Posted on 10/24/2012 8:07:45 AM PDT by Perseverando
True origins of institution had little to do with racism
Jon Hubbard, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, has a book, titled “Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative.” Among its statements for which Hubbard has been criticized and disavowed by the Republican Party is, “The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”
Hubbard’s observation reminded me of my 1972 job interview at the University of Massachusetts. During a reception, one of the Marxist professors asked me what I thought about the relationship between capitalism and slavery. My response was that slavery has existed everywhere in the world, under every political and economic system, and was by no means unique to capitalism or the United States. Perturbed by my response, he asked me what my feelings were about the enslavement of my ancestors. I answered that slavery is a despicable violation of human rights but that the enslavement of my ancestors is history, and one of the immutable facts of history is that nothing can be done to change it.
The matter could have been left there, but I volunteered that today’s American blacks have benefited enormously from the horrible suffering of our ancestors. Why? I said the standard of living and personal liberty of black Americans are better than what blacks living anywhere in Africa have. I then asked the professor what it was that explained how tens of millions of blacks came to be born in the U.S. instead of Africa. He wouldn’t answer, but an answer other
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
My yet-to-be-learned lesson – and perhaps that of Rep. Hubbard – is that there are certain topics or arguments that one should not bring up in the presence of children or those with little understanding.
bfl
Another great fact about slavery: 1 million white folk were put into slavery by the Barbary pirates (Africans).
What is also not taught is the fact that arab-muslim slavers and other black tribes captured fellow blacks and sold them at the coast to the Europeans. They were sold off into slavery by their own kind and that this slave trade long predated the European slave market. There are documented narratives of freed slaves making their way back to africa and becoming wealthy and powerful slave traders themselves. Want reparations? Go first and sieze the assets of the democrat party and then to the african tribes who are still there and either still in the slave trade or honor their slave trading past. Some of the real history of the slave trade was first published in the early 1800s.
We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.
Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
~~ Booker T. Washington
Could God still bless America with a President of the stature and intellect of Walter Williams?
That would be the American Dream!
Well, two of the OTHER untold “facts” of slavery are:
1) Slavery - of infidels - is STILL approved of in Islam and actively ENCOURAGED by Mohammad and the biggest slavers in history were Muslims.
2) North American black slaves had it MUCH better than their less fortunate brothers and sisters who were sent to the ‘Sugar Islands” and Central and South America. The mortality there was SO high that a continued supply of replacement slaves was necessary to maintain the workforce, while in North America, slaves were able to maintain their numbers under less deadful circumstances.
America fought a LONG and BLOODY war which imposed horrible sufferings on the slave-holding population of the South and Southerners in general, as well as familes in the North.
We MORE THAN PAID any debt we owed over this many times over.
This article is BS, you can tell by the number of blacks waiting for visas to move to Africa.
Lincoln freed the slaves. Obama is trying to get them back............
I never understand all of this talk.
Nothing is stopping anyone from emigrating, and settling in any African country which will accept them, if that is what some people wish to do.
It’s been almost 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and related policies such as affirmative action having been in place. The rampant discrimination of the past is long gone. Yet some still say we’re fighting the legacy of slavery and all that.
Some extremists even want payment of reparations for slavery.
Whatever today’s problems in the black community, the legacy of slavery is not holding anyone back.
I’m also puzzled that the election of Obama has not been a more powerful symbol that racism and bigotry and discrimination have faded out. If a black man can be elected president, then can’t a black man accomplish anything??
The problem with WW's statement here is that slavery in America was racist. It had to be racist in a nation founded on "all men are created equal."
In a society like most thru history where there are many shades of privilege, extending from the King down through the nobles to the middle and lower classes and eventually to various categories of slaves, at some point the "line" between "freedom" and "slavery" is crossed, but which side of the line you are on makes little difference in your life.
In a society like ours, where "all men are free," there has to be some (seemingly) logical reason why some men obviously aren't free.
The answer was racism. Explained it perfectly logically, if you accept the premise. Black people are enslaved because they aren't really men.
So one can continue to believe in both slavery and the Declaration of Independence without one's head exploding.
Slavery in most parts of the world and down through history hasn't been particularly racist in character. Slavery in the New World and especially in American certainly was.
Thus, black slavery was instituted by a black colonist.
bkmk
The biggest secret the liberals won’t tell school kids: A black man, Anthony Johnson, won a court battle to enslave John Casor for life, making Anthony Johnson, a black man, the first black slave holder in the new world.
John Milton wrote that it was better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. So how anyone can look at slavery and say that it was in any way beneficial to the slave passes all understanding. We are not meant to be someone’s property, no matter how much benefit to future generations are attributed to it. As humans, regardless of race, our natural state is to be free. To make our own decisions and be masters of our own fate, regardless of surroundings. And for someone claiming to be a conservative, a political theory whose guiding principles are freedom and liberty, to speak well of slavery is an absolute disgrace. He is no conservative, not in my book.
See #13. Slavery was instituted in Virginia by a black colonist.
Booker T. Washington seems here to imply that, before their enslavement, the Africans were mutes. Perhaps he meant "without a common language."
Regards,
A little known fact is that the American South is almost the only slave society in history in which the slave population grew at a significant rate without import of new slaves.
Every other slave society of which I’m aware, not just those in the Caribbean, required constant importation to keep up the numbers. Slaves just didn’t reproduce, and they had a much higher mortality rate than the general population.
American slaves did reproduce, and at “population explosion” rates. I don’t think anyone has ever explained this anomaly satisfactorily.
Not that the wonderful Walter Williams isn't worth repeating :-)
I would argue that Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society progrms have inflicted far more damage and harm to the United States than the Civil War ever did.
"The rampant discrimination of the past is long gone."
Hardly. The Welfare and Entitlement programs LBJ passed are more egregious and harmful to blacks today than the Civil War ever was.
I think the average American Slave owner was probably more of a paternalistic kind of overlord and a good businessman.
Probably this is connected in some way with the curious concept of being a Christian and a slave holder.
Well cared for slaves not only live longer and produce more, they also reproduce.
One of my favorite questions to libs is: “Do you know your history on that?” History - REAL history - is something they tend to be sorely inept about.
Yes, but those words were spoken by the character of Satan.
As to the rest of your argument: I don't think that any Conservatives are arguing that the subsequent felicitous circumstance of American citizenship in any way justifies the evil of erstwhile American slavery.
Regards,
That's an interesting story but unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, it isn't true. The first known case of court ordered indenture for life, aka slavery, occurred some time before that. And the owner was white.
"Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere." - A Virginia Court Decision (1640) from Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1898), vol. 5, no. 3, p. 236.
“Another great fact about slavery: 1 million white folk were put into slavery by the Barbary pirates (Africans).”
Oliver Cromwell contributed numerous red-headed slaves to Virginia and the Caribbean. Female mixed race slaves were highly prized for their beauty. And anyone can read the runaway slave reports describing slaves as “lily white” - the U of VA system has these notices in its archives.
"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for the unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished-for reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity. It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.I know not when to stop. I could say many things of the subject, a serious view of which gives a gloomy perspective to future times."
-- Patrick Henry
Well then how about this one? "Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." - Abraham Lincoln, March 1865.
As to the rest of your argument: I don't think that any Conservatives are arguing that the subsequent felicitous circumstance of American citizenship in any way justifies the evil of erstwhile American slavery.
You mean other than John Hubbard, Walter Williams, and most of the posters on this thread? Or would you agree that anyone who believes there were benefits to slavery aren't really conservatives?
Probably not, though not for lack of trying.
Julius Caesar took 10 years to conquer the Gauls, a population of 3M.
When he was done he had killed 1M, 1M were now subjects of the Romans, and he had sold 1M into slavery for his personal profit.
I seriously doubt any Muslim slaver in history ever succeeded in selling 1M people.
You are quite correct, for the Founders. One can accept slavery as an evil while still recognizing that it is impossible to do away with at the moment for practical reasons. That was the position of most, though perhaps not all, of the Founders.
The problem arose later, when southern fire-eaters starting with Calhoun began declaring slavery to be a positive good. At that point one cannot believe simultaneously in slavery and in the principles of the Declaration without demoting the slave, and by implication the black man, from being a full man.
I don’t know why you would want to try to argue this point. Taney was extraordinarily clear on the point in his Dred Scott decision.
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it.”
If that isn’t racism being used to justify slavery, I don’t know what would be.
You are quite correct, for the Founders. One can accept slavery as an evil while still recognizing that it is impossible to do away with at the moment for practical reasons. That was the position of most, though perhaps not all, of the Founders.
The problem arose later, when southern fire-eaters starting with Calhoun began declaring slavery to be a positive good. At that point one cannot believe simultaneously in slavery and in the principles of the Declaration without demoting the slave, and by implication the black man, from being a full man.
I don’t know why you would want to try to argue this point. Taney was extraordinarily clear on the point in his Dred Scott decision.
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it.”
If that isn’t racism being used to justify slavery, I don’t know what would be.
I agree with you on most aspects of this issue, but I think you are carrying your argument too far here.
Sometimes good can come from evil. That doesn't make the evil any less evil, but recognizing the fact doesn't mean one is accepting the evil.
The classic example for Christians is the murder of Christ. He was innocent and undeserving of death, so his murder was intrinsically evil. Yet as a result of this evil act we believe all humanity was offered the opportunity to be saved.
Slavery is the ultimate human evil. It reduces human beings, made in the image of God, to merchandise, thereby insulting God himself.
It is a lifelong kidnapping and rests on a basis of assault, torture and rape.
But even from such extreme evil some good can come.
I agree with you on most aspects of this issue, but I think you are carrying your argument too far here.
Sometimes good can come from evil. That doesn't make the evil any less evil, but recognizing the fact doesn't mean one is accepting the evil.
The classic example for Christians is the murder of Christ. He was innocent and undeserving of death, so his murder was intrinsically evil. Yet as a result of this evil act we believe all humanity was offered the opportunity to be saved.
Slavery is the ultimate human evil. It reduces human beings, made in the image of God, to merchandise, thereby insulting God himself.
It is a lifelong kidnapping and rests on a basis of assault, torture and rape.
But even from such extreme evil some good can come.
There is some dispute back and forth on that. Punch was sentenced to servitude for life for the crime of running away during his period of indentured servitude. Casor was declared slave for life, but not as punishment for any offense. Thus Casor more closely fits the definition of slave. As far as servitude as a sentence handed down for a crime, including servitude for life -- there were a large number of such up until recently, before chain gangs and prison farms fell out of fashion. We no longer sentence people to "hard labor".
So let me ask you. If you could be assured that in exchange for a lifetime spent in slavery, your descendents 3 generations into the future would no longer be slaves but would have a lifetime of second-class citizenship, and that your descendents 6 generations into the future would have a lifetime of prosperity and wealth then would you do it?
Apologies for the multiple multiple posts.
FR is being very weird today.
or perhaps "historically mute", in that without writing and the press, their words had no permanence or reach.
Also, when you're surrounded by hundreds of slaves, it's just not healthy to have them too angry with you. Despite the tales, I have a feeling that the life of an average slave was not much harder than the life of a free sharecropper.
The democrats would bring it back through the back door by allowing sharia law to be established here and there like in Britain that now holds sharia courts as equal to British common law. Sharia in Dearborn? It's there.
Sharia legalizes slavery and murder - honor killings and sex slavery abound everywhere sharia rules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GH0Mk-ZroM
You obviously did not read the entire article.
Read the entire article and then apologize to Dr. Williams
Your comments are exactly what this article is about;
My yet-to-be-learned lesson – and perhaps that of Rep. Hubbard – is that there are certain topics or arguments that one should not bring up in the presence of children or those with little understanding. Both might see that explaining a phenomenon is the same as giving it moral sanction or justification. It’s as if one’s explanation that the independent influence of gravity on a falling object is to cause it to accelerate at 32 feet per second per second could be interpreted as giving moral sanction and justification to gravity.
Re: Same article posted earlier - titled differently by Townhall.com :
What You Can’t Say
Not that the wonderful Walter Williams isn’t worth repeating :-)
Sorry, I missed it. I should have checked a little closer. Dittos to your comment. I love WW’s columns.
If the alternative was a certainty that they would be condemned to live in someplace like Rwanda, in perpetuity? Yes.
Nonsense. It had NOTHING to do with “racism” as we define it today. The reason slavery could be accepted in a nation founded on “all men are created equal” is that they (at least the majority who founded the nation) did not believe they were “men”. They believe blacks to be less than men. Now, I suppose you could make the case that that is its own form of racism, but it has nothing to do with how we use that word today. In other words, the people in those days did not hate black people simply because they were black. In fact, they did not hate them any more than they hated their mules or horses by “enslaving” them. I know that by today’s measure these are disgusting truths, but that is how people who tolerated slavery back then thought.
Wrong again. The problem began when more and more people began to understand that black people were human beings and indeed worthy of living as free as any other man.
“like in Britain that now holds sharia courts as equal to British common law”
No, it doesn’t.
Nope.
Like I said, that good can sometimes can from evil does not mitigate the evil.
Seems to me that’s the issue on this thread. Does the benefit to today’s black Americans mitigate the evil of past slavery? That’s what some conservatives mightsay, or probably more often, what some liberals will say the conservatives are saying. The answerL not in my book.
The equal and opposite fallacy, IMO, is the black racist and liberal claim that the good for American blacks today is completely invalidated by the fact that it is historically based on the past evil of slavery. Therefore blacks are always and eternally victims and we owe them forever, both guilt and money.
IMO, both the evil and the eventual good are real. The good does not justify the evil. But that the evil existed in the past also does not invalidate the good of today.
This is quite thoroughly disproven by the words of the Founders themselves, including those of Patrick Henry quoted upthread. Had they considered blacks to be less than men, there would have been no reason for slavery to bother them. And it most certainly did.
Most Americans didn't care much about it, and to the extent they gave it thought, disliked the institution while at the same time considering blacks inferior.
We should keep in mind that the "science" of the time pretty nearly unanimously concurred in this opinion. The only people who considered blacks fully the equals of whites were the occasional fanatical Christians who took their Bible seriously. Unfortunately, they were counter-balanced by other fanatical Christians who used other passages to "prove" that slavery was God's eternal will.
Over the course of the 19th century this consensus split. More and more in the North became opposed to slavery and especially to its spread. More and more in the South began to think of slavery as a positive good that could and must be spread over the Earth.
The first group tended, though not universally, to think of blacks as something approaching equals. The second group displaced them down the scale, to being less than men, as you say.
What you are doing here is displacing in time the attitude towards blacks common in the South of the 1850s back to the 1780s and making it the norm across the country. Which historical legerdemain Taney also tried in Dred Scott, but which was diced, sliced and dismembered in the dissenting opinions.
LOL! No problem. I just didn't want you hounded by the Posting Police. Not your fault the papers play switcharoonie with the title.
Ah, Walter Williams. I wonder if Romney could talk him into running the Dept of Education?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.