40000 Rapes in Congo

[Gibsie]

Okay I'll give you that one, since he said "racial lynchings"

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Oh yes. For examples, try these.

Abolishing slavery decades before the US.

Using the Royal Navy to shut down the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Remind me again what the US was doing at the time?

Not having racial segregation in the 20th century.

Not having the Tulsa race riots.

Not having tens of thousands of racial lynchings.

Not murdering black civil rights activists in the 1960's.

Will those do for starters?

Shall we discuss India in the 1930s and 1940s? Shall we perhaps mention a number of incidents during which British troops fired upon innocent unarmed Indian citizens? Perhaps we should discuss some of Mahatma Ghandi's observations of British society and its treatment of "wogs"? We could discuss Britain's attempt to squeeze taxes out of penniless Africans by forcing adult males, the family providers into conscripted labor, periods often encompassing the better part of the year in order to pay a "head tax", often causing the starvation of entire families. Shall we examine a number of incidents of mass racial violence occuring in Britain over the last 50 years involving whites attacking a variety of darker races. Shall we mention groups such as the BNP in such a context? Oh, pray tell, shall I go on.....and on.....and on.....and on?

[Spiffor]

If my roots were in Senegal, I wonder why I should be thankful of my family's enslaved past, looking at what happens in Congo.

It's like an Aussie descended from a deported English, being thankful for not being in Europe during the Bosnia war...

[MrFun]

"In the 1890s, lynchings claimed an average of 139 lives each year, 75 percent of them black."

"Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 4,742 blacks were victims of legal lynchings (speedy trials and executions), private white violence, and '****** hunts,' murdered by a variety of means in isolated rural sections and dumped into rivers and creeks."


(both quotes from "Without Sanctuary" in an essay titled "Hellhounds" by Leon F. Litwack)

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MrFun
"In the 1890s, lynchings claimed an average of 139 lives each year, 75 percent of them black."

No doubt these numbers have been gleaned from reported lynchings. Ignoring the existence of unreported lynchings paints an inaccurate picture of what was really happening.

And contrary to popular assumption, blacks also formed lynch gangs, mostly to lynch blacks, but sometimes to lynch whites. In Clarksdale, Tennessee, blacks lynched a white in 1914 for raping a black woman. The authorities later ruled that this was justifiable homicide. In 1872 in Chicot County, Arkansas, armed blacks broke three whites out of jail and shot them to death.

Nor was lynching by any means a sport in which any black was fair game. In Tennessee in 1911, four white men hung a black man and his two daughters for no good reason. This outrage roused the ire of the community - the whites were tried and two were hanged

"Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 4,742 blacks were victims of legal lynchings (speedy trials and executions), private white violence, and '****** hunts,' murdered by a variety of means in isolated rural sections and dumped into rivers and creeks."

What conveniently vague quote. No information is given as to the proportion of the 4,742 deaths that were a result of "private white violence" and "****** hunts". For all we know, they account for two of the 4,742 deaths! Does the quoted author actually go into these details WRT the 4,742 deaths?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Verto


What a load of crap.

Considering that's not at all what I said, you are correct.

[mrmitchell]

I'm only on the first page and you know what I see?

bfg - "Them ignorant negroes should be glad we stole them thousands of miles from their homes, enslaved their families for centuries, and forced our religion on them. Look at them today - the very luckiest of them are almost as well-off as white people!"

Caligastia - "Lynching was acceptable if the victim was actually guilty of something."

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Caligastia


No doubt these numbers have been gleaned from reported lynchings. Ignoring the existence of unreported lynchings paints an inaccurate picture of what was really happening.

And contrary to popular assumption, blacks also formed lynch gangs, mostly to lynch blacks, but sometimes to lynch whites. In Clarksdale, Tennessee, blacks lynched a white in 1914 for raping a black woman. The authorities later ruled that this was justifiable homicide. In 1872 in Chicot County, Arkansas, armed blacks broke three whites out of jail and shot them to death.

Nor was lynching by any means a sport in which any black was fair game. In Tennessee in 1911, four white men hung a black man and his two daughters for no good reason. This outrage roused the ire of the community - the whites were tried and two were hanged



What conveniently vague quote. No information is given as to the proportion of the 4,742 deaths that were a result of "private white violence" and "****** hunts". For all we know, they account for two of the 4,742 deaths! Does the quoted author actually go into these details WRT the 4,742 deaths?

He does not provide a reference to his statistics, but I encourage you to look for material on lynching -- there is no doubt you will find similar figures.

[Dis]

uggh! i'm not touching this topic.

let's just say I can care less when people complain about their ancestors being slaves.

I still support reparations mind you. If, and only if they can prove in a court of law any economic damages they incurred by slavery against a party who is directly responsible for their economic damages.

[Fake Boris]

Thank God there was the Armenian genocide, or else my mom could have been hairy.

[Brundlefly]

Some reading for you

Outrage as Black Reporter says 'Thank God for Slavery'
A black American author has sparked anger and controversy among black nationalists "by repudiating his African roots and thanking God his ancestor was enslaved."

"Keith Richburg has been shunned and insulted for daring to reject the Afro-centric idealism which is an article of faith in black America. In Out Of America, published in February,1997, (hardcover, 288 pages; 'Basic Books,' ISBN: 0465001874), after he spent three years reporting from Africa for the Washington Post, Mr Richburg hurls down a challenge to black American leaders to stop deceiving themselves and the 35 million (black) descendants of slaves, that Africa is Eden on earth.

"I'm tired of lying,' he writes. 'And I'm tired of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa, much of it from people who've never been there, let alone spent three years walking around amid the corpses.

"Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose in the images of the rotting flesh.'

"Richburg spent three years covering the continent's senseless violence, corruption, bloody and incessant cruelties--machete-wielding Hutu militiamen, a cholera epidemic in Zaire, famine in Somalia, civil war in Liberia, disease, dirt, dictatorships, killer children, AIDS, terror.

"Had my ancestor not made it out of here,' Richburg muses, 'I might have ended up in that crowd...maybe I would have been one of those bodies, washing over the waterfall in Tanzania or maybe my son would have been set ablaze by soldiers. Or I would be limping now from the torture I received in some rancid police cell...'

Afrocentrism 'has become fashionable for many blacks, Richburg notes. 'It cannot work for me. I have been here, I have lived here and seen Africa in all its horror.'

"Mr Richburg's every word is an assault on the group identity politics which have taken hold among black intellectuals and leads, critics say, to a Balkanisation of American society. Thinking about his slave forebear, transported in chains to the Caribbean and thence to South Carolina, Mr Richburg writes: "Thank God my ancestor got out, because, now, I am not one of them [Africans]. In short, thank God I am an American."

"Borders, a Washington D.C. book shop, was packed this month for a lecture by Mr Richburg at which hecklers accused him of racial betrayal. 'One man demanded to know if the author had a white girlfriend,' said Mary Ann Brownlow, who organised the lecture.

"When Mr Richburg appeared on a talk show on Black Entertainment Television, Randall Robinson, leader of the TransAfrica lobby group and one of America's most prominent blacks, refused to join the discussion.

"Jackie Clark, producer of the show, said: 'We African-Americans have this vision of Africa as the motherland which we see in this wonderful light, but people who have lived there can burst this bubble. It takes courage to say things you know are going to outrage people, but I think Richburg wishes he were white.'

"Out Of America is a gruesomely detailed account of barbarism and corruption across the continent, particularly in Somalia and Rwanda. The author pulls no punches in condemning it, and no...myth is spared. When sketching how his ancestor was enslaved, he says it was first 'probably by a local chieftain.' The suggestion that African blacks were slave owners is anathema in America...

"Mr Richburg, who is now working for the Washington Post in Hong Kong, says he is not condoning the evil of slavery, but insists that condemning it should not blind blacks to the fact that good has emerged from it..."

Reviews of Richburg's Out of America:

E.G. Long: "Africa is a painful reality. Over the past 21 years, I have lived and worked in five African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zaire and Nigeria. ..There is nothing in Richburg's book that I could contradict. I too, experienced the horror, and hopelessnesss of that continent. I read 'Out of America' in one sitting... "

Steve Wishnevsky: "This is the voice missing from the current race 'dialogue.' Mr. Richburg is a courageous writer and clear observer...His is an authentic voice and should be listened to closely. America is the only land where the descendants of Africans have anything approaching freedom and economic opportunity."

H. Luther: "So much of what you hear about Africa lately is from people who have never been there. People who want to romanticize what is in fact chaos and disaster...Richburg has written what he has seen, he has presented reality with great integrity. It is a must read. "

Note: Mr. Richburg's book is NOT for sale from the Campaign for Radical Truth in History. Order it at your neighborhood book shop.

I plan to read this book. I hope all of you will read it too and then perhaps we can have another discussion on this topic with people who are willing to look at it objectively.

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Oh yes. For examples, try these.

Abolishing slavery decades before the US.

Using the Royal Navy to shut down the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Remind me again what the US was doing at the time?

Not having racial segregation in the 20th century.

Not having the Tulsa race riots.

Not having tens of thousands of racial lynchings.

Not murdering black civil rights activists in the 1960's.

Will those do for starters?

I asked for examples of African-British individuals who have made significant contributions to humanity - not a list of examples of America's civil rights infractions. You are implying that UK has treated its citizens of African descent better than U.S. has. Well if that is true, then you will be able to list for me more British of African descent who have acheived honor and acheivement within your culture than I am able to list in comparison for America...

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
I'm only on the first page and you know what I see?

bfg - "Them ignorant negroes should be glad we stole them thousands of miles from their homes, enslaved their families for centuries, and forced our religion on them. Look at them today - the very luckiest of them are almost as well-off as white people!"

Caligastia - "Lynching was acceptable if the victim was actually guilty of something."

Unfortunately, this thread has not escaped the pile-on mentality of many OT posters who could care less about evaluating an argument and care more about just making a cute or outrageous post...

[Brundlefly]

Consider this...

Slavery was not new to Africa. Traditionally, slavery was used as a punishment for serious crimes. However, although slavery was a punishment for criminals, they were, in the main, treated fairly well by their masters.

This was not the case once trading in slaves became 'big business'.

From about 1510, Europeans had begun capturing slaves and taking them to work in the Americas. They were easily able to do this because their weapons were much more powerful than the Africans' traditional spears and shields.

As the demand for slaves grew, the demand for slaves by Europeans grew. They exchanged guns for slaves and African chiefs, eager to possess guns which would give them power over rival chiefs, began inventing new crimes for which the punishment was slavery.

At the same time, coastal Africans were using guns to raid inland villages for the slaves that the Europeans wanted. Those who resisted capture were killed.

Slaves were chained together and marched to the coast. Sometimes this could take many days or weeks. Slaves who did not move fast enough, or showed any sign of resistance to the traders, were whipped.

Those who were too weak or sickly to complete the journey at the required pace were left to die.

Fear of the slave trader led many Africans to move to remote areas where the soil was not so good and they were unable to grow enough crops to feed themselves.

Africa became a continent of violence, war, fear and famine.

So I ask you again, as an African-American would you have wanted your ancestor to stay in Africa or head to America with the Europeans?

[Spiffor]

Re: Some reading for you

Originally posted by bfg9000
I plan to read this book. I hope all of you will read it too and then perhaps we can have another discussion on this topic with people who are willing to look at it objectively.

I don't know where that guy lived for 3 years. I trust he lived in a war-torn, horrible place.

However, Africa is far from being a monolithic hellhole. Most people in Africa live a relatively peaceful (if poor) life. Sure several countries are affected by wars, and the human disasters that ensues. Sure most countries are affected by a really frightening epidemics of AIDS (which is probably more devastating than war). Sure crime is higher and health is worse than in other parts of the world.

But that doesn't mean that every African lives in the constant fear of rape, violent death or famine. Even if the only thing we westerners see on TV is those horrors. Most people in Africa live their lives. And many are even satisfied with it.

Once again: if my ancestors were Senegalese slaves (most Slaves come from western Africa), I'm not sure I would thank the slavers, seeing that Senegal is almost entirely at peace, that Human rights are tolerably respected, and that AIDS is kept in check.