"Blacks ought to be thankful for slavery; otherwise, they'd be back in Africa."

[Chris 62]

I'm going to go through this one more time, pay attention this time.

Originally posted by MrFun
Just because it was murder, does not mean that it was illegal in the United States.

Lynching, IE vigilante justice was illeagal.

Lynching was a particular form of murder that was legal when the victims were blacks.

The fact that it was prosecuted doesn't make it Legal.
Stop confusing this.

The Holocaust was legal under Nazi Germany, yet it was murder and genocide.

That was Germany, this is the United States.

Lynch mobs had no fear of being prosecuted after lynching a black man until anti-lynching laws were passed in the late 1940's after World War II.

That doesn't make it Legal.

If people are consistently prevented from being prosecuted for what would normally be a crime, you're saying that it is still illegal even though no one is prosecuted for the crime??

No was "prevented", nobody cared to see their friends tried for killing blacks.
Doesn't make it legal.

Leagl means the accepted laws of a country, as spelled out by statuate, nowhere is Lynching accepted, or murder of any kind authorized under US law.

Something else, the Nazis never made the Holocaust legal, officailly it was "resttlement", nowhere is it spelled out that it is not a crime to kill Jews, even though Jews had no rights under Nazi law.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Also consider that European colonies cut acress ethnic boundries and often included multiple ethnicities in the same colony. While this makes it easy for outside control, it has made rather a mess of the post-colonial period, with various ethnicities vying for power vis a vis one another and resulting in say, the Ruandan and Burandan genocides of the 90s.

I would say that is one of the main reasons why African nations are struggling to develop. The majority of the civil wars fought in Africa have been along ethnic or religous lines (Nigeria, Congo, Sudan to name but three).

Sikander is wrong about Europeans educating the "savages." Europeans controlled Africa for more than 100 years and did very little in terms of social or economic development. When Zaire became independent, there were only three native people with university degrees.

The same thing happened in Asia. The Hong Kong education system was designed by the British to ensure that less than 5 per cent of the students would graduate with a high school degree. The Brits wanted a few well-educated locals for government work, but otherwise, they wanted to keep people ignorant.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Chris 62
I'm going to go through this one more time, pay attention this time. Lynching, IE vigilante justice was illeagal

What's your point. Lynching was in theory illegal, but no one was ever prosecuted so the end result was the same. White folks could lynch black folks without fear of being thrown in jail.

[Rasputin]

, or murder of any kind authorized under US law.

hey chris isnt capital punishment legal in some states?

[mactbone]

Tingkai, and Mr. Fun -
How do you prove that in a court of law? This is what it boils down to. Your judgements are based on only a percentage of lynchings, because there were cases where white people were tried for lynching. I'm sure that there is at least one case where a person was tried and convicted for lynching. So, to claim that in every single case that a lynching happened, no one was tried and convicted is absurd and would never stand in court.

[chequita guevara]

I think white people were convicted of lynching (of a Black person) that took place in 1983, and there was also the lynching that happned a couple years back in Texas, where all three men got the death penatly, but those are the only two of which I am aware someone was actually convicted. Of the rest, even those folks that were tried, they all got off.

[Chris 62]

Originally posted by Tingkai
What's your point.

If you read the thread, you wouldn't have asked that.

Lynching was in theory illegal, but no one was ever prosecuted so the end result was the same. White folks could lynch black folks without fear of being thrown in jail.

Read the thread.

[Chris 62]

Originally posted by Rasputin
hey chris isnt capital punishment legal in some states?

Yes

[MrFun]

Ok, Chis -- I read your arguments.

Fine -- lynching was illegal even though lynch mobs were not prosecuted. Gee, that makes a lot of sense -- thanks for your logic.

Basically, in this case, it did not matter if lynching was a form of murder, and that this was "officially" illegal. It was in practice, legal, in spite of it being "officially" illegal.

Borrow a copy of the book, "Without Sanctuary." It shows and explains why lynch mobs did not fear prosecution.

How do you counter my point that there were no anti-lynching laws in the federal government until the late 1940's after World War II?? You ignored that point completely.

[Drake Tungsten]

Isn't any law prohibiting murder an "anti-lynching law"? I'm pretty sure murder was illegal before the 1940's...

On another note, there is a difference between something being "accepted" and something being "legal". You can claim all day that lynching was an accepted practice (what you are calling "de facto legal") and you would be right. However, it isn't going to make a difference if you try to base a case on it. The is no such thing as de facto legality as far as the courts are concerned; something is either legal or it isn't. A practice like lynching can be both illegal and accepted at the same time. The courts, however, are only worried about the legality of the practice.

I thought Chris explained this all pretty well. Why's it so hard to understand?

[MrFun]

I understand his argument on the legality question.

He is arguing from the official aspect. The government, from its ivory tower, declared that all forms of murder is illegal, therefore, lynching would be illegal.

However, from my argument, I am stating that in REALITY, not in OFFICIALITY, lynching was essentially legal simply because of lack of prosecution.

Just because I still diagree, does not mean that I do not understand the opponent's argument.

[Drake Tungsten]

I thought lynching and its "legality" was brought up in this thread because someone proposed that blacks be paid reparations for lynching. Someone else then pointed out that reparations for lynching would never be paid because lynching was never a legal practice in the US. You can talk about de facto legality all you want, but in a strictly legal sense (since we are examining a potential lawsuit for lynching reparations) the acceptance of lynching in practice is irrelevant. No government or corporation every sanctioned lynching, so who are you going to sue for reparations?

[Chris 62]

DT answered for me, it's exactly what I would have said.

When you go to court, especialy civil court, everything is black and white, there is no grey area in law suits involving monitary claims.

This is just an attempt to get a money handout using white people's shame over past doings, not money owed or diserved, it's a form of extortion.

[Tingkai]

Well, thank god you guys are moving forward on the legality issue.

I have a question about the US legal system. Is it possible to sue the government for failing to uphold a law? If the legal system failed to protect people from lynching then can those people sue the government for failing to protect their civil rights?

[Tingkai]

On another note, I met a distant cousin last night who had a copy of my family tree that contains the name and occupation of every son born for the last 20 generations. That goes back about 400-500 years. The book also provides a history of how our family ended up in southern China. It also claims that our family got its name when a king decided to honour an official by designating him the highest lord, or Lord Ko (Ko is the Chinese word for High). This is said to have happened before the first emperor of China so that's about 2,200 years ago.

The family tree is an official record (something like the church birth records in the west). The story about the name is apparently based on other family records, although it could well be a legend.

This is a link to my past and it is something that African-Americans will never have. By being taken as slaves and shipped over to the U.S., they were cut off from their history, their culture and their myths.

African-Americans may well be better off economically compared to people in Africa, but the history of African-American is that their ancestors were to weak to defend their freedom and ended up as slaves. They gained their freedom because whites in the north fought against whites in the south.

I don't know what it would be like to have that kind of history, but I suspect that it is bound to have an influence on people alive today. Most people in North America can look back to an ancestor who was an enterprising immigrant, but those descended from slaves cannot. Their history is a constant re-inforcement of the prejudice that they are somehow weaker than whites. They are routinely told by idiots that their race is not as smart, or that their race is more criminally inclined. In the back of their minds, they must wonder sometimes if it is true.

I admire African-Americans who are successful because they need incredible internal strength to ignore these messages.
They should not be thankful for the fact that their ancestors were slaves. They owe nothing to the whites who brought their ancestors to the Americas in chains.

Their success is due to their individual abilities.