Okay well, anyone with time may continue on this post- I am drinking a cup of coffee on a Friday night relaxing from a long week of homemaking and am starved for adult thoughts and conversation.
I think blaming whites for slavery is just as racist as the mean old plantation owners that treated them badly. But note that some slaves were treated quite well under the circumstances. Blacks sold blacks in Africa. They sold them to spaniards and later the english. Africans were sitting on literal gold mines and diamonds and somehow they decided to sell their own people.
Even today, they treat eachother awfully in my opinion, and some still use poorer citizens for profit by force. Ever see
"Blood Diamond"? Maybe it was the "obvious" class system that was abandoned by other civilizations far before that was in play over there. They took indentured servitude to a whole nother level. And it still baffles me that an area so close to the Tigris is so far behind other areas of the world in that regard. Maybe it's the Lions and Tigers. But I can tell you, there are no Lions in Georgia.
In selling them to the sailors from countries pioneering in seamanship- their travels brought blacks to areas of the world. Those areas of the world began to see blacks as slaves. That notion had to start from somewhere. But that's in the past and no one seems to look before 1654 AD nor at the other areas and races of the world.
In early America there were many different races designated as "slaves" but it was the farm regions in the south that caused slavery to be designated to just Africans for that purpose in the 17th century. Very racist, very racist indeed. Even some "free blacks" had slaves but only 1 in 4 households had them in the slave states and it was mostly for labor on the plantations. Kind of like illegal migrant workers now, but they are not slaves because of their color and they choose to be there.
Anyway, it was awful. But many other white Americans saw that and the majority of white Americans see it now.
In fact, 360,000 members of the Union Army which was predominantly white died to free blacks in the Civil War. That's roughly 120 times the amount lost on 9/11. Over half of the total 654,000 black slaves (out of 12 million throughout the world- mostly to Brazil) that were brought to the United States.
So it is indeed very presumptious and outright ridiculous to think that all whites were responsible for slavery. Not to mention that millions of whites have immigrated here since as well as blacks. So Keyshaun could be blaming James, when in fact, James' great great great great grandfather was an indentured servant from Ireland and Keyshaun's great great great grandfather was a fresh market vendor from Jamaica.
I am a white woman, I live comfortably and grew up comfortably in Virginia. My father worked hard and went to OSU on a music scholarship. His father was an artist and his mother an organ player at a church. His grandfather was a president of an Ohio college and he grew up working on a farm of his father who came over from Welch England. My mother's side is from Missouri - farmers and native americans. So I have no familial ties to black slavery in the United States. Every black child I grew up with went to an unsegregated school as did their parents. Every black person has had every right I have had and more scholarship opportunities. And after college there are the racial quotas in the work force that need to be met etc. But I can assume that I have been looked at by a black person and judged an evil whitey.
It's not my fault that the government in place in this geographical area voted slaves to be African. I did not vote for it or the elected officials that established that ruling nor did the people I came from. Many white Americans can say that.
As a white person I am tired of being made to feel guilty for that crap. I'm tired and weary of being afraid to step on a black persons toes. As a woman, I must gloat that my kind hasn't been as bitter even though we were granted our rights as citizens 50 years later.
That's all.
