Who Should We Blame For Slavery?

slavery has been a problem for virtually all of human history. it is still a problem today in many parts of the world, particularly those parts of the world controlled by "people of color". of all the African slaves brought to the New World, only about 4%-5% ended up in the US, most of the rest ended up in Brazil and the Caribbean. in Brazil most slaves were simply worked to death, which is why most African slaves continued to end up there even into the 1870s. as evil as slavery was in the US, it was not normal practice for them to be literally worked to death. you would think the US was the only country in the world that had slavery from the way some people make a career out of lecturing us about it. Brazil had slavery for some years after it was legally ended in the US. so why don't the PC (political correctness) police preach sermons about reparations for the descendants of Brazil's African slaves? I suspect it's because Brazil is a country of "people of color" and the PC police never seem to get as worked up about people of color enslaving other people of color as they do about white people enslaving people of color.

 

Why do we need to blame someone for slavery be it a person or a group, what good does it do, yeah sure we get someone to point fingers at but does that really make anyone feel better.

If we talk about slavery in a historical sense, then what is the point, those people died long ag, and therefore we can't ask them why they did itSo what good does it do us to blame them.

When you look at hisstory, it is important to always keep in mind that you simply can not look at the past with the eyes of the pressent time, evolution happened both biological and morally. times were different circumstance were different.

 

You are correct, in my opinion, the only REAL orchestrated slavery was the prisoners of the concentration camps who were worked to death during WW2

The next level was the importation of people from other countries who were sold and owned by their masters. However, in America, the vast majority of these people were treated fairly well and had a degree of freedom. Perhaps the best example was the slaves who were given guns to protect their masters lives and property during the civil war. In reality, most of these people had a better life than they did at home and the mortality rate was far lower.

The British empire was responsible for very little slavery. Instead, people worked to make a fairly meagre living, while we imported the proceeds of their labour and the mineral wealth of their country. The vast majority of these countries obtained independence without a war.
The one thing that put us to shame was far closer to home, where thousands of people in Ireland were left to die during the potato famine.
Within the UK, we have no history of slavery in the last 4 centuries. But although people were free, the class distinction created a similar situation. While films such as Downton Abbey paint a somewhat rosy picture, not everyone was as lucky.
India is a good example of how things transpired, since people often forget that along with supplying most of the technical facilities for Bollywood and their railways, we also helped them open medical colleges. People who trained in these colleges number among the highest paid consultants working for the NHS today.
While their was violence during independence, it was mainly between the different religious groups within the country, rather than directly with the UK.

Fast foreword to today.
The west in its greed started importing from China, resulting in all our money being sent along a one way street to them with almost no reciprocal trade.
Look at Beijing today, then look at Detroit and the depressed industrial northern regions of the UK.
Who is getting the last laugh this time.?????

 

Considering that 85.5% of the world's population falls into that category, and most of them have had nothing to do with slavery, that statement seems meaningless.Of course, so is the idea that every caucasian person in the U.S. is somehow responsible for slavery when their own ancestors may not have gotten off the boat yet at the time slavery was going on.

Murder, rape and incest have been problems for virtually all of human history and are still a problem today in most of the world, as every local newspaper can attest. As evil as murder is, the incidents in our local cities don't hold a candle to the Nazi death camps or the Soviet gulags. So why all the fuss about sexual harassment of women lately? It's really trivial, in comparison with burning women at the stake or hanging them as witches! ( i hope you detect a note of sarcasm here!

Dude, do you really think being a slave in the Antebellum south was okay--a kinder, gentler slavery? Too bad you can't try it sometime. What did you do? Dust of some antebellum manuscript about the happy darkies on the ol' plantation and decide to share it with HF?

So it was the "people of color" in Brazil who were importing all those slaves that they worked to death, and not the Portuguese who ran the place? The "people of color" in Brazil are that way mainly because their slaveowners couldn't keep their pants zipped. I think you're right though about why they aren't calling for reparations in Brazil. The population is so intermixed racially they'd be paying reparations to themselves. Not so, though,in the U.S.

 

Every country or tribe or group of people who have won a war, battle or fight.
To the winner the spoils.
History shows the winners always make slave of the loosers. So war is to blame for slavery. This goes back to the beginning of time and not just the last few hundred years.

 

Blame your English teachers for slavery. To this very day they teach English only has one grammar, when it has two, and refuse to teach a child how to share their words and play nice, then complain about bullies and demand they be tranquilized. They promote a culture of lies and the cult of personality, by encouraging people to organize along the lines of a flock of chickens. This is networking systems logic which can be roughly as accurate as Newtonian mechanics, with forty years of extensive studies concluding the republican party organizes along the lines of a flock of chickens. That way, they select for the most vicious liars among them, with recent studies indicating that good guys tend to finish first, but the most vicious liars remain in positions of authority longer.

Americans use language as a weapon, but one they almost never know how to actually use, because they've been taught their entire life to abuse language in every way imaginable. I conducted my own informal survey for over a decade, only to discover that over half make up their own definitions for words, while almost none of them know the dictionary merely contains popular definitions. Even Oxford professors such as Richard Dawkins spout endless rhetoric and invent their own nonsense words. Thankfully, modern technology is rapidly making their culture of lies unsustainable, with their populations imploding ever since the invention of modern contraceptives.

Methinks familiarity doth breed self-contempt, unless you have lots of money...

 

My opinion is that slavery predates civilization. In the hunter gatherer era there was frequent conflict over Hunting Grounds and Food Resources. Where there was conflict there were victims, followed by noncombatants such as women and children. Slavery was a way of incorporating these people into the victorious group. As the decades progress slavery continued to be a necessary evil for successful farming communities, that lack a non land owning workforce. When the first Europeans began immigrating to the Americas, land was available for wealthy land owners. Initially Native Americans were hired to work on farms and businesses. Native Americans looked at slavery as a normal social structure. Native Americans did not work out as reliable workers because when spring came many of them would abandon the farms and revert to a Hunter Gathering subsistence, leaving the landowner with nobody to work the land. The would later return to the farms when conditions were non sustainable. The next experiment was to indenture European with unmanageable debt and have them work the landowners property until their debts were paid off. My Immigrant Ancestor came to the Boston Area in 1632, as an indentured servant. He worked off his debt and started his own farm as a free man. When Africans were brought here, they were desirable because they were physically fit to perform outside labor in a hot climate. It is unfortunate that many land owners treated Africans far more harshly than their indentured countrymen. The American experiment would never have succeeded without developing a profitable workforce. I Think that the time has come to forgive the historical slave owners, and come together as a society, with the help of an effective legal system to protect human rights. If we don't the conflict that we are experiencing will continue to persist forever.

 

A neat trick in attempting to white-wash slavers and re-write history - but it doesn't wash with me - a slaver, is a slaver, is a slaver !!!

 

Hell no...

 

I am not trying to rewrite slavery. I prefer to move on and produce a harmonious society. If we don't the Cycle of violence will never end, with each side being self serving forever. My point ws that slavery was an economic system. It become non cost effective and faded into the sunset. The thought that society could survive with everybody functioning as an independent service provider is unrealistic.

 

That’s like saying torture is a justice system. Unregulated capitalism always degenerates into some form of slavery because it is based on the premise that anything goes and distribution and equity are irrelevant. That there is no social interest, only insatiable private interests. Unions can be a moderating influence and consequently Republicans hate unions and do their level best to destroy them.

 

I agree to a point. I say that the racial disharmony is an element by the Capitalists plan to disrupt the working class. Their goal is to destroy the middle class and make everyone happy to labor for wages that they cannot afford to live on. The last step is to force the masses into slavery. The last administration tried hard to destroy the middle class. They will probably succeed in the next administration.

 

you'd have to go back to prehistoric times, and not one person or one place.

also slavery didn't begin being anything about race. earliest slavery was way before there was any 'white' race existing at all.
even roman slavery, had white, red headed, celtic slaves. so that wasn't about race either.

the beginning of saying it was alright to treat people as not people, was the doctrine of discovery, which was one of the not very saintly early popes wrote that,
which was columbus' excuse, for stealing people from their homes in the caribian and sending them as slaves to europe.

 

actually his first two or three sentences are literally true. pretty much everything after that is, as you point out, morally questionable at best.

under breahon (celtic before roman invasion) law, slavery was the preferred punishment for murder.
execution was reserved for political leaders who started needless wars and genocides.

race did not become a factor in slavery until after columbus invaded the western hemisphere.

 

I agree with some of the first part of what you say, but balk at the idea that it was just one of those things, a necessary evil, and we should forgive slaveowners because it all made economic sense, which of course it did. I could use a few slaves myself, but the law and my conscience tell me it would be selfish and cruel.. BTW, I come from one of those Native American tribes that was into slavery before the Europeans came, got into it more after that, and fought on the side of the Confederacy. Our unfortunate Choctaw brothers, close to us in language and culture, were some of our first victims. It was certainly convenient, but wrong, and we paid a heavy price for it.

 

Of course the abolitionists and the Civil War helped in the "fading away" process. All you left out in your account were the "happy darkies" strumming their banjos on the old plantation. Those were the days!

 

And Steven Foster and his Minstrel shows !!!

 

I have lived in a community that is highly diverse for more years than I would like to say. Most of the African Americans were happy with their respective jobs, but were highly sensitized to issues of equity and fairness. Some of them have participated in weddings that practices in practices that go back to the slavery days, like jumping over the broom. I had an opportunity to hire a man who escaped from a civil war in West Africa, and came to America sponsored by the UN. I asked him why he would want to a country which has a long standing history of discrimination. He said that that people of African decent still have it better here than almost any country in the world. He said that has has relatives in the Ivory coast who would like to trade places with anyone who wants to go back to Africa. A lot of discrimination in Africa has Tribal roots, and people with mixed African ancestry face discrimination for that there.

 

sumarians. (which were way before even egypt, if you want a "who" to blame, though even them, it may have predated their consolidation as well)
(if i am expected to assume the subject limited to the u.s. and its first hundred years or so, that would be and is, an absurd assumption)
(even limiting to a euro-christian context is an absurd assumptions. as yes, i can see i am not alone in observing this)

slavery and race are entirely separate subjects.

history is full of bitterness and vengeance,
which logic and consideration could and would have prevented and still can.

i really believe the best way to deal with the problem is to build a world without it.
and to do that, by preventing the dominance of aggressiveness.

empire depends on war
infrastructure depends on peace
i'm not interested in war
i am interested in strangeness.

consideration doesn't end with yourself
it doesn't end with those who share your appearance, perspectives, or blood kinship.
(who am i saying this to? everyone of every root, ideology or belief)

consideration, and logic in the service of consideration is everything
through this, and not through one ideology or belief, are peace and freedom simultaneously possible.

all sapient beings are peers
all sapient beings who romanticism the dominance of aggressiveness, are slaves to their own blindness.

 

To answer the thread title.............nobody?...........get over it?

I love history(buff)........and i think it is important to know and teach..................but dont get hung up in to something that has already been and gone,learn from it.



Learning from history and try to do better........................blaming anybody for anything past generations did *sigh*

Mzzls