US, not africans, responsible for slavery

[GePap]

Originally posted by JohnT


Wahhhh. The world goes through 10,000+ years of history thinking that everything about it is hunky-dory, and then in a mere 100 year period the globe changes it's mind... and you're complaining that the US changed it's mind in year 80 as opposed to year 20?

Sorry, GePap, but given the timescales involved, this isn't much of a complaint. If]this is the depth of thought you put into it, where a countries place on the "anti-slavery" timescale is the only issue that matters, you'd do better to go whine at the Brazilians.

Unlike you it seems I do think human beings have a choice in their actions. And I do find those several generations of Americans who partook in slavery morally culpable for thier choice, specially when they no longer had the excuse of "everyone does it".

But its funny. So I will expect you never to say much about rabid homophobia in ohter countries thought, cause until only 80 years ago it was all hunky dory, so any systems that maintain it, well, in the great span of human history, what is a few decades, right?

Oh, and rabid expressions of secterian hatred. After all, its been 5500 years of it too, so what if a few places take a few decades more to overcome it than others...only crybabies don't think about it thusly.

You can only judge by the great spans of history..... (which is only 5500 years long by the way, since writing began in 3500BC)

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

NOt banning slavery right then and there was the greatest moral failing of the founding fathers, and one I can find little possible excuse for.

You mean aside from the revolution being one of, oh, 10 states, and not including Virginia?

Like I said it was for economic reasons.. the South would NOT join in the rebellion if they campaigned against slavery.

Last time I looked the rebellion was won by 1783. What does your statement have to do with the Constitutional convention of 1789?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by GePap
Last time I looked the rebellion was won by 1783. What does your statement have to do with the Constitutional convention of 1789?

What do you think?

If the Southern states weren't for banning slavery in 1776, why would they be in 1789. They needed to ratify the document, after all.

[GePap]

Slavery in 1789 was not an immensely strong institution. The economy of the south was certainly not built upon the rock of it. That happens later, and is especially true of states that were not even in existance yet.

Interestingly enough, you fail to point out that one of the main economic interests that would have been threatened by the end of slavery well northern shippers, the guys who happened to run the trade in slaves.

BUt that is at the end irrelevant to the moral questions. I am not stupid enough to think that moral questions take primacy over economic ones. BUt that does not stop me from being able to find them morally bankrupt for their crass hypocrasy.

Others had the "decensy" to not pontificate about their own goodness and moral rectitude while keeping slaves.

[Imran Siddiqui]

you fail to point out that one of the main economic interests that would have been threatened by the end of slavery well northern shippers, the guys who happened to run the trade in slaves.

Perhaps, but remember who was at that convention. Washington owned slaves. Jefferson owned slaves. Madison owned slaves. Their own economies were threatened.

And if you consider slaves to be merely property and freemen to be people are you really being hypocritical?

[Pekka]

"
i thought that one of the big targets in a Scanda-hoovian viking raid was 'thralls' so that they could spend the rest of the year drinking mead?"

Hey, I don't live in Sweden or Norway. Or Denmark. We always were the 'slave people'. I say it in quotations marks because it can't be compared to what Africans went through. But we were second rate folks for a long time so .. it's not like we had people working for us .

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Welcome to the mexican world pekka. Most mexicans are considered second rate folks. The rich white folks that have servents who do you think they are?? here in the us they are the older mexican woman that get to clean the houses and things of the rich folks. I can agree we havent lived what the african slaves have but the degradation some of these woman go thru is humilating. My ex mother in law cleans houses for rich folks and i have heard them treat her like she is nothing. I have gone a few times to help her, them not knowing i am educated started to treat me like her. I had to hold my tongue i did manage to curse a few of them in spanish thou. wrong choice but made me feel better

[Pekka]

This discussion is pretty weird. It was about money, so if you guys say well, the ones who sold are more guilty, and you were there to exploit to make business, then why not pay reparations like in a good business?

Then again I don't believe the seller was the huge super evil, I believe it's at least 50/50 or 80/20 for the buyer. It's not the same as just making a transaction and buying a slave that was enslaved ANYWAY.

The huge demand makes the market bigger. The demand grows, and the transportation of the goods, well so many died and stuff, I don't see that as just business. I see the buyer to be more responsible, simply because they bought those people, and also killed many of them, for a long time.

I don't think it's same as buying drugs. When you buy drugs, the drugs won't mind what happens to them. IT's more like buying a person. And them makign them work for free and sometimes killing their friends if some crap ensues. Or buying like a girl and putting them in cage while ****ing them every now and then and keeping them sex prisoners.

Thus, buyer more responsible, especially after the market grows due to demand.

I think this was pretty simple, yes? And most popular opinion, in the US? Who cares about it, it's in the past, some people have hard time letting go but it's in the past.

[Pekka]

MRs Tubes, yeah I know but that was to Ming who said Europeans did it too. It wasn't that serious reply because many European countries DID enslave folks so he's right. I just pointed out that we didn't do it, because we were second rate ourselves. Of course not like Africans were but still, we didn't have anyone working for us. That was my point, but not a very serious point.

[Barnabas]

dont forget there 3 kind sof people involved, those who would capture the slave in africa, those who would transport the slave from africa to the caribean, and those who would buy the slave in america

I tend to think that the transport/ship owner guy was the worst one of the 3, but that is just how I feel, no rational explanation for that.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
dont forget there 3 kind sof people involved, those who would capture the slave in africa, those who would transport the slave from africa to the caribean, and those who would buy the slave in america

I tend to think that the transport/ship owner guy was the worst one of the 3, but that is just how I feel, no rational explanation for that.

I agree there is no explaniation for that. But then again some folks will always say the shipper was only supplying the demand from this crowd. like that makes it any better. The us screwed up but they only follwed suit behind the other nations that did so as well

[Adam Smith]

Google is your friend...

Originally posted by The Mad Viking There would not have been a slave trade if not for the demand created by the US.

From LLOYDS REGISTER

Most (95%) slaves from Africa were transported to the Caribbean and Latin America. The largest proportion of around five million were shipped to Portugal's Brazil. The Spanish colonies received about two million, while most of the remainder went to British, French, Dutch and Danish colonies (aren't these some of your ancestors, TMV?) in the Caribbean. Only about 500,000 slaves were transported to the mainland, north of Spanish Florida. Most of the four million slaves in the United States in 1860 were actually American born.

ANOTHER SITEwith similar statistics.
Note that both these sites discuss only the Atlantic slave trade. The second site appears to indicate that a similar number were shipped by Arab merchants to the middle east.

Whlie no american should be proud of this part of our history (especially the exhaused plantations whose primary "crop" was slaves for sale elsewhere) the initial statement appears to be false on its face.

Trolls
Trolls with no factual basis

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
dont forget there 3 kind sof people involved, those who would capture the slave in africa, those who would transport the slave from africa to the caribean, and those who would buy the slave in america

You forgot those who bought the slaves from those who'd captured them and transported them to the coast.

I tend to think that the transport/ship owner guy was the worst one of the 3, but that is just how I feel, no rational explanation for that.

BTW: "Amazing Grace" was written by a former captain of one of those slave ships. The hymn reflects his astonishment of a religion that would forgive the sins of someone from his line of work:

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see."

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Japher


If there is no market there is no market... either way you look at it. Both are morally responsible IMO; those who bought AND those who sold.

I agree with Japher!!

[Odin]

Gepap is right, just before the invention of the cotton gin, there were several southern states actually thinking of abolishing slavery. Oh, and Britian got a lot of it's cotton for it's textile factories from the US south, so they still benefited greatly from slaves even after they abolished slavery.