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 :-)
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