The value of slavery?

[BlackSand]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

 

[Cellblock2429]

Why are people still defending slavery in America? 5 common excuses, debunked.

On the latest episode of her MTV web series Decoded, comedian and activist Franchesca Ramsey highlighted the unfortunate tendency many Americans have to ignore or erase the role slavery played in the country’s past.

"We talk about race a lot on this show," Ramsey said. "But thanks to our current election cycle, apparently we have to go back to the beginning to shed some light on the myths people use to justify slavery."

After Michelle Obama’s DNC speech about her historical legacy as the first black first lady "living in a house built by slaves," slavery fact-checking ensued. The first lady’s statement checked out.

But the fact that people tried to suggest otherwise shows just how little many Americans know about an institution that defined the country at its inception, and how that ignorance prevents us from taking an honest look at the country’s horrific past.

In response, Ramsey broke down five of the most common excuses used for slavery.

1) "Slaves were well-fed"
After the first lady tried to use her DNC speech to show that her time in the White House demonstrated how far racial progress in America has come, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly decided to use her moment to put a positive spin on slavery itself.

The following day, O’Reilly challenged Obama on The O’Reilly Factor, saying "slaves were well-fed." Then, after a backlash, he defended his statement by clarifying that slaves’ diet consisted of "meat, bread, and other staples."

Ramsey cited other common arguments that parallel O’Reilly’s, like the idea that some slave masters treated slaves well or that being a slave who worked in the big house was at least better than working outside in the fields.

But, as Ramsey noted, "this argument is immaterial, as in it doesn’t matter."

No matter their housing or food, the inherent problem with slavery is the fact that people were slaves in the first place, which is only compounded by the ways Africans were taken from their countries of origin and transported to an unknown place against their will where no one was required to muster even an ounce of recognition of their humanity.

"If aliens abducted your brother, sister, and favorite uncle, and stuck a feeding tube down their throats, while forcing them to build their emperor’s house, would you think, ‘Well at least the aliens fed my family’?" Ramsey asked on Decoded. "I don’t think so."

2) Slaves were happy to have work
Slaves may have had many excruciating jobs, including building much of America. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to equate slavery with employment.

"Newsflash: Although you might hate your job, slavery isn’t employment," Ramsey said. "It wasn’t voluntary, and it has no comparison to working at a job."

But even textbook publishers fail to get this fact straight.

Last October, McGraw-Hill Education came under fire after Roni Dean-Burren, the mother of a high school freshman in Texas, shared a photo of immigration patterns in her son’s geography textbook that said the slave trade "brought millions of workers" to the US through slavery from 1500s to the 1800s. But "workers" and slaves are not at all the same thing.

On Decoded, Ramsey explained the major difference: "Being forcibly taken from your home, put in shackles on a disease-infested ship, and forced to do hard labor from sunrise to sunset is not the same thing as clocking in at Starbucks, okay?"

3) Other countries had slavery too
It’s true America wasn’t the only country that had slavery. In fact, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’s name signals the scope of slave routes, which traveled from the shores of West and Central Africa to the Caribbean before stopping in the US.

Many of the people (nearly 4 million) taken from Africa to be slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries ended up in Brazil because the slavery conditions in Brazil were so brutal that continued importation was essential to make up for the high death rate, which outpaced birth rate.

But slavery elsewhere doesn’t change the fact that slavery in the US was still wrong.

"Even if slavery was common practice when America was doing it, it doesn’t make it right," Ramsey said. "Slavery is bad, and it was always bad, everywhere, no matter who’s doing it!"

4) The Irish in America were also slaves
Some people believe the Irish in America were also slaves because the Irish, historically, have faced persecution and many came to the US as indentured servants.

Ramsay’s response is simple: "No, they were not."

Ramsey has discredited this idea before. But that doesn’t change the fact that it has become a fixture for racist right-wing internet trolls.

In an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Liam Hogan, an Irish historian, explained that the myth of Irish slaves "broadly claims that indentured servitude and penal servitude can be equated with racialized perpetual hereditary chattel slavery."

The point is to try to deflect the reality of black people’s enslavement in the US by mythologizing a group of white people who were also slaves.

But Ramsey underlined the main problem with this approach: "Class, let’s say this one together: Persecution is bad, but not the same as slavery!"

5) Africans sold other Africans as slaves
This is similar to saying slavery happened in other places. It’s true that Africans did sell other Africans into slavery, but that doesn’t absolve Americans and Europeans for their participation in slavery.

In fact, suggesting as much erases a lot of nuance about power dynamics involved with how both Africans and Europeans were involved in the process.

As Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote for the New York Times in 2010, "Slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and sellers alike."

But slavery in the US wasn’t exactly business as usual. Barbara Ransby, a historian at the University of
of Illinois at Chicago, noted for Colorlines that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade exploited existing practices like selling prisoners of war into slavery to usher in "a heinous and brutal system that rested squarely on the dual pillars of white supremacy and ruthless capitalist greed."

Ramsey showcased the major takeaway from this historical fact: "It just means that West Africans also have a history to reckon with, just like us and every modern celebrity that thinks blackface is a joke."

So why do people still try to justify slavery today?
It turns out a lot of it has to do with the fact that America’s mythic greatness is inextricably tied to the atrocities of slavery Americans try to sweep under the rug.

Being honest about slavery, Ramsey said, forces us to grapple with the fact that our founding fathers who fought for freedom from Britain’s tyranny hypocritically kept an entire population in bondage. Additionally, recognizing slavery means addressing the systemic inequalities that have stayed with us long after its abolition.

"The blatant forms of racism we still see today, from disenfranchising black voters to police brutality, are rooted in the fact that people were brought here against their will and treated like they were subhuman," Ramsey said.

Acting like this isn’t the case isn’t a solution.

"We can’t keep ignoring and mythologizing slavery just because facing it head-on makes us feel bad," Ramsey said. "Part of the healing comes from facing it."

Why are people still defending slavery in America? 5 common excuses, debunked.

/----/ You claimed that Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery and yet you provided a link that admits it true: From your point #5: It’s true that Africans did sell other Africans into slavery,

 

[irosie91]

OH!!! ok-----the ONLY SLAVERY that "COUNTS" is that involving trans atlantic transport-------I GOT IT NOW

... You should have learned by now.
They don't want you to respond.

They just want you to listen.
You will never understand the way things really are ...
Because you aren't black.

.​

You whites only want lecture us. Everything you say here about us whites do in this section of the forum. In fact all you guys do is project.

try to be more specific. To what does "everything" refer?

 

[BlackSand]

Blah-blah-blah ... In fact all you guys do is project.

If by that you mean fight a Revolution and win our Independence from Britain ...
Then build a country with slave labor ...

Then I don't guess I could argue with that ...

.​

 

[Cellblock2429]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

 

[BlackSand]

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

There's no question to really beg.

It doesn't matter who sold who to whom if human slavery is the trade.
To me ... You cannot justify human slavery through any measure.

But by issuance of that ... It is assumed I would fight slavery in general ...
As well as fight and possibly die before allowing someone to make me a slave.

In one way or another ... Slavery involves compliance by the slave (brutal, forced, coerced or whatever).

.​

 

[IM2]

These words you posted are not exactly facts.

Because The Only 'Facts' You Want Anyone To Accept
Is By Black Re-Historians And Apologists Only

Eye-Witness Accounts By Whites
Traveling In Africa In Those Times
Are All Un-Acceptable Lies To You

Whites are well known historical revisionists. Africans do have a side in this and just because you are white and can't deal with the truth is of no importance to me. Almost every written and documented piece coming from Africans say the same thing. And it shows that Africans just did not run up to whites offering slaves for sale. And in the final analysis those Africans are not respnsible for the atrocities that happened to black slaves while in America. Those Africans did not make American law. An African did not decide Dred Scott , an African did not enact fugitive slave laws, slave patrols or anything else. You have no argument in this matter and you have nothing to disagree about. Not anything that makes sense anyway.

 

[IM2]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

We'll just look for any straw we can.

 

[karpenter]

Why are people still defending slavery in America? 5 common excuses, debunked.
So why do people still try to justify slavery today?

No One Does Either Of These
No One...

So, Why Do You Post References
From Those That Issue False Claims, IM2 ??

We'll just look for any straw we can.

Indeed You Do
But All You Source Is Thin Air

 

[IM2]

Introduction

Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were multifaceted and covered four continents over four centuries. Still, they have often been underestimated, overlooked, or forgotten. African resistance was reported in European sources only when it concerned attacks on slave ships and company barracoons, but acts of resistance also took place far from the coast and thus escaped the slavers’ attention. To discover them, oral history, archaeology, and autobiographies and biographies of African victims of the slave trade have to be probed. Taken together, these various sources offer a detailed image of the varied strategies Africans used to defend themselves from and mount attacks against the slave trade.

African Resistance - The Abolition of The Slave Trade

Defensive Strategies

When the first navigators reached the coast of Mauritania in 1441 and Senegal in 1444, they organized systematic abductions, and met with hostility and reprisals. Although they continued kidnapping, they also started to buy people. But that policy also met with opposition. Explorer Alvise Ca’Damosto, who was attacked by 150 men on the River Gambia in 1454, wrote than when he tried to talk to them,

they replied that they had had news of our coming and of our trade with the negroes of Senega [Senegal River], who, if they sought our friendship could not but be bad men, for they firmly believed that we Christians ate human flesh, and that we only bought negroes to eat them; that for their part they did not want our friendship on any terms, but sought to slaughter us all, and to make a gift of our possessions to their lord.

But armed struggle was neither the only nor always the best strategy. Long-term approaches were also needed to protect people from the slave trade. Earthworks were built to thwart small-scale raids and kidnappings; some rivers were diverted so that they would not bring ships near settlements. Africans surrounded their main towns by thick walls, twelve feet high; they built ramparts and fortresses with deep ditches and planted venomous and thorny trees and bushes all around.

Communities deserted their vulnerable settings to relocate in hard-to-find, easy-to-defend places such as hills, mountains, underground tunnels, marshes, caves, forests, or behind high sand dunes. Some hamlets regrouped to defend themselves more easily. In southern Benin, people built small towns on stilts at the edge or in the middle of lakes. This innovation gave them a clear view of approaching raiders and allowed them enough time to take the appropriate measures.

Africans established work teams for protection, left the paths to their villages overgrown, stationed armed groups at vulnerable points, and covered their roofs with noisy leaves to detect would-be kidnappers. They used their habitat as a safeguard by reconfiguring the layout, size, and architecture of their houses, villages, and capital cities. They built their towns in mazes to confuse and disorient attackers. Houses were connected one with another; they abutted forests and the sea to make escape easier. Some communities adopted the most brutal tactics: they indiscriminately killed anyone who ventured close to their territory so as to discourage any incursion.

Some leaders actively worked against the transatlantic slave trade. One of the most famous was Abdel Kader Kane, the Muslim leader of the Futa Toro region in northern Senegal. Kane had succeeded in peopling his kingdom by retaking by force his people who had been kidnapped and by forbidding slave caravans from passing through his territory. After the French took three children from Futa, Kane sent a letter to the governor:

We are warning you that all those who will come to our land to trade [in slaves] will be killed and massacred if you do not send our children back. Would not somebody who was very hungry abstain from eating if he had to eat something cooked with his blood? We absolutely do not want you to buy Muslims under any circumstances. I repeat that if your intention is to always buy Muslims you should stay home and not come to our country anymore. Because all those who will come can be assured that they will lose their life.

On a personal level, families who could locate a captive on the coast gathered resources to obtain his or her release, even if it meant substituting another person for their loved one. Some relatives were even able to trace the whereabouts of kin deported to the Americas and tried - sometimes successfully - to buy their freedom.

Defensive Strategies - African Resistance - The Abolition of The Slave Trade

Armed Struggle in Africa and in the Middle Passage

As the slave trade expanded, resistance to it grew as well, and the need for shackles, guns, ropes, chains, iron balls, and whips tells an eloquent story of continuous and violent struggle from the hinterland to the high seas. As one slave trader remarked:

For the security and safekeeping of the slaves on board or on shore in the African barracoons, chains, leg irons, handcuffs, and strong houses are used. I would remark that this also is one of the forcible necessities resorted to for the preservation of the order, and as recourse against the dangerous consequences of this traffic.

Wherever possible, such as in Saint-Louis and Gorée (Senegal), James (Gambia), and Bance (Sierra Leone), the Europeans' barracoons were located on islands, which made escapes and attacks more difficult. In some areas, as soon as local people approached the boats,

the crew is ordered to take up arms, the cannons are aimed, and the fuses are lighted . . . One must, without any hesitation, shoot at them and not spare them. The loss of the vessel and the life of the crew are at stake.

The heavily fortified forts and barracoons attest to the Europeans' distrust and apprehension. They had to protect themselves, as Jean-Baptiste Durand of the Compagnie du Sénégal explained, "from the foreign vessels and from the Negroes living in the country."

These precautions notwithstanding, in the eighteenth century, Fort Saint-Joseph on the Senegal River was attacked and all commerce was interrupted for six years. Several conspiracies and actual revolts by captives erupted on Gorée Island and resulted in the death of the governor and several soldiers. In addition, the crews of quite a few slave ships were killed on the River Gambia; in Sierra Leone, people sacked the captives' quarters of the infamous trader John Ormond. Similar incidents occurred in other parts of the African coast. Written records document how Africans on shore attacked more than a hundred ships.

Some Western slavers maintained occult centers in their barracoons, staffed by men they paid to "work on" the captives, sometimes with medicinal plants. The objective was to kill any spirit of rebellion, to "tame" the detainees, and make them accept their fate. The existence of these centers shows the extent of the precautions taken by slavers to prevent rebellions on land and during the Middle Passage: shackles and guns controlled the body, while the spirit was broken.

But revolts on slave ships, although extremely difficult to organize and conduct, were numerous. About 420 revolts have been documented in slavers' papers, and they do not represent the totality. It is estimated that 100,000 Africans died in uprisings on the coast or during the Middle Passage. The fear of revolts resulted in additional costs for the slavers: larger crews, heavy weapons, and barricades. About 18 percent of the costs of the Middle Passage were incurred due to measures to thwart uprisings, and the captives who rose up saved, according to estimates, one million Africans from deportation by driving up the slavers' expenses.

Armed Struggle in Africa and in the Middle Passage - African Resistance - The Abolition of The Slave Trade

When one decides to argue in opposition to something it helps if you know what you are talking about.

 

[Cellblock2429]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

We'll just look for any straw we can.

/-----/ No. I'm not looking for a straw. I'm looking for a simple answer to a simple question: If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

 

[IM2]

Why are people still defending slavery in America? 5 common excuses, debunked.
So why do people still try to justify slavery today?

No One Does Either Of These
No One...

So, Why Do You Post References
From Those That Issue False Claims, IM2 ??

We'll just look for any straw we can.

Indeed You Do
But All You Source Is Thin Air

Actually you have done that.

 

[IM2]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

We'll just look for any straw we can.

/-----/ No. I'm not looking for a straw. I'm looking for a simple answer to a simple question: If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

You were given an answer in post 353. I suggest you read that information then read the information presented in that website.

 

[karpenter]

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

​

Not Exactly...

Once Africans Were Introduced
To The Concept Of Individual Freedom, Here In The West
There Was At Least One Uprising In The South
And One Uprising Considered Real Successful In Haiti

But We Can See The Result Of The Haitian Uprising Today

Never-The-Less
The Out-Come Of The US Uprising Will Be The Same Again
If IM2's '...you don't want to be alive on that day' Delusion Ever Occurrs​

 

[karpenter]

Why are people still defending slavery in America? 5 common excuses, debunked.
So why do people still try to justify slavery today?

Actually you have done that.

Cite...

 

[BlackSand]

Not Exactly...

Once Africans Were Introduced
To The Concept Of Individual Freedom, Here In The West
There Was At Least One Uprising In The South
And One Uprising Considered Real Successful In Haiti

But We Can See The Result Of The Haitian Uprising Today

Never-The-Less
The Out-Come Of The US Uprising Will Be The Same Again
If IM2's '...you don't want to be alive on that day' Delusion Ever Occurrs​

If an uprising against the oppressor is successful ...
Then they are no longer oppressed ...

I never suggested it was futile to fight ...
Just that freedom requires possible sacrifice, or you will be oppressed.

.​

 

[karpenter]

Almost every written and documented piece coming from Africans say the same thing.

'Almost'
You're Going To Leave Out
Magical Cities Paved In Gold
Ability To Fly
And Time/Space Traveling Pyramids ??

That Scholarship Is Too Outrageous Even For You ??

 

[Cellblock2429]

Fixed...

Perhaps that will work out better for them ...

The only real fact is that the oppressed always have something in common.
They refused to fight in order to secure their freedom and general welfare.

.
​

/-----/ Which begs the question, If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

We'll just look for any straw we can.

/-----/ No. I'm not looking for a straw. I'm looking for a simple answer to a simple question: If Africans didn't sell their neighbors into slavery then why didn't the African Nations do battle against the slave traders? They certainly had them out numbered 10,000 to one.

You were given an answer in post 353. I suggest you read that information then read the information presented in that website.

/----/ Great. But apparently the African Nations didn't do enough to stop the slave trade. They had them greatly outnumbered.

 

[dave p]

Who gets reparations?

All blacks?
Just those who can show they descended from slaves?
What's wrong with starting with those who can trace their ancestry to a specific planation or sale
Those who immigrated here post slavery?
What is black? Anyone with a dna test showing they have a black ancestor somewhere? 50%....100%....
What is white?
What about whites who had no part in the slave trade or immigrated post slavery, should they pay?
The government pays because the whites involved in the institution of chattel slavery would not have been able to do so but for the racist laws that they created and the government enforced.
How about whites who lost their lives running the Underground Railroad or working for voting rights for blacks...should they get recompense or are they part of the group that pays?
Not to discount their participation or the risks that they took but there were no laws requiring them to do anything unlike the laws that required black people be kept in captivity and returned to captivity if they managed to escape.

If the government pays it means I pay.

Isn’t affirmative action a form of reparation innacted by the government?

Reparations were made to the Japanese Americans interned during WW2, paid out to each survivor. Not their descendents. A public apology by Reagan representing the government. In my opinion, that is just.

And those reparations should have been made along with the apology. But what determines whether reparations should be paid is the harm that was done, not that our government managed to wait enough time til everyone who could come after it with a claim were all dead. The harm didn't die with them, it was perpetuated for centuries through our government's racist and discriminatory laws and court rulings. And the damage is still being incurred though not in the volume that it had previuosly but still plenty enough for us to know that the problems have not cured.

there are plenty of reparations already in place. No more are needed.

No, there are no reparations in place. Not for blacks.

In a sense there are. Retain government programs were created just for Blacks benefit, those are reparations. Those are all that is needed.

 

[irosie91]

for the record-----the ancient (really ancient---like 5000 years ago) Egyptians---
had black slaves. The Ancient Persians, too. and the ancient Greeks.
The romans did too-----but they preferred blue eyed Europeans when they could get them
The slave trade was DOMINATED and CONTROLLED by arabs for thousands of
years. Simon Legree did not invent it. For reparations for slavery-----see the
arab league