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Contemporary? LOL. So only college grads are allowed an opinion? My college education status should make no difference but since you are probably old and set in your ways, your response makes sense now.
Knee-jerk? I actually read the link provided. Did you? The context of the OP doesn't even marry with the info provided in the link so not sure how that is knee-jerk.
Where did I call the OP a racist? I actually said he/she wasn't. Perhaps work on your reading skills before you opt to criticize someone's post that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
dude, that is not even a good wiggle. Your post still stands for everyone to read. If you want to assert now that it was not knee jerk, ok, I will believe you, but it makes the last paragraph spot on to describe YOU, not him.
and yes, if you are a 97 'yukon' grad (as we used to call them in the calhoun era) as you claim, something has changed. my wife was an '89 grad and the lessons taught then are quite different - as in how you look at the world - as you claim they are in 97
"who" builds is nowhere near as important historically as "what gets built" and "why?"
And once built, "who built that" is infinitely less important than "who uses/maintains" what was built.
A common complaint of the proletariat is to confuse guided labor with creativity, purpose and profitability. It is none of those things, just directed effort. In that way, the laborer is as useful as any other tool, but also equally replaceable and historically insignificant. Nobody credits saws, hammers, nails and caulking when they look at a Frank Lloyd Wright house, yet no Frank Lloyd Wright creation still stands without saws, hammers, nails and caulking as input tools/materials. Guided human labor is functionally no different than a hammer or saw. Just another tool.
So yes, in practice, it is tools and materials that build anything. But what gets built, why it gets it built, how what is built is designed, and what that which is built gets used for and for how much benefit...all that is what matters to history, and the tools used in the building are historically and philosophically irrelevant.
"who" builds is nowhere near as important historically as "what gets built" and "why?"
And once built, "who built that" is infinitely less important than "who uses/maintains" what was built.
A common complaint of the proletariat is to confuse guided labor with creativity, purpose and profitability. It is none of those things, just directed effort. In that way, the laborer is as useful as any other tool, but also equally replaceable and historically insignificant. Nobody credits saws, hammers, nails and caulking when they look at a Frank Lloyd Wright house, yet no Frank Lloyd Wright creation still stands without saws, hammers, nails and caulking as input tools/materials. Guided human labor is functionally no different than a hammer or saw. Just another tool.
So yes, in practice, it is tools and materials that build anything. But what gets built, why it gets it built, how what is built is designed, and what that which is built gets used for and for how much benefit...all that is what matters to history, and the tools used in the building are historically and philosophically irrelevant.
every word you say is true. The narrative that the OP is complaining about is just more of todays redefinition and revisionist actions with regard to the past. 'america', certainly any america we would identity with, was built by americans. the industrial revolution was just that. in the time period they oft refer to - first landing thru 1865 - the area to which they refer was just a patchwork collection of farms. oooo, real hard to build. work yes, build no and as you point out, ANYONE could, and did build them. But in todays newspeak you have to attach narrative to state that group A did more than they are credited and group B did less than they are credited. its no longer good enough to go thru life and do what you do without a stigma being attached
people only read what they want to read that supports the narrative they want to adhere to. The fact that other things DID happen in the past and very few leaders have a clean background sheet, does not mean you have to visit the sins of the father upon the child - that is what the left lives and breathes today to cover their past. Their past is their past, get over it. Own it. Move on. Dont repeat.
And to be fair, worldwide and history wide, to my recollection, the only 'resettlement' that has ever worked for mostly positive gain is Australia. And to accept that, we have to ignore something else....
FWIW, 'slavery', in this county, has been off the books for over 150 years. note that I said in THIS country. For as much as the left ******* they certainly turn a blind eye to their 'partners' as Jen calls them. But has it left his country? one institution still exists in this country in this year: the existence of the reservation. There is another 4000 words on that subject alone
Also important to remember that empires take centuries to create and days/weeks to destroy.
What Reagan said is true - you are never further than one generation away from the end of freedom and liberty, and that goes for ordered, productive society as well. You don't even need to look far...just look at Venezuela, Zimbabwe or South Africa.
Maintaining is an important factor in this whole "built" thing so far as history goes.
Many times we here the nonsense from the left that "black slaves built America". Of course, this is absurd, as the US was built by Northern European males, who farmed the land, built the buildings, built the factories and the transportation that made America. {snip}
Slavery in the US was mostly contained in the South. The US South in the 1700-1800s was always the poorest most under developed in the colonies. Even after the revolutionary War and the Civil War, and for many decades afterwards, the poorest parts of the US were still the South. So slave labor did not build this country, even after the cotton gin, slavery only fattened the wallets of the wealthiest slave owners.
I've heard the same said about "inherently criminal" Italians and the "lazy and dirty" Irish. I'm not sure any of these assertions are fair. I guess it depends on who you ask.
Don't forget the inherently stupid Polish, and the savage Germans
Actually anyone with an ounce of sense could come up with a pretty good reason rather quickly why Blacks sent back to Africa weren't able to amass wealth, but then that wouldn't fit your agenda would it?
Think: Resources, Capital, Environment - not exactly rocket science.
Your very own link provides a hint..."The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest in accurately-recorded human history.[2][3] Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived"... "group of 43 African Americans from Christiansburg, Virginia left for Liberia in 1830, but suffered high mortality. "Eighty percent of the emigrants were dead within ten years of landing there, most of them victims of malaria".
We get it - you're not racist, but it appears some bitterness continues to gnaw at you. Maybe you should focus on bettering yourself in 2022, spend less time on the forums and actually do something impactful with yourself. You'll feel a whole lot better.
But "amassing wealth" and "building" something are not one and the same thing.
In order to BUILD something, you actually need to have engineers and technicians working on it first of all ( all that infrastructure, warehouses, machinery and what not.)
And from this point of view, the OP is correct - it all has been done ( for the most part) by the white males of the Northern European descent.
I am certain that if you look at some Abu Dhabi or Riyadh wonders - all those sky-scrapers/towers - they were designed/ built by some white males engineers/technicians from US/Canada/ Europe. Not by the natives.
Even if the natives of Saudi Arabia were able to "amass wealth" all right, because of all the oil they are sitting on.
P.S. Oh and by the way - there were times when Europeans were dying of numerous diseases/epidemics too en mass, but they developed the vaccines against it.
Don't forget the inherently stupid Polish, and the savage Germans
I am not sure how "stupid" Poles really are, but even if Germans can be savage from time to time, this doesn't exclude them from being excellent engineers and musicians alike.
To be honest I never took that saying , " Black slaves built America" , to mean that they were the inventors and brain power to structure production and have a plan to do this or that.
I took it as they were the laborers and grunts,. i.e. slaves, that were forced to 'build America'. Just from a labor point of view.
While I still find even that a bit hyperbolic, that's how I took it.
I guess we should take the “black slaves built America” claim “seriously but not literally”.
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