You shouldn’t feel guilt, in my opinion. But you should recognize that you have benefitted in many ways (if you’re white) from the history of white supremacist policies and practices in the US, and non-white people have suffered in many ways due to these policies and practices, some of which continue today.
After wracking my brains for several minutes, I have to admit that I don’t understand the point behind saying this. Slavery might be something you can readily dismiss as part of your heritage, but as an African American, it’s certainly a part of mine. (Doubly so because I hail from the enslaved and the enslavers.)
But…so what?
Maybe not your in particular TODAY since your a first generation immigrant.
BUT, what about your children and the families they marry into? Here in the midwest almost anyone who’s family goes back more than 3 generations has some black or indian ancestry in the mix somewhere. Heck I was surprised how many black people here have Cherokee ancestry also. My wife has a little Navaho indian in her so thats part of my kids heritage now.
You can see it when most American white people have slightly darker skin than Europeans.
If you dont mind me asking, can you trace your family back to a particular plantation and owner?
On my maternal grandmothers side, I know the name of a slaveowner who had children with one of his slaves-- my great great great (give or take a great) grandmother. His property was divvied up to his children, including his white ones. That’s all I know about him.
I don’t know any specifics for my other ancestors.
Can you clarify that? The way I understand it wasn’t that plantation owners were opposed to Native American slaves, so much as the fact that whenever they tried said slaves were generally captured locally and knew the nearby land/had friends nearby and thus had a tendency to successfully escape. Africans had the benefit of being black (so unlike a White person they couldn’t skip town and blend in with everyone) while also being isolated from an established nearby community with no knowledge of the surrounding terrain.
The justifications about black people just naturally being better at farming cotton, as I understand it, didn’t start coming until a quite a bit later when “blacks = slaves” was more firmly entrenched in the cultural consciousness because we’d mostly stopped experimenting with Native Americans and extending white indentured servants’ contracts “just a bit too long.”
The triangle trade also took advantage of the clockwise wind patterns of the Atlantic ocean.
It applied more to South America than to North.
Most African slaves went to South America, to work in sugar plantations. It is correct that owners found that Native Americans died off too easily, from overwork and from imported diseases.
Native Americans weren’t enslaved by Europeans very much, by and large, because most of them died from epidemic disease both in South and North America. Estimates of the die-off range from 75-90%. Native American slaves before the Europeans were mostly war captives and things like that.
Regards,
Shodan
Do you have a cite for this? I’m curious about the numerical breakdown between slaves going to the US, Caribbean, Mexico/Central America, and South America. I wouldn’t have guessed that a majority went to South America – I would have assumed that US + Caribbean had a majority, even if plenty went to SA.
Source
Brazil imported the most slaves, around 5 million in total.
Thanks for the link.
It seems like the sanitizing part started with the bible translators themselves. The older manuscripts of Hebrew and Greek had the words meaning slave much more so than today’s translations into English. Even the KJV only uses slave and slaves twice in the entire bible. It prefers euphemisms like hired hand, maid, man servant, bondmaid, and others, and does so hundreds of times.
I’m in a very rural area of TX. And all I can say, is, the few times I’ve heard it in conversation, it just isn’t a big deal to them. Slaves were supposedly treated quite well, and I’ve heard them say they technically really weren’t slaves the way we think of them as. The longer they go on about it, and with no one questioning them, don’t be surprised if you learn they even had a pension back then.
First I’ve heard this sentiment put like that. Policies?
Seems to me that you really have to torture some logic to state that as absolute truth.
That Saturday Night Live skit comes to mind, where the black cast member goes “whiteface”, and is just given (for free) anything he wants by whites…
And on slavery/racism: What if the Africans had just freely immigrated here, not brought as slaves. Still the same racism and benefit/detriment split?
Yes dude. Policies. Big ones. Not trying to be snarky, but are you seriously saying this is news to you?
I don’t know where to start with this.
News to me that discriminatory practices of the past are now called “white supremacist policies”.
I think it’s a pretty reasonable characterization. Do you disagree?
Still trying to figure out what makes you balk at that characterization. The cite I linked to mentioned the GI Bill and redlining policies of 1940s and '50s, but let me keep going in case your incredulousness encompasses more than that.
Do you dispute that Jim Crow was a policy that kept blacks out of well-funded schools and public universities for decades–let alone out of decent hospitals, restaurants, hotels, etc–and that Jim Crow was founded on white supremacy?
Do you dispute that many local voting laws were policies designed to keep blacks from voting for their self-interests, in the service of white supremacy?
And please help me understand why you apparently find it strange to see laws that permitted slavery to be practiced for centuries “white supremacist policies”? Because it’s mind-boggling to see someone dismiss that of all things.
Where does it all end? I have benefitted from the accomplishments of the Roman Empire, which had an enormous slave population. Can I stop feeling guilty or angry (depends on the ancestor) yet?
I dunno, can you? Only you have control over your emotions, and no one here is demanding that you feel guilty or angry.
What I’m wondering is 1) why appeals like this seem to pop up whenever the “s” word is mentioned and 2) why would any self-respecting, self-aware person say something like this in a thread asking about slave apologists. Like, what better way to show the motivations of slave apologists than to advertise your own irrational emotional reactions to the subject of slavery?
Are you taking notes, OP? Feelings of guilt ultimately are what drive the narratives that seek to excuse or downplay the harm of American slavery. These aren’t positions based on rational analysis of historical fact. They come from emotional responses, knee-jerk in nature.
I don’t feel much guilt or anger, nor do I feel I should. I should think that by now you would know that my post was largely sarcastic. My actual position is that slavery in the US is a historical fact, and the repercussions are still felt today. To a great extent it has never entirely ended, and the political dialog today shows it gaining strength. This is what angers me, but what can you expect from idiots?
On the other hand, slavery has been a large part of the human condition for millennia. Most civilizations were built on the backs of slaves or near slaves. Therefore, we have all benefitted from slavery. Just some historical perspective.