playing by the rules. But a small number of isolated incidents can negate a lot of good will
As everyone know, out of all the injustices that took place on this soil,
I'll make you a deal. Blacks will forget about slavery and Jim if the rest of *you people* can do this
1. Erase the effects of slavery, opperssion, intimidation, segregation and discrimination
2. Stop being racist (personally, institutionally, etc)
No apology necessary. Just right the wrong and everyone can go from there.
I won't hold my breath.
As an aside, only someone who is largely ignorant of the long, sordid history and current state of race in this country would deign to make a suggestion like yours.
Here is an analogy:
If two kids get into a fight, then simply breaking up the fight, and having them apologize to each other and continue on as nothing happened (while keeping an eye on them) might seem like a fast way to move past the incident.
However, things get complicated if the fight has gone on for half an hour with one kid beating the other kid badly enough that he has been crippled by permanent injuries that will take more than the rest of his life to heal (even with special medical attention). Would you have the gall to tell that kid that he should 'forget about what happened in the past', even though the effects permeate his everyday life? What if one of the keys to healing this crippled kid was for the kid who beat him up to stop continuing to bully him even after the fight?
Jews have suffered at least three attempts at genocide that I can name. And yet Ashkenazi Jews have far and away the highest IQs on the planet, and Jews in general are amongst the most financially successful people in the world, if not number 1.
We dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese. The rebounded to become the number two economy in the world, and now sit at number 3.
The massive bombings, invasion from East and West, and partition actually did far more damage to Germany than was done to Japan. Germany now leads a confederation far more powerful and influential that it ever could have dreamed.
Europe as an entity has suffered more devastation than can be discussed in casual conversation. During the thirty years war, it lost a full third of its population. And yet I don't think I have to name the importance of Europe in the last 500 years.
When Hannibal invaded Italy in ancient times, he was able to destroy enough armies so that 200,000 soldiers were killed, and that is not tabulating the damage done in sieges, and due to famine, disease, etc. Historians have compared the demographic disaster to being equivalent to an atomic bomb going off in Manhattan. And yet Rome didn't need to recover...it won the war.
China lost 65 million people in the cultural revolution. It is now the #2 economy in the world.
I don't know how to calculate the damage done to Viet Nam, and I don't just mean by the United States. For centuries, Viet Nam was in a state of almost constant war and occupation from China, The Mongols, Japan, France, and ultimately the US at the end. It is now a formidable and coming power.
Mexico and Peru have some of the fastest growing economies in the world. This is even though their populations were ravaged by small pox and enslaved.
And on, and on, and on. we could name literally hundreds of examples of peoples suffering from worse than slavery/ Jim Crow and rebounding very quickly to do almost unbelievable things, and without the benefit that modern day African Americans are receiving.
It has now been 50 years since Jim Crow, and 150 since slavery. African American benefit immensely from affirmative action, recourse to the law, white good will and white guilt. Their descendants enjoy access to health care, education, and a social safety net unheard of anywhere in Africa today. We have a black president, if you didn't know, as well as black Senators, Supreme Court Justices, Secretaries of State and Defense, Millionaires, Billionaires, entrepreneurs...I believe the most admired woman in America is still Opra Winfrey.
Yes, is time to stop the endless rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over race issues. Modern day African Americans will never solve their problems until they learn that they own them. The best thing white folks can do to help is to stop the coddling.
This is a tough love message. No hate in it...I want everyone in America to be successful, happy, and more than tolerance, I would like to see friendship. But what I have written is the truth, and everyone knows it in their hearts.
You're overlooking a lot here. If I were to take this post as it's stated, the only conclusion I could come to is there is something inherently wrong with black americans. You mention black people got help from social programs, even going as far as to mention Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is what killed the black community today. You may not agree with what I'm saying but be assured, no law has ever helped black people specifically. If there were any law that did, it immediately got translated into helping other minorities and white women. So those laws went on to help everyone except black people. Yet all in all, black people need to come together and help themselves. The world we live in, each ethnic group is looking out for their own. Black people's problem is they are expecting for others to help them out. That's dumb because we live in a competitive country, and no one is going to apologize for that. The white community is looking out for the white community, the hispanic community is looking out for the hispanic community, and the asian community is looking out for the asian community. It's time the black community look out for their own, because right now there is no black community.
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Originally Posted by Tarzanman
I'll make you a deal. Blacks will forget about slavery and Jim if the rest of *you people* can do this
1. Erase the effects of slavery, opperssion, intimidation, segregation and discrimination
2. Stop being racist (personally, institutionally, etc)
No apology necessary. Just right the wrong and everyone can go from there.
I won't hold my breath.
As an aside, only someone who is largely ignorant of the long, sordid history and current state of race in this country would deign to make a suggestion like yours.
Here is an analogy:
If two kids get into a fight, then simply breaking up the fight, and having them apologize to each other and continue on as nothing happened (while keeping an eye on them) might seem like a fast way to move past the incident.
However, things get complicated if the fight has gone on for half an hour with one kid beating the other kid badly enough that he has been crippled by permanent injuries that will take more than the rest of his life to heal (even with special medical attention). Would you have the gall to tell that kid that he should 'forget about what happened in the past', even though the effects permeate his everyday life? What if one of the keys to healing this crippled kid was for the kid who beat him up to stop continuing to bully him even after the fight?
Don't expect the injured kid to get any sympathy. At this point in time he just needs to get up and do what he can for himself.
I'll make you a deal. Blacks will forget about slavery and Jim if the rest of *you people* can do this
1. Erase the effects of slavery, opperssion, intimidation, segregation and discrimination
2. Stop being racist (personally, institutionally, etc)
No apology necessary. Just right the wrong and everyone can go from there.
I won't hold my breath.
As an aside, only someone who is largely ignorant of the long, sordid history and current state of race in this country would deign to make a suggestion like yours.
Here is an analogy:
If two kids get into a fight, then simply breaking up the fight, and having them apologize to each other and continue on as nothing happened (while keeping an eye on them) might seem like a fast way to move past the incident.
However, things get complicated if the fight has gone on for half an hour with one kid beating the other kid badly enough that he has been crippled by permanent injuries that will take more than the rest of his life to heal (even with special medical attention). Would you have the gall to tell that kid that he should 'forget about what happened in the past', even though the effects permeate his everyday life? What if one of the keys to healing this crippled kid was for the kid who beat him up to stop continuing to bully him even after the fight?
Puerile analogy.
African Americans today are benefitting to no end from the generations that were wronged. We can say the truth again and again...a young black child born in America has access to health care, education, recourse to the law and opportunity unimagined in Africa. They further benefit from affirmative action, white good will, and outright white guilt. The kids who are screwing around in school, getting pregnant at the age of 12, doing drugs, committing violence, and refusing to work have never been wronged by anybody. Indeed, we are altering our entire education system in order to try to accommodate them. Indeed, they are wronging others and wronging themselves.
I have already delineated how what blacks have suffered is not that particularly horrific in comparative historical context, and how an almost endless list of other peoples have rebounded much more quickly from much graver wrongs to do great things.
But we agree absolutely that white people should stop offering advice. The only solution to this problem is that is that whites stop the coddling. Crime, illegitimacy, violence, gang violence, sloth, drug and alcohol dependency, lack of achievement, speaking English as if it were a second language...these are not problems that can be solved by any social program or any amount of understanding. These are problems that the black community must solve for themselves, and collectively as a people.
As longs as blacks think that complaining is the key to success, they will always be in last place
I don't understand however, this argument that black people benefit from so much, and yet the results come in dead last for everything black. If all these programs helped us specifically, then why the world are we at the bottom rung? The only conclusion would then be there is something inherently wrong with us. If not, then these programs never helped us like many believe they did. It's either one or the other.
Everyone else has already echoed that we should never forget our history.
But some people are misplacing the blame about the causes of where we are today. If you think because Jim Crow is over we have suddenly leveled the playing field, you'd be mistaken.
As always with subjects as this some people take it personal. The main problem is some people are allowed to abuse a system or the law. How else did rapes, murder, lynchings be allowed to go on under the US flag?
Most people don't blame "White People" as such for anything. Blacks just want a fair shake. Just consider for a moment if a family structure is blown up what can the long term effects be?
Make it hard for a man to feed his family and what happens? Attack a family and the man can't protect his family, what does that do to the man?
It's one thing to try to defend yourself and yours one on one but a different thing when you have the go ahead against you by the people who say they protect and serve. People wonder why the Gov. Is involved in so much. It's because of the way society is. If society won't act right then the Gov. has to step in.
Why was something like affirmative action impliminted? Why do and did so many African Americans join the military or get local or federal jobs? Because of society hiring issues. Consider the whole picture.
The thing is today what African-Americans have and are going through is happening nationwide. Let anyone today lose a job and there's a good chance they can end up on the street. I've spoken with many White people who were screwed over by an employer and had their life tumble to ruin due to lake of or a reduction of income.
No. OUR HISTORY covers all of mankind's history, not just the years since the first European explorers landed on the North American continent. And what about the glorious history of the Ancient Egyptians on the tip of North Africa? And those Africans used slave labour to build their magnificent temples and pyramids.
And by studying ALL mankind's history, blacks can see that their race was not solely picked upon. And it wasn't because of the colour of their skin, but rather because back then, their African civilization was primitive and not on par with the Europeans. Those tribal Africans could have been white, but since their civilization level was at a Stone Age level, they got taken advantage of, just like the natives in the Americas and in Australia.
And the lesson that should really be learned is to learn and absorb the knowledge of the dominant culture as quickly as possible. And that is what happened in India, the British colonized the country and eventually, the native Indians studied hard and became engineers, and then they didn't need the Brits anymore. I had a British friend who grew up in India. His family had to return to England when his dad fell ill. My friend missed India and while in England, studied to be an engineer in hopes that he could return to India and work there. However, he told me that sadly, by the time he got his degrees, India no longer needed British engineers because they had their own.
African Americans need to encourage their children to study hard and become doctors and engineers. It's the only way for them to succeed in the world. And with seven billion people on this people, the competition for success has gotten very intense. No one has time to pity other groups or be guilted into making reparations. The more African American stay in the attitude of feeling sorry for themselves, the farther their culture is being left behind.
And why is it with all the American aid groups going over to West Africa, I see no African Americans helping out? So far, I see only lily-white Americans in the news photos.
Not all of Africa consisted of tribal peoples living in the Stone Age. There were many civilizations such as Mali, Songhai, Dendi and the Ashanti. They built cities and had thriving cultures. The Zulu Kingdom, while not erecting citadels and the link, were still a powerful, structured confederacy. They didn't exactly bow down to European powers.
Africa, in fact, has quite a rich, fascinating pre-colonial history, but of course, the loincloth clad native with a spear in his hand is the image that people conjure when it comes to Africans. Africans are hundreds, thousands of different tribes/peoples, each with different levels of culture. Tribal peoples were rounded up for slavery due to not having exposure to European weaponry and being subjugated by more powerful African tribes, not necessarily because of "primitiveness". Falling to colonial powers bearing arms is nothing to be ashamed of - they'd join the ranks of several non-European countries/states. Also, in their region of the world, they really didn't need to invent the firearms - the spear/javelin was effective at killing and obtaining food.
African Americans today are benefitting to no end from the generations that were wronged. We can say the truth again and again...a young black child born in America has access to health care, education, recourse to the law and opportunity unimagined in Africa. They further benefit from affirmative action, white good will, and outright white guilt. The kids who are screwing around in school, getting pregnant at the age of 12, doing drugs, committing violence, and refusing to work have never been wronged by anybody. Indeed, we are altering our entire education system in order to try to accommodate them. Indeed, they are wronging others and wronging themselves.
I have already delineated how what blacks have suffered is not that particularly horrific in comparative historical context, and how an almost endless list of other peoples have rebounded much more quickly from much graver wrongs to do great things.
But we agree absolutely that white people should stop offering advice. The only solution to this problem is that is that whites stop the coddling. Crime, illegitimacy, violence, gang violence, sloth, drug and alcohol dependency, lack of achievement, speaking English as if it were a second language...these are not problems that can be solved by any social program or any amount of understanding. These are problems that the black community must solve for themselves, and collectively as a people.
As longs as blacks think that complaining is the key to success, they will always be in last place
Peace.
Let me remind you again that most black Americans are "doin' it for themselves" just fine. Only a minority of the minority are "screwing around in school, getting pregnant at the age of 12, doing drugs, committing violence, and refusing to work."
And again, Affirmative Action has benefitted white women far more than it has blacks, which is a result of applying the same law to a much larger demographic.
Maybe the sense of aggrievement for the slave and Jim Crow eras should be forgotten. It is a millstone, doing nothing but weighing down the people who wear it. Blacks who come to America from other countries do better than blacks that are born here. I think it's because they don't have the sense of victimology that seems to afflict so many American blacks. They just get on with their lives.
Technically, it isn't over. Read the 16th Amendment and it is kind of eerie considering what goes on today. This doesn't get into the various forums either.
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