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Well...even today if you look at how some of the immigrant migrant farm workers are treated....its pretty terrible. Generally there is a one-generation initiation of exploitation for most new immigrant groups in America.
The thing to note is that white society did not learn its exploitation and oppression when they found black people. This has been the way of life for white civilizations in all the history that I have read. The elites exploit the masses. That is the history of their culture. Its a learned behavior. The term "slave" derived from the treatment of "slavic" peoples. The term "Barbarian" has its roots in Europe. So no one is ignorant of the fact that whites have been oppressed under the system of whites, in the absense of any other group to oppress. Their economic/political constructs were dependendent upon an oppressed class. So no one is arguing that whites have not been oppressed.
The thing is this. Whites did not pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If they had of done that, they would have done it in Europe. Instead, whites pulled themselves up by taking the land, resources and labor of people from other lands. They created essentially the same system that the fled from in Europe, one in which the aristocracy and monarchies oppressed the masses based upon "Class", and turned it into a system based upon "Race" in the new world. The English and the German were granted immediat privilege and status in the new world, but all other white nationalities had to go through a one generation intitiaion into "white privelege". Oppression was unsustainable because if an Irishman did not have an accent and he changed his last name....you could not identify him to discriminate against him. There were ways to avoid detection for white oppressed groups....but there was no way for non-whites to avoid detection. The only way discrimination can work is if the targeted group are easily identifiable. It would be like Northern blacks trying to discriminate against Southern blacks....but how could you tell where they were from?
Every ethnic background has has sad and rough parts in their history. Every one of them are able to overcome these parts of history. It is only individuals that try to hold on to this past, that dont overcome it.
See, here we have an historic photo of black kids who look downtrodden. Then someone says, "Well there are white folks who are downtrodden too." The response for that is; "They may have been downtrodden, but they were at least free." To which comes the reply, "Not all white folks have been free down through history. Whites have been slaves too." That is answered by, "But whites were never slaves in this country..."
All this "race comparing", which is all it is, stems from a photo of unknown kids from 150 years ago. Now forget the kids for a moment, does anyone want to try to analyze the logic of "race comparing" based on one photo?
At least the USA acted like these Europeans were welcome. No such welcome for us.
And as has been pointed out before, they didn't have to come here. Nobody was forcing them to come here.
The USA did NOT act like all Europeans were welcome. And in fact, turned away some of those Europeans when the quotas were met. Yes, the immigrants came willingly, but quite often they had expectations that were not met, and the poverty and squalor they lived in in the United States was actually worse than what they had left. However, they'd sold everything they owned to get here, they didn't have the means to return to their home countries.
Notice how the left comes in so fast to pretend it will be the TEA party people who will use this photo? Never noticing it is they who are jumping on it and using it to promote their own agenda.
See, here we have an historic photo of black kids who look downtrodden. Then someone says, "Well there are white folks who are downtrodden too." The response for that is; "They may have been downtrodden, but they were at least free." To which comes the reply, "Not all white folks have been free down through history. Whites have been slaves too." That is answered by, "But whites were never slaves in this country..."
All this "race comparing", which is all it is, stems from a photo of unknown kids from 150 years ago. Now forget the kids for a moment, does anyone want to try to analyze the logic of "race comparing" based on one photo?
The problem arises when I.S. starts the poor us threads and some people start pointing out that some whites had it just as bad. in fact until labor unions were formed and forced passage of the labor laws, there wasn't much protection for the factory or mill worker and it was tantamount to slavery and conditions were horrendous. So yes many whites had it almost as bad. I still to this day would not work in a coal mine. here read this: Yes Virginia, WHITE Slavery Did Exist « ELLIOT LAKE News & Views
I'm really not sure what the point of this OP is. Is the picture supposed to prove that slavery existed in the U.S. and that it included children? Well, we already know that. Is it supposed to document the abusive treatment of slave children? Well, apart from the fact that the children pictured are dressed in rags, it really doesn't do that. I'll bet there were plenty of poor white kids living in similarly deplorable circumstances, minus the slavery aspect of course. So what's the point again?
The point is that a rare artifact, documenting America life, during the Civil War/Slavery period was discovered. It's priceless!
Last edited by dorado0359; 06-14-2010 at 04:18 PM..
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here read this: 
