Whew, that takes the heat off of me.
So true! At first, though, I thought the locals lacked my Minnesotan steely resolve in the face of Winter because they closed the schools at the first hint of snow. Then came the day we were sent home early and the bus started slipping sideways down a LO-O-O-NG slope. When I visualized us rolling for about a mile before we stopped I understood the pricipal’s prudence. After that I just enjoyed Winters that hovered around 30 with a thick blanket of snow that lasted for months.
The Blue Ridge is the best of the North and the South for a kid.
This is so true. I grew up outside of Chicago, and vividly recall going to school during what we in New England would call blizzards. Some mornings we’d watch the bus plod along directly behind the plow to pick us up. When my family moved to New England, we were shocked by the concept of a “snow day”, and the ubiquitous “snow delay” mornings. The reason they rarely had to alter school schedules in northern Illinois I think was a combination of the fact that the snow never melted and then froze, and also there was exactly two hills in my entire town. (We made pilgrimage to one or the other to ride our skateboards.)
Here in New England, the temperature is constantly melting and freezing the snow, and there isn’t a single flat (or straight) road in the entire county. Thus it is treacherous, but there’s plenty of plows, sand, and salt to dig us out.
When I moved down to North Carolina, it was back to no hills in the town, and no roads with a curve in them, yet the entire town shut down when we got a mere dusting. This was because there were simply no plows, sand, or salt to handle it.
I loved visiting my grandparents in the Blue Ridge mountains when I was growing up. Though most in this thread would be unamused by my nickname for the area.
I wouldn’t waste my time. The most bigotted talk I ever heard was on visits to Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Boston. The South has never been any more prejudiced than the North. Southerners owned slaves, but so did Yankees. Plus, they were sold by Yankees. And if the DYs had been more agricultural, they would have owned more slaves. Today, the Aryan Nation has its headquarters in Pennsylvania. Even in the 60s, some of the worst race riots were outside the South — Los Angeles, New York, Detroit. We have nothing to defend. If the DYs didn’t like it here, they wouldn’t be moving here in droves. Fuck 'em.
You must have been on the extreme east coast. Only the coastal plains are flat. Most of the state is in the Piedmont, characterized by rolling hills, and an ancient moutain range called “Uwharrie”. And the western part of the state is in the Appalachian mountains, including Mount Mitchell, tallest peak east of the Mississippi.
Your post is mostly inane, but I want to ask this: in what way are the evils of slavery mitigated by the fact that it was motivated by money?
Strikes me as worse: at least Hitler thought, in his twisted awful way, he was moving toward utopia. Slavers were just in it for themselves.
Daniel
I don’t have time to search for one right now, but I’m sure there have been studies about how people acquire racists beliefs. I’d put money on this woman absorbing her attitude from her family, though, before I’d bet that she overheard a single remark in a conversation and said “My God, I’d never thought of it before! They’re so right!”
Wrong. I’m demanding evidence that you’re not talking out your butt before you go accusing Sampiro of propagating racism. You’re the one making the hideous implication; if you can’t support it, you owe him an apology.
But if you’re really interested in the question of how people get racist ideas, why not read a bit on the subject before blowing smoke out your ass? Here’s a very brief article on the subject. Or you could dig a little deeper and check out this book.
Daniel
Hitler and his coterie killed for no other purpose than hate and political gain; the slave trade wasn’t about killing, or exterminating untermensch. It was just about plain old greed. Wholesale slaughter of the slave population (Genocide) would be insane from a profit motive POV.
Hence, I say the slave trade was never about genocide, and anyone who calims it was is being melodramatic.
As bad as it is, exploiting another human being for greed is a much lesser evil than killing them “just because.”
A dead person can never escape to freedom, or be emancipated.
Anyone know how many people died over the course of the American slave trade, as a direct result of it?
I’ve heard estimates as high as 50 million, but don’t know whether those are reasonable estimates.
At any rate, I think it’s ridiculous to have a pissing contest over atrocities like this. Yes, the Holocaust and the American slave trade were different; no, I don’t think that the Holocaust was substantially worse, just different.
Of course, every mountain looks the same size to an ant, and both atrocities are horrific beyond my conception.
Calling it melodrama is bizarre.
Daniel
On a second reading I realize you weren’t calling me melodramatic, since neither I nor anyone else in this thread called the slave trade genocide; that’s a straw man you introduced for your own reasons. I apologize for taking offense at the word.
Daniel
Regardless of the numbers, the difference is intent.
Hitler set out with the intent of completely eliminating the Jewish peoples and other “undesireables.” I don’t think that it’s too much of a jump to suppose that, had he been more successful, the list of “undesireables” would have grown with the aquisition of each new territory to the Third Reich.
The slave trade (specifically the Middle Passage) was probably the worst aspect of slavery, and probably accounted for the largest share of your estimated 50 million.
But no one set out to exterminate the negro.
There was no “Final Solution.” The first instance I could find of them being declared “lesser beings” was after the abolitionist movement began, in reaction to the Abolitionists claims that the negro was a normal human being, deserving of freedom and rights. Darwin’s Origin of Species certainly gave the racists something to latch onto.
But no one set out to wipe the negro from the face of the Earth.
The cultural destruction aspect of the genocide claim comes closest to being valid, IMO. The only systematic attempt to eliminate African culture that I’ve ever read about was within the captured slave population, and through Colonial efforts in Africa,, which are separate from the slave trade.
But that’s looking at the slave trade overall. The Big Picture.
The claim that the Southern American Slave Practice was Genocide is, IMO, patently absurd. And the person making it is, IMO, being melodramatic.
Again, who’s making that claim? I wasn’t, and I searched the thread, and the first time the word “genocide” appears is in your post accusing other people of being melodramatic.
My claim is that the American Slave Trade is to the United States what the Holocaust is to Germany: an atrocity of staggering proportions that inflicted a grave psychic scar on its survivors and the survivors’ descendants.
Daniel
ExTank, I think Daniel is making the point that they are comparable in scope, not that they were identical in execution. You’re picking at a nit on your own shirt.
You equated the American Institution of Slavery to the Holocaust. It was not. The Holocaust was attempted GENOCIDE.
The American Institution of Slavery WAS NOT.
On this level, you may be partially correct, inasmuch as some people may feel some residual guilt for the actions of their ancestors, or may feel the need to assume some burden of guilt for the actions of their country centuries before they were born. But you’re comparing the after-effects of two disparate events.
And that difference is a !@#$% Grand-Canyon of intent. Which brings me too…
I’m not even arguing on the point that they were different in execution; that they were is so blindingly obvious as to obviate the need for statements to that effect.
Where are the concentration camps in Georgia?
Where are the ovens and showers in Virginia?
Where are the ash remains of the 8+ million slaves that were “liquidated.”
I don’t think that the differences in MOTIVATION and INTENT between the American Slave Owners and Nazi Germany are a “nit.”
I think it is grossly disrespectfull to Native Americans, the Jews, the Roma, the Bosnians, and every other victim of “ethnic cleansing” to equate their ordeal to that of the African-American slave. Their descendants may have some moral equivalency to the claim for the treatment of African-Americans after emancipation, but that’s a different matter.
Yes, yes, yes. And the Holocaust was OVER WITHIN TEN YEARS, whereas the institution of American Slavery WAS NOT. Your point–that the two events had differences between them–is both obvious and irrelevant.
Who said guilt? I didn’t. Wouldja quit with the straw men?
Why is it disrespectful? Why is greed, when it leads to torture and slow, awful death, better than hate? Does the motive matter to the victim?
Daniel
You’re presuming that life as a slave is better than death as a warrior. If you have killed a man’s spirit by turning him into your personal sunup to sundown field ox until he drops from disease or old age, thrn you’re more cruel than the man who would have shot him between the eyes.
Oh dear. I seem to have upset the politically correct Left here on The Left Dope Propaganda Board.
It’s irrelevant only if you equate the deliberate, premeditiated murder of 8 million+ people to slavery.
Oh Puh-lease! This is dripping with so much white guilt you could whitewash an antebellum plantation.
Did every slave die of torture? Did every slave die a slow, awful death? Two out of three Jews in Europe did. It would have been 3 for 3 had Hitler not been stopped. It was never the intent of the American slave owner to kill by torture every negro. It was never the intent of the American slave owner to kill them slowly, in an awful manner.
Strawman, stuff yourself.
American slave owners didn’t buy negro slaves to shoot them between the eyes. If they wanted to get rid of excess cash, they could have just burned it or tossed their gold into the ocean. They purchased them for a specific economic purpose, one that precludes overly harsh treatment as a normal regimen of discipline, because at some point in that course of action, death is preferable to life. I think the white French “Masters” on Haiti learned that to their brief regret.
And just as obviously, the “spirit” of the negro slave was not “killed;” I think you are being a racists, condescending twit for supposing that the white slave owner could ever completely dominate the negro slave. Ever heard of Harriet Tubman? Underground Railroad?
By trivializing the American slave experience with inaccurate and melodramatic comparisons to Hitler’s Holocaust, you deny the resilience of the human spirit embodied in every slave escape attempt, whether it was successful or not.
You deny the bravery and gallantry of the “black regiments” that fought and died in the Civil War.
In essence, you are denying the essential humanity of African-Americans.
That is one of the earmarks of :gasp: Racism.
And so, Extank slips into the ranks of the terminally stupid. Forget I said anything.
Daniel
Rather stupid than racist.
Forgetting what you say will be easy; words from people without subtance often are.