Black or white-I’ve never understood the concept of race pride. I mean, it’s like being proud of being tall. “Yeah, six foot one, and I really worked on that.”
Still the mindset is pretty well explained.
“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”–Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
Apparently it was a bit more complicated than that.
“…the Haitian slave revolt coincided with the French Revolution, and the slaves and soldiers borrowed from the metropolis the idea that the survival of a revolution justified murder, war and even large-scale massacres, that ideology was worth dying, and killing, for. Second, economic interest was at the heart of the planters’ desire to force black slaves to work, but it also influenced the rebellious slaves’ decision to kill all planters and their families: black generals, who replaced Whites as plantation owners, directly benefitted from the genocide. Third, the 1802–4 period marks the conclusion of a bloody, thirteen-year slave revolt that was itself a reaction to a century-old colonial rule characterized by the brutal exploitation of a large slave population. War, by creating a context in which violent death was the norm rather than the exception, made it easier to resort to mass murder. Fourth, with few exceptions, those who perpetrated the genocide were former slaves, while most victims were former slave owners and soldiers supporting slavery; the genocide was thus a form of class warfare in which an exploited lower class exacted revenge against the master class. Finally, in its last stages, the war turned into a racial conflict that pitted Whites against Blacks and Mulattoes. The usual characteristics of racism (hatred, oversimplification, conspiracy theories, dehumanization) all facilitated the genocide.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00313220500106196?src=recsys&journalCode=rpop20
Probably not a good idea to speak or “tweet” approvingly of any genocide, whatever the supposed justification.
The problem with this argument is that it justified murder on subjective grounds. It excuses the crimes of people like Eric Rudolph who kill to stop what they think are crimes against humanity…in this case abortion.
That’s why we have to do things like consider the context. But to a certain extent, you’re correct, the justification of murder is pretty damned subjective, from an ethical standpoint.
I feel neither outrage or admiration toward this professor. While racial inequality is a deeply problematic reality in this country, I’m tiring, fast, of identity politics. We can do better.
I suppose you can always have less bloody Revolutions (but without skillful leaders, I doubt its effectiveness at preventing loser-irredentism in the future).
Haiti is, without a doubt, history’s most righteous and justified case of Revolution/Genocide/uprising. The Haitian white/Slaver class cannot hold irredentist claims on your land, your labour, and the bodies of you and your family when they are all dead.
I know, right? A multicultural society does not stop racist nitwits from spreading their DNA. LOL!
It doesn’t excuse Rudolph in the least, any more than a killing in self defense does. Are you really saying that a slave who kills their master while escaping is mostly culpable for murder?
Depends on the circumstances. Could he escape without killing? Did he purposely seek him out to kill him? If he had to kill to escape absolutely ethical.
And what if he had to kill to prevent himself from being hunted down like an animal, tortured, maimed, and maybe killed?
In the case of true oppression like slavery, I do not believe that the slaves have any moral obligations to their oppressors.
If a slave burns downs a plantation house with the entirely of the family inside, I would not condemn the slave in any way.
Basically, you are right, it does depend on circumstances.
If they are in the circumstance of being a slave, you have no right to expect them to honor any moral obligations you may think they should have.
I don’t begrudge Alexander Turner for escaping slavery, joining the 1st New Jersey Colored Infantry then returning to his old plantation and killing his former overseer, who had a reputation for cruelty.
The fact that the man lived out his life on a farm in Vermont that he named ‘Journey’s End’ is even better.
Especially when you consider that his grandmother was an English woman who got shipwrecked on the coast of Ghana, fell in love with a local and bore a son, who was later captured and sold into slavery in America.
Reality is almost never so cut and dry. In the heat of the moment the escaping slave might lash out, or set a fire as a diversion. When the alternative is a life of being raped and brutalized forever, and watching their children raped and brutalized forever, I can’t imagine judging someone who acts violently to escape. Slavery, in America, was terrorism and war on black people, and some reacted as humans often do when warred upon and terrorized.
I still prefer the rich people/Republicans of the 1930s who called President Roosevelt a “traitor to his class.”
This accurately summarizes the behavior of all the Trump apologists. They turned the Presidency into an unfunny trolling meme.
I don’t know about the down-home Nazis. But the White Identity guys in nice suits don’t impress me as the types to have Aryan wives at home, popping out blonde babies. They probably can’t interest anyone in their, umm, DNA…
Does it matter that those whites were slavers?
Well any institution like slavery has the ability to break a person down into what people describe as less than human, you lose all dignity, if you really imagine what it would be like to be whipped, starved, humiliated, see your loved ones raped, your children taken away and sold like property never to be seen again, if you think you could experience something like that and not be slightly pissed or changed as a result you’re crazy. The morality of killing the slavers doesn’t even enter into the equation, such treatment of human beings basically reverts us back into the animals we all are deep down, you can’t be dehumanized systematically like that and then be held to some higher standard because you killed the slaver, and then all of the sudden be expected to just bend over and take it.
Agreed all around. I don’t see threads from the OP when a black performer castigated other blacks, for example. Looks like the only race worth being loyal to is white, as far as the OP’s concerned.
Either loyalty or treason to a happenstance of birth is a ludicrous idea.
White nationalist?
I mean, if any group needed killing it’s slave labor camp owners.
I think a part of the belief otherwise is either due to not understanding the absolute depravity of slavery in the Americas. People probably believe that the worst thing about being enslaved was to lose one’s “freedom,” while I’d say it was the torture, murder, and rape of untold millions.
Another reason might be people know about all the evils of slavery, and they just don’t care.
What’s incredibly weird to me is that the OP is presenting a historical slave uprising and slaveowner massacre as a race-loyalty issue, rather than one of mass murder and/or freedom-fighting in general.
I could see somebody arguing in good faith that the rebelling Haitian slaves should be condemned as murderers because retaliatory violence never justified or whatever. I could also see somebody arguing in good faith that the slaves’ violence was justified because legitimate act of self-defense by the brutally oppressed or whatever.
What I can’t understand at all is somebody arguing that one’s view of the ethics of the situation should depend on which racial “team” they happen to belong to. What kind of bizarre-ass racist relativism is that?!