The redux. White people climbing onto the backs of Black People for another free ride.

[sheshe2]

For years slavery was part of this country. It was one of the most shameful aspects of America's past.I find it overwhelmingly painful that we have not learned anything. What the hell is wrong with us? We are all equal under the law, yet it's a fact many are less equal. I am as mad as hell.

SLAVERY IN AMERICA

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation’s 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

FOUNDATIONS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

In the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants (who were mostly poorer Europeans). After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.

One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former slave who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, black slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. After the American Revolution (1775-83), many colonists (particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy) began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition. After the war’s end, however, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor” (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Read More: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

So here we go again. It's almost as if some believe that Black People are our own personal ATM's. Let's shame them and blame them and then take them for every last dollar they have. I guess if they can't pay enough then we just shoot them. We can bring in the tanks the assault gear and make them cower, yet they did not. We debase and humiliate them and try to take there spirit away, but we did not.

Michael was shown only disrespect as he lay in that street, uncovered for hours. He was treated as three-fifths of a person. Actually, that is wrong he was not treated as a human being at all.

That was the day that our humanity died.

See here.

Ferguson and surrounding cities profit from poverty

Posted by peasant one

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025511851

Do not! Do not tell me that there is no such thing as White Privilege in this country!

[Cha]

1. I hate that this is so, she.. thank you for exposing the facts.

[sheshe2]

2. I do too Cha.

If one person gets here and tells me White Privilege does not exist. I think I will implode and probably get a hide.

Thank you Cha.

[Cha]

4. Thank you for all you bring to hightlighting the outrageousness of it

all, she That is a way in dealing with it positively.. to know it actually exists.

How about this?.. I saw it on my FB feed today and I have to say.. bring a tissue.. but

[freshwest]

6. Most powerful video I've seen in years. Thanks, Cha.

#t=227

[Cha]

7. Sweet, fresh.. you want

to put it in your journal.. I do that too. Mahalo! that world should definitely end.

[sheshe2]

9. That was beautiful Cha!

Thank you~

[Cha]

10. I know.. I dare anyone to watch without

[freshwest]

3. This is why I will not countenance the 'there's no such thing as white privilege.' Look at the laws!

Have there ever been race directed laws to keep the white people down?

Playing the class, ethnic and religion card won't work on this issue. It goes all the way back to the beginning.

The Founders had to give way to the slaveholders to even establish this nation!

The USSC said that no black person had rights that any white person ever had to respect. When the law says that about whites, I'll have that talk, until then, nothing doing.

The only other group so codified by law has been women, allowing a man to beat his wife according to 'the rule of thumb.' He could legally beat her with wood or another object no wider than his thumb. Don't talk to me until you see your history written in the law.

And of all the atrocities done, to peoples of color, women and emigrants NOTHING equals the treatment of blacks. It was the LAW OF THE LAND.

And black women got the DOUBLE WHAMMY.* Treated just like cattle to produce profit, from their womb and taken from them as if they meant nothing. Raped by white slave masters, their offspring would be slaves.

Is there really anything that equals this? Have people got NO SHAME?

It's only been relieved under liberal laws against a backdrop of those who still sing about the good old Land of Cotton.



*Okay, had to take a break for tears.

I might make a post or an OP about the oppression of men by training them to be warriors, or the history of slavery in Europe or other places where it still exists.

But in my opinion, there is nothing to compare with the Euro-American slave trade. Which built this country and gave white privilege from years ago that is still not being acknowledged.

We should all be angry about what has been done. Because what goes around comes around. When I see the purveyors of racism by white pundits, they are a greater danger to whites than the so-called legions of POC they keep raving about.

Because they steal the soul.

EDIT: The Founders also were in favor of wiping out the natives peoples of this land... Asians and Hispanics were also used and killed...

But I am talking of this one issue and the wealth created by it. The rape of the land is also a major source of wealth that has never been returned, and can't be, for it's been ruined. Forgive me if I've left out your group.

Because I feel this is an issue of the USA, in the history of whites and blacks than the other issues. And we are not perfected, by any means.

[sheshe2]

8. Yes, tears here too.

"Have there ever been race directed laws to keep the white people down?"

None to my knowledge, yet maybe some can provide a link.

Yes, it goes back to the beginning, our foundation and prosperity was built on the backs of the African slaves we "imported". They were the ones that built America with blood sweat and tears. Humiliated Beaten Raped Bought and Sold Families Divided. No end.

We lost our soul back then, freshwest. We have lost it again today when the sweet soul of Michael was murdered in cold blood. The response to Ferguson was so over the top. White power at it's worst.

And as the article that I linked states. They do it again and again, white people climbing on the backs of Black People for another free ride.

I am ashamed of my country.

[Oktober]

14. Guess...

[Iliyah]

5. K & R

What GOP, corporate media and creationists want you to "not know", ban knowledge, sorta like that movie about Americans being the dumbness beings on earth.

[JDPriestly]

11. We whites are privileged. No doubt about it.

But don't forget to thank those white folks who had the privilege of fighting for the emancipation of the slaves.

Not all white Americans held slaves.

Many white Americans fought and died for the Union and against slavery.

The Civil War was America's bloodiest conflict. The unprecedented violence of battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg shocked citizens and international observers alike. Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. Roughly 2% of the population, an estimated 620,000 men, lost their lives in the line of duty. Taken as a percentage of today's population, the toll would have risen as high as 6 million souls.

http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html

The Union Army was composed of many different ethnic groups, including large numbers of immigrants. About 25% of the white people who served in the Union Army were foreign-born.[6]

The estimate of 25 percent of the Union armed forces being foreign-born is very accurate. This means that about 1,600,000 soldiers and sailors were born in the United States, including about 200,000 African-Americans. About 200,000 soldiers were born in one of the German states (although this is somewhat speculative since anyone serving from a German family tended to be identified as German regardless of where actually born).[7] About 200,000 soldiers and sailors were born in Ireland. Although some soldiers came from as far away as Malta, Italy, India, and Russia, most of the remaining foreign-born soldiers came from England, Scotland and Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army

My great-great-grandfather and other members of my family served. Great-great-grandfather was a German immigrant who came to the US after the failed German democratic revolution of 1848. When he joined the Union Army, he took with him my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather did reconnaissance for the Union Army. Still a child, he took a bullet in his leg for the Union and lived to tell me about it when I was a child.

Slavery should never have existed, but some thanks should be offered to those, mostly privileged white people, many immigrants, who didn't have to volunteer but did because they believed that slavery and racism were wrong. My family has long been opposed to slavery and discrimination.

I know it is very, very hard to be African American, but don't paint all white people with one brush. Just as all African-Americans are not alike, all white people are not alike.

White privilege exists. What should we who are white do about it? What can we do about it?

Some white people are more privileged than others. Money and education are the supports for privilege. What can be done? Does it help if white people feel guilty about their privilege? What is the reason for white privilege? What do you think can be done to even the playing field?

Any ideas?

[freshwest]

12. Sheshe, to your point and what will befall those who resist the truth:

James Baldwin debates William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University | The Resolution: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”

Transcript and comment:

Baldwin goes on to eloquently state the affirmative in what has to be one of the most encompassing and moving soliloquies I have ever heard. Excerpts follow, but do not sell yourselves short, watch it in its entirety:

“The white South African or Mississippi sharecropper or Alabama sheriff has at bottom a system of reality which compels them really to believe when they face the Negro that this woman, this man, this child must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity.”

“In the case of the American Negro, from the moment you are born every stick and stone, every face, is white. Since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.”

“From a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports and the railroads of the country—the economy, especially in the South—could not conceivably be what they are if it had not been (and this is still so) for cheap labor. I am speaking very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing.”

"The Southern oligarchy which has still today so very much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat and the violation of my women and the murder of my children. This in the land of the free, the home of the brave.”

“Sheriff Clark in Selma, Ala., cannot be dismissed as a total monster; I am sure he loves his wife and children and likes to get drunk. One has to assume that he is a man like me. But he does not know what drives him to use the club, to menace with the gun and to use the cattle prod. Something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman’s breasts. What happens to the woman is ghastly. What happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse. Their moral lives have been destroyed by the plague called color.”

“It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. Until the moment comes when we, the Americans, are able to accept the fact that my ancestors are both black and white, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity, that we need each other, that I am not a ward of America, I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the country—until this moment comes there is scarcely any hope for the American dream. If the people are denied participation in it, by their very presence they will wreck it. And if that happens it is a very grave moment for the West.”

http://bacanisays.tumblr.com/

The video is long, but worth it to hear all that Baldwin says to Buckley:

James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

Published on Oct 27, 2012

Historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?"

As far as climbing on their backs, that happened in Ferguson with white OC proponets and white anarchists seeking to divert interest to their cause without even knowing Michael Brown's name. Just vulturing.

[sheshe2]

16. I will watch it in a bit, freshwest.

Thank you for the link, I never knew of the debate between Baldwin and Buckley. This does underline my point, great add, fresh.

In the case of the American Negro, from the moment you are born every stick and stone, every face, is white. Since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.

[napkinz]

17. the truth ...

[sheshe2]

19. Yes indeed napkinz.

[napkinz]

18. ...

[freshwest]

20. A little late for the descendants of willing immigrants to start pointing the finger now...