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I guess I'm thinking about a quote from Henry Ford when it comes to this topic:
"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right."
Slavery and Jim Crow were horrible. No one can deny it. But dwelling on them not only serves no purpose, it stifles progress. It make people think they can't, which is more than half-way to really can't.
When people don't know the past or history, people & humanity are doomed to repeat it.
The past should never be used as an excuse but only for reflective historical memory.
As for Holocaust & the Jews, that gets talked about more than slavery & Jim Crow even though most of the people that suffered & perished in the Holocaust were NON Jews. So people need to get over the Holocaust as wel.
Remember, however, that the Jews were ALL marked with the 6 pointed star. That was almost certainly a death sentence. No other race or nationality was so loathed, save the gypsies. And even they didn't suffer the embarrassment and systematic extermination that those of that faith had to. Should all Jews hate all Germans? No. Should they 'forget' the Holocaust? Hell no. No more than Jim Crow laws should ever be 'forgotten'. Hate is a severely limiting mindset that unnecessarily consumes people.
As everyone know, out of all the injustices that took place on this soil, slavery often ranks number one in a lot of people's heart. Although it's not right to say so because it undermines other wrongs done to people of all ethnicity. Yet at the end of the day, as a black person I ask myself what did it profit, and what did all the suffering under Jim Crow profit? You had 300+ years of free labor and at the end of day, no black slave received anything when they were set free. I often been told freedom itself were the slaves' reparations, that good white men gave their lives to fight for our freedom against the south. So slavery was repaid in being set free.
Then you had the period of terrorism on black people and the subsequent Jim Crow era. In that period black people tried to get on their feet in this country, but without protection under the law, we could only go so far. Eventually that led to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. After that we finally got protection under the law, and even programs like Affirmative Action got thrown into the mix. Yet at the end of the day, those programs weren't just for black people, but all minorities and white women. To this day white women benefited more from Affirmative Action than any other group, and by association the program help white families more than black families. Again, no specific reparations or payment of any kind was given to those black people who suffered during Jim Crow.
So my thinking is here are two times where black people's suffering profited nothing. I used to think at least from the Civil Rights Movement, black people contributed to all minority people and women with all the civil rights programs that was issued as a result. I used to think because of black people's suffering in the early 20th century, other people coming into this country wouldn't have to suffer in the same way because of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet when I talk to people about it who's family immigrated here, they give all the credit to the hard work of their family in making it. I at least thought we had that contribution to the US, but no one is really thankful for that, it's not their history. At the end of the day then, what worth is there from all that suffering? The only thing I get from that history is it's over, no one is to blame for that, and that we should get over it. I see no contribution to the US if immigrants didn't need our suffering, and slavery itself was a legal activity.
One should never forget the past but understand that it is the past. Blacks, as any complaining group, are childish when they latch onto the past and cannot move forward. One could state they have ruined their own present and future by focusing on the past.
I think the problem is not the history of slavery in this country but the fact that too many individuals, especially some of our so-called or self-appointed "black leaders", use this history as an excuse for the segments of the black community that are not moving forward.
Slavery was a cancer on the soul of this country but it ended well over a century ago and anytime slavery is mentioned, it is inevitable that the subject of reparations is broached as well.
Unlike victims of the Holocaust, there is no one alive today who experienced it, so there is no reason for anyone to reasonably expect to receive any type or amount of reparations, unless they have the documentation to proof such a claim and only on a case-by-case basis. Even Holocaust survivors and their next of kin, as well as, the Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps had to show proof of their claims but due to the lack of records regarding the documentation of blacks (i.e. - birth certificates, death certificates, etc.) the burden of proof is virtually impossible to prove.
Like the Jews and to a lesser extent, the Japanese, we need to never forget what happened but use the events as a motivation to promote and prioritize education, self-sufficiency, political and social involvement, individual and civic responsibility, and family values.
I think the problem is not the history of slavery in this country but the fact that too many individuals, especially some of our so-called or self-appointed "black leaders", use this history as an excuse for the segments of the black community that are not moving forward.
No, the problem in this country is ignoring the inequalities in wealth, housing accessibility, and medical care that are attributed to slavery & Jim Crow. Did neither one of them affect the waves of blacks moving to the Rust Belt to find manufacturing jobs? Did those manufacturing jobs that were disproportionately held by blacks hurt the black community when they were outsourced?
Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo... all have large black populations that came from migration from the South to escape Jim Crow. Blacks were met with housing discrimination while there. All these historical issues shape the income inequality gap between blacks and whites today.
Let's not forget health care. Blacks are less likely to be insured. A college educated white male lives over 14 years longer on average than a black male that didn't go to college. Blacks do not live as long as whites.
Forgetting our history is asinine on multiple levels.
White people, stop taking slavery so personally. No one is blaming you for slavery. The issue with white oversensitivity to slavery is the convenience of ignoring its effects on this country that still exist today.
Should Jews just "get over" the Holocaust? Should Native Americans get over centuries of genocide?
Well this is not a History discussion as History is being cherry picked to support positions which anyone who is truly well read would dismiss as facile ones.
Sorry, but I respectfully have to disagree: the history of just about any societal trend is there. It's mostly a matter of knowing where to look for it and how to present it.
The link below represents an outstanding documentary of how millions of African-Americans escaped from the peonage of the agrarian South over the course of the mid-20th Century. Very few individuals are personally cited, but anyone seeking more information on their own background would discover many areas in which to research, and gain plenty of insights as to exactly how the process took place.
The history of many white people in America is told outside of their plantation dealings with blacks. Blacks of the same period seem to be forever linked to their servitude. Why is it we don't refer to the fathers of our country as plantation masters as in " slave owner Thomas Jefferson" , Benjamin Banneker a contemporary of his is always referred to as "freeman Benjamin Banneker "
IMO plantation owners and whites who benefitted from the Jim Crow system did not have as much control over the lives of blacks as they believed they did. There is evidence that some Slaves; accumulated as much as $20,000, opened bank accounts , built vacation homes and the fist black person to accumulate a million dollars died in 1919.
There is a whole history of black people that can be told outside of their lives as slaves just as we study whites with out broaching the subject of their interaction with their slaves as important parts of their life. Just as the story of the first settlers who endured the rigors of the west and it's inherent dangers and hard ships that they had no control over, the story of black people can be told also with tales of enduring hardship that they to had no control over.
Last edited by thriftylefty; 08-06-2014 at 05:18 PM..
“After World War II, a new consensus emerged in the United States and Europe that Jews had to be integrated posthumously into white Europeanness, and that the horror of the Jewish holocaust was essentially a horror at the murder of white Europeans. Since the 1960s, Hollywood films about the holocaust began to depict Jewish victims of Nazism as white Christian-looking, middle class, educated and talented people not unlike contemporary European and American Christians who should and would identify with them. Presumably if the films were to depict the poor religious Jews of Eastern Europe (and most East European Jews who were killed by the Nazis were poor and many were religious), contemporary white Christians would not find commonality with them. Hence, the post-holocaust European Christian horror at the genocide of European Jews was not based on the horror of slaughtering people in the millions who were different from European Christians, but rather a horror at the murder of millions of people who were the same as European Christians. This explains why in a country like the United States, which had nothing to do with the slaughter of European Jews, there exists upwards of 40 holocaust memorials and a major museum for the murdered Jews of Europe, but not one for the holocaust of Native Americans or African Americans for which the US is responsible.”
—
The Last of the Semites by Joseph Massad
I think the problem is not the history of slavery in this country but the fact that too many individuals, especially some of our so-called or self-appointed "black leaders", use this history as an excuse for the segments of the black community that are not moving forward.
Slavery was a cancer on the soul of this country but it ended well over a century ago and anytime slavery is mentioned, it is inevitable that the subject of reparations is broached as well.
Unlike victims of the Holocaust, there is no one alive today who experienced it, so there is no reason for anyone to reasonably expect to receive any type or amount of reparations, unless they have the documentation to proof such a claim and only on a case-by-case basis. Even Holocaust survivors and their next of kin, as well as, the Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps had to show proof of their claims but due to the lack of records regarding the documentation of blacks (i.e. - birth certificates, death certificates, etc.) the burden of proof is virtually impossible to prove.
Like the Jews and to a lesser extent, the Japanese, we need to never forget what happened but use the events as a motivation to promote and prioritize education, self-sufficiency, political and social involvement, individual and civic responsibility, and family values.
There are many survivors of Jim Crow though still today. And majority of those killed & effected by & during the Holocaust were NON Jews.
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