I am a latecomer to this long thread, and maybe i missed a post, but what is the value of a US Citizenship? Looking at the number of immigrants here in Texas, I believe it is pretty high. I suggest that anyone african-american wanting reparations be given two choices, 1) reparations and a trip to africa (with no possibility of return) or 2) US citizenship with the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else (one can make a good faith arguement they do not have this today, although I would disagree).
Yes, I agree racism is alive and well in the US, but I fail to see what that has to do with reparations.
The same is true of many poor and working class whites. The deck is stacked against them, too. Please get over this idea you seem to have that white skin provides some kind of magical protection against injustice and hardship.
**
If I told you how even half the shit I’ve suffered in my life, you’d probably accuse me of making it all it up, and I wouldn’t blame you. And yet no matter how much I’ve endured, people like you go on insisting that I am somehow privileged simply because I’m white. I am not supposed to believe what I’ve experienced in my own life and what I’ve seen with my own eyes, 'cuz ya see, I’m just poor dumb white trash blinded by ignorance and prejudice, and all the wonderful privileges I enjoy are invisible to me 'cuz I’m not wearing your magic spectacles. Fuck that shit. It’s the emperor’s new clothes, and I’m not buying it.
But you see, an argument you’ve been using is also disgustingly racist.
Some posters here have objected to the argument that blacks today shouldn’t complain about slavery because, without slavery, they wouldn’t be here in America at all, and being in America is obviously a great benefit. Well, it’s a stupid argument, and those posters are right to object.
But the argument that all whites have benefitted from racism, even if they can’t see it, is just as stupid. Hell, many whites were actually hurt by racism because it blinded it them to their real political and economic interests and made them the pawns of unscrupulous politicians. The theory that all whites are privileged, regardless of their circumstances as individuals, is viciously racist.
Okay, so I’d have an easier time getting a cab in New York than a black guy. But somehow I don’t think that balances out all those years of poverty I endured.
This, I think, is where the “unjust” objection to reparations comes in: that a poor white, struggling to keep his/her head above water, will have their taxes go to a middle- or upper-class black solely on the basis of skin color.
The logistics themselves, of course, are a nightmare.
Who, pray tell, has suggested that you feel guilty? Provide a cite, name a name, please. Now I may be wrong, but I don’t think anyone has done that, at least here. Are you sure that all this guilt you’re being demanded to feel isn’t being sought by your own conscience? I certainly don’t want it if it means you being irrational and hyper-defensive.
The depth of ignorance being displayed in both reparations threads leads me to conclude that this country really does need a American slavery museum. When we have posters saying that 22 million or more dead Africans does not represent a holocaust because it happened over the course of many years, it makes my chromosomes ache. [B}Truth Seeker**, if holocaust is not the appropriate word for all those deaths, what is? Have you paused to think why those people died, and how? Just think about how insensitive your comments sound, and why it makes this descendant of American slaves angry.
White people are tired of feeling guilty. I understand this. But please understand this: black folks are sick and tired of having to prove why slavery was the atrocity it was.
Last summer I went to the Holocaust museum with a German friend of mine. I was proud that he wanted to go there, probably more than anyone else that we were traveling with. You see, even though he didn’t particpate in the Holocaust, he still had to confront what his country had done. In doing so, he had to check defensiveness, guilt, and pride at the door; he had to swallow his shame and take in everything with an open mind and accept that yes, this happened, yes, it was terrible, yes, yes, yes. He didn’t blather on in denial about this being hyperbole and that being false. He took it all in like a man. I will never forget his strength and courage that day.
I wish their were more like him, I really do.
I really believe an American slavery museum is something that could help heal us all.
Who, pray tell, has suggested that you feel guilty? Provide a cite, name a name, please. Now I may be wrong, but I don’t think anyone has done that, at least here. Are you sure that all this guilt you’re being demanded to feel isn’t being sought by your own conscience? I certainly don’t want it if it means you being irrational and hyper-defensive.
The depth of ignorance being displayed in both reparations threads leads me to conclude that this country really does need a American slavery museum. When we have posters saying that 22 million or more dead Africans does not represent a holocaust because it happened over the course of many years, it makes my chromosomes ache. [B}Truth Seeker**, if holocaust is not the appropriate word for all those deaths, what is? Have you paused to think why those people died, and how? Just think about how insensitive your comments sound, and why it makes this descendant of American slaves angry.
White people are tired of feeling guilty. I understand this. But please understand this: black folks are sick and tired of having to prove why slavery was the atrocity it was.
Last summer I went to the Holocaust museum with a German friend of mine. I was proud that he wanted to go there, probably more than anyone else that we were traveling with. You see, even though he didn’t particpate in the Holocaust, he still had to confront what his country had done. In doing so, he had to check defensiveness, guilt, and pride at the door; he had to swallow his shame and take in everything with an open mind and accept that yes, this happened, yes, it was terrible, yes, yes, yes. He didn’t blather on in denial about this being hyperbole and that being false. He took it all in like a man. I will never forget his strength and courage that day.
I wish their were more like him, I really do.
I really believe an American slavery museum is something that could help heal us all.
Who, pray tell, has suggested that you feel guilty? Provide a cite, name a name, please. Now I may be wrong, but I don’t think anyone has done that, at least here. Are you sure that all this guilt you’re being demanded to feel isn’t being sought by your own conscience? I certainly don’t want it if it means you being irrational and hyper-defensive.
The depth of ignorance being displayed in both reparations threads leads me to conclude that this country really does need a American slavery museum. When we have posters saying that 22 million or more dead Africans does not represent a holocaust because it happened over the course of many years, it makes my chromosomes ache. Truth Seeker, if holocaust is not the appropriate word for all those deaths, what is? Have you paused to think why those people died, and how? Just think about how insensitive your comments sound, and why it makes this descendant of American slaves angry.
White people are tired of feeling guilty. I understand this. But please understand this: black folks are sick and tired of having to prove why slavery was the atrocity it was.
Last summer I went to the Holocaust museum with a German friend of mine. I was proud that he wanted to go there, probably more than anyone else that we were traveling with. You see, even though he didn’t particpate in the Holocaust, he still had to confront what his country had done. In doing so, he had to check defensiveness, guilt, and pride at the door; he had to swallow his shame and take in everything with an open mind and accept that yes, this happened, yes, it was terrible, yes, yes, yes. He didn’t blather on in denial about this being hyperbole and that being false. He took it all in like a man. I will never forget his strength and courage that day.
I wish their were more like him, I really do.
I really believe an American slavery museum is something that could help heal us all.
I agree with almost everything you said there, you with the face. A slavery museum would be appropriate. I understand that there was great suffering and dislocation.
But you’re still not getting my money. That’s the point. I think Squish said it best.
The Holocaust museum shouldn’t be there. It was not an important or central event in American history, and it exists simply because American Jews have the political clout to make the rest of us pay for a museum that they should pay for out of their own pockets.
**
Fair enough, but we should also have a museum about the dispossession of the American Indians and a museum about the exploitation and oppression of poor and working class whites.
You should, by the way, go to the library and get a book called Time on the Cross, which will explain to you that slavery in North America wasn’t as terrible as most people think. No, slavery wasn’t good; but there has been significant exaggeration of its horrors.
It was **not ** a Holocaust. Among other things, the Jews did not gleefully sell each other to the Nazis; and the European slave dealers weren’t conducting a planned campaign of genocide, they were trying to get cheap labor so they could more profitably exploit their holdings in the New World. These are crucial differences.
Slavery was not good, but there has been a significant exaggeration of its horrors
Polecat, I thought you were a reasonable man, but you just lost me there. This is not history. This is neo Confederate propaganda. You are of a piece with the Nuwabians and the other nutjobs.
Well, except for the fact that the events which precipitated and accompanied the Holocaust are, for all practical purposes, indisinguishable from those of WWII, which was not only an important and central event in American history, it was the defining event for Western culture in the 20th century.
wring, does the “liberal but not a fucking lunatic” table have an "against reparations but doesn’t think that slavery was ‘not that bad’ " section?
I’ve been lurking on this thread but I feel compelled to say something, lest lonesomePolecat gets too carried away…
So a museum dedicated to slavery isn’t fair unless everyone wronged in the US gets one? Is that what you’re saying?
Somehow I don’t think you care about museums or memorials. You just want to keep harping about poor whites and their struggles. Yes, they have struggled. But WHAT THE FUCK DO POOR WHITES HAVE TO DO WITH BLACK PEOPLE AND THEIR OPPRESSION!
<dammit!>
Your argument is crazy: the US doesn’t owe black people anything–symbolic apology or otherwise–because another group was wronged too. But admitting that one group was oppressed doesn’t mean another wasn’t. Admitting that one group suffered doesn’t mean no one else suffered. Admitting the horribleness of one form of oppression doesn’t discount the horribleness of others. Stop making this into a poor-whites-are-special-too affair. Poor whites ain’t got nothing to do with black Americans and their quest for justice!
And I recommend you pick up a book of slave narratives. From the mouths of the people who were actually there. Not all the stories were full of tragedy and horror, but many were. The fact that there were so many slave rebellions and runaway slaves provides further testament that slavery was worse than “not good”.
(I’m just SO sick of people discounting slavery. It “wasn’t good”? If that shit is supposed to be funny, it’s not!)
It WAS a holocaust, buddy. Millions of people died on the hellish voyage known as the Middle Passage. Thousands more died when they got here and were broken in like horses, their culture, names, language, identities ripped from them.
Just think of the millions of people who were brainwashed into thinking they were souless animals at best, spawns of Satan at worse. And all the millions of people who would never fully understand the concept of freedom. Yes, freedom, the principle on which this country is supposedly built. Even if no one physically died, this to me would be tantamount to death.
Secondly, you don’t think there were some Jews that sold out to save their asses? Selling out ain’t a “slavery” thing, my friend. It’s a survival thing.
So why didn’t they rape and pillage themselves if they were just looking for “cheap labor”? Why didn’t they cram some Englishmen or some Belgians or some Russians into the hold of a slave ship and enslave them?
Whether or not they intended genocide is besides the point anyway. Just looking at the typical hold of slave ship, it’s clear that the value of a African slave’s life and that of a Jew during the Holocaust was about the same…nil. And if the Europeans ended up eradicating African societies in their efforts to exploit the New World, I don’t think they would have shed very many tears, do you?
Yes, like the historical differences between the poor whites and black Americans. But I’m guessing you only see differences when they fit your argument.
'Um…, who captured and sold black Africans into slavery?
Wal-Mart?
Sears & Roebuck?
Bloomingdales?
NONE OF THE ABOVE! Just their local territorial boss or village chief who were out to make a buck. Life sucks and then you get sold. Better pick better leaders than one that will sell your "ass"ets off at the drop of a guinea.
Pretty much, yeah. I see no reason why there should be a museum honoring your ancestors and none honoring mine. But you’re a racist asshole, so you can’t be expected to understand that.
**
It matters because it provides proper historical perspective. If you ever get over the idea that the only suffering that matters is the suffering of black people, you’ll be a lot closer to getting over your racism.
**
Good! Some faint glimmer of understanding is finally beginning to seep into that little knot of primitive cells at the top of your spine you’re using for a brain! Lots of people besides blacks got royally fucked, too, so there’s not much point in singling out blacks and giving them special attention or benefits. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll some day come to understand that black people aren’t the only ones that matter. But I’m not holdin’ my breath.
**
Exactly. So why are you so desperate to deny the oppression and exploitation of poor whites?
**
Stop trying to deny the horrors visited upon poor and working class whites in Europe and North America for centuries. And that “quest for justice” is looking more and more like “thirst for revenge” every day.
**
I’ve done plenty of reading about slavery, thank you.
**
I’m just SO sick of racist blacks who think the suffering of THEIR ancestors is the only suffering that matters.
**
Did I hurt your widdle bitty feewings? This is the Pit, you racist asshole. If you can’t deal with the fact that most people see the demand for reparations as the vicious racism that it is, you need to turn off your computer and watch cartoons or read comic books.
**
No, it wasn’t, bub.
**
One more fucking time. This didn’t happen just to * you. * They’ve happened to plenty of others as well, and the concept of “freedom” you’re talking about pretty much didn’t exist before the modern West invented it. You are judging whites by standards of morality which you learned from whites. Africans had no moral problems with the slavery and slave trade at all. Some of them still practice it.
**
There was no open, large scale trade whereby Jews sold each other to the concentration camps. The Africans didn’t sell each other into slavery trying to “survive.” They did out of greed and out of hatred for each other.
**
They did. Millions of whites from Europe got sold into slavery into North Africa and the Middle East. So many slaves were taken from Eastern Europe that Slav became the root word for the English word “slave.” There were white slaves in America before there were black ones, and many of them suffered as badly as any black slave. Plenty of whites were reduced to sub-human status and treated as beasts of burden, too.
**
Then you’re guessing wrong. I try to look at the whole picture. You only look at the parts that seem to justify hatred for white people.
Certainly there are, Squish. I never claimed otherwise, in fact I said last week while I was watching the march on TV that many of the supporters bothered me.
**'Uigi, I’m sure you wouldn’t understand this since “they all look alike”, but Africans weren’t sold into slavery by their own chieftans.
LonesomePolecat, others may not want to say this, but as a poor white man myself I feel the need to tell you to get off the fucking cross.
I live in a trailer park, the AC in my car has been broke all summer and I haven’t been able to afford to fix it. So fucking what, there is a huge fucking difference between being poor and being discriminated against.