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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorge W. Bush’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Slave Trader
BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone—Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while serving in office, and at least 25 presidents count slave owners among their ancestors. But new historical evidence shows that a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush was part of a much more appalling group: Thomas Walker was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18th century along the coast of West Africa.
Walker, George H.W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather, was the captain of, master of, or investor in at least 11 slaving voyages to West Africa between 1784 and 1792.
Scores of European merchants and American plantation owners grew rich on the trade that transported more than 10 million Africans to North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil between 1550 and 1850. Bush's family, like many others, has previously been identified as slave owners in the United States. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at least five Walker family households, George W. Bush’s ancestors by his father’s mother, owned slaves in Maryland’s Cecil County.
But this is the first time an ancestor of Bush has been directly linked to the brutal trans-Atlantic trade in which millions perished. When I queried the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which publishes ancestries of American presidents, the only other president they flagged up with definite slave dealer ancestry was Thomas Jefferson, whose father-in-law, John Wayles (1715-1773), was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. (The NEHGS did acknowledge that there could be other presidents with slavers as ancestors.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history_lesson/2013/06/george_w_bush_and_slavery_the_president_and_his_father_are_descendants_of.html
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bravenak
(34,648 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)
JI7
(93,563 posts)often because of rape in the slave days.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)benefit from their ancestors' crimes, while the black ones tended not to.
Historically speaking.
JI7
(93,563 posts)individuals today are to personally be blamed for slavery.
Boreal
(725 posts)for the crimes of their ancestors.
nichomachus
(12,754 posts)The Bush Family benefits from the crimes of its forebears, including the Nazi financier Prescott. If people can benefit from the actions of its ancestors, why not be punished?
Boreal
(725 posts)for their own actions, only. Should the Kennedy's be punished for the sins of Joe? They've all benefited from them. It's absurd.
former9thward
(33,424 posts)JI7
(93,563 posts)until 2nd half of last century . i have no ancestry related to the US Slave days.
but part of my taxes would go towards reparations and i have no problem with that as i benefit from a country which did get a lot from slave labor.
who were paid that measly settlement were the people who lost their freedom and property.
Feel free to dig through your ancestry and find other people your ancestors may have harmed or profited from harming it it makes you feel better.
The point is that you can only be responsible for your own actions. Not your grandfather's, not somebody else's great great great great great grandfather's. Just you, the only one you have control over.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)the money (about $20k). Their children were not eligible.
Mugu
(2,888 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)Mugu
(2,888 posts)But, felt the need to poke a bit of fun.
I only know the difference because I recently make the opposite mistake while discussing the difficulty of shooting good quality photos of internments in a mausoleum. Some smartass asked why I didn't leave the door unlocked so the interned could escape.
dawg
(10,777 posts)
Mugu
(2,888 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)profits made from the institution.
A direct beneficiary: his money, his power & his position, along with the rest of his family.
His personal talents, intelligence, or whatever have little to do with his present position in society and in the world.
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)to debate. I doubt they will ever happen though.
But it's a good talking point for persons like yourself, to demonstrate their liberality while defending the ruling class and making the working class, both black and white, bear the cost of the sins of the powerful.
JI7
(93,563 posts)class types but there is a lot of racism there.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)like Bloomberg or it wouldn't be tolerated. Wealthy folks who pose at being post-racist, but only because their money insulates them.
but you want to lay everything at the feet of the workers, everything, down to the last jot and tittle, while sweeping the history of people like the bushes under the rug.
JI7
(93,563 posts)mean they aren't to blame.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)less a characteristic of individuals than a system of power, yet the power that maintains it wishes to make it about individual racists, who are basically powerless unless supported by the system.
"Racism" was created by wealth, maintained by wealth, in the interest of wealth and power and social control. And continues to be so maintained, in the same interests.
JI7
(93,563 posts)
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)One that was bought and paid for partly under legacy policies. Of course, that also was mostly paid for via legacy. Regardless of the facts, advanced education at an ivy league school = intelligence.
I wonder how many of his "old money" wealthy donors have similar slave trading family history.
merrily
(45,251 posts)everyone in the US has benefited indirectly from slavery (and from the less heinous, but still unfair, exploitation of immigrant laborers).
We have better reasons to condemn Dimson than what his ancestors did hundreds of years before he was born.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)of Walmart get by grinding labor to the ground.
You apparently do put "all people" on a par with the Walmart family.
It's ridiculous.
I don't condemn the Bushes for what their ancestors did. I condemn the accumulation of wealth via dispossession of others -- which the Bushes are still engaged in, BTW. Witness the recent wars they spearheaded -- and the power such dispossession gives the wealthy, which they pass on through the generations.
merrily
(45,251 posts)If that is what you got from what I actually posted--and all you got from what I actually posted--I don't see much point in my trying to communicate with you, at least not on this topic.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)"some would say everyone in the US has benefited indirectly from slavery (and from the less heinous, but still unfair, exploitation of immigrant laborers)."
Now maybe you understand why I talked about lettuce and walmart.
Yes "everyone" gets the dubious benefit of cheaper lettuce.
The tradeoff is that the Walmart family gets richer and Walmart becomes more of a monopoly, helping to drive down wages for everyone, including farmworkers.
This is the fucking 'benefit' we get. It's no benefit at all, it's another form of slavery.
So I could give a rip that 'some people say' such things. They're delusional fools.
were the ones capturing and selling other Africans to the slave traders.
A few years ago I read an article about the wealthy east coast families of Maryland and Rhode Island and many made their (old) money in the slave trade. The biggest slave traders were the British.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Africans who migrated elsewhere, such as the US.
Yes, many families who remain wealthy and powerful today had interests in the trade.
Jamestown was home to the last known slave in Rhode Island. "No one would ever think that," Rickman adds.
The following death notice was published in the Providence Daily Tribune on Jan. 10, 1859: "James Howland, the last of the Rhode Island slaves, died at the residence of John Howland, Jamestown, R.I., on the 3d inst., at the ripe old age of one hundred years. He had always been a faithful servant in the Howland family. Up to the time of his death he retained all his faculties unimpaired, and on the night of Jan. 2 attended to his usual duties about the house. On the morning of the 3d he rose, dressed himself, and was about to ascend the stairs from his chamber, when he fainted, and expired in a few moments."
Slavery was everywhere in Rhode Island, Rickman says. Slaves worked on South County farms and in the mansions in Newport. But it was the slave trade that was the "number one financial activity" for Rhode Island from 1720 to 1807.
The slave trade started here with the spirits: Rhode Islanders would manufacture rum, which they would ship to Africa and sell or trade for slaves. "Rhode Islanders were really good at making rum," he says.
Then the Rhode Islanders would transport the slaves in the Caribbean and the southern colonies, which later became states, where the slaves would be sold or traded for sugar cane. "They would fill the boat with sugar" that was brought home to the Ocean State to make the rum, Rickman says.
It was a trading triangle, he says. Slaves were packed below decks on the ships and many became sick and died. Their treatment was brutal and inhuman.
Many Rhode Island residents were involved in the slave trade. There were "16 or 17 rum factories" in the state. "Newport had six," Rickman said.
Wooden barrels to transport the rum were manufactured in northern Rhode Island. Trees were also felled in the northern areas of the state for the slave ships, many which "were built everywhere - Newport, Bristol, Providence," Rickman says.
Bakers in South County would make the bread used to feed the Africans who were being transported in the ship's hold from western Africa.
Rhode Islanders manufactured 50 percent of the clothing worn by slaves in the South up until the Civil War, he adds. "That's 10 million people" they provided clothing for.
"In Narragansett County, conditions favored large-scale farming, and here more than anywhere else in the North a system began to emerge that looked like the Southern plantation colonies. In parts of 'South Country' (as Narragansett also was called), one-third of the population was black work force by the mid-18th century. That's comparable to the proportion of slaves in the Old South states in 1820. Narragansett planters used their slaves both as laborers and domestic servants. William Robinson owned an estate that was more than four miles long and two miles wide, and he kept about 40 slaves there. Robert Hazard of South Kingstown owned 12,000 acres and had 24 slave women just to work in his dairy. The Stantons of Narragansett, who were among the province's leading landowners, had at least 40 slaves.
"In keeping with the usual pattern, a higher percentage of blacks meant a more strict control mechanism. South Kingstown had perhaps the harshest local slave control laws in New England. After 1718, for instance, if any black slave was caught in the cottage of a free black person, both were whipped. After 1750, anyone who sold so much as a cup of hard cider to a black slave faced a crushing fine of £30," historian Douglass Harper writes.
http://www.jamestownpress.com/news/2009-03-19/front_page/003.html
MADem
(135,425 posts)I'm betting even the most progressive, liberal, equality-loving, people-first human beings--to say nothing of politicians-- have some sketchy characters up in the family tree! Hell, if you go back far enough, you find that George Bush and Barack Obama are ....COUSINS!!!!!
It gets worse--POTUS is cousins with DICK CHENEY, too!!!!!
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/obama-and-bush-are-cousins/?_r=0
You know what they say--you can pick your friends but you can't pick your relatives!!!
bravenak
(34,648 posts)You cannot pick your family! I have a few I'd like to forget myself. 
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Many black people have ancestors who were slave owners or slave traders because their ancestors were basically raped.
However, in that case it is pretty clear that these particular descendents did NOT benefit from that ancestry.
If my white grandfather owned slaves, (if I am Prescott Bush) then presumably he profitted from their labor. Maybe not hugely rich, but maybe moderately rich. Rich enough, let's say, to send his son to West Point, or perhaps to set him up in a business, or send him to Yale. In that way, his prosperity, his ill gotten gain, provides benefits for his white descendants.
Not so much, however, for his black descendants. The son or daughter of one of his slaves does not get any benefit from the grandfather who does not even acknowledge him/her or necessarily do all that much for their mother.
It's not the blood (the relationship) that matters, it is the ill-gotten gain.
Sanity Claws
(22,408 posts)Great crime.
randys1
(16,286 posts)
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)What was JK Rowling's "great crime", exactly?
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)(Fully expecting to get flamed here, but I'm not a 'Potter fan'.)
bravenak
(34,648 posts)It truly is for children I think
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)I have read both and am eagerly looking forward to the third. (Published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith).
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Is it aimed at a more mature audience?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)This is not one of them.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)of the reasons the Walkers became wealthy & powerful.
Call it blame or whatever you like; one of the reasons the Bushes are rich and powerful is because they had ancestors in the slave trade.
JI7
(93,563 posts)blame.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Lets' get one thing clear....
Fuck the whole gawd damn bush family. They are personally to blame for hundreds of thousands of dead people.
Are we clear?
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)And given the Bushes' relationship with Brown Bros Harriman, which made fortunes from businesses associated with slavery and the slave trade, within living memory (Prescott bush 1895-1972) --
and given some other associations of the family with the trade --
I don't really care that the bush family -today- has no association with slavery. They did, and their position in society TODAY is built on it.
Merchants in New York City, Boston, and elsewhere, like the Browns in cotton and the Taylors in sugar, organized the trade of slave-grown agricultural commodities, accumulating vast riches in the process. Sometimes the connections to slavery were indirect, but not always: By the 1840s, James Brown was sitting in his counting house in Lower Manhattan hiring overseers for the slave plantations that his defaulting creditors had left to him. Since planters needed ever more funds to invest in land and labor, they drew on global capital markets; without access to the resources of New York and London, the expansion of slave agriculture in the American South would have been all but impossible.
The profits accumulated through slave labor had a lasting impact. Both the Browns and the Taylors eventually moved out of commodities and into banking. The Browns created an institution that partially survives to this day as Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co., while Moses Taylor took charge of the precursor of Citibank. Some of the 19th century’s most important financiers—including the Barings and Rothschilds—were deeply involved in the "Southern trade," and the profits they accumulated were eventually reinvested in other sectors of the global economy. As a group of freedmen in Virginia observed in 1867, "our wives, our children, our husbands, have been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locate upon. … And then didn’t we clear the land, and raise the crops of corn, of tobacco, of rice, of sugar, of every thing. And then didn’t the large cities in the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars and the rice that we made?" Slavery, they understood, was inscribed into the very fabric of the American economy.
http://chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/
JI7
(93,563 posts)
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)JI7
(93,563 posts)
JustAnotherGen
(38,041 posts)Watching your comments on the thread. I'm in agreement.
I think I'd rather see something like a tax credit formula or increased Social Security payout if you descend from black Americans that appeared in the 1900 To 1950 census and your birth certificate says you are black or negro (my dad's ID'd him as negro).
We need to focus on slavery by any other name. Things that impacted the financial mobility of black people in the post World War II era. The Rosewood incident descendants sued, had their day in court, and won. The destruction and seizure of property 'touches' many non black Americans - because of our economic system. They can see/understand that.
Talking about slavery and the Bush family - a lot of families - I'm not going to condemn them for that.
I certainly hope no one holds my grand daddy's crimes against me - and the past 15 years a lot of what the "black bootlegger and spirits maker" did has been uncovered. If he shot a rival in 1927 or something isn't a crime I should pay for. And trust me - every single one of his 33 grandchildren fully benefit from the wealth he accumulated.
There's a LOT I can hold agaist the Bush family in the here and now and my lifetime. This isn't a hill I'm willing to die on as a black American.
CTyankee
(68,160 posts)about the source of their wealth. But at a certain, point we have to let grudge go and just let history serve justice, which really it should do. And we can all work toward that goal. Serve justice and get right with the past and don't let it haunt you.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)thread as well as in the popular media, that -all- white americans are equally responsible and benefited equally from slavery, even down to the present day.
It's a gross lie foisted on white and black americans by the real beneficiaries of slavery, who survive in their mansions and power today.
serving justice = naming them, naming their crimes, and setting the record straight.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)JI7
(93,563 posts)you seem more upset you don't have mansions or whatever the fuck than how blacks were affected and how to improve things for them because of the history.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)very angry because I've chosen to discuss the origins of the bush family's money and power.
Here's more:
The Bush Family's Slaveholding Past
A new book by Jacob Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy, mentions in passing that at one time some of the president's family owned slaves. Weisberg doesn't dwell on the links between the White House and the antebellum past except to say the Bush clan's story is a long-held "family secret."
The skeletal facts surfaced in April 2007, when an amateur historian named Robert Hughes published his research in the Illinois Times, a small paper out of Springfield. Hughes found census records showing that during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, in Cecil County, Maryland, five households of the Walker family, the president's ancestors via his father's mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, had been slaveholding farmers...With this, the president joins perhaps fifteen million living white Americans who trace their roots to the long-gone master class.
The tragic story of America's slave days inspires disabling levels of fear among whites and anger among blacks. Probably neither the 43rd president nor his father, the 41st, possesses the introspection needed to grasp the relationship between the Bush family's slaveholding past and its present circumstances without escaping into defensiveness. Still, President Bush has talked about slavery from several microphones, most memorably in a 2003 speech on Gorée Island, one of the "slave castles" in West Africa from which captive youth and children were dispatched to the Americas. Speechwriters likely supplied the words on that occasion when the president said, "slavery was one of the greatest crimes of history." But the words fell short of an accounting by the White House for America's role in the Middle Passage, and they came before the revelation of the Bush family's own link to the slave past.
The heirs of slaveholders are not responsible for the past; but in a better world, they would be accountable for that past. They would make an effort to deal with the slave story, talk about it, and try to come to terms with it.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2008/02/the_bush_familys_slaveholding_past.2.html
grasswire
(50,130 posts)...and a belated welcome to DU.
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)This country was built on the backs of slaves and on the graves of Native Americans. Even the poorest among us enjoys a little higher quality of life than if Americans in the past had never owned slaves or had acquired the land honestly.
In the case of African-Americans however, that benefit is negated by the fact that their history as slaves has relegated them to a status of second-class citizens. White privilege today exists in large part because of the greed and racism that drove the slave trade over hundreds of years.
Hence there is a good argument to be made for reparations. We are not responsible for the actions of our forefathers, and African-Americans today never had to live the life of a slave, yet it is undeniable that whites today are better off and African-Americans today are worse off due to the role slavery played in this country. The same goes for Native Americans and the role their genocide played in this country.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)I see you are one who wants to make it whites v. blacks.
I live in a pretty white town, yet unemployment here is still close to 10%, drug addiction is common, and poverty is very high. I also live in a state that didn't become a state until after the civil war, the descendant of immigrants who didn't arrive in the US until after the civil war and came to this state as soon as they arrived in the us.
You want to make me as 'guilty' and responsible for slavery as the descendants of the old money whites who stepped off the mayflower and got rich enslaving Africans -and- whites and stealing land from Native americans, while sucking money from the government for various reasons.
it's just bullshit. There's no common ground between me and people like Anderson cooper.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)my 39th Great Grandfather is Charlemagne, also one of my Great Grandfathers fought in the 29th NC Infantry during the Civil War.
I fail to see the point of this.....
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)This is stupid.
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)...about your "god" given privilege and treat others like dog crap.
That can happen
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)You have no choice about the fruits and nuts in your family tree and should not have to apologize for them.
Just as proving a direct linage to say...Van Gogh would not guarantee you are destined to be an artist.
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)white americans alive in slave days didn't own or trade slaves, so didn't amass capital from the trade or ownership. Thus they never got to reinvest in railroads, like, for example, a bush descendant did.
and since a minority of americans have ancestors that were here in slave days, being white is the only 'privilege' they ever got.
but some are dedicated to the storyline that white privilege = the same position on the ladder as the bush family (generations of wealth and power)
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)So the 'benefit' me & mine get is simply 'white skin privilege' and the right to be used as disposable labor by the powerful.
I inherited no capital whatsoever, let alone capital ultimately derived from the slave trade.
I suppose you are one of those who make a great deal of the 'white skin privilege' but are quick to absolve people like the Bushes and their 'super white skin privilege'. Who talk about reparations, but don't want historical crimes even publicized, let alone paid for -- unless the indictment is of poor, undereducated white people -- not rich, sophisticated and powerful beings like the Bushes.
JI7
(93,563 posts)when it comes to race issues.
the trash that killed emmett till and the jury that let people like that off.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)it ever was.
The whites who ran slave patrols were the beneficiaries of 'white skin privilege' too, in that their jobs paid for their daily need for food and shelter. They were better off, in the short term, than the blacks they hunted -- but not so significantly, though they may have thought so, and the black people they terrorized may have thought so.
Not in the big picture. Both slave and slave hunter were driven by forces under the control of the rulers and those the rulers paid to run the world in their interest.
JI7
(93,563 posts)now.
and you are excusing the cops by blowing it off as taking orders from bloomberg.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)the interests of wealth and property, and at the behest of those interests. If the wealthy didn't like the way nypd ran the place, if they didn't like the racialized policies, they'd be gone.
we all know the heavy duty racial policies were put in place to clear out the riff-raff to make the city safe for capital again.
JI7
(93,563 posts)victims if they are not wealthy .
JI7
(93,563 posts)Garner and Brown ?
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)bushes and avoiding any attempt to link wealth and slavery. why you are so invested in making all whites responsible for slavery and racism, when as a social institution, both exist by the will of the ruling class, and change when the ruling class decides they are no longer in their interest.
when we all know the wealthy were the prime instigators and beneficiaries of slavery, even to the present day.
JI7
(93,563 posts)racists in the NYPD are to blame themselves. they aren't victims.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)their privileged position in society today.
If the 01%ers who run nyc gave a rat's ass about racist police, there wouldn't be any. they like them. they like their servants to fight each other. it helps maintain their power and helps them feel superior.
JI7
(93,563 posts)racists themselves are to blame. i don't excuse bigots just because they aren't wealthy.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)finally being out of power.
carter's family inherited slave wealth. just like bushes and many other powerful families. he wouldn't be where he is today without it.
I wouldn't say the bushes are racists, but they do a lot more damage to black people than your garden variety racist does.
rank and file nypd don't set policy for nypd. stop and frisk, for example, wasn't set by line cops, all they did was carry it out.
I'm tired of your carrying water for power.
JI7
(93,563 posts)what happened with that.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)of racist beat cops too, right?
everything is the fault of workers, nothing is the fault of the rich and powerful, who are trying so hard to bring us a just, post-racial, and glorious society. but we are just so deluded, we won't go along with their vision for us...
JI7
(93,563 posts)up .
i blame all who are racist and support them .
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)What do you think about the many abolitionists who were white and organized the movement that led to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery?
Not all whites were pro-slavery. Some lost their lives and fortunes fighting slavery.
Please explain this sentence to me:
"the only other president they flagged up with definite slave dealer ancestry was Thomas Jefferson, whose father-in-law, John Wayles (1715-1773), was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony"
If John Wayles was Jefferson's father-in-law, how could he also be Jefferson's ancestor?
Your father-in-law is the ancestor of your spouse, not of your self.
I don't want to be rude, and I don't want to detract from the outrage at slavery, but there are some problems with the logic and language in the article quoted in the OP.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)think the meaning is clear.
wayles was the father of Jefferson's wife and the couple inherited slaves and property from wayles.
not to mention that Jefferson himself dealt in slaves, in the sense that he bought and sold them.
is that your worst criticism of the article?
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)An ancestor or forebear is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited."[1]
Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestor
I don't doubt that Bush's ancestors may have been slave-traders. But that article is incorrect in claiming that Jefferson's ancestors were slave-traders based on the fact that his father-in-law traded slaves (although Jefferson's ancestors may have been slave-traders based on some other evidence).
I question the conclusions in the article based on the error regarding Jefferson's ancestry.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)inherited wealth.
I thought it was fairly clear.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)The Irish (and certainly some of my ancestors) were also sold or forced into slavery by that "Happy Fun Guy" Cromwell who liked Ireland, just not the people so had them killed or removed, so again one has to ask what is the OP's point to all of this...............
JI7
(93,563 posts)person in our family tree .
there is no need to put the blame on him for this in order to show how bad he is. there are good people who would have similar ancestors.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)institution of slavery'?
it's nothing to do with them being shitty or good; it's a material fact.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Besides currently snuggling up to the House of Saud in the last generation or two, wasn't his grandfather or great grandfather in tight with Nazis?
The Bushes seem to always be willing to do whatever it takes for money and power, throughout the generations.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)the present day.
but the family fortunes were apparently founded on slavery.
edhopper
(37,340 posts)funding Hitler is bad enough, no need to go back further.
JI7
(93,563 posts)being the worst President in History doesn't need additional baggage.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)The bush family is responsible for their forefathers because they have rose to power on the riches their family acquired.
To sit here and read these apologies on DU is amazing and a bit sickening.
The Bush Family Evil Empire - BFEE - should be given no quarter nor offered any apologies for their evil acts.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)would have no qualms about putting the 'guilt' for slavery on all americans.
what don't people get about the bush's position being built on wealth from the trade and the institution of slavery? That's the origin of their power. It's a material and historical fact. And the Bush's aren't the only powerful family where it's the case.
uppityperson
(116,017 posts)
Ms. Toad
(38,594 posts)and Daine Perry?
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2011-09-29/latest-news/sp2-screens-documentary-tracing-slavery-trade-north
http://www.tracingcenter.org/resources/background/james-dewolf/
No one controls what their ancestors did - all we can control is what we do going forward. Both "good" people and "bad" people had ancestors in the slave trade. Blame (or praise) them for what they do with their own lives, not for what their ancestors did.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)of the DeWolf slaves did. That's why they can command the resources to make a film.
It's a material fact. You seem to think it has something to do with the 'goodness' or 'badness' of today's descendants.
Very few people are directly descended from slave traders, or from people who held a lot of slaves, you know why?
Because then, as now, ELITES COMMANDED MOST OF THE RESOURCES.
Ordinary working americans didn't. Most americans didn't own slaves; of those who did, most owned maybe a couple.
The slave system benefited a very narrow slice of the population.
Their specious 'white privilege' was all most white americans got out of the deal. Which was groovy if they attacked poor blacks, but just let them try to attack their 'betters'. Or to make common cause with poor blacks.
Ms. Toad
(38,594 posts)and my response, in context. I was responding to a specific person, and the comments that person who suggested that heaping scorn on Bush BECAUSE of what his ancestors did was appropriate - who was scolding DU members who suggested that Bush is not responsible for what his ancestors did.
Access to resources is a very different question, and one on which I did not comment.
Ilsa
(64,331 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)
Euphoria
(455 posts)Nothing to do with the current occupants of the Bush family name. However, this is yet another addition to the astounding accumulation of crap this family over so many generations has done to the world of man.
It's the modus operandi of this family. Total disregard for anyone or anything except the amassing of power and wealth.
BTW I am a strong supporter of reparations. It's the only real way of making some sort of justice.
Boreal
(725 posts)Would you do family trees and DNA testing to determine who's guilty and needs to pay? Serious question.
pipi_k
(21,020 posts)and confusing.
Imagine someone being descended from slaves on his mother's side, and slave owners on his father's side.
Now what happens?
Boreal
(725 posts)all of the Americans who are descendents of those of who had nothing to do with slavery and even came to the US after slavery was abolished? The whole idea of reparations for slavery is ridiculous. The victims and those responsible are long dead. There was a solid and just case for reparations to Japanese who were put in concentration camps during WWII. Payments went to those who were harmed but they didn't get shit compared to what was stolen from them. Also, the reparations were paid by taxpayers, rather than those who stole their property and property is about the only thing anyone can be compensated for because no price could be put on the destruction of their lives. The time for slavery reparations was when slavery ended. It's too late.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)americans are descended from post civil war immigrants).
If there are to be reparations, "white people" will pay, not the rich.
And as for keeping racial tension going, "white people" are an easier target than "rich people".
TexasMommaWithAHat
(3,212 posts)My (white) ancestors were dirt poor sharecroppers who never had more than a fourth or fifth grade education until my parents' generation. My father graduated from high school, and my mother finished tenth grade.
Reparations will never be punitive since you can't punish folks for the sins of their distant ancestors, but you can help folks who have suffered the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws. I definitely wouldn't give any individuals cash, since we can see how lottery winners, sports players, entertainers, etc., who are not accustomed to an influx of cash blow through their money and are no better off than before. IF the purpose of reparations is to help level the playing field, the best way to level the playing field is for money to be invested in education and housing in safe communities.
Boreal
(725 posts)And screw that. I've never felt a shred of guilt for anything I didn't do and never will.
ileus
(15,396 posts)GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)does this mean that Kanye was correct when he said George Bush doesn't care about black people??
Blanks
(4,835 posts)President Franklin Pierce who saw "the
abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation." He was among the worst presidents in American history.
Of course George W. Bush's record as president probably brought his ranking up a bit.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Pierce
If by reparations you mean the confiscation of any exploitive criminal legacy and returning that to the nation in such a way as benefits no individual but the nation as a whole, I would agree.
Assuming we can define exploitive criminal legacy.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)as part of reparations.
because you know any reparations they agree to won't be enough to help blacks, just enough to stir up resentment and racism.
that's how the .01% rolls.
JI7
(93,563 posts)does that mean we should never have a black president.
and the resentment and racism isn't only from the upper classes.
branford
(4,462 posts)He bears no responsibility for the purported crimes of his ancestors. The sins of he father should not be visited upon his sons, no less so many generations removed. It's not only inherently wrong, but would unfairly tarnish and burden many liberal icons like the Kennedy family and numerous others.
As to some ancillary claim that he benefited from related family wealth, I believe both the legal and proverbial statute of limitations has run on the original crime. Unless and until there's evidence that GWB engaged in or now actively supports the slave trade, his genealogy is little more than a passing curiosity.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Even into the present day.
So I think the information about the bush family, and other powerful families, as well as banking institutions and corporations, should be shouted from the rooftops.
And it should be noted that slavery hasn't year disappeared, and it's mainly because of the same interests.
"Some of the 19th century’s most important financiers—including the Barings and Rothschilds—were deeply involved in the "Southern trade," and the profits they accumulated were eventually reinvested in other sectors of the global economy." Not to mention Aetna, New York Life, Bank of America's predecessor banks, etc etc adinfinitum.
Brooks Brothers, for another example, got started by selling clothes for slaves to slave traders.
http://yourblackworld.net/shocking-list-of-10-companies-that-profited-from-the-slave-trade/
branford
(4,462 posts)You have free speech, and I personally have no desire or intent to try to stop you. However, most people live in the present, understand our history, and simply do not agree with your perspective.
Simply, GWB does not owe anyone anything because some far removed relative engaged in activities that were legal, albeit totally immoral, at some point in history. This is unquestionably true as a legal matter, and without a doubt, the prevailing opinion of the vast majority of Americans.
Slavery was a terrible injustice, and its legacy is still felt today. Nevertheless, GWB personally is not responsible in any way for slavery. If you believe that the families of former slaves are due some form of compensation, you should look to general government policies, not punishing people who were not even alive when slavery was legal.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Do you have a direct line to the opinion of the American people? It would seem so from your post. Cite your authority.
I am not quite sure why someone as conservative as yourself is participating on DU.
And, this is the weakest argument I've seen on the subject.
1) GWB owes nobody anything because slavery was legal at the time. So legality makes immorality and torture and abuse ok?
Good luck on that argument.
2) Not punishing people who were not alive when slavery was legal. Since you ignored most of this thread, I will state it for you, though you probably won't get it. Every white American alive now benefits from our former system of slavery. We live in a historical continuum. The policies of the past, all the way from 250 years of slavery and another 100 years of extreme discrimination have benefited every white American, particularly in the area of accumulation of wealth than can be handed on to the next generation. That results in wildly unequal opportunity. You have benefited. I have benefited.
branford
(4,462 posts)According to the most recent polling in 2014, by a whopping margin of 68% to 15%, American opposed reparations. Accusing me of being a conservative because I will not adopt a position that it widely unpopular, including with most Democrats, legally unsupportable, and is nowhere to be found in the Democratic Party platform, is just plain lazy and insulting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/reparations-poll_n_5432116.html
https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/06/02/reparations/
Again, GWB does not personally owe anything to anyone for slavery because he had absolutely nothing to do with slavery. Unless and until you can demonstrate that GWB actually engaged in the slave trade or owned slaves, he simple bears no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the sins of his distant relative. My mention of the fact that slavery was legal at the time was simply to emphasize that there is nothing in American law to demand one individual whose ancestor committed no actual crime to pay damages to the descendant of someone else. This is certainly not a legal or moral excuse for slavery, but a fundamental expression of American jurisprudence. There is no legal, or I would posit, moral, case to be made for anyone, conservative or liberal, rich or poor, to be held personally responsible for actions they had no part in, slavery or otherwise.
My family immigrated to the USA in the early and mid-20th century, some escaping from the routine pogroms in eastern Europe, later the rest escaping extermination in the Holocaust. My family was dirt poor and never owned slaves, no less engaged in the slave trade, in either Europe or the USA. Rather they were trying to sustain a meager existence while trying not to die in the periodic violence against Jews endemic to Europe. My grandparents and great-grandparents then faced systemic and institutionalized discrimination in the USA, by private enterprise and often the government, because of their ethnicity and religion. Antisemitism was commonplace, and is still a force today, including in many parts of the USA My family also did not receive any government benefits until such benefits were provided to all Americans under the law.
Now, why exactly do I or anyone like me personally owe reparations to anyone for slavery, and if so, how much do I purportedly owe and to whom?
If you want to discuss government programs to ensure that the descendants of slaves receive an equal opportunity to enjoy the benefits of American society and culture, you will find me to be an ally. However, neither I, nor the vast majority of Americans, will support punishing anyone or dispossessing them of their property when they personally committed no crime.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I am not even discussing reparations, though you veered off on that topic.
I suggest you read the excellent "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-nehisi Coates, probably the best extended essay I've read in the past year. The article isn't about reparations at all, other than as a logical conclusion to the treatment that black people have experienced over history and are still experiencing with that history.
This treatment didn't end with the Civil War and slavery. The legal discrimination did not end until the 1960s, and the instiutionalized forms of it continue today.
Here is what I see as the central error in your thinking:
My family immigrated to the USA in the early and mid-20th century, some escaping from the routine pogroms in eastern Europe, later the rest escaping extermination in the Holocaust. My family was dirt poor and never owned slaves, no less engaged in the slave trade, in either Europe or the USA. Rather they were trying to sustain a meager existence while trying not to die in the periodic violence against Jews endemic to Europe. My grandparents and great-grandparents then faced systemic and institutionalized discrimination in the USA, by private enterprise and often the government, because of their ethnicity and religion. Antisemitism was commonplace, and is still a force today, including in many parts of the USA My family also did not receive any government benefits until such benefits were provided to all Americans under the law.
Now, why exactly do I or anyone like me personally owe reparations to anyone for slavery, and if so, how much do I purportedly owe and to whom?
If you want to discuss government programs to ensure that the descendants of slaves receive an equal opportunity to enjoy the benefits of American society and culture, you will find me to be an ally. However, neither I, nor the vast majority of Americans, will support punishing anyone or dispossessing them of their property when they personally
1) How is what you propose different from reparations? Does it simply have another name? Any program that would help the descendents of slaves would have to be paid for by taxes. Money out of your pocket.
2) The type of discrimination experienced by Jews in the US, as bad as it was, does not remotely compare to the hundreds of years of slavery and then Jim Crow that happened to African-Americans. Jews are also white and from that have white privilege that blacks will never have. Jews can disappear into white society, blacks cannot.
3) You apparently eschew the idea of societal responsibility that we as Americans currently have, regardless of whether our ancestors had slaves or not. My family has been here since the 1630s, but it is unlikely that they ever held slaves because they lived in New England and were rural subsistence farmers. My ancestor was also a soldier in the Union Army. That does not mean that we as a country don't have the responsibility regardless of our background to right societal wrongs as members of this society.
branford
(4,462 posts)or anything similar. I provided recent polling demonstrating overwhelming opposition to reparations and similar measures. I don't understand how you now claim that it wasn't the topic.
In any event, in response to your points:
1. As indicated in a number of my other more detailed posts in the thread, I support government action to actively enforce anti-discrimination laws and policies to ensure that all Americans, regardless of race, have an equal opportunity to benefit from our society. It's not reparations, because such policies are targeted equally at everyone, and not designed to only benefit blacks, no less at the expense of individuals who bear no personal responsibility for slavery or its legacies. I would not under any circumstances support any directed transfers from one racial group to another, or payments to distant ancestors of individuals on account of race alone. As I also mentioned earlier, I have no objections to taxes funding government programs. However, taxation cannot be arbitrary, punitive or the responsibility of a group based on their race. Such a taxation scheme would be unconstitutional and abhorrent.
2. It's not a competition between Jews and blacks as to who have suffered more or are entitled to compensation, and that certainly wasn't my point. However, it is undeniably that neither my ancestors or myself had any responsibility for slavery in the USA. I feel no guilt nor obligation to compensate anyone for historical events over which I, or even my distant ancestors, had no control based solely on the color of my skin.
Moreover, I find the notion of categorizing all "whites," both historically and today, as some monolithic and amorphous group of oppressors to be particularly offense. There are many purported "whites" who belong to culturally and ethnically distinct minority groups in America, such as Jews, Italians, Irish, Polish, etc., who primarily immigrated to the USA well after the end of slavery and were who were systematically oppressed by the government and other majority Anglo Protestant whites (and treated in a similarly poor manner by other minority groups). If you think groups like the Jews, Irish and Italians could just "disappear" into majority white society, with all due respect, you need to study history far more carefully, and pay more attention to international politics today.
Your "white society" theories also happen to fail to account for the various groups of Asian Americans who faced severe institutional discrimination, are just as easily differentiated from whites as blacks, often immigrated well after the end of slavery, were actually interned by the government in the 20th Century, yet prosper without reparations in "white society," and are even sometimes held to a higher comparative standard due to ethnic success under programs like affirmative action designed specifically to help African Americans.
3. You and I have apparently have different ideas about "societal responsibility." As stated above, I believe society should ensure that laws guarantee protections against discrimination, not enforce a redistribution scheme from people who had no responsibility for slavery to the descendants many generations removed of those wronged.
Simply, as polls clearly indicate, I and most Americans, including a great many Democrats, do not view everything and everyone through the lens of "white privilege." Even if I were to accept the position as you understand it, I cannot envision a compensatory scheme today other that strict and actively enforced guarantees of equal protection that would be remotely constitutional, no less supported by anywhere near a majority of Americans.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)
1. As indicated in a number of my other more detailed posts in the thread, I support government action to actively enforce anti-discrimination laws and policies to ensure that all Americans, regardless of race, have an equal opportunity to benefit from our society. It's not reparations, because such policies are targeted equally at everyone, and not designed to only benefit blacks, no less at the expense of individuals who bear no personal responsibility for slavery or its legacies.
If you are not actively opposing racism in current day American, you are responsible for that legacy. You benefit from that legacy.
Are you aware that much of the wealth that white America enjoys today is the result of post WWII government housing policies? Most white Americans, non home-owners coming out of the Great Depression, gained wealth through the rising equity in their homes. They bought those homes with guaranteed post-war GI Bill federal loans that were not only denied to black people, but denied to whites who lived near black people. This enforced segregation, and economically-based segregation.
The blacks who suffered this discrimination are alive today. The economic effects of these policies are with us here and now.
I feel no guilt nor obligation to compensate anyone for historical events over which I, or even my distant ancestors, had no control based solely on the color of my skin.
You've answered all my questions about you in this single sentence. You feel no responsibility. This is why I find you such a charming individual.
Your "white society" theories also happen to fail to account for the various groups of Asian Americans who faced severe institutional discrimination, are just as easily differentiated from whites as blacks, often immigrated well after the end of slavery, were actually interned by the government in the 20th Century, yet prosper without reparations in "white society," and are even sometimes held to a higher comparative standard due to ethnic success under programs like affirmative action designed specifically to help African Americans.
You really do espouse conservative memes. This is historically idiotic. Asian Americans never were slaves, nor bore, more than at certain historical points, anywhere near the oppression that African-Americans bore for hundreds of years before them.3. You and I have apparently have different ideas about "societal responsibility." As stated above, I believe society should ensure that laws guarantee protections against discrimination, not enforce a redistribution scheme from people who had no responsibility for slavery to the descendants many generations removed of those wronged.
That's the whole point. The generations of those wronged are alive today. It is your lack of historical knowledge of this that is the most shocking aspect of this.
branford
(4,462 posts)I am only responsible for my own actions, not that of my ancestors, distant or otherwise, and certainly not all whites, and great number of whom would not even consider me part of the classic white collective due to my Jewish ethnicity and religion.
More importantly, I actively oppose racism and prejudice by ensuring that our laws and institutional policies do not permit discrimination on the basis of race (and other protected categories), to the extent consistent with equally important constitutional rights like freedom of speech and religion, and when appropriate, punishing those particular individuals actually guilty of discrimination in violation of such laws, whether with civil liability in matters like housing and employment, or criminally with sentence enhancements in circumstances such as assault or murder. I do not, and will not, oppose racism by punishing or dispossessing one group and directly rewarding another based solely on their colors of the skin, for it would simply reinforce and justify the fundamental injustice of racial and other discrimination which I unreservedly oppose and the Constitution largely forbids.
Insulting me with accusations that I employing "conservative memes" and otherwise disparaging my character because I do not believe that the descendants of those who engaged in slavery do not bear some corruption of blood requiring punishment or remediation, no less anyone, whites or otherwise, who never directly benefited from the slave trade or owning slaves, and were actual victims of American state-sponsored and other institutional racism after slavery ended, is ludicrous and offensive.
Simply, the polls overwhelming demonstrate that the vast majority of Americans, including numerous members of the Democratic Party, do not support the types of reparative or redisributive schemes you appear to advocate, based on notions of collective white guilt and responsibility or anything else. The fact that the issue is totally absent from the Democratic Platform also truly speaks volumes.
Of course, you may believe both this majority and the Democratic Party are wrong, ignorant, or worse, and proceed to explain your reasons why, but that does not change the fact that race based reparations were and are universally an extremely unpopular idea. If you believe such opposition is a "conservative meme," the Democratic Party is far more conservative that I could ever imagined, and I cannot understand how you can associate with such individuals on a regular basis, particularly here on DU. You must be seething with rage and sorrow reading the reactions to the OP (and a similar thread today about purported family slave wealth of Benedict Cumberbatch) among Democrats even more liberal than myself that has more often than not ranged from astonishment and bewilderment to stern and unyielding opposition.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I understand you feel you have no sense of responsibility. To me, it displays a remarkable lack of empathy towards less-fortunate people on your part, and to me that is a mindset I find common among conservative Americans. That is why I use the term with you. You think changing laws is enough to redress hundreds of years of abuse, which I see as completely inadequate. You also feel no collective responsibility as an American towards others in our society, which is libertarian, in my mind, also a conservative mindset.
You also apparently believe that discrimination against African-American ended with the end of slavery, which is simply ahistorical. I have yet to see any acknowledgement from you of post-Civil War discrimination that has continued through Jim Crow (do you know what that is?) and whose effects EXIST TODAY. People who are alive right now suffer from the historical and current effects of racism, and it is a continuum that hasn't ended. This isn't rewarding descendents of those who suffered from slavery, it is about compensating those who have suffered and are alive now.
Do you believe in the concept of white privilege, or do you also believe that to be a myth?
You also seem fixated on the idea of reparations. This is, at best, an academic argument as the possibility of reparations in this country ever happening is less likely than all Americans giving up their guns. There is no possibility of reparations happening.
But an excellent case could be made for reparations, and has.
This article, as I pointed out earlier, is that case, though despite it's title is not about reparations at all, but about the current effects of historical discrimination. It is a brilliant piece of writing by an editor of The Atlantic Monthly, who is the best current writer on race in America. Ta-nehisi Coates. This article had a huge impact when is was first published last June. I strongly recommend that you read it. Then we could have a more informed discussion on this topic.
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
June 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
branford
(4,462 posts)or other forms of discrimination, including antisemitism, homophobia, ageism, and a litany of other pernicious bigotry.
This bigotry is precisely why I support doing everything that is constitutionally permissible to legally prohibit and punish all forms of discrimination. I support such measures because it is simply the right and just thing to do, not out of some amorphous "collective guilt" (or taint of blood as implied by the OP), particularly since neither I nor my ancestors were part of the purported "collective" that participated in slavery, Jim Crow or anything else remotely related to the issue. Rather, my group (American Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated in and around WWII or just Jews) has been institutionally discriminated against throughout the world, historically and today, and even suffered a near genocide within living memory. The fact that my "collective" was a significant part of the civil rights movement in America and a liberal force in the Democratic Party is also notable in contrast to the larger "white" society you criticize. Jews only started being perceived as "white" in America when we, as a group, started to become economically successful in and around the time of the civil rights era, and to many, we are still definitely separate and distinct. Studying historical trends, I would note that many now argue that the success of Asian Americans (and to a lesser extend, Indian Americans) today are making them the American Jews from yesteryear. I anticipate Asians will be "white" soon enough.
Again, I believe that as a citizen of this country I have a responsibility to others, and that responsibility is to promote and ensure the end of discriminatory practices as a means to promote equal opportunity. I have done so in my political advocacy as well as my career as a civil trial attorney who has practiced employment law and dealt extensively with illegal discriminatory practices, racial and otherwise. Nevertheless, nothing will ever be totally "fair," however you define the term, such a quest is a fool's errand which will likely cause more and worse problems that it tries to solve, and it is impossible to guarantee positive or prosperous results.
You can define my "mindset" as conservative, libertarian or anything else, but it is demonstrably mainstream and benign, including among Democrats, and consistent with our party platform.
Further, you are certainly free to advocate for more compensatory or related policies, but as you appear to acknowledge, you will face increasing legal barriers and diminishing public support, including among large swaths of liberals and Democrats. Since affirmative action and many diversity policies are now rapidly becoming legally untenable or overturned nationally or by state and local popular will, more redistributive polices such as reparations become little more than fringe academic discussions.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Your appeal to popularity. This is a logical fallacy, of course. Because policies are supported by a majority of Democrats and/or appear in the party platform, they are then correct. You advance this viewpoint over and over in your posts to prove your legitimacy as a Democrat. This does not make those policies right. They are only popular. This is the essence of the problem with the reparations opposition. Truth is, most Democrats, and most people in general, don't understand the argument.
Secondly, you mistake compassion and empathy for collective guilt. I find this quite remarkable, and also, another conservative meme. A classic one.
Thirdly, Asheknazi Jews have been in the US in great quantity long before the immigration of your own family after WWII. The assimilation into American society was in progress before your family got here. And I have no idea why you bring this up in a topic about African-Americans. What happened to Jews internationally was one of the greatest crimes in this history of humanity, but the level of discrimination here in the US doesn't bear the remotest comparison to the treatment of African-Americans. Read the article, please. Frankly, the complaints about discrimination of any white ethnic group are, as I said before, laughable in comparison of the abuse heaped upon African-Americans ....
I am aware of the role of Jews in the Civil Rights movement. I give a special shout-out to Julius Rosenwald, who made his fortune at Sears Roebuck and created a foundation that set up matching funds to build 5,000 schools for black children in '20s and '30s. I am a friend of one of his great grandchildren.
And the key point is this: You benefited from this discrimination against African-Americans in your lifetime. All whites have. Read the article. This happened in YOUR lifetime.
branford
(4,462 posts)a forum exclusively for members of the Democratic Party and those who support its ideas and goals.
You have repeatedly accused me of conservatism and other decidedly non-Democratic ideas and positions. My reference to the party platform and the acceptance of my positions universally, particularly among our own party and other liberals, is simply to demonstrate to you that your implications are false and insulting. I would suggest you consider that my ideas are not conservative, but rather your ideas just might represent the very far left of our party and beyond. You've read many of the responsive posts in this thread (and, I assume, the similar Cumberpatch thread), and I'm hardly alone, even here where active left of the party is very well represented.
I also repeatedly cite the ever decreasing popularity and acceptance of some of your ideas to note the near impossibility of their practical implementation, even if I were suddenly to agree with all your views (and also because our discussion began when you challenged the notion that reparations were unpopular). We live in the world of the possible.
Additionally, I already stated that I believe we all have a responsibility as citizens of the county, a "collective responsibility" if you prefer the term, to end discrimination in our society, racial and otherwise, by all appropriate legal means and ensure opportunity for all. The fact that I've actively engaged in ending discrimination, both politically and professionally, places me clearly to the left of clear majority of the population. If you do not believe such ideas and activism makes me suitably compassionate or empathetic, that's not only unfortunate, but you must think the world full of virtually no one but trolls and ogres.
Lastly, I cite my religious and ethnic background primarily to show that talking about "whites" as on near lock-step and indistinguishable group is inaccurate, contrary to history, and morally no better than judging anyone solely on the color of their skin. The definition of white in privilege and similar discussions has become little more than "relatively successful non-blacks," and is alienating, unhelpful and contextually, often offensive. If you discuss racism in the context of "white culture," without examination of individual circumstance and achievements, both historically and now, and then demand it change, it is the very definition of "collective guilt," regardless of your or others intentions, and I would posit why such ideas are largely the province of academics and far-left activists, and more importantly, decreasingly popular even among individuals like myself who are fairly liberal and actively oppose discrimination.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Lastly, I cite my religious and ethnic background primarily to show that talking about "whites" as on near lock-step and indistinguishable group is inaccurate, contrary to history, and morally no better than judging anyone solely on the color of their skin. The definition of white in privilege and similar discussions has become little more than "relatively successful non-blacks," and is alienating, unhelpful and contextually, often offensive. If you discuss racism in the context of "white culture," without examination of individual circumstance and achievements, both historically and now, and then demand it change, it is the very definition of "collective guilt," regardless of your or others intentions, and I would posit why such ideas are largely the province of academics and far-left activists, and more importantly, decreasingly popular even among individuals like myself who are fairly liberal and actively oppose discrimination.
Privilege has nothing to do with guilt, and has never had anything to do with guilt. It is simply a quality. It is an advantage, that is all.
All whites in America have privilege based on their skin color, and nothing more than that. Ethnic background has nothing to do with it. It is privilege extended on the basis of appearance only.
When I look at you or any other white person, I don't know anything about your family story. And, it doesn't matter. You clearly reject the notion of white privilege, though I haven't seen anything in your writings so far to see that you've even looked at the theoretical work behind it in the first place.
And, no, I am not far left, I am barely left of center, and I never claimed that reparations were popular with Democrats. Repartations are morally justified; you haven't grappled with any of the arguments I've presented, which is quite telling. You would rather live in the abstract world of legal principle rather than engage with the true history of African-Americans.
branford
(4,462 posts)and other constitutional protections like due process, free speech, etc.
I fight to ensure these legal principles are applied universally in practice, an endeavor which I imagine you support.
Assuming I adopted the full spectrum of your "white privilege" positions, I'm somewhat at a loss as to your ultimate goals other than effective equal protection. What do expect someone who's white, setting aside the fact that the term is far too general as you portray it, and regardless of whether they immigrated to the country yesterday and had no connection to slavery, to actually do, say and act as a result of such "privilege?"
Are these individuals not supposed to apply for certain jobs or refuse them if offered, not allowed to run for office, cannot leave any accumulated wealth to their children, etc.?
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)for some time. Same with Jews.
branford
(4,462 posts)does that make them any more or less "white?"
Does it affect if and how they benefit (or suffer) from "white privilege?"
Do they owe anything to anybody, particularly African-Americans, because of their historically recent success?
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)be considered beneficiaries of white privilege.
I think the 'recent' 'success' of Asians (and jews) shows how contingent these things really are.
branford
(4,462 posts)For instance, the affect of explicit and "unofficial" affirmative action and diversity policies in California. Given the very high numbers of highly qualified Asian applicants and students in state higher education institutions, many Asians actually have to have grades and backgrounds demonstrably more impressive than their white and minority peers.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)California's affirmative action ban bolstered by Supreme Court ruling
California's 16-year-old affirmative action ban is lodged more firmly than ever in state law after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday shut off further court challenges in states that have enacted such bans. ..
Despite the setbacks, proponents of affirmative action say they're going to keep working toward giving minorities a boost in schools and jobs, and the author of California's most recent ill-fated legislation to overturn the state's ban says he hasn't given up.
But the Michigan case had major implications for California, where Proposition 209 -- approved by voters in 1996 -- has forbidden consideration of race and gender in university admissions and financial aid, contracting and other public programs throughout the state. Legal challenges to Proposition 209 failed, and its critics considered the Supreme Court case out of Michigan the last, best chance to revive a challenge in the courts.
Some say the ruling, combined with the political backlash in California, could end the debate.
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25617295/californias-affirmative-action-ban-bolstered-by-supreme-court
branford
(4,462 posts)The issue in California is that many claim that the state schools are simply ignoring the affirmative action prohibitions.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)admissions have risen gives it the lie.
it would certainly be easy to challenge in court if it were the case. no one's doing it.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)that the slave trade is the origin of the bushes' money & power.
branford
(4,462 posts)For instance, in you post #51, you state,
I support casting the high down from the mountains built with their ill-gotten wealth, personally. as part of reparations.
because you know any reparations they agree to won't be enough to help blacks, just enough to stir up resentment and racism.
that's how the .01% rolls.
You concede that GWB has no responsibility for slavery, yet you appear to want to dispossess him and others in his family of their property, or worse, as part of some broader reparation scheme. I'm curious, does your reparative theory also apply to old, rich liberal families who have skeletons, including participation the slave trade, or only families with points of view you oppose? Do you contend that the Bush family is somehow historically unique or special? I assure you that there are quite a few liberal and Democratic families that were involved in the slave trade, some now rich, some not so much.
If you want to discuss how the Bush family and a great many other notables in USA benefited from the institution of slavery, as I indicated earlier, I certainly would have no objection. It is an interesting and meaningful piece of our history that provides context to events and people, then and now.
However, I will not condemn anyone because some ancestor committed abhorrent acts, slavery or otherwise. We do not inherit the sins of fathers. Such a concept is pre-medieval and against the nature of our culture and jurisprudence. People are to be judged, good or ill, on the own actions, nothing more.
I will happily and strongly support efforts to punish and prevent discrimination, particularly on the basis of race, and government programs to ensure all Americans have the opportunity to benefit equally from our society. Neither I, nor most Americans, as polls suggest, will support some arbitrary or punitive wealth and property redistribution system targeted at individuals who committed no personal wrongdoing.
I understand and agree with your anger at GWB solely for the personal actions of GWB, and I similarly sympathize with your frustrations with the legacy of slavery. Nevertheless, the connections between the two are so tenuous as to be disingenuous.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)redistributive scheme too. Perhaps it would be more appealing to some if white trailer trash were taxed to pay for it. They're racists, right? And that's the most important thing, though they don't have an iota of power.
As though the forced labor camp we live in isn't a scheme designed to redistribute wealth to the already rich and powerful.
branford
(4,462 posts)Specifically, do you want to increase taxes on everyone who's wealthy, even those who are African-Americans or other minorities or who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery or the slave trade, or only selected individuals or families? Do you propose a income or capital gains-type tax or an actual tax on wealth? What do you consider "wealthy" and how much of a tax do your propose?
All taxes are restributive. I (and the courts) object when the intended payors and recipients are arbitrary or based upon race, a clear constitutional equal protection argument. Taxing only rich whites to pay only blacks would be legally untenable, and taxing only those families or individuals who had ancestors involved in the slave trade would face even greater legal scrutiny, likely be viewed as punitive, and essentially a bill of attainder. Even a standard income tax to fund a broad reparation scheme would face legal and practical uncertainties, including who would actually be entitled to payments.
Depending on your particular suggestions, some permutations will be clearly unconstitutional or have other significant legal problems, while others reflect objections to capitalism itself far more than remedying the legacy of slavery.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Better than taxing the poor, which is the system in place now.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)840high
(17,196 posts)a guess - 95% of Americans don't care.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)A lot of us had ancestors that did despicable things. Bush needs to be held accountable for what he did in office, not for what his ancestor did. "Sins of the father" is a primitive backwards concept that has no place in the 21st century.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)families in the country, and the money from the despicable things was the source of your wealth and power, then the public should know that -- instead of trying to pretend all whites are collectively responsible, and benefited equally, from the institution.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Not Thomas Walker.
GWB committed enough evil in the White House.
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)of power and profit. the killers of till had the blood of one on their hands; the powermongers had the blood of many, yet stay in the shadows. they're happy to throw those who act at their will to the wolves when it serves their power.
to hear you talk, rich and powerful people are at the mercy of poor white racists. what a crock.
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)to those with little power
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)you seem deeply invested in defending the bushes and putting the entire burden of America's racial sins on ordinary white people who are either 'good' and non-racist or 'bad' and racist -- as individuals. while meanwhile disappearing the role of organized power and wealth in creating and maintaining racist institutions, practices and thus culture and mindset. and whose interests this ultimately serves.
it's a caricature, and one I no longer have any interest in debating. goodnight.
JI7
(93,563 posts)i'm working class and whatever institutions you blame for non wealthy whites being racist isn't making me racist.
nypd and most cops make more money than i do.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)The apologies and whitewashing of the bush family shown here by more than a few is disgusting.
Good job, NewDeal, helping them expose themselves.
Next thing you know they will start in with the "jeb must be looked at without seeing any of his or his family's history". I hope they do, then we can clean up a bit around here.
eShirl
(20,226 posts)you guys are really worried about Jeb
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)like most of us, has 32 great-great-great-great grandfathers.
How much money did he get from this 1/32nd of his ancestry?
Or look at it another way. My paternal ancestor, for one example great-great-great grandfather Koch had 13 children, 72 grandchildren, 221 great grandchildren, 376 great-great grandchildren and 521 great-great-great grandchildren. The fortune would need to be pretty substantial to survive all that dividing. Not to mention various reversals of fortune which might have happened between then and now. (Maybe he died in 1901 with a great fortune that was mostly wiped out in the crash of 1929.) And that's only 1/16th of my ancestry. Take it another generation and you will be dividing it further.
840high
(17,196 posts)
starroute
(12,977 posts)It's much like the small group of (mainly Yale-educated) early leaders of the CIA. They all know each other, they're all aware of each other's crimes, and that shared guilt and those shared secrets act as the glue that holds them together. Or it's like Skull and Bones, where the price of initiation is to confess everything you've ever done that the others can use to blackmail you with.
In this case, a lot of the strands run through Texas. Some years ago, I did a series of posts here about the Farish family. William Stamps Farish was an oilman who married into a prominent Houston family -- one that went back to a Confederate officer related to Jefferson Davis who'd settled in Texas after the Civil War. The family name was Botts -- as in the Baker & Botts lawfirm. But what's most significant is that Farish was also the chairman of Standard Oil who got in trouble for dealing with the Nazis on the eve of World War II.
He died in 1942 as the result of an overdose of Congressional hearings, and his son was killed in a military training accident shortly thereafter, leaving his infant grandson as the heir to a fortune. Farish's widowed daughter-in-law became close friends with George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and the Farish family served as their entry into the Texas oil business after World War II. That grandson, William Stamps Farish III, grew up to become a close friend of the Bush family as well.
There are also some other interesting connections. That daughter-in-law was the daughter of General Robert E. Wood, a chairman of Sears Roebuck and a major right-wing activist and financial backer of the right in the McCarthy era. I checked him out online, and he was in correspondence with every Holocaust denier and revisionist historian you ever heard of.
And the wife of W.S. Farish III is the former Sarah Sharp, daughter of another close friend of the Bush family and the great-niece of the pro-Nazi Du Pont brothers who tried to pull off a coup against FDR.
So these family ties keep being reinforced. And at every step you find slavery, Nazi ties, extreme right-wing politics, and high-level connections to the oil and chemical industries. But that's why it's irrelevant to say "don't bear a grudge." For us, the slave trade may be ancient history. But for the families that got rich off it, it's just the sort of thing they do. Slaves in one generation, Nazi concentration camp labor in another. They remember their family history, they're always looking for the opportunities, and those opportunities generally mean immiseration for the rest of us.
I see checking Wikipedia that there's also a William Stamps Farish IV whose oldest son is William Stamps Farish V. You think these people don't remember where they came from?
Ilsa
(64,331 posts)Bookmarking threads. We should never forget where these people come from and the beliefs they are raised in.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Farish 3 managed HHWB's blind trust, I believe -- and some farish had a role in the GWB admin too, I think. Those families go way back.
"that's why it's irrelevant to say "don't bear a grudge." For us, the slave trade may be ancient history. But for the families that got rich off it, it's just the sort of thing they do. Slaves in one generation, Nazi concentration camp labor in another."
and i'll bear a grudge as long as I want; it's like pretending we shouldn't talk about former Nazis, especially ones who got rich off their dirty work.
Jamastiene
(38,206 posts)of Congressional hearings. Is that a typo?
Great post, otherwise.
starroute
(12,977 posts)After pleading “ no contest ” to charges of criminal conspiracy with the Nazis, William Stamps Farish was fined $5,000. . . . But a war was on, and if young men were to be asked to die fighting Hitler … something more was needed. Farish was hauled before the Senate committee investigating the national defense program. The committee chairman, Senator Harry Truman, told newsmen before Farish testified: “ I think this approaches treason.
Farish began breaking apart at these hearings. He shouted his “ indignation ” at the Senators, and claimed he was not “ disloyal. ”
After the March-April hearings ended, more dirt came gushing out of the Justice Department and the Congress on Farish and Standard Oil. Farish had deceived the U.S. Navy to prevent the Navy from acquiring certain patents, while supplying them to the Nazi war machine; meanwhile, he was supplying gasoline and tetraethyl lead to Germany’s submarines and air force. Communications between Standard and I.G. Farben from the outbreak of World War II were released to the Senate, showing that Farish’s organization had arranged to deceive the U.S. government into passing over Nazi-owned assets . . .
In August, Farish was brought back for more testimony. He was now frequently accused of lying. Farish was crushed under the intense, public grilling; he became morose, ashen. While Prescott Bush escaped publicity when the government seized his Nazi banking organization in October, Farish had been nailed. He collapsed and died of a heart attack on Nov. 29, 1942.
Jamastiene
(38,206 posts)I wish all of this information was made into a book. I would certainly buy it.
RandySF
(83,985 posts)Slave traders....Business partners with Nazis...friends of Napoleon...What have we missed?
OregonBlue
(8,209 posts)and really has no relevance to what we do now.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)from the trade and from slave industry was reinvested in other areas to build their fortune and power.
OregonBlue
(8,209 posts)I don't like them or their policies but to pretend like they are somehow responsible for their great, great relatives seems pointless.
starroute
(12,977 posts)That's the real question.
Years ago, I heard the science fiction writer Larry Niven say that his family had gotten rich first by profiting from the Teapot Dome scandal and then by owning all the phone booths in Los Angeles. (I think it was phone booths. This was a long time ago.) What struck me as strange at the time was that he seemed kind of proud of it and not at all embarrassed.
Sometimes shame is a normal, healthy reaction to deplorable circumstances. If you would feel ashamed to learn that your family were slave-owners, you're doing okay. If you would take a curious pride in the fact ... not so much.
markpkessinger
(8,909 posts). . . based on what they have done in living memory. But any American whose family has been in America since colonial days is likely to have one or more unseemly ancestors along the way, and many will even have an ancestor or two that can be linkied to the slave trade. None of us chooses our ancestry, and one cannot infer anything in particular about any living individual, based on what an ancestor of some six generations and over two centuries ago might have done.
840high
(17,196 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)I would love to think that all 64 of mine were paragons of virtue, but I suspect that some may not have been.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Walker was a first cousin, once removed, of Senator and Supreme Court Justice David Davis. Walker was the son of George E. Walker (1797–1864) and Harriet Mercer (1802–1869). His grandfather was Thomas Walker (slave trader)...
Through his son George Herbert Walker, he was the great-grandfather of President George H. W. Bush and great-great-grandfather of President George W. Bush.
His sons David Davis, Jr., Joseph Sidney and George Herbert all had involvement with the Ely & Walker firm, which continued as a major clothing manufacturer until it was acquired by Burlington Industries after World War II, but George went into banking.
Walker died in 1918 at Walker's Point, his son George's seaside property in Kennebunkport, Maine, the modern-day Bush compound now occupied by former President George H.W. Bush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Davis_Walker
The connection with the slaving past is very direct, and the profits also.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)nt
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)his grandpappy was a traitor that plotted to overthrow the U.S. government!
JI7
(93,563 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)1) Reparations from whom? All white people? All white people whose ancestors were here before 1865? Only rich people? Or just out of general tax revenues?
2) Reparations are useless without a change in conditions of privilege. Far too many people of color are poor, often in debt, poorly educated, and without any experience in managing money. Under those circumstances, any windfall is like winning the lottery -- it gets blown on trinkets, goes to pay off debts, or gets ripped off by con artists.
The best thing we can do is change the system. Lacking that, your obsession with reparations seems curiously misplaced.
JI7
(93,563 posts)money"
WTF is that ?
and would you want limits on how japanese who got reparations spend their money ? how about people who have been wronged by the state or in other ways and get settlement money like the girl who was kidnapped and held by some pervert who ended up getting like 25 million from the state . would you want limits on what they do with their money ?
Igel
(37,516 posts)However, "people of color are typically wealthy, seldom in debt, usually well educated and often with great experiencing in managing money" would strike most as counterfactual.
By "experience in managing money" I don't understand the poster to mean "experience in handing limited funds while ensuring survival" but managing investments and securing a good ROI.
If it were true, we would be talking about "black privilege" and we wouldn't be worried about the "achievement gap" in education, the earnings gap in income, the wealth gap in accumulated wealth, or the difference in unemployment figures.
It's a generalization. Many don't meet the requirements of the generalization, but the counter-generalization is even more problematic. (Generalizations should be understood for what they are: fuzzy statements of statistical trends, not exhaustive quantification over the set in question with checking to be certain that each member of the set in question is adequately described by the conditions set forth.)
JI7
(93,563 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)"racism". the racism was rather held in place by the law and policing of the law, which was set up for the benefit of the rich.
starroute
(12,977 posts)The Japanese had careers, businesses, property that were all forfeited by the internments. That's something you can calculate and compensate with money.
The only kidnap victim story I can find that even vaguely matches your description is one about a proposed bill in Ohio to compensate the three women held prisoner by Ariel Castro at the rate of $25,000 per year in captivity for each of them. But I don't see any followup stories, so it apparently never went anywhere.
But the situation with people of color is very different from either of these. Are you proposing to appropriate $45 billion and give each black person in America a check for $1000 each? Or appropriate $450 billion and give them each $10,000? And in either case, how much difference will that make to the life of a poor inner-city resident with no education and no marketable skills? Or even to the life of a middle-class black family which is working their butts off but has no accumulated property or investments because they started from nothing and are still paying off student loans.
This is not only unfeasible but also pointless. Once again, the only answer is to change the fucking system.
JI7
(93,563 posts)as for how it will be given out. that would have to be worked out based on advice from many people.
the girl who was kidnapped in calfornia, jaycee dugard got like 20 million in some settlement with the state and i think there is another one case against the Federal Govt. and i have no problem with this .
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)get the reparations and not your generation?
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)or for all black Americans? And to what extent should those of mixed race qualify for reparations?
bravenak
(34,648 posts)Some passed for white. Most changed their names after slavery. For all of us since we are still experiencing racism to a high degree. It never ended, and now America has begun a new slavery system in our prisons.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)This doesn't surprise me all that much, nor does it change my opinion of Prescott Bush, yet it is interesting to note that the accumulation of wealth was clearly evident by the time Prescott was born.
And that the accumulation of wealth and power of that family was built upon slave trading!!
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)But we dont do the sins of the father thing here.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)From stuff that happened in the 1700's. That period is long over, I can see calling people out when the players are still alive or have recently passed. But nobody is alive from that dark period.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)the slave trade.
You go ahead and 'move on' if you choose.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That makes no sense to me.
merrily
(45,251 posts)sense, given Samuel's wiki. (Sam's pappy was a minister.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush
I am not saying the more remote Bush's weren't slave traders, but I do wonder where Samuel is in this list.
That said, I have no idea what my remote ancestors did. If good, I can take no credit for their pure deeds. If bad, I would think it unfair If I had to take the blame for their misdeeds.
Washington, Jefferson and other national heroes were slave owners and worse. I am sure they have had some upstanding descendants and some evil ones, just like any family. The more modern Bushes did enough bad things on their own that we can blame them for. I am not going to blame them for what ancestors did hundreds of years ago as well.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)The Walker genealogy (with the slave trading Capt Thomas) is the genealogy of Dorothy Walker, Senator Prescott Bush's wife. It's the Walker line, which, thanks to the investment of the slave trading founder, became a business and banking line.
Samuel P. Bush, in the Bush line, fits here:
James Smith Bush (1825–1889) Father of Samuel P. Bush
|
Samuel P. Bush (1863–1948), Father of Prescott Bush
|
Flora Sheldon (1872–1920), the wife of Samuel P. Bush, married June 20, 1894 and mother to Prescott Bush.
|
Prescott Bush (1895–1972), Samuel P. Bush's son, served as a US Senator from Connecticut. Dorothy Wear Walker Bush (1901–1992), the wife of Prescott, was the daughter of George Herbert Walker of the well-connected Walker family of bankers and businessmen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_family
merrily
(45,251 posts)pointing that out.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)the Fay brothers, New Englanders, went to Savannah to work in the cotton business and became agents for Barings bank (one of the biggest banks in the world at the time, deeply connected with slavery and cotton). Rev. James Smith Bush, father of Prescott Bush, married the daughter of one of the brothers.
merrily
(45,251 posts)I just don't agree with you as to the significance of the deeds of people who were born hundreds of years before we were. I'd rather blame or praise people for what they themselves do or omit.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)what I have said is that slavery was the foundation of the wealth the Bush family accumulated, and it's that accumulated weath that put them where they are today.
This is a fact, and has nothing to do with the character or lack of character of present-day Bushes. But their position was founded in slavery-derived profit.
merrily
(45,251 posts)the implication of your posts on this thread, taken as a whole.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)the Bush family's wealth and power are in slavery. That it's a cold hard fact, and it's a general historical fact about wealth and power as well.
If you choose to take that to be a personal judgment on the Bushes, that's your lookout. But the cold fact has little to nothing to do with the kind of people the Bushes are, just the source of their power and money -- which they are free to use for good or evil as they will.
But however the money and power is used today, its sources were founded in what most people consider an evil, the evil of slavery. And I prefer that the public knows that the rich and powerful are much more likely to have benefited from slavery, down to the present day, than anyone else, or than 'white people' generally.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)associate of the Rockefellers, and the father of the Senator.
merrily
(45,251 posts)
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...among many of their descendants. Zum Beispiel:
The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.
And they are the ones* screwing America now.
What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.
Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.
* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.
Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.
And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, as planned in 1933, their weapon since Pruneface made his first payment to the Ayatollah has been "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans, that means Trickle-Down.
Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal
By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.
CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html
And people wonder why the Have-Mores keep getting ahead while the 99-percent must make-do with Austerity.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)KentuckyWoman
(7,398 posts)Evil and incompetent go way back in that family.....
on point
(2,506 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)rich and powerful became so and remained so by fucking over black people, poor people, workers, etc. Including the Bushes.
Contrary to the popularized version pushed on us that disappears the role of wealth in the creation and maintenance of slavery and other oppressions and diffuses the guilt for such crimes to the general population or some personal 'racism'.
bobclark86
(1,415 posts)MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)I fail to see anything significant about this.
Seriously.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)
mfcorey1
(11,134 posts)slave traders.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)He was completely ostracized by his family, including his father. At least, that's what my grandfather told me. My grandfather never knew his grandfather.
One of my friends is a descendant of Joseph Smith, but the connection to Mormonism has long been lost.
Point is: A lot of people have ancestors who were less than reputable.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Not only did the Bushes have the slave trading ancestor, they had multiple slave-owning ancestors and multiple slavery financier ancestors, plus Prescott Bush who made his nut at Brown Bros. Harriman, a company that not too many years earlier had vastly increased -its- nut in various aspects of the slave trade: lending to plantations (with slaves as collateral that BBH would take possession of in lieu of the loan payment), brokering slave-grown cotton (I believe I read it was the biggest such broker in the world at one time), and other such activities.
One of the reasons BBH became a major financial power, with lots of capital for investment in railroads and the like.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Does not make Jimmy an asshole.
Does not make Georgie not an asshole.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)For example, this link says wiley carter (1798-1864), president carter's 2nd great grandfather, owned close to 6000 acres but only 29 slaves.
https://books.google.com/books?id=tdtVDX2zG38C&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=littleberry+walker+carter+slaves&source=bl&ots=Jn6Bzvd89a&sig=lXEEkihTo6Meqwl_xP85DDQ30r0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TD-rVLGtGpawogTlvYD4BA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=littleberry%20walker%20carter%20slaves&f=false
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)At the time I was living in GA and it was a report on Native American studies and the Cherokee and Creek Indian "displacements" and what happened to their land. It stuck out to me as the name James Carter (1773-1858) popped up in the census reports. At the time I had no idea James Carter was related to "Jimmy" carter.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)owned by any ancestor.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)"the 1850 census listed james....as 77 years old...owner of 8 slaves. jesse owned 69."
james is the jimmy carter ancestor right? father of wiley? what am I missing here?
zappaman
(20,627 posts)
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)I'm biracial and we've had a few family fights. Now my father's father was actually born on the boat on the way over in 1920. However his mother's, mother's, father and his father were slave owners. My dad used to get that thrown in his face by a few of my mom's relatives (who did not agree with their marriage), and it would break his heart.
I take issue with throwing the sins of the father on the children. Trust me, the living Bush family has plenty of their own sins for me to not like them.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)source of the family fortune and power, I think that's worthy of note. certainly more worthy of note than some generalized 'white privilege' is.
yet many posters here pound the 'white privilege' meme into the ground, while leaping to defend people like the bushes from any mention of the origins of such people's wealth and power.
the bushes benefited more from slavery and jim crow than most families -- but we're not supposed to talk about it. sorry, I don't agree. I think we need to talk about it more.
the bushes boasted a slave trader, multiple slave owners, slave-system civil war era financiers, and lastly, Prescott bush's career with brown bros harriman, a company which made huge profits lending to planters, brokering cotton, and other financial activities related to the slave trade; they owned slaves and took them as collateral.
Before Prescott's time, of course, but the power of BBH was a result of these activities, which were not that far in the past. and slave profits were what enabled bbh and the bushes to invest in railroads, streetcars & other 'new' industries.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)But what do we do to the likes of the Bush family, the Carter family, and my own father's family now that we know this? Since my dad is dead I guess that would fall on me I guess.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)If not, it's more or less history.
what I would like is for the general public, black and white, to be more aware of history.
even the dirtiest wealth becomes somehow sanctified with age. there's something wrong there.
thus my surprise at the many posters who seem to think the bushes need champions who'll defend them.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Well... I am in no way in the 1%, but I cannot say for certain that I did not benefit. Not rich, but college was taken care of by Grandpa.
"even the dirtiest wealth becomes somehow sanctified with age. there's something wrong there." - So what should be done about it?
The bushes will always have champions... Hopefully MIRT has had their coffee today.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Glassunion
(10,201 posts)NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)multiple generations, because they were in the south for a very long time. I'd just like some reference to get a sense of how many generations, how big the properties were, how many slaves, etc.
interestingly, jimmy's father had "two hundred African americans as tenant farmers." to me that was as surprising as anything else.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)that I had to go through in my old high school report... but these should give you an idea... I'm so glad I took off several years before taking college courses. I don't know how my parents got through college without the internet.
In order by father starting from the President.
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter (b 1924)
James Earl Carter (1894-1953)
William A Carter (1858-1903)
Littleberry Walker Carter (1832-1874)
James Wiley Carter (1798-1864) - 43 slaves - He left the equivalent of about 4 million (today's dollars) to his children + about 2400 acres of land and livestock.
James Carter (1773-1858) - 6 Slaves at his death the other article I linked before mentioned 8 from the census.
Kindred Carter (c. 1750-1800) - ?
Isaac Carter (1720? to 1792?) - 58 slaves
Also, if you ever see someone claiming that Jimmy Carter is a descendent of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, it's bullshit. There were 3 distinct lines of Carters in Virginia, and Jimmy's is separate. But he is related to Elvis (6th cousin) and Johnny Cash (by marriage June Carter Cash)
More interesting to me is the history of the Carter family. Such a colorful group of people, who were absolutely nothing like the quiet Southern gentleman that Jimmy is. There is a good book, "Jimmy Carter: Champion of Peace" that touches on some of this. I'd highly recommend the book. It is of course a child's book, but it has some really interesting tidbits into the life and family history of President Carter. $4.99 on Amazon.