Posted on 09/12/2012 11:28:13 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Folk rock legend Bob Dylan has some strong words about America that many of his compatriots may not want to hear: He says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts whether the country can get rid of the shame because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.”
Dylan spoke to Rolling Stone for a cover story that coincides with the release of his 35th studio album, “Tempest.” Dylan has long been an outspoken critic of American culture and its inherent inequalities, particularly during the 1960s when his songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” voiced his generation’s support for civil rights and anger at the Vietnam War.
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan, who has won just about every music and songwriting award on the planet, seems intent not so much on attacking America for its racist history but observing that racism has long been holding the country back.
“People (are) at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color,” he said. “It will hold any nation back.”
A 71-year-old man born in Minnesota at a time when blacks in many parts of the country couldn’t eat in white restaurants or use white water fountains, Dylan has seen a great deal of America’s progress and evolution during the past century—all the way to the election of the first black president. But clearly he has not seen enough progress. And he thinks it all goes back to the country’s founding.
He tells Rolling Stone that blacks know that some whites “didn’t want to give up slavery.” Only after a civil war cleaved the nation in two did slavery come to a reluctant end—after more than 600,000 Americans (including 260,000 Southerners) died in a war that started because the South wanted to preserve the institution.
“If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today,” Dylan observes.
When the magazine asked if the election of President Obama was helping to bring about a change, Dylan says: “I don’t have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change.”
The magazine’s new issue hits newsstands Friday.
Go argue with yourself, ansel12. You just might win.
Read post 114, and think about it.
Let me begin by saying that I am, and pretty much always have been, a Dylan fan. I listened when he was young, I listened during his Christian era (his best), and I've listened to his later years stuff.
Let me offer a defense of his words based on the line above.
It is like saying of a husband/wife divorce: "It would have brought better relationships afterwards, if it hadn't been a physical abuse case. In fact, it would have been better for the kids if it hadn't been a physical abuse case."
Now, as a career-long pastor, chaplain, and marriage & family counselor and educator, I know that the above about divorce and abuse is true. Abuse brings lingering inter-generational effects, and sadly, they somehow transmit to the children in terms of repeating the abuse patterns that they've witnessed.
Can we apply this to a nation, slavery, and the passage of 150 years?
That's pure conjecture on my part, but I have seen the lingering effects of WWII in terms of Germans and Japanese, and how we view them.
So, perhaps this might have been what Dylan was thinking. Perhaps not.
I've already purchased "Tempest", I've yet to listen to it because I just got it day before yesterday, and if there's anything in the album that directly addresses these ideas of Dylan's, then maybe we'll all know a bit more.
I was pleased that Dylan would not defend Obama.
“If we had just left these people in Africa where they enjoyed making slaves and meals of each other , and imported the Irish to work the southern plantations we wouldn’t have had this problem either.
Then again if my aunt had a penis she would have been my uncle.”
Best post of the entire day!
Thanks for posting it,
Jan
“The papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537, to which Spain was committed, also officially banned slavery, but it was rescinded a year after its promulgation. Therefore, the Spanish used other forms of coerced labor in their colonies, such as the Indian Reductions method, the encomienda system, repartimiento, and the mita.
After the issuing of the 1542 New Laws, the Spanish greatly restricted the power of the encomienda system. The statutes of 1573, within the “Ordinances Concerning Discoveries,” forbade certain kinds of coerced labor and regulated treatment of the local population. It required appointment of a “protector de indios”, an ecclesiastical representative who acted as the protector of the Indians and represented them in formal litigation. These laws however did not change very much the practice of encomienda and mita forced labor.
Later in the 16th century, in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, thousends of Indigenous people they were forced to hard work as underground miners in the mines of Potosi, Guanajuato and Zacatecas.
The Spanish imported Africans as laborers to the Americas in 1502.[citation needed] They continued to import African slaves, generally buying them from British and Portuguese traders (the former also were transporting slaves to the West Indies and Americas.) The Spanish finally outlawed slavery in the 18th century in all colonies with the exceptions of Cuba and Puerto Rico. There it survived in a semi-legal state until being abolished in 1866 and 1863, respectively.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Spanish_New_World_colonies
My point is, with you it's always the same. Who do I believe, the great oracle muawiyah or my own lying eyes?
BD needs to go to the old folks home and put a sock in it.
The only way you can deal with these problems is get a source in Spanish from somewhere in the Hapsburg sphere of influence and another in English or French ~ and see if you can figure out what the truth was.
BTW the Turks also had a major interest in the goings on in England and Spain and sometimes you'll see one of their versions infiltrating into the history.
So, you want to believe that the same Spanish government that was suppressing slavery was supporting slavery?
I cannot stand his voice!
Thank GOODNESS I’m not the only one who does not like his music!
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