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

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Tingkai

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.

I agree with your entire post.

But would like to add that I shouldn't be made to feel responsible for those whites who brought their ancestors over in chains.

And yet I and many others do. That is why I, anyway, have a hard time with reparations. I don't feel like I should have to pay them because my ancestors did not do this, but somewhere inside is the shame that white people did do this.

I've heard talk by white supremacists(?) say they should feel proud to be white. Blacks can feel proud, indians can feel proud, asian, hispanics can to . Why not whites?

But because I hate everything a White supremacist stands for, and because of slavery, and the genocide of the indians, and other instances, I do not feel proud to be white. BUT I also don't think ANY race should be proud of their skin color, after all it's just an accident of birth.

[faded glory]

I think that is stupid. But it is true

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Their success is due to their individual abilities.

So if they are successful its due to their individual abilities, but if they fail its the white man's fault.

[Tingkai]

How about this analogy of three olympic athletes who are in a serious car crash six months before the games.

One of the athletes decides there is no way she'll be ready for the Olympics so she retires.

The second athletes does rehabilitation training, but when the games start, she is not ready to compete because the injuries were too severe.

The third athlete works hard to overcome her injuries, decides to compete, and despite her injuries, wins a medal.

The medal-winner succeeded because of her individual abilities.

The athlete who trains, but doesn't compete because her injuries were too severe, can honesty say that it was not her fault. She was affected by factors outside her control. Her failure, if we want to call it that, is due to the accident, not her individual abilities.

The athlete who doesn't re-train has to accept some individual responsibility for not making it to the Olympics, but she is not entirely responsible for her fate.

[MOBIUS]

DP

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Caligastia


Good thing we didnt bring this topic up for discussion when we met in NYC Moby!

You may laugh, but you haven't refuted my observation...

With the exception of a minority of skilled professionals, most blacks in the US appear to be menial workers on low to minimum wage kinds of jobs. With that kind of income, very few can break the 'poverty trap' to afford education or mortgages - or even just a decent interest rate on a bank loan...

They are forever kept in a vicious circle where poor education leads to poor jobs - ad infinitum.

Just how much does a decent college education cost these days in the US???

How many people on minimum wage afford to send their children to an average US college?

It is not slavery in the strictest sense where you do not have your freedom and are not paid - but many slaves were given a day off and the freedom to go about their business...

If you are stuck in a poor neighbourhood for lack of funds, chained to your dead-end job for lack skills and fear of losing what job you do have - if you cannot get the education you want, what freedom do you have?

One of the definitions of a slave is a person with little or no personal freedom...

I put it to you that the poor of this World are today's slaves, earning just enough to maintain their miserable existences but almost never being able to elevation themselves out of it...

Only this time the rich don't have to provide a roof over their heads and food such as even the lowliest plantation slave could expect - now today's 'slaves' have to fend for themselves...

[Sikander]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Sikander, your post is pretty good, except on two points.

1) Althought the slave trade was illegal in the US, slave ships continued selling their wares in the South until at least the 1850s, just not as often.

Agreed, but the vast majority of slaves were brought before this.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
2) The scramble for Africa wasn't about prestige, although that did have something to do with it. It was primarily about wealth or protecting wealth. Britain wanted the Cape to ensure control of the sea lanes from India, Egypt for its cotton, the Sudan to protect Egypt, Rodesia and Kenya for plantations. France wanted rubber and gold, and so on.

I'll stick to my lengthier though perhaps less clear interpretation above, though I'll grant you that in almost every case an economic argument was used to justify (to the government / taxpayers) the expense of taking / founding a colony. The later colonies were hard to make a case for, but nations like Italy and Germany were keen to take on the burden and gain the prestige of owning colonies even though there were objections (usually correct) regarding the economic viability of the areas in question. Even England which usually was quite strict about leaving an area alone that didn't have a clear profit potential took vast areas just to deny them to France etc.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Belgium was certainly the worst colonial power in Africa, but they were by no means the only butchers. They are no unearthing mass graves in Namibia dating back to the German colonial period. The French were definately evil, and the Portugese have their share of blood on their hands.

Agreed.

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.

Let's not confuse ethic boundaries with preexisting political boundaries. European colonies crossed both, but for the most part they simply made their own boundaries as they saw fit. Most of the political units in Africa were a good deal smaller than the ethnic units, ie the ethnic divisions would have existed for the most part in the form of clan lines between peoples of the culture.

Your example of Rwanda and Burundi is an excellent example of the state of Africa before European intervention, and how that intervention interacted with the status quo. The Tutsi and the Hutu for instance were already mixed together before the Belgians arrived, with the more advanced Tutsi already set up as a ruling strata above the less advanced Hutu. The Belgians found it far simpler to utilize this structure to some extent by ruling the Tutsi, and thus the Hutu. The difference was that rather than allowing nature to take it's course, where these two peoples would probably grow into one over time, the Belgians took over as the top strata, and both Hutu and Tutsi began to take on Belgian characteristics rather than the Hutu taking on Tutsi characteristics. This kept the fracture lines between these two cultures fresh, and when the Belgians pulled out the Tutsi were in far less control than they would have been if left unmolested, and the state was less integrated than it would have been, though of course it's doubtful whether there would have been a state anywhere near this large at all.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
When African countries try and get control of their own resources, they have a nasty habit of having a coup (Congo, Algeria, etc.) or becoming a "rouge nation" (Lybia).

So Qadaffi is wearing rouge. I thought so.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tingkai

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.

The wars you mention were already in progress when the Europeans came and monopolized the use of force / kept the peace. They continued on once the Europeans left, just like the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Tito regime allowed the longstanding Balakan conflicts to reignite. Read my post, Africa was in a state of flux before the Europeans or even Arabs arrived due to the rapid growth of the population and successive waves of migration. The Europeans brought peace temporarily but didn't have enough of an effect to eliminate the underlying cultural conflicts. When the Europeans left they left behind a vastly larger population in most cases, vastly larger political units in every case, and more modern armaments. It's surprising that the outcome wasn't more like India.

As for education, you are correct in implying that the colonial powers educated their subjects for their own purposes. You neglect though the large though extremely variable efforts of missionaries to teach literacy. These efforts started much earlier and produced most of the early candidates for secondary education. Belgian Congo was exceptional in it's lack of educational development, not the rule.

As for infrastructure, it's important to keep in mind a few things.

1) There was no base infrastructure, which means that even fairly simple tasks for a country which was already agrarian for a time and had cleared areas to build on and rudimentary roads to transport equipment etc. were often expensive undertakings in Africa.

2) Most of the colonizers controlled more of this rough terrain in Africa than they controlled territory in Europe.

3) The larger colonial powers had fairly extensive colonies outside of Africa, which often were a good deal more economically viable / developed, and where on a strictly economic basis better returns could be made.

4) There were inumerable European wars which not only sucked cash away from all other expenditures, but tended to make the powers invest in fortifications and armaments in the colonies as well as the homeland lest the entire enterprise fall into another's hands.

5) While many of the powers were monarchies, few were anything near absolute monarchies and thus had to spend money close to home in order to keep things in hand where the regime could be threatened most.

Thus Africa was low on the priority list for most states, especially in the 20th century where the two world wars drew away vast sums of capital and energy. Europeans weren't trying to screw over their own colonies, they were simply dealing with their own realities and ambitions, much like you would playing a game of civ. I don't doubt for a moment that Africa would not have been able to produce the level of infrastuctural development or education (modest though it was) it achieved under European control on it's own had it been left unmolested.

I am not trying to make Europeans out to be some sort of force for good in the world, though there was a not insignificant political and religious force which was trying to 'improve' the condition of the Africans by the time Africa was brought completely into the European embrace. What I am trying to say is that the Europeans were no worse than any other conquerers throughout history. They never sought to leave Africa in such a dysfunctional state, but through their neglect and moreso the enormity of the task of modernizing Africa they left a far larger mess than they imagined they would.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
You may laugh, but you haven't refuted my observation...

There are plenty of whites caught in the poverty cycle too, not only blacks. Also I think its ridiculous to refer to them as todays "slaves". While many people are stuck in low income jobs (black and white) they still have far more freedom than any slave.

To call people in low income jobs "slaves" demeans them and sends a message of hopelessness IMO. Being in a low wage job does not mean you are a slave with no hope of anything better. Sure, it makes success more difficult, but there are plenty of examples of people rising out of poverty through hard work and determination.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Sikander

It's surprising that the outcome wasn't more like India.

When you say that, do you mean India's enslavement of impoverished children today, and a rapidly growing population that is overwhelming its resources??

[DinoDoc]

MOBIUS: It looks like you don't have any facts to back your point that blacks are alaves and are basing it almost entirely on your own supositions.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The second athletes does rehabilitation training, but when the games start, she is not ready to compete because the injuries were too severe.

Not too bad of an analogy, except I dont think physical injury is comparable to something that happened to your ancestors.

[WhiteElephants]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
With the exception of a minority of skilled professionals, most blacks in the US appear to be menial workers on low to minimum wage kinds of jobs. With that kind of income, very few can break the 'poverty trap' to afford education or mortgages - or even just a decent interest rate on a bank loan...

They are forever kept in a vicious circle where poor education leads to poor jobs - ad infinitum.

Just how much does a decent college education cost these days in the US???

How many people on minimum wage afford to send their children to an average US college?

The only reason anyone in this country would be denied a loan for a college education would be because they make too much money. Frankly, I'm tired of this excuse. Yes, excuse. There is plenty of scholarship, and loan, money out there particularly for the minimum wage lower classes. In all likelyhood someone who earns a minium wage would be sending their child to school for free, but even without that there's the subsidized and non-subsidized college loan money. I'm getting a college education, both my parents got a college education and our last name is not Rockefeller. The problem is that people aren't willing to get those loans, nor are they interested in a college education. So, quit with this excuse, and quit with the poor people pity party. Its lame and completely undermines anyone who is poor and is out there getting a college education by the means available to them.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by WhiteElephants
I'm getting a college education, both my parents got a college education and our last name is not Rockefeller.

That's really the key: both your parents have college educations.

If your parents have a post-secondary education then you are more likely to get a degree. I don't have the specific stats, but it stands to reason that if your parents are not well-educated then they will be less able to educate you during the pre-school years.

But this is a cross-cultural situation and is not exclusive to any given race or nationality.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Caligastia


Not too bad of an analogy, except I dont think physical injury is comparable to something that happened to your ancestors.

Racism continues to this day and remains a hurdle that black people must overcome and a hurdle that white men don't encounter.