Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
I specifically stated in Post 130 that:
“During the 1860's, my family was back in Cuba providing Generals and Founding Fathers to the Cuban Republic and the Cuban wars of independence from Spain. My great-great-grandfather was a signatory to the first Cuban Emancipation Declaration but that same ancestor had owned slaves.”
“Emancipation Declaration” means the document that freed the slaves. Yes, he owned slaves once upon a time. He freed his own slaves and then he tried to free every other slave in Cuba. Unfortunately, Spain won the 1868-1878 Ten Years War, my great-great-grandfather was killed in that war, the first Cuban Emancipation Declaration died with the loss of the war and slaves in Cuba stayed slaves under Spanish rule.
So, maro, don’t give me that patronizing garbage about “That's OK; I bet if you go back far enough, you will find some ancestors of mine who owned slaves too.”
How many Emancipation Declarations abolishing slavery in an entire country did any of your ancestors ever sign?
Slavery was quite common in ancient times. But can we all agree that, as modern men, we understand that slavery is and was evil, and that we have done well to get rid of it (except in places like the Sudan)? If you agree with that, then can you see why symbols that suggest latter-day sympathy for slavery are indecent?
And who decides what, exactly, is a “symbol of slavery”, maro.
Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? Hillary Clinton? You? A majority vote of any and all people who claim they are offended?
You want a “symbol of slavery”, maro? Pull out you wallet and take out a One Dollar Bill. You see that man on the front with a funny wig on? That man was a slave owner and actually kept slaves when he served as President in Philadelphia.
Some people consider George Washington to be “a symbol of slavery”. Some have succeeded in stripping Washington’s name off of public schools.
Read over the link, maro. Those people are using the same arguments that you are….” can you see why symbols that suggest latter-day sympathy for slavery are indecent?”
Now, George Washington is indecent.
The same sanctimonious people who want to demonize American society prior to the 13th Amendment never acknowledge that their ancestors were captured by fellow Africans in African wars where the penalty for losing an African war was death or….enslavement by fellow blacks.
As I noted in a prior post: Nothing in the 19th Century was morally obvious. The freed black slaves that were sent from America to Liberia used their Western expertise to enslave the local blacks and slavery of native Liberians by Amero-Liberians existed until the League of Nations stepped in to abolish the practice in the 20th Century.
If you want to stamp out all symbols of slavery, maro, you need to go way beyond the fighting men who wore Confederate gray and extend your vendetta to everything from the text of the U.S. Constitution to the African culture that the ancestors of African Americans came from.