Ark. GOP Calls Candidates' Statements 'Offensive' (Called Slavery 'A Blessing in Disguise')

Yahoo via AP ^ | October 7, 2012 | CHUCK BARTELS | Associated Press

[lbryce]

Arkansas Republicans tried to distance themselves Saturday from a Republican state representative's assertion that slavery was a "blessing in disguise" and a Republican state House candidate who advocates deporting all Muslims.

The claims were made in books written, respectively, by Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro and House candidate Charlie Fuqua of Batesville. Those books received attention on Internet news sites Friday.

On Saturday, state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb called the books "highly offensive." And U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, a Republican who represents northeast Arkansas, called the writings "divisive and racially inflammatory."

Hubbard wrote in his 2009 self-published book, "Letters To The Editor: Confessions Of A Frustrated Conservative," that "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." He also wrote that African-Americans were better off than they would have been had they not been captured and shipped to the United States.

[lbryce]

It was, after all, their own people that sold them to the whites. We were unable to go get them from the jungle.

Absolutely right. That the black African slave-traders were the very ones who facilitated the institution of slavery to the West without whom there would be no slavery is all I need to know about the horrors of it all. BTW: That Brazil owned, employed five times as many slaves as the US did is to me something that changes the entire complexion, phenomena of the US slave trade. Not once have I read or heard about any recriminations or talk about reparations for even a single slave forced to live and work in Brazil.

[Slump Tester]

Yeah, and they'd still be running around in the jungle with a tiger on their ass!

[annieokie]

The Black Avenger, Ken Hamblin, once said on his radio show, that he is GLAD his ancestors were brought over, for obvious reasons today.

[MestaMachine]

Nobody said anything about wanting to be slaves. We Hebes were slaves before we wandered around in the desert for a generation. Would I want to go back to Egypt? Hell frikkin’ no!

[Repeat Offender]

Oh there's a few more....

-Blacks in America owned slaves

-Free blacks willing fought on behalf of the Confederacy (which actually armed them with rifles and bullets)

It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. Frederick Douglass

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

*Facepalm!*

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

“Offensive” and “untrue” are not synonyms.

[Little Ray]

Well, for the current generation of blacks, he’s right. Their ancestors having been slaves in the US WAS a blessing. If it weren’t for their servitude in the US they would be living in Zimbabwe, Somalia or some other lovely failed or semi-failed African state.

BTW: Most slaves were captured and sold by other black Africans. And they were “surplus” meaning that their captors didn’t need them; it is likely they would have been killed if they hadn’t been sold. The Africans didn’t know what the Europeans were doing them; they speculated that they were eating them - and didn’t care.

[Terry Mross]

Jesse Jackson said the exact same thing.

[Little Ray]

The realistic alternatives for those slaves were being a slave in Africa, a slave in America, or being dead. They were were “surplus” and their captors didn't need, or particularly want them.
So decide for yourself.

[AppyPappy]

If you don’t want to be a slave, neither does anyone else. There has never been a redeeming quality to being a slave. Israel being formed is not a positive thing that came out of the Holocaust and neither is blacks in America a positive thing about slavery.

Slavery is wrong....period.

[UltraV]

1783? Where do you get that? And slavery is wrong. Get that through your skull.

[muawiyah]

You want to compare relative income levels, do that with slaves in the American South vs. Free labor in the North. There are several books out that do exactly that. Plantation life turns out better on the material wellbeing scale ~ but there was no freedom.

I, myself, prefer freedom even if I have to live in holes in the ground and steal garbage from the alien elite who might be invited in by the Democrats to take over.

[gr8eman]

HOW STUPID CAN PEOPLE BE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING AP AND THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE SAYS?

[muawiyah]

You missed that one big time. Slavery in the United States of America has the same date as the start of the United States of America ~ which is actually 1776 or there abouts ~

[stayathomemom]

Does anyone else remember this guy?: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/out-of-america-by-keith-b-richburg/

[stayathomemom]

Someone page the black American author - I believe worked for the ComPost at one time - who wrote a book several years ago giving thanks that his ancestors were removed by force from Africa and brought to America as slaves.

See my post #56. Is that who you were recalling?

[heye2monn]

That is very interesting — northern standard of income for free black labor lower than for southern slaves. I did not know that.

I agree with you on the idea of freedom. But it’s still amazing that so few ex-slaves were willing to move to Africa (Liberia). Remarkably, the ex-slaves did not want to leave the supposedly evil racist America.

Obviously our country was never that bad of a place all along.

[crosshairs]

Slavery has been an absolute curse on this country. No slavery means there would be no -American in African-American.

[Georgia Girl 2]

“and a Republican state House candidate who advocates deporting all Muslims”

I’m sending tha guy a donation.