A Conversation for Slavery, Reparations and Common Sense

All I can say is....

Post 1

FairlyStrange

....well put. AMEN!

NM


All I can say is....

Post 2

Ashley


I shall pass your comments onto Rob.

Many thanks

Ashley


All I can say is....

Post 3

WebWitch

While I agree that living in America is in many ways better than living in Africa in concrete terms, and that there is the danger of placing collective blame on people whose ancestors had no *direct* dealings with slavery (though almost all Europeans have ancestors who in some way had dealings with the effects of slavery - i.e. my ancestors were cotton weavers who would not have had that particular job had the massive plantations of the American South existed), I find the assertion that the current position of African Americans (or black Britons, for that matter) has nothing to do with slavery slightly mindbending. Slavery was a cultural norm for African Americans for 4 centuries and ended only 140 years ago. Segregation, a direct outgrowth of slavery, was a cultural norm for 100 years and ended only 40 years ago. I've never met an historian, sociologist, anthropologist or psychologist who would argue that 500 years of history and culture have absolutely no impact on the current culture.

So while I am ambivalent about reparations, I'm very clear on the cultural and psychological impact of slavery which remains to this day here in America.


All I can say is....

Post 4

2 of 3

Black americans may be better off than their african counterparts but we cannot say that this would've been the case had slavery not existed. i.e. they may have been even better off . . . or the US may have been worse off.

Several of the countries of the developed world were built up through the blood and sweat of african slaves. They would not be where they are today had it not been for enslavement and forced labour of africans . . .

So we can't possibly know that black americans are better off now than they would've been without slavery . . . not to mention the colonisation of Africa by European countries.

And african americans still have lots of social problems that can be directly attributed to slavery!

2of3


All I can say is....

Post 5

badger party tony party green party

I live in a country where it has been proved by a judicial inquiry that my murder or the murder of another black person would not be treated as seriously by the law enforcement operators as an identical crime against a white prson.

In this country the colour of my skin determines that I receive a lower standard of health care than the national average and that I am more likely to live in substandard housing. Having read Mihael Moores book "stupid white men" I am lead to think the situation is the same in the US. Black people are not as the writter might try to convince us lucky that slavery happened.

Furthermore that the black people in the US do not live in a politically free nation (the discounted votes of Jewish and black people in the Florida area) as with many of the comments in the original article the one about the political systems in Africa is fatually flawed and only appear true from a white US citzens perspective. I live in the UK which is neither politically free or a democracy in the broadest sense (we have 16 year olds who are taxed but not represented, they can be sent to war but have no say in the political process that decides their fate, sounds just like slavery to me.)

I do agree that reperations for the Black Holocaust are unfeasable and in many ways unreasonable.

That does not mean that the G8 countries should not release their immoral strangle hold on world trade. Slavery was a trade practice and not meant as a harm against black people it was simply cheaper and more sensible to have black slaves than Cornish or Scottish "bond servants". Feudal slavery in different forms had existed in England for generations before the "triangle trade" began. The trade practices of the present are equally abhorrent and damaging to the most vulnerable and least powerful groups of people, children, as they have always been.

This lame, however well thought out, apology for the ignorance and inacction of developed countries, is missing the point. The failure of developed countries to take resposiblity (not to pay reprations but to do something) over the problems that continue to effect terrible harm in many parts of the world, including within their own borders is unforgiveable. No amount of money can ever make amends for the contiuing suffering.smiley - peacesign


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