Thread: A challenge: how did you benefit from slavery? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
The challenge is to find out to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery. Did you attend a college or university that was built on land taken from Native Americans, or built with slave labor? Do you work for or own stock in a company that benefited directly from slavery? Or did your parents or grandparents? If you're in the UK, did your family benefit in any way from the Triangle Trade?

And what about the modern prison industry? Is your 401K invested in private prisons or in companies that exploit prisoners and their families?

Could you be standing where you are right now if you weren't standing on the backs of slaves?
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
Here's a list of 15 major corporations that benefited from slavery.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
Economists estimate that pretty much every American has benefitted from slavery/oppression of indigenous persons. During 200 years of slavery/forced settlement the US built up an enormous reserve of wealth which is what pretty much everything built upon. Not just the more direct examples Josephine cites but pretty much everything can be traced to that. In one of his addresses (can't remember which one) Lincoln reminded the country of this-- essentially saying "you northerners can get off your moral high horse because you benefitted from the economic subsidies of southern wealth"). Since there was never any attempt to pay reparations to freed slaves/descendants of slaves, that wealth is part & parcel of the American economic system to this day, able to be leveraged advantageously.

The point being (as Josephine is alluding to) that it's no good for American whites to say "hey, I don't need to repent of slavery, I never owned slaves"). We all benefitted from slavery, regardless of whether we or our ancestors owned other human beings.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
Not just America. Here is a fairly depressing list of public buildings in Liverpool financed directly or indirectly through slavery.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
Could you be standing where you are right now if you weren't standing on the backs of slaves?
No, I wouldn't.

Aside from echoing what cliffdweller said, I can point to lots of more direct connections. I do live in the South, after all. On a more personal level, I have in my house two pieces of family furniture that we guess may have been made by slaves. One is my chest of drawers. The other is a small table in our living room. Both are simply made but quite handsome.

Who knows—maybe neither was made by slaves, or maybe they both were, and some other family pieces we have were as well. It's not something I can undo if they were. What I can do, though, is let them be tangible, regular reminders to me of just built into the woof and warp of my life the effects—and benefits—of slavery are.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
My grandparents immigrated to the US from Denmark in the early 20th c. So it would be easy for me to believe that since they came more than a generation after the Civil War and the forced resettlements, I have no connection to those evils (of course, if we start opening that Viking history book...)

But... my grandparents were able to settle on land that was cleared by that early wealth accumulated thru slavery and stolen from indigenous peoples. When they moved West, it was to land that was explored and cleared thru violent and oppressive means, not just of indigenous people but also of Asian workers. The roads, buildings, everything that was and is part and parcel of the infrastructure-- was built with that early slave wealth.

Then there's the fact that even though they were immigrants who didn't speak the language and were often mistaken for those awful Germans, there were certain assumptions made about them because they were white. They could enter into a community, safe that their neighbors would assume that they were law-abiding, intelligent, and hard-working until proven otherwise. Similar assumptions would not be made of African- and native- Americans, even though those individuals would have greater knowledge of the language and customs of the US. That gave my grandparents significant advantages in work. educational and business settings-- advantages that I inherited both in material and social assets that were passed down and thru similar assumptions still made about me today as a European American.
 
Posted by AmyBo (# 15040) on :
 
As a child, I was relieved to learn my ancestors were to poor and too northern to have been involved in the slave trade.They settled the prairie, building homesteads and farms on what was then the frontier. I know their faith precluded them personally from harboring ill will towards any people. But their settlement encroached on Ojibwe land.

I also like to point out that they crossed into the US from Canada without any documentation. By today's standards, my white family were non-English speaking illegals. [Big Grin]
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
I think that instead of dwelling on the past, one should ask about the slavery (and institutions nearly the equivalent) that persists today. It is one of the easiest societal vices to reinvent.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by AmyBo:
As a child, I was relieved to learn my ancestors were to poor and too northern to have been involved in the slave trade.They settled the prairie, building homesteads and farms on what was then the frontier. I know their faith precluded them personally from harboring ill will towards any people. But their settlement encroached on Ojibwe land.
and, again, was built with the wealth that was accumulated and/or subsidized by southern slave dollars.


quote:
Originally posted by AmyBo:
By today's standards, my white family were non-English speaking illegals. [Big Grin]
This is true of virtually all European Americans whose ancestors immigrated here up until at least the 20th c. "Illegal immigration" is yet another convenient mythology invented to suppress "the other".
 
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on :
 
I believe there to be a huge, inevitable irony about this whole question.

The world's economy is now so heavily dependant on a few global corporations, so many of which benefitted from slavery to a greater or lesser extent, that to a very real extent, we are all touched by the economic legacy of slavery.

Our economic connectedness now challenges the ability of history to define whether or not we have benefited: if we trace our families' history back that may or may not show effects of slavery, but across our global family now, we are all touched by it.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I think that instead of dwelling on the past, one should ask about the slavery (and institutions nearly the equivalent) that persists today. It is one of the easiest societal vices to reinvent.
The two are not unrelated. It is precisely because we (white Americans) have allowed ourselves to believe that slavery has nothing to do with us today, that enslaving and oppressive systems continue today. The same mental "lockbox" that allows us to ignore the way past slavery benefits us economically today allows us to ignore the way slavery on the other side of the world benefits us economically today. Talking about our past helps us to see the way the past is still impacting us today. We won't move forward w/o dealing with the past.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
None of us now alive today could be here without the probably violent and certainly messy exploitation of people in the past. The past was not a nice place. Go back far enough and you too have an ancestor who clouted someone on the head with a rock and then ate him.

I agree it is not likely to help, now, to dig back into the past. After a certain number of years/centuries/millennia we should accept that it's over. The dead have buried their dead. We have to live today.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:


I agree it is not likely to help, now, to dig back into the past. After a certain number of years/centuries/millennia we should accept that it's over. The dead have buried their dead. We have to live today.
This may be true cross-pond, not for me to say. But in the US, it's barely more than 1 century past, and it's definitely not over. The events of this week have demonstrated how very much it is a part of our present. If we are to live today, we will have to deal with the legacy of the past.
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
Cliffdweller, you seem to think of slavery only in terms of its past in the U.S. There was plenty of slavery before it came to the North American colonies, and there is plenty of slavery left today, in many places and in several forms.

I am unsure of the purpose of this thread. One could similarly ask how you in your life have benefited from the French Revolution, the opium trade, the Protestant Reformation, the Silk Road, the building of the Roman roads, or the conquests of Alexander.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Cliffdweller, you seem to think of slavery only in terms of its past in the U.S. There was plenty of slavery before it came to the North American colonies, and there is plenty of slavery left today, in many places and in several forms.
No, I'm trying not to speak beyond my own sphere. I was explicitly acknowledging that slavery did (and still does in some parts) exist outside the US. I just felt it was important to focus on my own country. It would be hypocritical for me to speak beyond that.


quote:
Originally posted by HCH:

I am unsure of the purpose of this thread. One could similarly ask how you in your life have benefited from the French Revolution, the opium trade, the Protestant Reformation, the Silk Road, the building of the Roman roads, or the conquests of Alexander.
The point is because that legacy is still impacting us today in the form of economic, social, and judicial inequality. If we wear blinders and just say "well, that happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with today" then you're apt to be less sympathetic toward movements like BlackLivesMatter and programs like affirmative action which are trying to deal with these basic inequalities. When you look at how the legacy is still a part of our economic, social, and political systems today you're more likely to see why these movements and programs are needed.
 
Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :
 
Back in 2004, I visited Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.

Cape Coast Castle was the centre of the slave trade. As most of you will know, Britain did not have slaves but we became rich by exporting slaves from West Africa to the West Indies and United States.

Nearly 200 years later, I stood there and felt the ghosts of that place.

The slave trade is part of what made the UK wealthy. The wealth of the UK is the reason I got my education and healthcare and why I am where I am.

So, yeah, I benefited from slavery.

AFZ
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Cliffdweller, you seem to think of slavery only in terms of its past in the U.S. There was plenty of slavery before it came to the North American colonies, and there is plenty of slavery left today, in many places and in several forms.
No, I'm trying not to speak beyond my own sphere. I was explicitly acknowledging that slavery did (and still does in some parts) exist outside the US.
I'd say it does exist within the U.S. too. Why else do we have a similar rate of drug use between Caucasian and African-American people and yet a hugely higher rate of incarceration for African-Americans. Who then conveniently get to work for $0.25 an hour. But that's not slavery at all, right?
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Cliffdweller, you seem to think of slavery only in terms of its past in the U.S. There was plenty of slavery before it came to the North American colonies, and there is plenty of slavery left today, in many places and in several forms.
No, I'm trying not to speak beyond my own sphere. I was explicitly acknowledging that slavery did (and still does in some parts) exist outside the US.
I'd say it does exist within the U.S. too. Why else do we have a similar rate of drug use between Caucasian and African-American people and yet a hugely higher rate of incarceration for African-Americans. Who then conveniently get to work for $0.25 an hour. But that's not slavery at all, right?
Yes, which is why it's called
The New Jim Crow.

Which, again, is not unrelated to the prior slavery. Which again, is why we can't just dismiss it as something "in the past" with no relevance to today.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I'm probably going to regret this (okay, I regret it already) but I have a hard time seeing how anybody can actually "repent" the sins of another person, ancestor or no. I think we can take actions to try to right historic wrongs, and we should. And we can look and see where we might be repeating the sins of the past in the present. But beating my breast because one or more of my ancestors (possibly--I have no discernable ties to slavery) was probably oppressing others of my ancestors (American Indian, in my case)? Meh.

My newly-assumed guilt is not going to help anybody. If anything, it is likely to inspire emotional rebellion against the extra burden (as in fact it is doing in me right now). I think I can get on with peace and justice work on the grounds of "it's just right to do that" without the guilt stimulus.

And the corresponding self-righteous stimulus ("Yes, you rotten descendants of Andrew Jackson, you oppressed my people!")--well, I don't need that temptation either. Better to attempt to root out assholery in myself using other methods.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Or, put it another way, we all have sinned. It's in our blood and heritage -- hitting Neanderthals with rocks and eating them, you know. The very fact that you are here now reading this is due to the fact that one sperm, and not another, hit the egg. All the others, sadly, died.
 
Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
I have no knowledge of having benefitted from historical slavery, and if I did I'm not sure what I could do to right the wrong that was done.

I discovered through a news item that the sourcing of fish in the tins I was buying my cat was from ships that employed slave labour. I immediately switched to locally slaughtered meat. I'm also in the process of tracking down the volunteers who run a Seafarers' Centre to make a donation to their work.

Huia
 
Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :
 
I hate to say it, but in the 1600's my ancestors in Connecticut owned slaves. I was not aware of this until 12 Years a Slave came out and member of the extended family reported he found my family owned slaves in the property records.

I also knew that the branch my maternal grandmother came from also owned slaves. They lived in Tennessee.

My wife's family were strict abolitionists as far back as she can tell.

[ 10. July 2016, 01:28: Message edited by: Gramps49 ]
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
I agree Lamb Chopped, well said.

There is so much wrong in the world right now, so much starvation, desperately ill people with no medical care, child abuse, violence, women mutilated as a part of cultural tradition, and of course the slavery that continues in many places. It's overwhelming just as it is now without taking on the burden of guilt over things that happened in the past over which we have no control.

I understand that awareness of historical wrongs help keep us from repeating them, but I'm not sure how it benefits the present to find things like slavery in a company's history unless we're prepared to boycott them all. Most older companies have some history of child labor or horrific working conditions. Just think of the fire in the textile factory in Lowell. The coal mines in West Virginia once considered the loss of human life as a fair trade for saving money through skipping safety measures.

I think it's enough to try to make things better now. There is a danger that self-flagellation over the past can serve as a salve to the conscience that might delay doing anything about the problems of the present.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Or, put it another way, we all have sinned. It's in our blood and heritage -- hitting Neanderthals with rocks and eating them, you know. The very fact that you are here now reading this is due to the fact that one sperm, and not another, hit the egg. All the others, sadly, died. There is nobody with clean hands, nobody who can say "I'm totally innocent."
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Darn, sorry there are two versions of that. I thought the backspace button was working, but no....
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
Our wealth is stolen goods, stolen land, stolen lives. We can't / won't give it all back, but we can still be judged on how we as a society handle our stolen wealth. Do we allow fewer and fewer people to hoard it or do we actually use it to benefit all the people?
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
we have a similar rate of drug use between Caucasian and African-American people and yet a hugely higher rate of incarceration for African-Americans. Who then conveniently get to work for $0.25 an hour. But that's not slavery at all, right?
Yes, which is why it's called
The New Jim Crow.

Which, again, is not unrelated to the prior slavery. Which again, is why we can't just dismiss it as something "in the past" with no relevance to today.
Very much in the present in multiple ways.

Private prisons are guaranteed something like 97% occupancy, meaning enough people have to be thrown in prison and kept there past parole eligibility to keep them full. I read an article a year ago about prisoners trained as firefighters for forest fires and a states Deputy Attorney General argued in court against releasing prisoner firefighters early because their nearly free labor saves the state 80 million dollars a year, freeing a firefighter early would hurt the state. (At least one judge agreed.)

Nixon created the war on drugs against the advice of the committee he appointed to declare marijuana dangerous (look up Shafer Commission), they concluded Marijuana private use is harmless and should not be criminalized, but Nixon overruled them. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman.

The history is well known and yet we *still* have those harsh laws based on nothing but Nixon's personal political benefit. (In USA it has been illegal since Nixon to do any scientific research that demonstrates marijuana is not harmful. Any research that accidentally discovers usefulness instead of harm gets shut down immediately.)

DEA has LOTS of staff, many of those jobs depend on having lots of "criminals" to investigate and arrest.

The prison industry needs lots of arrests to stay profitable (not just private prisons, in some areas the local sheriff is given a food allowance for prisoners, if he can feed them for less he legally pockets the difference).

If prisoners learn useful skills or make a fair wage, they will be able to create a life outside and not return to prison. Is that why the system is not set up to promote learning marketable skills? (Often there are not even GED classes.)
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I agree Lamb Chopped, well said.

There is so much wrong in the world right now, so much starvation, desperately ill people with no medical care, child abuse, violence, women mutilated as a part of cultural tradition, and of course the slavery that continues in many places. It's overwhelming just as it is now without taking on the burden of guilt over things that happened in the past over which we have no control.
I don't feel any burden of guilt over things I had no control over, nor do I flagellate myself about it. I just think it's important to be honest with myself not just about history in general, but my own family history, both good and bad.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
I discovered through a news item that the sourcing of fish in the tins I was buying my cat was from ships that employed slave labour. I immediately switched to locally slaughtered meat.
I fret over awareness that the clothes I buy are made by people obviously paid very little. Is it slave labor or the Northern (USA) equivalent the "company town" where workers were kept in debt to the company and worked until disabled or dead and then the family kicked out pennyless, or is it a good job with decent wages and safe conditions that can churn out t-shirts for less than I have to pay for the fabric to make one myself?

I stopped eating chocolate when I read just about any we buy is mixed with chocolate from slave labor, but are the pickers of the tomatoes or lettuce I eat treated much better? How can I know?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm probably going to regret this (okay, I regret it already) but I have a hard time seeing how anybody can actually "repent" the sins of another person, ancestor or no.
I don't care if anyone repents of the sins of the past.

I am more than content with this:
quote:

I think we can take actions to try to right historic wrongs, and we should. And we can look and see where we might be repeating the sins of the past in the present.
quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
I discovered through a news item that the sourcing of fish in the tins I was buying my cat was from ships that employed slave labour. I immediately switched to locally slaughtered meat. I'm also in the process of tracking down the volunteers who run a Seafarers' Centre to make a donation to their work.

Huia
This is extremely laudable. If people cared more for the slave labour which produced their food than buying cheap prawns, coffee, biscuits/cookies and chocolate, we could be a massive force for change.

[ 10. July 2016, 03:26: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm probably going to regret this (okay, I regret it already) but I have a hard time seeing how anybody can actually "repent" the sins of another person, ancestor or no. I think we can take actions to try to right historic wrongs, and we should. And we can look and see where we might be repeating the sins of the past in the present. But beating my breast because one or more of my ancestors (possibly--I have no discernable ties to slavery) was probably oppressing others of my ancestors (American Indian, in my case)? Meh.
I'm going to disagree with you, even though the few times I've done that in the past I've always regretted it (because I usually end up seeing the wisdom of your side). I think this reflects the individualism that is so completely woven into our society and for that reason, completely woven into Western (and particularly) American Christianity. I think we're reading this individualism into Scripture. I just don't think we can separate ourselves off from our society that easily. We are part & parcel of it. We can't act as if we're not a part of it-- we are. We have benefitted from it, as detailed above. And we (those of us who are white Americans, anyway) continue to benefit from it, whether we chose it or not.

I don't think any of us who live in American can claim to have "no discernible ties to slavery", for the reasons cited above. Again, my ancestors came here a generation after the Civil War so certainly never owned slaves. And yet they benefited from slavery, as we all do still to this day.

There is a strong biblical thread of communal repentance, that is just as strong and consistent, if not more so, than individual repentance. We have sinned as a community, and we continue to sin as a community. We have not taken actions to reverse the horrible results of our sin. So we, as a community, need repentance. If we saw anything this week, we saw our desperate need for restoration-- and that begins with repentance.

I would agree that we shouldn't spend our time anxious over things we don't have control over. But that's the thing-- we do have control. We have control over the choices we make about consumer products, as detailed above. But we also have choices about things like affirmative action that are seeking to rectify inequities that are a legacy of the past, including slavery and oppression. There is still more work to be done to continue to address the persistent inequities that can be linked to the legacy of slavery. When we repent, we will be led to do that work. That's what repentance means. And it is something we very much have control over and can choose, right now, today.

[ 10. July 2016, 03:40: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

My newly-assumed guilt is not going to help anybody.
The difference between shame and guilt is helpful here.

It is not appropriate to assume or project guilt for actions taken by others (such as Jews blaming themselves for Jesus's death, or Gentiles demanding that they do), but is is not inappropriate to feel shame for actions taken by collective entities with which we associate ourselves.
 
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
To invert the question, how do the winners of history NOT benefit from slavery?

And to answer that question, we do not benefit except in material well being at others' obscene cost, historically, currently and robbed from the future.
 
Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

Originally posted by Huia:
I discovered through a news item that the sourcing of fish in the tins I was buying my cat was from ships that employed slave labour. I immediately switched to locally slaughtered meat. I'm also in the process of tracking down the volunteers who run a Seafarers' Centre to make a donation to their work.

Huia
This is extremely laudable. If people cared more for the slave labour which produced their food than buying cheap prawns, coffee, biscuits/cookies and chocolate, we could be a massive force for change. [/QUOTE]

To be honest I reacted so quickly because it was happening locally - although the crew concerned were from S.E Asia. I thought our government had taken action so that boats fishing in the NZ economic zone were covered by NZ laws to prevent this kind of thing taking place. I was really angry to find this wasn't so. It may be naively optimistic of me, but I expect the laws here to protect people better than this, and I felt both angry and ashamed they didn't. Also I could easily source an alternative.

It's kind of weird, but I think I hold my country to a higher standard than I do other countries* because the exploitation of clothing workers has not been on my radar as clearly. It is almost impossible to buy clothing that isn't imported, so I need to do some research on ethical employment practices.

* I just realised that as I was writing this, so I haven't really thought it through.

Huia
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
It is almost impossible to buy clothing that isn't imported, so I need to do some research on ethical employment practices.
We, as nations, just don't care enough. Clothing, as you say, is largely imported. And much is made in heinous conditions and workers, many children, die unecessarily every year.
If we cared enough, this would not be true.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
Hard to tell from here (UK shires)/Wasp.

Guessing from family trades at WW1-WW2 not obviously direct individual beneficiaries (I.E nothing suggests money from shares or anything)*.
Practically given at least 1000 ancestors at the time (having the extra century) and various things (such as dead child workers not having kids) it's highly likely got some DNA from those who benefited greatly, but nothing else obviously inherited.

Town Library is Carnegie, so that has clear connections.
Hospital is local landowners land, in the current form I think the money mainly comes from the clearances, dissolution and court positions in the C17th (...).
Other civic structure is offshoot of farm machinery trade.
Town had a number of anti-slavery campaigners (missionaries), not sure if that implies other activities.
Inland so again, town industry I think grew after and wrt supplying the army, so more likely indirectly Indian money than slave money.

University almost certainly connected with slave owners (it definitely had some future ones as students).

So I think it would be a question of average effects for Britain. Which someone else can prob go into. But skipping to the conclusion, there's lots of reason why it's not the case that UKIP are beheading random people while ISIS are celebrating leaving the Persariabian Union. And why the 'victims' of UKIP are getting as much sympathy in Germany as the victims of ISIS. But some of that's down to Blair/Bush and multiple other chains many of which are tied to slavery.


*which isn't particularly helpful, but contrast with say Cameroon.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My mother's father's family had a biggish country house with farmland near Tunbridge Wells - much now under the Bewl Bridge reservoir. Money must have come from investments, so probably some from slavery, via sugar or something. Since they lost the lot via some bad investments advised to them by someone bent, karma presumably struck. My grandfather was supposed not to get married but to keep his mother and sister in the manner to which they had been accustomed, in the small cottage they could afford, but he took no notice of that.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
The challenge is to find out to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery.
Benefited relative to what counterfactual ? What exactly is the slavery-free alternate history you're assuming here ?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
There is a strong biblical thread of communal repentance, that is just as strong and consistent, if not more so, than individual repentance.
That is not the same as "identificational repentance". In NT terms, it makes no sense at all to repent of the sins of our fathers.

Communal repentance involves somebody leading the community in repentance. If that person is not a legitimate representative of the community, the process is meaningless. In my experience, in Christian circles such ceremonies are very likely to be a substitute for engaging in any practical action.

ETA: I also would like to know just what Josephine is seeking to achieve here.

[ 10. July 2016, 13:27: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
The challenge is to find out to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery.
Benefited relative to what counterfactual ? What exactly is the slavery-free alternate history you're assuming here ?
I'm not sure what you're asking. If I asked,
"How much money did you make at your job last year?" you wouldn't respond, "How much money relative to what counterfactual? What exactly is the job-free alternative history you're assuming here?" That just doesn't make sense.

So what is it that you're asking?
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
The challenge is to find out to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery.
Benefited relative to what counterfactual ? What exactly is the slavery-free alternate history you're assuming here ?
Thanks to slavery and colonialism, my Irish ancestors were able to escape starvation, genocide and Catholic sharia law. The "alternative" history is the history of the people who stayed i.e. your ancestors.
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
ETA: I also would like to know just what Josephine is seeking to achieve here.
Sorry, for some reason I didn't see your post when I replied to Russ.

What I'm trying to achieve? A conversation.

I've seen discussions before of the long-lasting harm of the American institution of slavery, harm that continues to the present day. But I have rarely seen discussions of the long-lasting benefits.

Those discussions are rare because they're uncomfortable. But I think they're important. I think it's important, if we're to understand what's going on today, to understand how our present follows from our past. I think it matters.

I think it's too easy, for those of us who benefit from the legacy of slavery in this country, to say, "That was a long time ago. It doesn't have anything to do with me. It just makes me feel guilty or ashamed. I don't want to talk about it."

But I think we need to talk about it, even if it's uncomfortable, and even if we don't want to. I think that understanding how we continue to benefit from the legacy of things that happened 150+ years ago allows us to see how others continue to be harmed by that same legacy.

The fact that some of my ancestors were slave-owners in Mississippi has an effect on my wellbeing, and that fact has a different effect on the wellbeing of the descendents of the slaves.

I think these things are worth thinking about, and worth talking about.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

Communal repentance involves somebody leading the community in repentance. If that person is not a legitimate representative of the community, the process is meaningless. In my experience, in Christian circles such ceremonies are very likely to be a substitute for engaging in any practical action.
Very much agree. The solution though, IMHO, is to call/work toward communal repentance that IS paired with meaningful action. Something like the truth & reconciliation commissions that were enacted in South Africa might be a model.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
ETA: I also would like to know just what Josephine is seeking to achieve here.
Sorry, for some reason I didn't see your post when I replied to Russ.

What I'm trying to achieve? A conversation.

I've seen discussions before of the long-lasting harm of the American institution of slavery, harm that continues to the present day. But I have rarely seen discussions of the long-lasting benefits.

Those discussions are rare because they're uncomfortable. But I think they're important. I think it's important, if we're to understand what's going on today, to understand how our present follows from our past. I think it matters.

I think it's too easy, for those of us who benefit from the legacy of slavery in this country, to say, "That was a long time ago. It doesn't have anything to do with me. It just makes me feel guilty or ashamed. I don't want to talk about it."

But I think we need to talk about it, even if it's uncomfortable, and even if we don't want to. I think that understanding how we continue to benefit from the legacy of things that happened 150+ years ago allows us to see how others continue to be harmed by that same legacy.

The fact that some of my ancestors were slave-owners in Mississippi has an effect on my wellbeing, and that fact has a different effect on the wellbeing of the descendents of the slaves.

I think these things are worth thinking about, and worth talking about.
Agreed.

I think one of the reasons why it's so uncomfortable is that if we really look and acknowledge the way we (Americans anyway) are still benefitting from slavery, the logical and just conclusion is that it will cost us something. It might cost us economically as we see that reparations for centuries of last wages are owed to the descendants of slavery. It might cost us professionally as we see that the education and careers we were able to achieve were built on a faulty system that gave some of us an unfair advantage.

The illustration often given of race relations in America is of a race where when the starting gun is fired, some runners are held back by force, allowing others to get a significant head start. Halfway through the race someone intervenes to protest this injustice. As the system currently appears, the participants ultimately acknowledged the unfair practices and agreed to no longer hold back the disadvantaged runners. But the race was allowed to continue from the point it stopped, without rectifying the head start given to the privileged runners.

When we look at that image, I think most of us like and appreciate the idea of bringing the disadvantaged runners forward to race from the same point as the privileged runners. What makes us uncomfortable is the image of moving the privileged runners back to the starting line-- the place where the disadvantaged runners were held to.

It's an imperfect metaphor, but I think it gets at our discomfort. We like the idea of helping others who have been disadvantaged by our ancestor's evil when that means bringing them forward. We don't like the notion that that might cost us something-- that we or our children might be set back by just reparations, financial or otherwise. And the greater the debt, the disparity, the greater the cost of rectifying the wrong. In this case the debt and the disparity are significant. On some level we know that, and are frightened by it.

All of this I think is reflective in our instinctive desire to draw a line and say "let's just move on from here".
 
Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :
 
These things are definitely worth thinking and talking about. Thank you, Josephine, for the topic.

Looking back at my family's history after arriving in the U.S., I realize that they/I had a number of advantages that helped them in fitting in and later blending in to the larger society. The greatest these was being white.

Coincidentally, I read this morning a fascinating op-ed piece in the NY Times by Michael Eric Dyson, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

From "Death in Black and White" --


quote:
At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.

Those binoculars are also stories, bad stories, biased stories, harmful stories, about how black people are lazy, or dumb, or slick, or immoral, people who can’t be helped by the best schools or even God himself. These beliefs don’t make it into contemporary books, or into most classrooms. But they are passed down, informally, from one white mind to the next.

The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.

So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.

Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
Those binoculars are still hanging around our necks and dragging us down. Dyson ends with one of the most heart-wrenching statements I've ever read on the topic of whites and blacks in the U.S.

quote:
We cannot hate you, not really, not most of us; that is our gift to you. We cannot halt you; that is our curse.

 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The solution though, IMHO, is to call/work toward communal repentance that IS paired with meaningful action. Something like the truth & reconciliation commissions that were enacted in South Africa might be a model.
The process in SA was very much dealing with the sins of NOW, where the process in the US/UK/Canada, etc. would be addressing the sins of yesterday and how they created those of today. And sins of today are very much those many do not wish to acknowledge.
"that was then, this is today" ignoring that today was bought with the blood and lives of other peoples' yesterday.
Look at the UK EU referendum. The UK's present power is a direct result of the exploitation of foreigners, yet a significant portion of the Leave vote was to exclude foreigners sharing in that bounty,
The US' wealth was built on a foundation of slavery and exploitation, yet many beneficiaries of that wish to deny/can't be arsed to care about the direct decedents sharing in the benefit.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
Trying to answer the OP, it got awful complicated.

Great-great grandfather owned a plantation, lost it when slaves were freed. No labor means no crop means no way to pay the bills.

Started over as a grocer, together with his son.

They would argue he started with nothing and built a business and his son built it more and differently and became somewhat wealthy and any black man could have done the same.

But as former plantation owners they probably had business skills, a social network of other people with business skills, a little money to start with by selling whatever they could carry away from the plantation like family silver and gemstone jewelry.

Their starting over from nothing was hugely different from a freed slave's experience of starting with literally nothing, even if we leave out of the comparison things like ability to read and do numbers, skin-color-based social stratification, and legal system persecution.

My ancestors build a new thriving business without the direct help of slaves but with a lot of training and social advantages slaves had been forbidden to pursue.

My great-grandfather lost everything in the depression, by then he had already sent all his sons to college, an advantage uncommon even among whites in the gay 90s and 10s and 20s.

As a woman it gets complicated - he sent his sons, not his daughters, to university (Grandma remained opposed to education for women all her life). When I graduated college most careers legally barred women. Women in exactly the same job as a man were paid significantly less.

And yet, the jobs open to white women were better than the jobs open to black women.

And my high school gave us a better education than some community colleges do today while the black schools didn't have enough books and taught at a much lower level.

Direct gain from slavery, no. Indirect gain, not sure.

But definitely advantages being white skinned in an anti-black culture if only more gentle treatment by police.

Also advantages being reared with a value system that taught believe in the future, believe you can develop abilities, delay marriage until you get a college degree so you can live comfortably, instead of being reared by people who experience life as constant putdowns and fatalism and are reared to expect to drop out of school and live in poverty because that's all any of their family have ever done.

It's not solely about slavery. A group that culturally teaches believe in your worth and yes you can learn and get ahead is the Jewish community; even in severe discriminated they have access to a self understanding they are God's chosen people. No matter how a society treats them, they have value.

Black slaves had no such inner cultural encouragement. Slave owners worked hard to break any cultural identity, and the slaves had no unified story of self worth to turn to.
 
Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :
 
All us whites have benefited from slavery because wew all live in this world and draw benefits from it, and this world was created in part by slavery.

And yes, in my case, though I like to boast that my great great grandfather ran a stop on the underground railroad, it's equally true that on the other side of my family there were slave owners.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
I visited the old graveyard in Pescadero once- a rural coast town about 30 minutes south-- and discovered a small section devoted to Japanese graves, dating back 1800s. Took me a moment for it to register that these people were probably part of the huge wave of Asian immigration, where people came here hoping for prosperity and were pretty much conscripted for labor jobs that were little more than slavery. The Coastal railway system was built by Asian labor.

This is why the internment camps were full of sometimes second or third generation Japanese folks- their parents were sent over here to break rocks. Out of that sad history they still managed to unify and build solid, vital communities-- only to be ripped out of them in the forties.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
This is an example of working in the present.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by roybart:


Coincidentally, I read this morning a fascinating op-ed piece in the NY Times by Michael Eric Dyson, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

From "Death in Black and White" --


quote:
At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.

Those binoculars are also stories, bad stories, biased stories, harmful stories, about how black people are lazy, or dumb, or slick, or immoral, people who can’t be helped by the best schools or even God himself. These beliefs don’t make it into contemporary books, or into most classrooms. But they are passed down, informally, from one white mind to the next.

The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.

So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.

Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
Those binoculars are still hanging around our necks and dragging us down. Dyson ends with one of the most heart-wrenching statements I've ever read on the topic of whites and blacks in the U.S.

quote:
We cannot hate you, not really, not most of us; that is our gift to you. We cannot halt you; that is our curse.
Thanks for bringing this here, Roybart. As you say, it is fascinating. I looked it up and read the whole thing and a few of 2000 plus comments.

The comments along with this thread make me wonder about the difference in perspectives from the white people who read it. So much of it doesn't apply to any white people I know, so it makes me feel defensive and unfairly attacked.

I wonder if those white people who agree with him are saying to themselves, "Yes, he's right. That's me," or are they mentally standing shoulder to shoulder with the professor and thinking, "Yes, that's all you other white people."

It's horrifying to me to see so much hatred toward the entire white race from a college professor. I wonder what he expects us to do to help blacks that we haven't done. I keep looking for specifics and all I see in articles like this, is "Admit it! You all suck!"
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
I don't see anyone wasting that much verbiage on someone you hate. It sounds like a warning, to people the writer assumes are intelligent and concerned.

What it brought to mind is more real time non historical racism I had been taught. My Mormon grandma, who I adored, making bizarre claims about the personal hygene habits of black folk. The cute black boy in high school that flirted with me, but I didn't even consider him an option because I knew how my parents would act- not overtly cruel, just... Discouraging. The various teachers I had that seemed to have just a tiny bit more problem with the black kids in class than the rest of us. ( As well as the teachers who stood out-- who managed to make a classroom full of kids from ridiculously diverse racial and economic backgrounds feel like family. Thank you, Mrs. K.)
 
Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I wonder if those white people who agree with him are saying to themselves, "Yes, he's right. That's me," or are they mentally standing shoulder to shoulder with the professor and thinking, "Yes, that's all you other white people."
I guess that I find myself more or less in the first group. As I get older, my sense of the way in which my various privileges (most of which I was born with) have distorted the way I see and feel about so many things and people. Dyson's metaphor about the binoculars strikes me as being quite apt (speaking only for myself, of course).

Now that I am living in a relatively moderate part of a conservative Republican state, I find myself in contact with many people who share the attitudes -- and the acute sense of being being the aggrieved party -- of the "white" people characterized in Dyson's piece. It's mostly a matter of the people I overhear -- or whose letters to the editor I read -- or unsolicited comments by neighbors, people at the gym or on a checkout line, etc. I'm an elderly, white retiree. It's eye-opening, what people will share when they assume that they are talking to one of "us" about "them." The sense of us-versus-the Other is alive and well around here. Situations involving the police (almost universally seen as "one of us," in my limited experience) seem to bring this to the fore.

My feeling about the Dyson article is one of deep sadness about a tragic and (I can't believe I'm saying this) possibly irreversible situation.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by roybart:
I find myself in contact with many people who share the attitudes -- and the acute sense of being being the aggrieved party -- of the "white" people characterized in Dyson's piece.
I have a friend who can get annoyed at chatter about white males being privileged. It's not anti black or any other defined group, it's not a claim he deserves privilege, its a protest at being told he is inherently privileged because he's white male when the people in his office of various races, genders, sexual orientations or whatever live no differently than he does. (Or live better than he does because he's paying child support.)

Part of the problem may be the seeming dualism in the wording - you are privileged or you are not - when people are varying amounts of privileged.

It's especially hard for a person who is from a poor background, first in his family to attend college, worked his way through night school (which is a lower status education than a degree from a residential school), has a routine career, and has never had any special good breaks to help him get ahead, to see his life as "privileged".

That he has never been arrested for "driving while black" is invisible, you don't see the ways you have not been abused.
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
I sometimes wish there was a better term for privilege. But it's the term we have. It doesn't mean that everything you've ever had was handed to you on a silver platter. And it's most certainly not something you chose -- it's not something that you can choose to have or to give up. It is what it is.

Belle Ringer, maybe one of these articles would help your friend understand what privilege is.

A Guide to White Privilege for People Who Think They Haven't Had Any, written by a white woman who grew up with far more hardship than I've ever had to face.

Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person, similar to the previous.

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is, my favorite, because the analogy is pretty near perfect, and almost always instantly understood, at least by people who are into any form of gaming.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
John Scalzi is a great explainer and an all around good guy.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

So what is it that you're asking?
We all know roughly how much or how little we have in the now we live in. This present reality is the product of a history which includes slavery but also includes a lot of other stuff.

What's not so obvious is how much less wealth we would have if slavery hadn't happened. Which is an alternate history question. So I'm asking you to clarify what alternate history you're asking us to think about. E.g. How far back does it diverge from our history ?

Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

My newly-assumed guilt is not going to help anybody.
The difference between shame and guilt is helpful here.

It is not appropriate to assume or project guilt for actions taken by others (such as Jews blaming themselves for Jesus's death, or Gentiles demanding that they do), but is is not inappropriate to feel shame for actions taken by collective entities with which we associate ourselves.
Shame is even worse. I have a foot in one shame culture and one guilt culture, and guilt sucks, but at least there are accepted ways of getting rid of it.

But my problem is, I don't see at all how my feeling shame or guilt is going to advantage anybody else. It isn't going to motivate me to go out and change anything--far more likely to push me over the edge into depression and leave me hiding under the bed. I do enough of that already, and it benefits neither God nor man.

Furthermore, I am already taking action against present-day injustice and racism. How the hell can I do anything to change the past? I can't. I wasn't there. Nor can I change things that I am not a part of in the present. And I decline to suffer emotionally for the evil behavior of people who are not me nor influencable by me. I have enough to do with peace and justice stuff in my own neck of the woods.

Perhaps I'm over-reacting. But perhaps not. Consider this case: A couple of months ago we were having some Bible study text I've forgotten and I made a reference to "our black people" (meaning American black people, as opposed to Caribbean, South American, or African, etc.) and the many obstacles they face in "our" society. After class a seminarian (black, yes) took me aside and flayed me alive because in his view "our" could only mean that I was claiming personal ownership of other human beings. He went on to make remarks about my family's slave-owning past (no. We haven't got any). I apologized and explained what I'd meant. He continued to flay me. I finally fled the room in tears and continue to avoid him at church today.

Now was that a proportionate reaction to my wording? I have no doubt that I set off any number of triggers for other people's past evil behavior in his mind. But I freaking apologized. I made it clear that I had no part in that crap and that it had never entered my mind. It did me no good. He dumped all of his anger on me and there has been nothing since to suggest he has any second thoughts about that encounter. As far as I can tell, he sees nothing wrong with what he did.

This is fucked up. So I'm white (partly). I am not the person who hurt this man. I don't deserve to get publicly dumped upon totally out of proportion for a slip of the tongue that could have been quietly questioned and apologized for instead.

I'm on the receiving end of a fair amount of sexism, agism, and racism (=mixed marriage, also over the phone when people assume I'm ethnic Vietnamese and say shitty things to me). I'm not dumping that stuff back on innocent members of the communities my abusers came from. I hold the individuals responsible, and I do what I can to defuse the incipient hatred these incidents cause in my family members. And believe me, it does. Get burned repeatedly by several members of one ethnic group you don't know very well, and bang! a new case of racism. I try to head that off, in myself and in them.

I don't think things are going to get better until individuals can meet together and try to work together with good faith, holding one another responsible for their own sins and not those of non-present members of their communities. Is it hard? Hell yes. But it's the only way we're going to get past dumping historical shit on one another.

Human beings are not trash cans. And indiscriminate dumping only begets further anger and hatred. It's been two months, and I still have a damned hard time taking communion at the hand of this seminarian, because of all that shame he dumped on me publicly. Forgiving that is a hell of a challenge.
 
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

So what is it that you're asking?
We all know roughly how much or how little we have in the now we live in. This present reality is the product of a history which includes slavery but also includes a lot of other stuff.

What's not so obvious is how much less wealth we would have if slavery hadn't happened. Which is an alternate history question. So I'm asking you to clarify what alternate history you're asking us to think about. E.g. How far back does it diverge from our history ?

Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
What Nazis?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
It is silly to take an event a century and a half after slavery and assume it would have happened in a timeline without slavery. The power structure of the Western world, if not the entire world would be different.
Hitler is used to cover a multitude of sins, this one is probably the most ridiculous I've heard.

X-post with the most concise rebuttle I can remember.

[ 10. July 2016, 23:36: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I'm in north east Scotland, not America. Our parish church was built at a time when there were men from the parish making fortunes in the Caribbean and remitting money home. I'm sure some of that money helped finance the church.

In the last ten years we have had two Afro-Carribean visitors to the church, both with Scottish surnames, both with ancestry here. Usually when I show a visitor with local ancestry round I say "welcome home!" but that didn't seem appropriate. I did not know what was appropriate.

It does seem important that we here in Scotland acknowledge where some of our wealth came from. I gave a talk at the local library on the subject two years ago and am booked to give another next winter. We have three (possibly four) gravestones in our churchyard belonging to slave owning families.

[ 11. July 2016, 02:33: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
What Nazis?
Martin60 nailed it. The Nazis took the American eugenics movement to its logical conclusion. And the American eugenics movement was based on the American view of race.

If white folks in America hadn't regarded blacks (and Asians, and Native Americans) as less than fully human, there would have been no eugenics movement. And maybe the Nazis would never have existed. Maybe.

No way of knowing, of course. But interesting to think about.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
What Nazis?
Martin60 nailed it.
He did, but not for this reason:
quote:

The Nazis took the American eugenics movement to its logical conclusion. And the American eugenics movement was based on the American view of race.
The political structure that led to the WWI then the rise of the Nazis and WWII would not have existed. A World War might still have arisen, but its nature would be different.
And no one needed slavery to think less of other "races". Indeed, that is what allowed slavery, but it did not have to lead to it.
 
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :
 
Excellent. It's only the second page and we've already managed to make white Americans responsible for the Nazi holocaust. This is going to be a wonderful thread.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

And no one needed slavery to think less of other "races". Indeed, that is what allowed slavery, but it did not have to lead to it.
Actually, that's not what the latest scholarship says. The ancient peoples talked more about tribe and nations and people groups-- defined by things like ancestry and language and customs. The modern idea of "race" as some set of supposedly definable genetic characteristics was, according to recent sociologists, invented primarily to explain/justify slavery.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

And no one needed slavery to think less of other "races". Indeed, that is what allowed slavery, but it did not have to lead to it.
Actually, that's not what the latest scholarship says. The ancient peoples talked more about tribe and nations and people groups-- defined by things like ancestry and language and customs. The modern idea of "race" as some set of supposedly definable genetic characteristics was, according to recent sociologists, invented primarily to explain/justify slavery.
Possibly, but slavery based on the concept of inferior race was established before the US was. Unless Josephine meant America as in the continents and islands of America. But this is not what is normally meant when referring to American eugenics.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The ancient peoples talked more about tribe and nations and people groups-- defined by things like ancestry and language and customs. The modern idea of "race" as some set of supposedly definable genetic characteristics was, according to recent sociologists, invented primarily to explain/justify slavery.
Some years ago I read an article about - I don't know what century - that said class mattered, not race or nationality. Most blatant example given was that Royals married royals from other countries or cultures or languages rather than marry non royals (or at least nobility) from home.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
The Nazis took the American eugenics movement to its logical conclusion. And the American eugenics movement was based on the American view of race.

If white folks in America hadn't regarded blacks (and Asians, and Native Americans) as less than fully human, there would have been no eugenics movement. And maybe the Nazis would never have existed. Maybe.
Ahistorical nonsense.

Nazi race theories derived from nineteenth century European "scientific" anti-Semitism, and the eugenics movement which began in Britain.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Shame is even worse. I have a foot in one shame culture and one guilt culture, and guilt sucks, but at least there are accepted ways of getting rid of it.

But my problem is, I don't see at all how my feeling shame or guilt is going to advantage anybody else. It isn't going to motivate me to go out and change anything--far more likely to push me over the edge into depression and leave me hiding under the bed. I do enough of that already, and it benefits neither God nor man..
See, I think that's the difference between shame & guilt.

Shame is, as you suggest, a dead-end. Shame focuses on the past, and labels you a "bad" person. Shame leaves you stuck forever in the past, forever tied to your worst moment.

But the difference with guilt, otoh, is that it leads to repentance. It is a natural response to recognizing that you have done something wrong-- something that violates your moral code. But it's focus is not on the past, as with shame, but rather on the future-- on moving your forward. Shame says "you're not good"-- guilt says "you can do better."

In the context of the question of the OP: how did you (not your ancestors, not your race or ethnic group) benefit from slavery, the distinction is quite relevant as we so often do fall into shame. And yes, because shame is an intractable death-spiral we do tend to reject/deny shame, even when there is real, measurable wrong. But with guilt, the regret can and should move us forward-- to new behaviors. That's repentance. That's what we preach every Sunday.

And yes, we cannot repent for the sins of our ancestors, but we can and should repent for the sins we continue to participate in. For our unwillingness to see injustices that unfairly benefit us-- because it would be inconvenient to look too closely. And we do that corporately as well as individually-- because none of us are isolated, discrete units. We exist and live and worship-- and sin-- as a community.


quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

Furthermore, I am already taking action against present-day injustice and racism.
I know that is true. And so it very well may be that you are doing all you can, all you should be doing to fight the persistent racism. Just like any time we preach on any sort of sin, there will be people in the congregation for whom this particular sermon is inapplicable-- who don't struggle at all with this particular sin, never have never will-- just as there will be those who are cut to the quick. But we still preach on those things. And we still respond by praying "search me O God and know my thoughts"-- we ask the Spirit to do inventory. And if the sermon is inapplicable, we move on. But it doesn't mean we don't preach the sermon, because there are others who need to hear it.


quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
How the hell can I do anything to change the past? I can't. I wasn't there. Nor can I change things that I am not a part of in the present.
The point of the OP is that we are all a part of it in the present.

As noted above, privilege exists in a multi-faceted continuum. One can be privileged in terms of race but not gender, or in age but not ability, or a 1000 other variations. And of course we don't choose any of those things. But the one thing we can do when we find ourselves in an area where we are "privileged" is to use that unearned power to open doors for others. "Privilege" means that we do have influence, in some small sphere. There are things to be done, things that can be done. Indeed, you ARE doing them-- that social justice stuff you referred to. The reason we engage in acts of social justice, whatever they might be, is precisely because we know that we do have influence, we know that those things matter, even if many times it seems like only a drop in an ocean of injustice and suffering. We keep on doing what we can. Certainly, I think here on the Ship you are in a position of influence. I suspect that is even more true in your RL community. You are making an impact. And that's important.


quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Perhaps I'm over-reacting. But perhaps not. Consider this case...

It's been two months, and I still have a damned hard time taking communion at the hand of this seminarian, because of all that shame he dumped on me publicly. Forgiving that is a hell of a challenge.
You're not over-reacting there. That was horrible. It was an example of shaming. And again, shame feels horrible because we can't get rid of it. Because it addresses not your behavior or attitudes but tries to label you as a person. The seminarian was not interested in "the grief (guilt) that leads to repentance" but was instead attempting to impose the "worldly grief (shame) that produces death" (2 Cor. 7:9-10). No wonder you were pissed.

If that's what I've sounded like here, I apologize. That was not my intent.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The ancient peoples talked more about tribe and nations and people groups-- defined by things like ancestry and language and customs. The modern idea of "race" as some set of supposedly definable genetic characteristics was, according to recent sociologists, invented primarily to explain/justify slavery.
Some years ago I read an article about - I don't know what century - that said class mattered, not race or nationality. Most blatant example given was that Royals married royals from other countries or cultures or languages rather than marry non royals (or at least nobility) from home.
This person clearly never read about the Romanovs. For whom the adjective "morganatic" may well have been invented.

[ 11. July 2016, 06:42: Message edited by: mousethief ]
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Figuring out what can and should be done *today* to redress past and ongoing wrongs is hard and complicated, no matter how compassionate and motivated you are.

Example: Land that was wrongly taken from Native Americans. In most cases, it happened long ago, with many "in good faith" owners since then. So it's not as simple as making the land thieves give it back. Only way I can see is for the gov't to buy the land from the current owners, and transfer it to the appropriate tribe/people. If the current owners don't want to sell, then eminent domain procedures might come into play--which is the gov't taking land, again...And that's not even getting into whether the federal gov't can afford it, or how much turmoil and unrest it would spark.
 
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Maybe you think that without the wealth from the slave trade, Britain and America would have been so much weaker economically that the Nazis would have won WW2 ?
What Nazis?
Martin60 nailed it. The Nazis took the American eugenics movement to its logical conclusion. And the American eugenics movement was based on the American view of race.

If white folks in America hadn't regarded blacks (and Asians, and Native Americans) as less than fully human, there would have been no eugenics movement. And maybe the Nazis would never have existed. Maybe.

No way of knowing, of course. But interesting to think about.
EXACTLY Josephine. There's no way Britain - including America - could have been that enlightened 350 years ago, Jesus would have had to have returned as written, in power. There are no short cuts in social evolution. We have to suffer. If a plague had just killed the English, I doubt history would look qualitatively any different. Conversely if the English had mutated rapidly in to a higher empathic, more enlightened sub-species (Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio & Children), the C20th would have been well in to Darwin's Millennium. No WWI, no Russian Revolution, no Nazis.

[ 11. July 2016, 10:11: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The political structure that led to the WWI then the rise of the Nazis and WWII would not have existed. A World War might still have arisen, but its nature would be different.
Allowing that events can have multiple causes, the idea that WW2 was "caused" by the settlement imposed on Germany after WW1 seems to me to have more merit than the idea that it was caused by Hitler reading either American or British eugenicists.

But what connection are you making between slavery and the causes of WW1 ?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Slavery, and other forms of oppression like colonization, affected the power dynamic of Europe. Without it, the power balance, and the history of those power struggles, would have been different. Even had a world war still occurred, it would have been different.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Figuring out what can and should be done *today* to redress past and ongoing wrongs is hard and complicated, no matter how compassionate and motivated you are.
Absolutely. That applies both to your example of the land stolen from native Americans as well as the labor stolen from African slaves (and Asian workers in the West). It's more manageable when we deal with it relatively quickly-- as with the reparations paid to Japanese Americans who were unjustly interned during WW2. After so many generations it becomes really really complicated, most likely impossibly so.

And I think the impossibility of the task is a significant part of why we (white Americans) instinctively want to push it aside and say "that happened a long time ago, I didn't have anything to do with it." It's pretty uncomfortable to acknowledge you have a huge debt you cannot possibly pay. Again, the shame/guilt dynamic is at play-- when you cannot possibly set right the injustice, you tend to fall on the shame side of the equation-- which then tends to lead to denial or self-destruction (see Pilate and Judas). Yet I think we're seeing how denial just isn't working.

This is where I think the OP comes into play. Perhaps it we could come to that point where we confess out loud not just that, yes, this happened, yes, it was horribly horrifically evil, but also yes, we have been complicit in continuing unjust systemic oppression, then perhaps we can move forward-- even if full restitution is impossible. Sort of like the way a 12 step program beings by acknowledging your brokenness and admitting that you are powerless over your brokenness. Perhaps that is the key to moving forward and coming to a consensus about what CAN be done.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Cliffdweller, you haven't sounded anything like that. My frustration was addressed generally, more or less to the whole world, I suppose. Thanks for the shame vs. guilt analysis--I'm going to have to think that one through.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Cliffdweller, you haven't sounded anything like that. My frustration was addressed generally, more or less to the whole world, I suppose. Thanks for the shame vs. guilt analysis--I'm going to have to think that one through.
Thanks, Lamb. I always rest more comfortably when we're on the same side.
[Biased]

I meant what I said about your influence both here and in your community. You are making a difference, so much of my "sermonizing" here is directed more to myself than to you.
 
Posted by wots a user name (# 18619) on :
 
Yes the white west benefitd in many ways from slavery and still does. It is how we relate to, treat the alien in our communities that matter and how we encourage or help those in need of help.
The poor whether black, brown or white arn't poor because of slavery, but because of poor education.

How many here would vote for a party that would penalies them in order to help the disadvantaged?

How manychurches represented here have links with inner city churches in poor areas, ditto schools and colleges.
It's one thing to recognise a wrong in the past, but what about the wrongs thos old wrongs are causing in the present?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Yay, crosspost.

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Figuring out what can and should be done *today* to redress past and ongoing wrongs is hard and complicated, no matter how compassionate and motivated you are.
Absolutely. That applies both to your example of the land stolen from native Americans as well as the labor stolen from African slaves (and Asian workers in the West). It's more manageable when we deal with it relatively quickly-- as with the reparations paid to Japanese Americans who were unjustly interned during WW2. After so many generations it becomes really really complicated, most likely impossibly so.

And I think the impossibility of the task is a significant part of why we (white Americans) instinctively want to push it aside and say "that happened a long time ago, I didn't have anything to do with it." It's pretty uncomfortable to acknowledge you have a huge debt you cannot possibly pay. ... Perhaps it we could come to that point where we confess out loud not just that, yes, this happened, yes, it was horribly horrifically evil, but also yes, we have been complicit in continuing unjust systemic oppression, then perhaps we can move forward-- even if full restitution is impossible. Sort of like the way a 12 step program beings by acknowledging your brokenness and admitting that you are powerless over your brokenness. Perhaps that is the key to moving forward and coming to a consensus about what CAN be done.
Just want to say that the only reason I'm quoting your post up above is that it so beautifully encapsulates both the good and the (IMHO) not-so-good of the communal repentance thing. It's not directed to you (the stuff that follows) but to the thread in general. Really, I'm rather surprised nobody's slapped me down yet. And so I blunder on...

We do need awareness of the past. We do need to think about reparations. But IMNSVHO we need to do this without invoking the toxic power of personal shame and guilt that I, at least, see hovering in phrases like "It's pretty uncomfortable to acknowledge you have a huge debt you cannot possibly pay... we
have been complicit".

No one alive today was complicit in pushing my ancestors off their land. None of that land is likely to be held by the original thief today, or even by his/her heirs. It's been too long. Innocent people have purchased and repurchased it. Innocent children have been born and inherited it. I don't want to call these people "complicit" because they weren't there. Nor did they purchase/inherit our land with the intent of doing the original owners out of their due.

I'll tell you who WAS there--the US government. And the US government is still around, and still owns its complicity, and deserves its shame and guilt, and ought to make reparations. That will certainly affect the millions of present-day Americans who end up footing the bill, losing land, or whatever. And that sucks. They/We will bear the burden of righting whatever can be righted at this late date. But they/we ought NOT to be expected or encouraged to take up personal guilt and shame with regard to the historic situation, IMHO. Because that's just going to come back to bite us all in the butt.

I would far rather proceed on the basis of justice, and let the motive be "let's do this thing to create justice," rather than bring in toxic emotions and start distributing them. Because in my observation, imposing those unjustly leads to rebellion on the part of those saddled with it. As can be seen on any Facebook feed.

I'd like to ask a question here and see how off base I am. Is there anybody here who finds guilt and shame an effective motivation for themselves? I don't mean the threat of g/s--goodness knows I'll haul myself out of bed some mornings only to avoid the g/s of arriving at work supremely late. But already-existing guilt and shame?
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
In the interests of full disclosure, I have my own story of race-related "shaming" similar to Lamb's, and how shifting the balance to "guilt" is helpful.

When I was still a relatively new university instructor, the uni started stressing the need for more frank classroom conversations about race and diversity. This made sense to me, although I had no experience or training in doing that. But, foolishly, I waded into this fraught territory anyway, in a way that made sense to me pedagogically but due to the heavy weight of any discussion of race in America, blew up in my face big time. The students in my class had asked a question about slavery in the Bible. I responded to the question (which I intended to use as a case study in hermeneutics) by reading a relevant passage & then asking the African American students in the class to reflect on whether they read/heard the passage differently than their classmates because of the history of slavery in America.

Well, that did NOT go well. It was a ham-fisted attempt, and immediately obvious it was a huge disaster. All the air sucked out of the room the instant I asked the question. It might have been different with older, more mature grad students (these were freshmen) but in this setting it really Did. Not. Work.

I moved on quickly, then connected with the African American students after class to apologize and ask more about how they experienced the question. We had a good conversation. However, I didn't check in which the other (white & Asian) students.

Come student evaluation time, many weeks later, I was annihilated. The word "racist" was used. In evaluations that would be read by my dept chair and the dean (who happens to be African American). "Shame" really was and is the best word to describe my feelings then and even now, recounting it. In part because, as with Lamb, there was no way to rectify it. What was said was said, the class has now passed, the evaluations were anonymous, so there is no way to address the offended students, apologize, and seek forgiveness. It wasn't just that (like Lamb) I had used a careless, ham-fisted wording that I now regret-- it was that I had been labeled in a way that felt like an identity I would never be able to shed.

I immediately met with my dept chair (who would have called me in if I hadn't). Fortunately, the chair gets this whole shame/guilt thing. I was able to explain what happened, and together we framed the subsequent discussion in redemptive terms-- i.e. how I could introduce race into class discussions in a more natural way that would open exchange of ideas rather than shut them down. He gave me a lot of excellent ideas/advice. Later, the uni offered some training classes that were also most helpful. That whole experience very much shifted the dynamic from "shame" (I am a bad person who is probably racist) to "guilt" (I said something unfortunate out of ignorance that caused offense, that feels miserable, but I have taken steps to change that offensive behavior).

Huge difference. And one that I think is key to moving forward in discussions of diversity, not just re race (although perhaps particularly so) but in other areas of diversity as well.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Slavery, and other forms of oppression like colonization, affected the power dynamic of Europe. Without it, the power balance, and the history of those power struggles, would have been different. Even had a world war still occurred, it would have been different.
Why stop there? Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Cliffdweller, you haven't sounded anything like that. My frustration was addressed generally, more or less to the whole world, I suppose. Thanks for the shame vs. guilt analysis--I'm going to have to think that one through.
LC, when I read your account of the event, the thought in my mind was "a person who views others from their pain, there is no satisfactory wording." Probably anything you said, any wording choice, would have gotten the same reaction. The issue is not what you said, the issue is you said anything.

Of course, not saying anything would also have been an issue because that would be the same as labeling him and his pain and all others who have been hurt in the past "not worth noticing."

The lesson I get from these (rare) encounters (not specifically blacks, any group that feels oppressed or belittled) is that some people have been deeply hurt. Their reaction expresses their pain, which they can't see beyond. The pain is real, but it really has nothing to do with my personhood or my behavior.

I would like to say "educate me, what wording should I have used to express this concept?" but an angry or hurt person is not usually in a mood conductive to calm helpful discussion.

He believes he did nothing wrong in how he spoke to you. There's not going to be any reaching out to you. Whether you can find a way to reach out to him that isn't instantly scorned, I don't know.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I would far rather proceed on the basis of justice, and let the motive be "let's do this thing to create justice," rather than bring in toxic emotions and start distributing them. Because in my observation, imposing those unjustly leads to rebellion on the part of those saddled with it. As can be seen on any Facebook feed.

I'd like to ask a question here and see how off base I am. Is there anybody here who finds guilt and shame an effective motivation for themselves? I don't mean the threat of g/s--goodness knows I'll haul myself out of bed some mornings only to avoid the g/s of arriving at work supremely late. But already-existing guilt and shame?
cross-posted w/ Lamb in my prior post re my personal experience.

Just to bring it to your specific question, for me (and the way I'm defining the terms) you have to separate the two. "Shame" is a horrible way of motivating change. In fact, that's the defining difference-- the way you know if you are feeling shame or if you are feeling guilt. Shame keeps you stuck. It doesn't motivate you to move forward, it leads to passivity. Since "shame" deals with your core identity, not your choices or actions, nothing you can do will ever get rid of it. That doesn't motivate you to move forward, it motivates you to deny or hide. (Something we can see in shame-based cultures).

Guilt, otoh, I think is defined precisely by the fact that it can be redemptive. By the fact that there is a way forward. By the fact that we can honestly acknowledge our sin/offense, take responsibility for it, and move forward. The momentary pain of guilt doesn't immobilize us, instead it propels us forward-- to different actions, different choices. It is one of the ways the Spirit brings transformation.

Shame is permanent, immobilizing, and keeps you stuck in the past. Guilt is temporary, motivating, and moves you to a better future.

All very very relevant I think to the way we talk about race.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Why stop there? Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
That slavery funded the Industrial Revolution, doesn't mean nothing else could have. I think it would have been different. Possibly slower growth, but Europe could not have sustained major growth without technological progress.
So, perhaps an Industrial Progression?
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
LC, when I read your account of the event, the thought in my mind was "a person who views others from their pain, there is no satisfactory wording." Probably anything you said, any wording choice, would have gotten the same reaction. The issue is not what you said, the issue is you said anything.

Of course, not saying anything would also have been an issue because that would be the same as labeling him and his pain and all others who have been hurt in the past "not worth noticing."

The lesson I get from these (rare) encounters (not specifically blacks, any group that feels oppressed or belittled) is that some people have been deeply hurt. Their reaction expresses their pain, which they can't see beyond. The pain is real, but it really has nothing to do with my personhood or my behavior.

I would like to say "educate me, what wording should I have used to express this concept?" but an angry or hurt person is not usually in a mood conductive to calm helpful discussion.

He believes he did nothing wrong in how he spoke to you. There's not going to be any reaching out to you. Whether you can find a way to reach out to him that isn't instantly scorned, I don't know.
This strikes me as very true and helpful. Sometimes the pain is so great there is nothing you can do-- at least with that person, at that time. That's part of the burden we all carry-- there are hurts we can't fix, we can only pray.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Just to messy things up a bit more--

I have problems with guilt, too, because I run to OCD tendencies (YES, I MEAN THE DIAGNOSIS) and so guilt is basically permanent for me, barring the miraculous help of God. I don't know how other people experience, but it has a similarly toxic effect to shame in my experience. That may just be me.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Why stop there? Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
That slavery funded the Industrial Revolution, doesn't mean nothing else could have.
So without slavery the Western World would still have been dominant over and richer than the rest?
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Just to messy things up a bit more--

I have problems with guilt, too, because I run to OCD tendencies (YES, I MEAN THE DIAGNOSIS) and so guilt is basically permanent for me, barring the miraculous help of God. I don't know how other people experience, but it has a similarly toxic effect to shame in my experience. That may just be me.
Yeah, it's probably just a difference in terminology, but anytime it's
permanent like that, I think it's not a good or healthy thing. Any time it keeps you stuck in the past or becomes a part of your identity, I'd call that shame or what Paul calls "the worldly grief that leads to death." The point of the "pain" we feel when we do something bad/wrong/immoral/stupid is to move us forward, not backward. It's not meant to be a permanent life sentence, it's meant to help move us to repentance and new behavior. It's meant to bring life, not death. Anything else is not from God but from the other guy.

But the normal, healthy process of temporary guilt (or remorse if that word fits better)/ repentance/ transformation gets really mucked up by things from our culture, our families, etc.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Why stop there? Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
That slavery funded the Industrial Revolution, doesn't mean nothing else could have.
So without slavery the Western World would still have been dominant over and richer than the rest?
Do you wish to make a point, or do you want to drag this out?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
Almost certainly. Slavery (and similar forms of forced labor) seems to arise in situations where the the prevailing wage for free labor is significantly higher than human subsistence. If a market equilibrium price of labor is close to subsistence it's easier to pay that. In many ways industrialization is a different answer to the same problem, substituting mechanization for costly human labor. The main difference is that it requires a higher degree of technical knowledge and a nearby source of concentrated energy (historically coal).

In fact the early industrialized economy and slave economy seem antithetical to each other. If you had the one it seems impossible to maintain the other in the same geographical economy. The United States in the early nineteenth century was as close to a natural experiment as you usually get in economics. At the time of the Declaration of Independence slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies/states, but much more prevalent in the South. The rise of industrialization in the North seems to very closely parallel the decline of slavery there.

The case could even be made that by providing a low-tech substitute for mechanization, the existence of slavery actually hindered the development of industrialization.

The question then reduces to "can the raw materials and resources needed to sustain an industrial economy be supplied through the efforts of paid labor rather than forced labor?" The fact that sugar and cotton and other various commercial crops are grown today using paid labor seems to indicate that this is at the very least possible.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Slavery (and similar forms of forced labor) seems to arise in situations where the the prevailing wage for free labor is significantly higher than human subsistence.
Looking at that you would expect the Black Death in Western Europe to have resulted in serfdom regathering strength as an institution. As I understand it, in conventional history the Black Death is supposed to have killed serfdom off. Is that accounted for in the theory?
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
guilt (or remorse if that word fits better)
Discussions of guilt are often confused by making the term "guilt" synonymous with "feelings of guilt".

Guilt itself is an objective condition of being somehow responsible for something wrong.

Actual guilt is sometimes accoompanied by no feelings of guilt (eg psychopaths), and sometimes people have false feelings of guilt when they are not in fact guilty of anything.

Shame, on the other hand, is always a sensation - sometimes unjustified, sometimes disproportionate to the point of toxicity, but sometimes entirely appropriate and a sign of moral health and awareness.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
guilt (or remorse if that word fits better)
Discussions of guilt are often confused by making the term "guilt" synonymous with "feelings of guilt".

Guilt itself is an objective condition of being somehow responsible for something wrong.

Actual guilt is sometimes accoompanied by no feelings of guilt (eg psychopaths), and sometimes people have false feelings of guilt when they are not in fact guilty of anything.

Shame, on the other hand, is always a sensation - sometimes unjustified, sometimes disproportionate to the point of toxicity, but sometimes entirely appropriate and a sign of moral health and awareness.
Not the way I'm using the terms, but for that reason a good illustration of how much variation and subjectivity there is in the way we use these particular words.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Why stop there? Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
That slavery funded the Industrial Revolution, doesn't mean nothing else could have.
So without slavery the Western World would still have been dominant over and richer than the rest?
Do you wish to make a point, or do you want to drag this out?
I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing, especially in light of the central thesis of this thread that our prosperity is entirely due to our ancestors exploitation of slaves.

In the context of the Industrial Revolution, one could say that without slavery mechanisation would have progressed even faster in order to provide the raw materials (especially cotton) for the mills and factories to process. But it feels a bit "chicken and egg" to me - did the slave trade grow in order to feed the mills or did the mills grow because of the abundant raw materials that the slave trade provided? While doubtless both factors combined to form a self-perpetuating cycle, I suspect that the latter played more of a part in starting the cycle than did the former.

Given that textiles were by far the dominant industry during the Industrial Revolution, and assuming that that was the case largely due to the high volume of raw materials provided by the slave trade, it seems valid to ask if the IR would have come about without the slave trade. And the IR was directly responsible for the subsequent unprecedented growth in global (but primarily Western) prosperity.

So yes, we have benefitted from the slave trade. Vastly. But ISTM that that applies to everyone currently living in an industrialised country. And therefore the question is not so much who has and has not benefitted from the slave trade (we all have), but who has benefitted a lot (business owners) and who has benefitted a little (everyone else).

That's just the economic side of the discussion, of course. In social terms it's unarguable that slavery has had profound and persistent negative impacts on ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. Several hundreds of years of societal attitudes being built around the worst form of oppression doesn't just disappear because some politicians signed a bill, and we are still very much in the "growing pains" stage of a society with more inclusive and equal attitudes towards its members. There is much work still to be done, and each of us has a key role to play in that. This, I feel, should be the primary focus of our efforts. Changing the economic situation without changing societal attitudes is a recipe for discontent and unrest, but changing societal attitudes will inevitably lead to a change in the economic situation. It will be slower, yes, but it will be far more enduring.

I know that it's very easy for me to advocate a "slow and sure" approach, as it's not me who's waiting for the end result. But I do think that in the long term that is the approach that will work out the best for everyone.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
Germany didn't have slaves during its industrialization in the 19th century. Russia had serfdom until 1861. But the rest of Europe abolished it by ~1815. England was an anomaly to have stopped in the 15th century.

Re benefits from slaves, after a Bangladeshi factory collapsed a few years that was supplying shirts to a major Canadian chain, we learned that discount tshirts selling for some $22 paid the workers 14 cents. With malnutrition and inability to manage life.

Like genocide, slavery seems to come in variations, with no end in sight and no clear will to fix it.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
In the context of the Industrial Revolution, one could say that without slavery mechanisation would have progressed even faster in order to provide the raw materials (especially cotton) for the mills and factories to process. But it feels a bit "chicken and egg" to me - did the slave trade grow in order to feed the mills or did the mills grow because of the abundant raw materials that the slave trade provided? While doubtless both factors combined to form a self-perpetuating cycle, I suspect that the latter played more of a part in starting the cycle than did the former.

Given that textiles were by far the dominant industry during the Industrial Revolution, and assuming that that was the case largely due to the high volume of raw materials provided by the slave trade, it seems valid to ask if the IR would have come about without the slave trade. And the IR was directly responsible for the subsequent unprecedented growth in global (but primarily Western) prosperity.
You seem to be assuming rather than demonstrating your conclusion. It's not at all clear that a system of paid labor is incapable of producing cotton in industrial quantities. In fact, given cotton is produced today largely using paid labor it seems fairly clear that the premise that cotton agriculture requires slavery is faulty.

In fact, it could be argued that slavery impedes industrialization in another way. A paid worker is also a potential customer. An unpaid worker is not. Using an enslaved workforce is a constraint on market size.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
That's just the economic side of the discussion, of course. In social terms it's unarguable that slavery has had profound and persistent negative impacts on ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. Several hundreds of years of societal attitudes being built around the worst form of oppression doesn't just disappear because some politicians signed a bill, and we are still very much in the "growing pains" stage of a society with more inclusive and equal attitudes towards its members. There is much work still to be done, and each of us has a key role to play in that. This, I feel, should be the primary focus of our efforts. Changing the economic situation without changing societal attitudes is a recipe for discontent and unrest, but changing societal attitudes will inevitably lead to a change in the economic situation. It will be slower, yes, but it will be far more enduring.
I disagree. History has shown repeatedly that waiting for slaveowners to voluntarily manumit their human property through "changing societal attitudes" is a fruitless endeavor. Something like the Slavery Abolition Act or the Thirteenth Amendment is always required to "chang[e] the economic situation" first.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I know that it's very easy for me to advocate a "slow and sure" approach, as it's not me who's waiting for the end result. But I do think that in the long term that is the approach that will work out the best for everyone.
I take issue with the notion that waiting patiently for "changing societal attitudes" to take effect is in any way "sure". This was the argument heard for about a century from ardent Segregationists in America's southern states, that things like the Civil Rights Act were needlessly disruptive of the "slow and sure" progress underway since the end of Reconstruction. That such "progress" was undetectable seems to have been more of a feature than a bug.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

Re benefits from slaves, after a Bangladeshi factory collapsed a few years that was supplying shirts to a major Canadian chain, we learned that discount tshirts selling for some $22 paid the workers 14 cents. With malnutrition and inability to manage life.

Like genocide, slavery seems to come in variations, with no end in sight and no clear will to fix it.
It is a foreign problem, the company have promised to address the issue, some factory/sweatshop owner has gone to the dock, problem solved. And we still get our clothing cheap.
That is actually the maddening thing. Because of the differences in labour cost, we could still have inexpensive kit and they could have decent standards and a living wage. We care so little, because it is them that we will not apply the proper pressure.
But merely suggest that the shape of our bananas is threatened, an we will kick ourselves down a stairwell to avoid an imaginary inconvenience.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing, especially in light of the central thesis of this thread that our prosperity is entirely due to our ancestors exploitation of slaves.
Your addition of "entirely" qualifies this as a strawman, IMHO. No one has suggested Western prosperity is entirely due to slavery. The OP invites us to speculate re how much of our prosperity is due to slavery.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I know that it's very easy for me to advocate a "slow and sure" approach, as it's not me who's waiting for the end result. But I do think that in the long term that is the approach that will work out the best for everyone.
I take issue with the notion that waiting patiently for "changing societal attitudes" to take effect is in any way "sure". This was the argument heard for about a century from ardent Segregationists in America's southern states, that things like the Civil Rights Act were needlessly disruptive of the "slow and sure" progress underway since the end of Reconstruction. That such "progress" was undetectable seems to have been more of a feature than a bug. [/QB]
Indeed. Rather than add my own argument I'll simply refer Martin to MLK's
Why We Can't Wait

[ 12. July 2016, 16:35: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
History has shown repeatedly that waiting for slaveowners to voluntarily manumit their human property through "changing societal attitudes" is a fruitless endeavor. Something like the Slavery Abolition Act or the Thirteenth Amendment is always required to "chang[e] the economic situation" first.
It may be important that one of those passed peacefully.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
History has shown repeatedly that waiting for slaveowners to voluntarily manumit their human property through "changing societal attitudes" is a fruitless endeavor. Something like the Slavery Abolition Act or the Thirteenth Amendment is always required to "chang[e] the economic situation" first.
It may be important that one of those passed peacefully.
There are similar examples in the U.S. What we don't have examples of is historical examples of slavery ending without some kind of legal action being taken.

The determining factor seems to be the overall prevalence of slavery. For example, the enslavement rate of New York in 1800 (around the time the above-linked law was passed) was about 3.5%. The cut-off for American states willing to enact gradual emancipation programs seems to have been somewhere between 6% and 10% total population enslaved. The notable exception seems to be Delaware, which maintained legal slavery despite holding a relatively small proportion of its population in bondage.

The other cut-off point was how prevalent slavery had to be for a state to be willing to engage in violent rebellion for its preservation. That cut-off seems to be somewhere between 20% and 25% enslavement. Of the fifteen American states where slavery was still legal in 1860, the eleven who joined the Confederacy all had enslavement rates of 25% or higher while the four slave states that remained loyal to the Union all held less than 20% of their population in slavery.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing, especially in light of the central thesis of this thread that our prosperity is entirely due to our ancestors exploitation of slaves.
Your addition of "entirely" qualifies this as a strawman, IMHO. No one has suggested Western prosperity is entirely due to slavery. The OP invites us to speculate re how much of our prosperity is due to slavery.
And the addition of "what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing" also extends the question far beyond the OP, which said it sought to find out "to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery."
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing, especially in light of the central thesis of this thread that our prosperity is entirely due to our ancestors exploitation of slaves.
Your addition of "entirely" qualifies this as a strawman, IMHO. No one has suggested Western prosperity is entirely due to slavery. The OP invites us to speculate re how much of our prosperity is due to slavery.
And the addition of "what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing" also extends the question far beyond the OP, which said it sought to find out "to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery."
But that extension is implied in the OP itself-- you can't really answer the question of how you benefitted w/o first speculating on what the world (or at least your little corner of it) would be like had our history been different. And yes, when you start speculating it's hard to reel it back so some degree of "slippery slope" thinking is inevitable. But still, no one has suggested that ALL Western prosperity is based on slavery.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
And the addition of "what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing" also extends the question far beyond the OP, which said it sought to find out "to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery."
America's history of slavery began from Britain's slave trade and is intertwined with British-American relations until the American Civil War. As cliffdweller says, it is a natural extension and well within the natural flow of a Ship thread.

Oh, yeah, and there is this from the OP:
quote:
If you're in the UK, did your family benefit in any way from the Triangle Trade?
So beyond America from the start.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller
But that extension is implied in the OP itself-- you can't really answer the question of how you benefitted w/o first speculating on what the world (or at least your little corner of it) would be like had our history been different. And yes, when you start speculating it's hard to reel it back so some degree of "slippery slope" thinking is inevitable. But still, no one has suggested that ALL Western prosperity is based on slavery.
Sure, in order to answer the question of how one one might have benefited from American slavery one has to consider how history might have been different without American slavery. And of course, the effects of American slavery weren't confined to America.

But that wasn't my point. My point was that the OP, which asked about how one might have benefited from slavery in Anerica, had been expanded to a broader "what would the world look like if slavery had never been a thing"—which I, at least, take to mean not just American slavery, but all slavery throughout world history. Perhaps I read to much into that, but discussions of feudalism and serfdom in Eurooe make me think I didn't.

The implications and lingering effects of slavery generally are certainly worth considering. But it is broader than the more specific question posed in the OP.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
ah, I see.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
And if you must delve into historical slavery (I fail to see how you could not) then you have to consider how it's not just one thing. The race-based slavery of the Americas was very different from African slavery or the practices of the Classical world, or even that of the OT, which seems to have shaded over into serfdom.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And if you must delve into historical slavery (I fail to see how you could not) then you have to consider how it's not just one thing. The race-based slavery of the Americas was very different from African slavery
The existing West African slave system which European trans-Atlantic traders bought into was horrific and remunerative enough, even if not specifically race-based, but it is difficult to deny the existence of a racial element in the Arab trade in sub-Saharan Africans, even if it was mixed up with religious and economic factors.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Without slavery, would the Industrial Revolution even have happened?
Almost certainly. Slavery (and similar forms of forced labor) seems to arise in situations where the the prevailing wage for free labor is significantly higher than human subsistence. If a market equilibrium price of labor is close to subsistence it's easier to pay that. In many ways industrialization is a different answer to the same problem, substituting mechanization for costly human labor. The main difference is that it requires a higher degree of technical knowledge and a nearby source of concentrated energy (historically coal).

In fact the early industrialized economy and slave economy seem antithetical to each other. If you had the one it seems impossible to maintain the other in the same geographical economy.
However, the profits gained from the sourcing and maintaining the slave trade helped to fund the industrial revolution. This is certainly the case in the West Midlands (UK), where I live.

On a more personal level, I'm descended from both slaves and slave owners, so you could say that without the Transatlantic slave trade I wouldn't exist. Whether I should see that heritage as a 'benefit' is a controversial question.
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
The implications and lingering effects of slavery generally are certainly worth considering. But it is broader than the more specific question posed in the OP.
It is. But threads have a way of drifting away from the specific points in an OP, and I'm okay with that. Especially since Real Life has gotten in the way of me being as active a participant on this thread as I would have liked!
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You seem to be assuming rather than demonstrating your conclusion. It's not at all clear that a system of paid labor is incapable of producing cotton in industrial quantities. In fact, given cotton is produced today largely using paid labor it seems fairly clear that the premise that cotton agriculture requires slavery is faulty.
I guess my assumption is that the mill owners wouldn't have been prepared to pay for large quantities of cotton if they'd have had to pay wages as well. Maybe that's not a safe assumption.

quote:
In fact, it could be argued that slavery impedes industrialization in another way. A paid worker is also a potential customer. An unpaid worker is not. Using an enslaved workforce is a constraint on market size.
Except that, in terms of the textile industry of the time, the slaves weren't living in the market they were selling to. Just like all those clothes manufacturers today aren't selling their wares to people in Bangladesh.

quote:
I disagree. History has shown repeatedly that waiting for slaveowners to voluntarily manumit their human property through "changing societal attitudes" is a fruitless endeavor. Something like the Slavery Abolition Act or the Thirteenth Amendment is always required to "chang[e] the economic situation" first.
You make a persuasive argument.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
And the addition of "what the world would look like had slavery never been a thing" also extends the question far beyond the OP, which said it sought to find out "to what extent you and your family have benefited from America's long history of slavery."
Well, if you just want me to think about direct benefits to me and my family then the answer is "we haven't". I come from a long line of farmers and menial workers. We neither owned slaves nor were related to anyone who did, and what small prosperity we as a family may have has been built up in the last couple of generations, well after the slave trade ended.

Of course, the usual reply to such a statement runs along the lines of how the world around me is different - to my benefit - because of slavery. In which case the question of how different and in what way(s) becomes perfectly relevant to the initial question.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You seem to be assuming rather than demonstrating your conclusion. It's not at all clear that a system of paid labor is incapable of producing cotton in industrial quantities. In fact, given cotton is produced today largely using paid labor it seems fairly clear that the premise that cotton agriculture requires slavery is faulty.
I guess my assumption is that the mill owners wouldn't have been prepared to pay for large quantities of cotton if they'd have had to pay wages as well. Maybe that's not a safe assumption.
The typical early industrial textile mill wasn't vertically integrated so it wouldn't be paying the wages of agricultural workers anyway. A more accurate way of phrasing this is to question whether mill owners were "prepared to pay for large quantities of cotton if [the price was marked up to include wages]". We know that they were willing to buy cotton at prices that were marked up to include the cost of huge-ass mansions for plantation owners, and that was at a time when human labor was cheap and durable goods were expensive. It may be possible that mill owners might have balked at a price marked up to include both wages and a huge-ass mansion, but that brings us back once again to the question of the absolute necessity of prioritizing huge-ass mansions over paid labor. It's at least arguable that 'forcing' cotton barons to live in mansions with slightly smaller asses is a worthwhile trade-off for human freedom.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
In fact, it could be argued that slavery impedes industrialization in another way. A paid worker is also a potential customer. An unpaid worker is not. Using an enslaved workforce is a constraint on market size.
Except that, in terms of the textile industry of the time, the slaves weren't living in the market they were selling to. Just like all those clothes manufacturers today aren't selling their wares to people in Bangladesh.
Actually in a lot of ways they were. Textiles produced in British mills (or, later on, mills in New England) were primarily an export commodity.

quote:
By the middle of the nineteenth century, global cotton production was firmly locked into a trans-Atlantic pattern. Cotton was produced via slave labor in the southern states of the US. It was processed into its usable raw form by the slaves, then sold by the southern plantation owners to the major manufacturing firms of northern Britain. Britain was famously referred to as “the workshop of the world” in this period, and it was cotton cloth production that underpinned that status. Simply put, the production of raw cotton by slaves and the manufacturing of cloth by massive, specialized British industrial power culminated in high-quality cloth that was cheap enough to undermine the native cloth industries of practically every place then integrated into the global market system. The most famous shift in this regard was the reversal of the British – Indian cotton relationship; where Britain had struggled desperately to protect its native cloth manufacturing against the tide of high-quality, fashionable and affordable Indian cottons, British-manufactured cloth severely undermined the Indian cotton industry during the nineteenth century thanks to the efficiency of the US – British cotton production system.
In short, given the fact that slave-produced raw cotton managed to get from the U.S. to Britain there was no reason finished textiles couldn't make their way from Britain to the U.S. The main barrier was similar to the barriers around the people of Bangladesh, the fact that American slaves had no means to purchase anything. Though it should be noted that the few rags of clothes provided to American slaves by their owners were probably from fabric milled either in England or a northern state.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Of course, the usual reply to such a statement runs along the lines of how the world around me is different - to my benefit - because of slavery. In which case the question of how different and in what way(s) becomes perfectly relevant to the initial question.
As I clarified in a subsequent post, I don't disagree. My point was simply that the OP asked about how people had benefited from the American institution of slavery, not from slavery throughout history generally.

That doesn't mean I don't think the latter conversation isn't worth having. Far from it. And I agree with Josephine that threads blow where they will. It's simply that if one is talking about how the world is different because of slavery throughout history, the discussion has become broader than what was posed in the OP, and what many posters may have been responding to. It's worth being clear about that to make sure everyone is still singing on the same page in the hymnal. That's all.
 
Posted by Graven Image (# 8755) on :
 
Always thought I got off free of any personal involvement with slaves. Southern families on both side did not own slaves. One side of the family was too poor to own slaves and although living in the south supported the union, the other side of the family although southern were abolitionists for religious reasons.

Then I found out tne-hundred-seventy-eight years ago, Georgetown University was massively in debt.
In order to pay that debt, the university sold 272 slaves -- the very people that helped build the school itself.
When I attended Georgetown I had no idea of any of this. Thankfully they are seeking to make amends with the descendants those slaves. Clearly I owe my education and all it's benefits to slavery.

[ 13. July 2016, 20:55: Message edited by: Graven Image ]
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

Guilt itself is an objective condition of being somehow responsible for something wrong.

Actual guilt is sometimes accoompanied by no feelings of guilt (eg psychopaths), and sometimes people have false feelings of guilt when they are not in fact guilty of anything.

Shame, on the other hand, is always a sensation - sometimes unjustified, sometimes disproportionate to the point of toxicity, but sometimes entirely appropriate and a sign of moral health and awareness.
Shame is social. It's a feeling of reluctance to admit to those whose good opinion we value that we haven't lived up to their standards.

Being able to feel shame is a sign of being part of a community and aware of the values of that community.

When we identify as part of a group - in this instance a nation or a race - we can feel shame for what that nation or race has done.

But ISTM that guilt is individual. Christians believe that we will be held responsible befire God for our own actions, not those of our fellow countrymen.

Nobody alive today has any guilt for slavery that ended 150 years ago.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

But ISTM that guilt is individual. Christians believe that we will be held responsible befire God for our own actions, not those of our fellow countrymen.

Nobody alive today has any guilt for slavery that ended 150 years ago.
I disagree. Both the OT and NT speak of sin and guilt in corporate terms just as much if not more than they do in individual terms. One can be guilty individually of acts committed personally and directly, or one can be guilty corporately for acts committed by a community of which you are a part and for which you made no effort to stop.

This is the case with slavery. As has been abundantly demonstrated so far on this thread, Western society continues to feel the effects of slavery and to benefit economically from slavery both past and present. If we fail to act on that knowledge with integrity-- doing what we can to reverse those effects, however costly they may be or however we may feel we're but a drop in the ocean-- then we are morally complicit in the acts.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
This is the case with slavery. As has been abundantly demonstrated so far on this thread, Western society continues to feel the effects of slavery and to benefit economically from slavery both past and present. If we fail to act on that knowledge with integrity-- doing what we can to reverse those effects, however costly they may be or however we may feel we're but a drop in the ocean-- then we are morally complicit in the acts.
I don't think that has been demonstrated. Some people made money out of slavery, certainly, but that doesn't prove that society as a whole benefited from it compared to what might have happened otherwise. It seems at least possible that keeping a high proportion of the population enslaved (and therefore poor, uneducated, and without economic autonomy) tends to retard economic development. If so, we might all have been better off if slavery had never happened.

But even if that's not the case, does the fact that I personally might have derived a small, indirect economic benefit from past injustice really make much of a difference to my moral duties here and now? If we're thinking of racial justice, it seems to be that my obligation is, firstly, not to be racist myself, and secondly, to encourage racial equality in my society as far as I reasonably can. I don't see that those duties would change if my great-great-grandfather were a slave-trader or an abolitionist.

I'd feel a little happier if my ancestors had been on the right side, perhaps, but only a little. I can't imagine feeling either shame or guilt if they weren't.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
I don't think the effect then-- or now-- was as small as you think. Certainly Lincoln didn't, or he wouldn't have taken the North to task over thinking they had the moral high ground.

But the point I think for you is probably whether or not there is any benefit today. And I think there is. If it can be shown that blacks are disadvantaged in employment, for example, it then would stand to reason that whites or non-blacks have somewhat of an advantage-- less competition for the choice spots. I think that it's clear that any such advantage/disadvantage stems from the racism nurtured by slavery.

Of course privilege is something we're born into, not something we choose. But once we are aware of it, what we do with that privilege is a choice. So then it comes down to the things mentioned upthread and how we respond to any benefits we may have rec'd either indirectly or directly from slavery-- whether we use those benefits to open doors or simply to leverage our own position. Whether we're working for a more just society or content to live with one in which some are privileged.

[ 15. July 2016, 01:17: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Eliab is not American, but it is the same argument regardless.
One cannot claim no reliance on the stone of the foundation simply because one lives in the second floor.
I care not for guilt in modern people for the sins of the past. What I do care about is acknowledgement of that past, the benefot it gains them in the present and the willingness to right present wrongs.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Both the OT and NT speak of sin and guilt in corporate terms
This is a principle which we only apply very selectively as it suits us, and with dubious exegetical validity.

Would we seriously want to enforce the sort of communal guilt which saw a whole family destroyed because of one individual's offence, as in the case of Achan (Joshua 7:24)?

Or the generational guilt which saw genocide perpetrated against a whole people because of what their ancestors did centuries previously, as in the case of the Amalekites (I Samuel 15:2-3)?

A more historically recent obscenity which I mentioned upthread has been the centuries of persecution of the Jews for their putative corporate guilt in killing Christ.

What's more, there are quite explicit refutations of corporate guilt in the OT, such as Deuteronomy 24:16, Jeremiah 31:29-30 and Ezekiel 18:1-4.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If it can be shown that blacks are disadvantaged in employment, for example, it then would stand to reason that whites or non-blacks have somewhat of an advantage-- less competition for the choice spots. I think that it's clear that any such advantage/disadvantage stems from the racism nurtured by slavery.
I think it's clear that there's a strong connection between black slavery in the US and racism. The exact cause-effect relationship between the two is less clear.

You seem to be saying that life is a ratrace in which what matters is relative advantage over other people in one's own society. Competition for jobs and influence is what it's about. So that if history has done other people down then that's an advantage to you.

Not convinced that that's what's important.

And you'va still not come clean about your counterfactual. Arguably if there had been no slavery, there would be no blacks in the US for you to compete with...
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But the point I think for you is probably whether or not there is any benefit today. And I think there is. If it can be shown that blacks are disadvantaged in employment, for example, it then would stand to reason that whites or non-blacks have somewhat of an advantage-- less competition for the choice spots. I think that it's clear that any such advantage/disadvantage stems from the racism nurtured by slavery.
Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't work to end the evils of racism. But even had I got my job due to racism on the part of my employer (which is not the case) I wouldn't see that as me benefitting from slavery. To conflate the two seems unnecessary to me.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
With a possible very few exceptions of people who have inherited wealth built over several generations starting with fortunes made from the slave trade or commerce on the labour of slave, I don't think anyone is claiming a direct personal benefit from slavery. The benefits are indirect, and are benefits we have from being members of our society.

And, I think the benefits to people in the UK are from a different route than those in the US, where there was a fairly recent history of direct exploitation of slave labour. Because of that, I'm going to expand on the benefits we have in the UK, but that the situation in the US is different.

For the UK, and I suspect much of western Europe, the slave trade was part of a much bigger picture of colonialism. Slavery was one particularly extreme example of the exploitation of native peoples and resources by and for western European colonial powers. I suppose a case could be made for the early colonialism (Spain and Portugal in South and Central America) was driven by religious ideology. But, certainly by the time you get to later colonialism (France and Britain in North America; France, Britain, the Netherlands in SE Asia; practically everyone in Africa) the driving force is commercial - colonies were established to make money, and hence to gain power within the context of the rising competition between western European nations. The particular means by which money was made varied depending upon the particular situation - the colonial nation and the native people and their resources. But, the common theme was that the western European powers made their money at the expense of the native people in their colonies. In the southern parts of what would become the United States and the Caribbean that wealth came from production of cotton and sugar, and since the majority of the native population had been wiped out by European disease those were grown with maximum profit by exploiting the populations of African colonies, shipping them across the Atlantic as slaves.

That colonial exploitation created vast fortunes for a small number of people. Even as late as the turn of the 20th century, vast wealth continued to flow into the UK from India and elsewhere in the Empire. That money paid for political influence, the influence needed to protect the exploitation that generated that wealth. British commercial interests, the East India Company for example, effectively bought the services of the British army and navy to protect their interests - even when those interests were as despicable as dealing in opium. That money also fuelled the industrial revolution, as a means of making yet more money (and, exploiting the people of Britain as labour in the factories as they were exploiting the native populations of the colonies), it fuelled a growing middle and upper middle class of people made their own small fortunes as merchants and in service to commercialism, it created grammar schools to educate enough people to fill the ranks of clerical positions within these new commercial enterprises, and new universities to train the engineers and lawyers and other professions the country was needing to keep the wheels of industry and trade turning. We live well and truly on the shoulders of the wealth that colonialism created.

Earlier in the thread a question was raised about whether slavery, and the incipient racism that was based on, lead to the rise of Hitler. I don't think there is a direct connection. But, I don't think there is any doubt that the protection and expansion of commercial interests by the different European nations created the tensions in the continent at the start of the 20th century, that almost inevitably erupted in 1914. The slaughter of the next four years, and the re-ignition of that between 1936-45, was to protect the commercial interests of European colonial powers. By that stage slavery was no longer part of those commercial interests, but exploitation of native peoples certainly was.
 
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
The problem is how far back do you go? I doubt there's a nation on earth today that isn't what it is due to slavery of some form or another, and not always of black people. It's a little like asking an irish person how they benefitted from the 1798 rebels who lit a flame that would burst into a fire in 1916, and should I currently feel guilt and therefore apologise to the Brits who were murdered? The answer is that we 'benefit' from any event in history to be where we are currently at and, no I can't apologise for the actions of someone else. I can condemn their actions as wrong, but I can't apologise on their behalf - they're dead and I'm not their spokesperson.

So, say we took the example of someone in the States whose great grandfather (if they happened to be alive at the same time) had slaves that built their current livelihood. Yes, the descendants alive currently could express sorrow at what their great grandfather did, but they cannot apologise on their behalf. Should they make retribution? No. Who would they give it to? They are all dead and gone. To insist that retribution financially should be made to those treated cruelly in history and whose descendants didn't experience it seems utterly daft to me. It would be like saying that the British family who were burnt out of their stately home in Ireland in 1916 and whose descendants are alive in Cambridge today should be given financial compensation for the living they otherwise could have had. It's a nonsense.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

Even as late as the turn of the 20th century, vast wealth continued to flow into the UK from India and elsewhere in the Empire.
and even more recently than that in the decades after WWII, the APOC/BPC paid more in taxes to the British Exchequer than they did to the government of Iran.

There were some structural reasons why this was the case - but to a certain extent this agreement and others funded the social settlement post WWII.
 
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :
 
Thanks for the thread Josephine.

I read the article and noticed a company that a friend used to work for. I rang them up and told them that their previous employer was involved in slavery. They told me that this was the reason they left (an obvious lie) and went to the German company that now employs them. It typical German fashion this company is very open about their past work with the Nazi regime in the 1930's and 40's, and their involvement in supporting the death camps.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
The problem is how far back do you go?
Usually anything further back than yesterday is considered too far on this question.

quote:
This species of ignorance — of looking away — is old. In 1884, Harvard scientist Nathaniel Shaler assessed "The Negro Problem" in the pages of this very magazine [The Atlantic]. Shaler concluded that:
quote:
It was their presence here that was the evil, and for this none of the men of our century are responsible ... The burden lies on the souls of our dull, greedy ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who were too stupid to see or too careless to consider anything but immediate gain ...

There can be no sort of doubt, that, judged by the light of all experience, these people are a danger to America greater and more insuperable than any of those that menace the other great civilized states of the world. The armies of the Old World, the inheritance of medievalism in its governments, the chance evils of Ireland and Sicily, are all light burdens when compared with this load of African negro blood that an evil past has imposed upon us.
At the very moment that Shaler was disowning American responsibility for enslavement, there were thousands, perhaps millions, of freedmen alive as well as their enslavers. It had barely been 20 years since enslavement was abolished. It had not been ten years since the rout of Reconstruction. In that time, sensible claims for reparations were being made. The black activist Callie House argued that pensions should be paid to freedmen and freedwomen for unpaid toil. The movement garnered Congressional support. But it failed, largely because, the country believed as Shaler did, that "none of the men of this century" were "responsible."
The "end of slavery" in the U.S. is an interesting question and kind of hard to pin down. Jim Crow seems to have been an attempt (and a largely successful one) to re-instate slavery in all but name. Does a system that uses trumped up legal charges to selectively sentence black people to forced labor (even going so far as to auction off that labor in a historically very familiar way) count as "slavery"? If so, slavery persisted in the U.S. up to the 1940s. How about the more refined methods of not directly extracting labor from black folks but instead cheating them out of the product of their labor? Again from Coates:

quote:
A similar moment finds us now. Even if one feels that slavery was too far into the deep past (and I do not, because I view this as a continuum) the immediate past is with us. Identifying the victims of racist housing policy in this country is not hard. Again, we have the maps. We have the census. We could set up a claims system for black veterans who were frustrated in their attempt to use the G.I. Bill. We could then decide what remedy we might offer these people and their communities. And there is nothing "impractical" about this.

The problem of reparations has never been practicality. It has always been the awesome ghosts of history. A fear of ghosts has sometimes occupied the pages of the magazine for which David and I now write. In other times banishment has been our priority. The mature citizen, the hard student, is now called to choose between finding a reason to confront the past, or finding more reasons to hide from it.
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I doubt there's a nation on earth today that isn't what it is due to slavery of some form or another, and not always of black people. It's a little like asking an irish person how they benefited from the 1798 rebels who lit a flame that would burst into a fire in 1916, and should I currently feel guilt and therefore apologise to the Brits who were murdered?
This kind of argument always relies on the conflation of nations (and sometimes other organizations) with people. The United States and United Kingdom (for example) claim to be the same entities today that existed two centuries ago. For example, the United States claims to own the property of Fort Monroe (now a U.S. National Monument) because it was built by "the United States". It was also built primarily with slave labor. It seems like a whole new species of special pleading to argue that the property belongs to "the United States" because they have been the sole and continuous owner since the early nineteenth century and also to argue that it wasn't "the United States" who built the site using slaves because no one is still alive from the time of original construction. Nations claim to be functionally immortal. We should hold them to that even when inconvenient.

[ 15. July 2016, 15:31: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Nations claim to be functionally immortal. We should hold them to that even when inconvenient.
Very well. Then to whom do you propose our nations pay reparations?
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Nations claim to be functionally immortal. We should hold them to that even when inconvenient.
Very well. Then to whom do you propose our nations pay reparations?
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves. Same as we would say for any other long overdue debt. But again, that's a most inconvenient answer
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Not only inconvenient, but not a moral or ethical solution. If reparations were to be done, it is the governments of the nations responsible who would pay.
But I am not a fan of reparations. They would not change the current inequities and would give an excuse not to pursue the difficult issues that need to be solved to end those.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves.
But aren't they beneficiaries of slavery?

If it weren't for the horrific experiences suffered by their enslaved ancestors at the hands of other West Africans, Arabs, and Europeans, they would almost certainly be enjoying a far lower standard of living in Africa rather than the US.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
Modern Australia exists only because of the occupation of the land over which the ancient people had roamed for 60,000 years or so, and their subsequent exclusion from most of it. The ramifications of that are slowly, painfully slowly, being worked out.

As to slavery - there was the practice of blackbirding Kanakas from various Western Pacific islands and bringing them to Queensland to work on cane sugar farms there. It operated for about 40 years from 1860 or so. In theory, all were free volunteer employees but in practice they were forcibly removed and treated as slaves on their arrival. Many of the mills to which the produce of the sugar farms was taken were operated by a company called Colonial Sugar Refinery, and various generations of my family from then on have held shares in that company. So my forebears directly drew benefits from slavery and I do so indirectly from the still very profitable but now diversified company.

[ 16. July 2016, 03:59: Message edited by: Gee D ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves.
But aren't they beneficiaries of slavery?

If it weren't for the horrific experiences suffered by their enslaved ancestors at the hands of other West Africans, Arabs, and Europeans, they would almost certainly be enjoying a far lower standard of living in Africa rather than the US.
Right, because no one in Africa emigrates. Not to mention the current state of economics in Africa being a result of the same countries whose exploitation we are speaking about.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
If you want to argue that everyone in the US has benefited from slavery then it seems to me that there are there aspects to address:

- whether slavery created more wealth than the system that would have operated otherwise (and if so how large or small the marginal increase is)

- whether slavery caused the Civil War (and if so how much wealth was destroyed thereby)

- whether in the long run everybody benefits from greater wealth in the economy
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
If you want to argue that everyone in the US has benefited from slavery then it seems to me that there are there aspects to address:
Not just the US.
quote:

- whether slavery created more wealth than the system that would have operated otherwise (and if so how large or small the marginal increase is)
Irrelevant. The end being the same doesn't change the morality of the means.
quote:

- whether slavery caused the Civil War (and if so how much wealth was destroyed thereby)
It was so caused. And much wealth was lost, though that is also irrelevant.
quote:

- whether in the long run everybody benefits from greater wealth in the economy
Everyone did. Though for the former slaves it is a more complicated equation.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Right, because no one in Africa emigrates.
Near enough to right, because the overwhelming majority don't.

quote:
Not to mention the current state of economics in Africa being a result of the same countries whose exploitation we are speaking about.
Irrelevant.

The issue is whether or not the descendants of slaves in America are better off than they would be in Africa, and therefore whether or not they are beneficiaries of slavery.
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves.
But aren't they beneficiaries of slavery?

If it weren't for the horrific experiences suffered by their enslaved ancestors at the hands of other West Africans, Arabs, and Europeans, they would almost certainly be enjoying a far lower standard of living in Africa rather than the US.
However, broadly speaking, the descendants of slave owners in the USA are still enjoying a better standard of living than the descendants of slaves. Plus, as others have pointed out, you can't ignore the fact that slavery and colonialism also affected economic and social development in Africa.

But hey, if you'd like to come be my slave in Canada, so your descendants can live in a country with less gun violence and better access to health care, PM me.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Not to mention the current state of economics in Africa being a result of the same countries whose exploitation we are speaking about.
Irrelevant.

The issue is whether or not the descendants of slaves in America are better off than they would be in Africa, and therefore whether or not they are beneficiaries of slavery.
Perhaps your dictionary is lacking, but it is the very opposite of irrelevant.
The process which fucked up Africa is part of the very same that led to slavery. Namely exploiting the hell out of other people for your own economic benefit. And twas done by the very same actors. That cannot be separated so is very relevant.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
A few years after we were married my wife was reading a book titled "Slaves in the Family". When she was about half-way through she realized with a start that it was a book about my family.

Up until that point I had successfully kept this fact hidden from her. [Paranoid]

Our marriage survived, but she has viewed me with suspicion ever since. [Frown]

In my defense, my great-great grandfather, born in 1811 near Charleston, South Carolina, left the family plantation before the Civil War and moved to Philadelphia. We like to think that this was due to his principled objections to the lifestyle.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The process which fucked up Africa is part of the very same that led to slavery. Namely exploiting the hell out of other people for your own economic benefit. And twas done by the very same actors. That cannot be separated so is very relevant.
I agree.

I try to imagine alternative paths world history might have taken.

What if, once humans had migrated into every unoccupied corner of the globe, the clans, tribes, and nations had treated each other with respect and deference?

Would every population group today be in the spot where their ancestors migrated to thousands of years ago? Or would friendly trading and cooperation have resulted in a mixture of population groups that is similar to what we currently experience?
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Eliab is not American, but it is the same argument regardless.
99% true. The remaining 1% (my aortic and mitral valves) of me is of US manufacture, so I cannot claim to be entirely indifferent to American economic development.

It would seem slightly surreal to me to suggest that because I am indebted to US technological progress for every heartbeat, I have inherited a greater benefit from slavery than the average Brit, but that would seem to follow from the logic of this thread. My point is that even if this is true, I don't see that it makes an material difference to my (already existing) moral duties not to be a racist and to oppose racism. Even if you could demonstrate with conclusive proof that, but for slavery, I'd be dead, I can't see that this would impose any additional moral obligation.

I think that my distaste for the 'arguments from privilege' against racism is that it seems to me to portray black and white as competing interest groups - if blacks are disadvantaged, then whites must have an equal and opposite advantage. I'm anti-racist because I think the black/white.distinction is bullshit - we share a common humanity, we mostly want the same things, and we all benefit from having a more just society. The idea of races as essentially different is part of the legacy of slavery that I wish to refuse. I decline to self-identify with slavers simply because we have similar pigmentation. I'm not racist. My responsibility not to be racist does not vary according to the benefits I might derive from my skin colour.

Also, while pointing out that present day injustice has historical causes might be worthwhile, trying to motivate me to be less racist by emphasising the advantages that apparently accrue to me because of racism seems counter-productive. I'd rather emphasise the advantages of fairness.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
I'll break down my response to your post later, but for now I would reply that explaining the past can help people understand why the present isn't fair, equal or balanced.
Too many people is met think that inequity is inborn. Many do not think they are prejudiced, just observing what "is".
You may see the inequity without considering the why, that is hardly a universal trait.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Perhaps your dictionary is lacking, but it is the very opposite of irrelevant.
The process which fucked up Africa is part of the very same that led to slavery. Namely exploiting the hell out of other people for your own economic benefit. And twas done by the very same actors. That cannot be separated so is very relevant.
Perhaps your dictionary lacks a definition of non sequitur.

Even if European exploitation, including the trans-Atlantic aspect of the slave trade, were the unique cause of Africa's problems (which it is not), it does not follow that the descendants of transported slaves now living in America are not beneficiaries of slavery.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

- whether slavery created more wealth than the system that would have operated otherwise (and if so how large or small the marginal increase is)
Irrelevant. The end being the same doesn't change the morality of the means.
I read "benefitted from slavery" as meaning "are better off than if slavery hadn't happened".

If you think that's irrelevant, then I guess you have a different meaning of "benefitted". Which you might want to spell out...
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
I think the point of whether it's relevant or not probably depends upon perspective.

Let's assume that it can be demonstrated through some alternate history analysis that the descendents of slaves in the United States are better off than they would be in the alternate history in which there had been no slavery. How would the descendents of those slaves actually view that observation?

Of course, the first thing to note is that it doesn't alter the fact that there are descendents of form slave-owners, slave traders and other direct beneficiaries of slavery who are very much better off than they would have been in the alternative history without slavery. The comparison does nothing to change the current inequalities within the US that have developed because of slavery.

Second, it doesn't alter the fact that the situation is not just about economic and social privilege. The alternative history would also need to include not just the non-existence of slavery, but the non-existence of the racism that allowed some people to consider other people as not much better than animals. Concentrating on economics does nothing to address the sickening racism endemic in the world.

Finally, and here's the biggie. What does that analysis convey? The primary message to the descendents of slaves is "You're better off because of slavery than you would have been without it". The implicit message, very close to the surface, is "so, don't complain about how unfairly life treats you". You might as well say "stay in your place and stop being so uppity".
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves.
But aren't they beneficiaries of slavery?

If it weren't for the horrific experiences suffered by their enslaved ancestors at the hands of other West Africans, Arabs, and Europeans, they would almost certainly be enjoying a far lower standard of living in Africa rather than the US.
By that argument I am a beneficiary of the Third Reich. My grandfather (from the North East) only met my grandmother (from Somerset) because he was billeted near her when he was serving in the British army during the Second World War. If Hitler had not come to power they would not have met, married and conceived my mother. I would not, therefore, have existed. Now broadly speaking I think existence is preferable to non-existence and I think, by and large, I do more good than harm. But I don't think that it follows from that that the rise of National Socialism was a net benefit to humanity. In the same way, I'm not sure that it can be argued that the North Atlantic Slave trade was of net benefit to humanity because the descendants of some slaves have managed to attain a comfortable middle class existence. I think, in all seriousness, that we may be asking the wrong questions here.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Let's assume that it can be demonstrated through some alternate history analysis that the descendents of slaves in the United States are better off than they would be in the alternate history in which there had been no slavery...

...What does that analysis convey?
It gets rid of the strange notion that those who have benefitted from slavery owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it ?
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
By that argument I am a beneficiary of the Third Reich.
Regardless of how horrific and purely evil something might be, it is seldom impossible to see something good, however small, that results - even though clearly outweighed by the bad.

Humanity's shameful history of conquest, domination, cruelty and hatred has served to extend the reach of knowledge and connection to every corner of the globe.

This sets up the future possibility of a united world, even if the wickedness that drove it makes that unity seem like an unrealistic pipedream.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The most obvious would be the descendants of slaves.
But aren't they beneficiaries of slavery?

If it weren't for the horrific experiences suffered by their enslaved ancestors at the hands of other West Africans, Arabs, and Europeans, they would almost certainly be enjoying a far lower standard of living in Africa rather than the US.
Others have touched on this, but I want to emphasise how problematic it is.

With regard to the 'lower standard of living' in Africa, some scholars estimate that the Transatlantic slave trade actually helped to underdevelop the continent. It took away the young, strong members of African society. Along with the Arab slave traders it helped to depopulate whole regions. It exacerbated conflicts by encouraging ethnic groups and nations to war with their neighbours; to drive them into slavery was a way of preventing them from doing the same to you and your people, or to divert the unwelcome attention of slave traders. Some say that it influenced the direction of African leadership for a long time afterwards.

It should also be said that almost as soon as the Transatlantic trade was abolished, the destructive colonisation of Africa by Northern European countries began. Not everyone sees this as a complete coincidence.

In terms of what it's meant for the people of the African diaspora in the Americas, the trade created a psychological barrier between them and and modern Africans that has never truly healed. On a broader level the loss for Africans in the New World has been immense; a loss of languages, religions, names, cultures, and as a result, a huge a loss of ancestral knowledge, or simply knowing where your family came from. Individuals have to live with these losses deep inside them every single day, in addition to their largely subordinate position in the Americas.

Various attempts have been made to plug the gaps culturally and psychologically, but most have been found wanting.

As for the Arab slave trade in black Africans, I can't see what the point of that was at all. Most of the women ended up in harems, with their babies frequently put to death. The boys were castrated in order to staff the harems, or were stolen to provide the ancient, Eastern version of cannon fodder. AFAIUI their descendants haven't particularly 'benefited', neither in terms of social ascendancy, nor cultural distinctiveness.
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
It gets rid of the strange notion that those who have benefitted from slavery owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it ?
Well, isn't that convenient.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

- whether slavery created more wealth than the system that would have operated otherwise (and if so how large or small the marginal increase is)
Irrelevant. The end being the same doesn't change the morality of the means.
I read "benefitted from slavery" as meaning "are better off than if slavery hadn't happened".

If you think that's irrelevant, then I guess you have a different meaning of "benefitted". Which you might want to spell out...
Let me put it in simpler terms. If a person is shot by someone intending them harm and during the subsequent operation a malignant tumour is found and removed, this does not obviate the intent of the shooter. Nor does it change the fact the body has been damaged by the bullet, probably permanently. Contrary to Hollywood. Nor that recovery from a serious bullet wound is a very long process.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Perhaps your dictionary is lacking, but it is the very opposite of irrelevant.
The process which fucked up Africa is part of the very same that led to slavery. Namely exploiting the hell out of other people for your own economic benefit. And twas done by the very same actors. That cannot be separated so is very relevant.
Perhaps your dictionary lacks a definition of non sequitur.

Even if European exploitation, including the trans-Atlantic aspect of the slave trade, were the unique cause of Africa's problems (which it is not), it does not follow that the descendants of transported slaves now living in America are not beneficiaries of slavery.
Very few such "problems" have unique cause. BUt many of those currently facing African countries are directly traceable to European intervention. And, for those that are not, your argument assumes that Africans could not have benefited from peaceful interchange.
And your notion of beneficial is laughable. Repression, lynching, persecution, poverty etc., well in excess of the norm for paler citizens.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Let's assume that it can be demonstrated through some alternate history analysis that the descendents of slaves in the United States are better off than they would be in the alternate history in which there had been no slavery...

...What does that analysis convey?
It gets rid of the strange notion that those who have benefitted from slavery owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it ?
Leaving aside the enormous "if" implicit in the alternative history scenario ...

I've already covered the biggie, that it strongly implies being content with what you have and stop being so uppity.

In addition to my other points, which you haven't addressed, the next biggie is that people tend to think strongly in terms of how much better or worse off than those relatively near them. They know if their children go to a crappy school, yet those from another part of the same town go to a much better school. They know if they're struggling to get enough to feed their families, when others have enough to throw food away. Those disparities are particularly keenly felt when the dividing lines follow skin colour, or the ongoing ripples of history.

A comparison with a hypothetical alternative history doesn't have that same immediacy.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Finally, and here's the biggie. What does that analysis convey? The primary message to the descendents of slaves is "You're better off because of slavery than you would have been without it".
No it doesn't.

What it conveys is that if the West in general, and the US in particular, owe any sort of reparations for their benefitting from slavery, then they would be more justifiably paid to the poor nations of West Africa whose plight is partly the result of Western exploitation which included slavery, rather than to American descendants of slaves who are better off as a result of slavery.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
In the same way, I'm not sure that it can be argued that the North Atlantic Slave trade was of net benefit to humanity because the descendants of some slaves have managed to attain a comfortable middle class existence. I think, in all seriousness, that we may be asking the wrong questions here.
Nobody, least of all myself, has argued that the slave trade was of net benefit to humanity because the American descendants of slaves are, on the whole, better off than most Africans.

Nobody has argued that obscenities such as the slave trade and the Third Reich can be justified by the chance benefits which they threw up for a minority.

In all seriousness, I cannot believe that you cannot see that.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
With regard to the 'lower standard of living' in Africa, some scholars estimate that the Transatlantic slave trade actually helped to underdevelop the continent.
Agreed.

What's your point?

quote:
It exacerbated conflicts by encouraging ethnic groups and nations to war with their neighbours; to drive them into slavery was a way of preventing them from doing the same to you and your people, or to divert the unwelcome attention of slave traders.
The slave trade existed before Europeans bought into it.

quote:
It should also be said that almost as soon as the Transatlantic trade was abolished, the destructive colonisation of Africa by Northern European countries began. Not everyone sees this as a complete coincidence.
Again, agreed.

quote:

As for the Arab slave trade in black Africans, I can't see what the point of that was at all. their descendants haven't particularly 'benefited', neither in terms of social ascendancy, nor cultural distinctiveness.
The point of mentioning African and Arab involvement is not to argue that the descendants of Arab-owned slaves are better off, but to remind ourselves that slavery and slave trading were not, and are not, exclusively European faults.

[ 17. July 2016, 23:48: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
If the West in general, and the US in particular, owe any sort of reparations for their benefitting from slavery, then they would be more justifiably paid to the poor nations of West Africa whose plight is partly the result of Western exploitation which included slavery, rather than to American descendants of slaves who are better off as a result of slavery.
As I implied in my earlier post, being 'better off' can't be reduced to access to running water and lots of shopping malls. Some scholars would argue that in many respects, black Africans are psychologically and culturally better off than their distant relatives in the Americas. In fact, Africans have been known to be rather critical of the lack of progress made by the descendants of slaves in the diaspora.

In addition, the difficulty with tying financial aid in Africa to the legacy of the slave trade (and not to colonialism in general) is that the slave trade was indeed a trade; Africans traders were paid for the slaves that they provided. As a black Caribbean woman at a meeting in France astutely observed, if African nations were 'compensated' for the effects of the slave trade, it would give the impression that her ancestors were being sold twice.... I don't think this would go down very well in the African diaspora. A more thoughtful, nuanced response is required.

Of course, assistance to Africa may continue to be necessary, although some would say that fairer access to world markets would be far better than pouring in ever more charity, which seems to be what happens at present. The reality, of course, is that it's physically impossible for the whole world to live according to the same standards that the West currently enjoys. Dealing with that problem is going to take far more serious thought, and sacrifice, than just handing over more cash.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

Of course, assistance to Africa may continue to be necessary, although some would say that fairer access to world markets would be far better than pouring in ever more charity, which seems to be what happens at present. The reality, of course, is that it's physically impossible for the whole world to live according to the same standards that the West currently enjoys. Dealing with that problem is going to take far more serious thought, and sacrifice, than just handing over more cash.
For the most part I agree, although I do think (from my own narrow observations in central Africa over the last decade) that the current derision in some quarters (not yours, just in other popular books, essays) for charitable giving in Africa is overstated. Both are needed, for a variety of complex reasons. As you said, it requires a thoughtful response. I still find Jeffrey Sach's
The End of Poverty the best, most carefully researched and nuanced approach, particularly to African poverty.

Sachs doesn't really address his work from the pov of reparations or moral guilt-- like others here on this thread, he's primarily concerned with the issues now and how they can be addressed. But he does trace the reasons for the chronic persistence of African extreme poverty (defined as life-threatening), some of which are the fault of Mother Nature (malaria, drought) but others which fall on our Western doorstep. Not just slavery, of course, but also colonialism, global warming, manipulative trading, etc.

Whether highlighting those causal aspects would provide any greater incentive to Western nations in getting on board with the (IMHO sensible) plan Sachs outlines is another question.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:


What's your point?
The point is that black people wouldn't necessarily be physically 'better off' in the great USA if the Transatlantic trade hadn't existed, because it's this very trade that helped to underdevelop Africa....


quote:
The slave trade existed before Europeans bought into it.
Slavery has existed all over the world, true. Yet the Transatlantic trade was of a very particular type, and had very particular and ongoing cultural, financial and psychological consequences.

That's why we still talk about it so much. Whole nations had their ethnic make-up transformed because of it. Millions of people lost their lives in order to satisfy the brutal demands of the trade, many of them on the initial journey, long before they'd cut any cane or bailed any cotton. The trade created a raft of new social challenges and refined forms of racism across the New World, which have their resonance to this day. IOW, it was a form of slavery unlike any other.


quote:

The point of mentioning African and Arab involvement is not to argue that the descendants of Arab-owned slaves are better off, but to remind ourselves that slavery and slave trading were not, and are not, exclusively European faults.
I quite agree that it's not a matter of 'exclusively European faults', and the Arab trade ought to be better known. But it's better to point the finger at other people's history after you've dealt with the problems and challenges created by your own!

Admittedly, it's all very difficult. Slavery has been described as the USA's original sin; how does one deal with that? Commentators have asked themselves whether the American 'approach' has been better or worse than the British or the French, etc. In a sense, I'd agree with Frantz Fanon that having this whole history played out in the context of European settler colonialism makes the struggle somehow seem more authentic, more vital, than in Europe, where it's easier for populations and politicians to ignore the brutalities which (in general) happened overseas, far away.

I don't have a pat solution as to how all of this should be dealt with currently, but it seems clear that all is not well. And from a Christian point of view, you do wonder how all of this is going to be explained away, and if God really will require an accounting....
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
your argument assumes that Africans could not have benefited from peaceful interchange.
It assumes no such thing.

You just made that up.

Obviously "peaceful interchange" would have been the ideal for everyone everywhere, but slavery, including the trans-Atlantic trade, was a fact, and it is a fact that the descendants of those transported to America are today better off than the descendants of those who weren't.

As Homer Simpson would say, it's not rocket surgery.

quote:
And your notion of beneficial is laughable.
Not to those American blacks who agree that they are better off because their ancestors were slaves.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Kaplan--

*Are there* any African Americans who feel better off because of slavery? Don't think I've heard of any. (Apologies if you said upthread, and I missed it.)
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

I read "benefitted from slavery" as meaning "are better off than if slavery hadn't happened".

If you think that's irrelevant, then I guess you have a different meaning of "benefitted". Which you might want to spell out...
Let me put it in simpler terms. If a person is shot by someone intending them harm and during the subsequent operation a malignant tumour is found and removed, this does not obviate the intent of the shooter. Nor does it change the fact the body has been damaged by the bullet, probably permanently. Contrary to Hollywood. Nor that recovery from a serious bullet wound is a very long process.
All true. But what this analogy says is that:
- you are comparing what happened with what would have happened had the trigger not been pulled
- the fact that someone benefits by chance doesn't change anything.

No jury is going to find someone who wasn't born yet guilty of pulling that trigger.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

A comparison with a hypothetical alternative history doesn't have that same immediacy.
Same question as to lilBuddha - if you don't think "benefitted from slavery" means "benefitted relative to a hypothetical alternative history in which (US) slavery didn't happen" what do you think it means ?

Or is your reply to Josephine's challenge that you don't think that's the right question. Because the questions of US race relations or African poverty are so much more "immediate" ?
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

A comparison with a hypothetical alternative history doesn't have that same immediacy.
Same question as to lilBuddha - if you don't think "benefitted from slavery" means "benefitted relative to a hypothetical alternative history in which (US) slavery didn't happen" what do you think it means ?
That is what I think, but that alternative history has to be hypothetical, and is an unknown.

Most importantly, my point was that even if it could be demonstrated conclusively that descendents of slaves in the US are better off than under an alternative non-slavery history that doesn't actually address the current issue - especially if that's pointed out to descendents of slavery to say "you're better off, stop complaining". Because ...

quote:
Or is your reply to Josephine's challenge that you don't think that's the right question. Because the questions of US race relations or African poverty are so much more "immediate" ?
Yes, we need to deal with the current questions.

Though, I note that I'm not really addressing the question Josephine asked (which was the extent to which we, ie: to the most part not descended from slaves, benefitted from slavery) but a subsequent route the conversation took - which was whether the descendents of slaves also benefitted.

What seems obvious to me is that even if there was some benefit to descendents of slaves that benefit is significantly less than that we enjoy. And, that disparity exists within small geographical areas within the United States which makes the injustice much more immediate.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
It gets rid of the strange notion that those who have benefited from slavery owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it ?
Doesn't this argument extend to slavery itself? If someone who "benefit[s] from slavery" by owning slaves owes nothing to "those who have suffered from it" (i.e. his enslaved human property), isn't that an argument that there's nothing wrong with slavery as an institution?
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
isn't that an argument that there's nothing wrong with slavery as an institution?
No. Slavery - asserting rights of ownership over another human being - is wrong because it reduces a human being to an object. Whether I benefit - whether I would be better off owning a slave or investing in a machine or employing a skilled worker at the market rate is beside the point.

Whether the slave benefits or not is also beside the point - to own him is to treat him as something less than human.

(I'm joint owner of some livestock - my wife and I keep chickens and a few sheep. But keeping humans in the same way is almost unimaginable. If one of the sheep turned around and started conversing with me - showed evidence of human-level intelligence and feeling and free will - it would completely change our relationship..)
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
isn't that an argument that there's nothing wrong with slavery as an institution?
No. Slavery - asserting rights of ownership over another human being - is wrong because it reduces a human being to an object. Whether I benefit - whether I would be better off owning a slave or investing in a machine or employing a skilled worker at the market rate is beside the point.

Whether the slave benefits or not is also beside the point - to own him is to treat him as something less than human.
I don't see how you can claim a slave owner owes his slave nothing and also argue that a slave owner owes a slave treatment as a human being. Those propositions can't both be right.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
*Are there* any African Americans who feel better off because of slavery?
Yes, there are.

You hear from and read about them sometimes in the media, and you can find some if you go looking online.

There are countless other African Americans who would disagree with them, of course, so they don't "prove" my point.

What their existence does demonstrate is that the point can't be dismissed on the ad hominem grounds that it is merely a covert apologia for slavery by racist whites.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
By that argument I am a beneficiary of the Third Reich. My grandfather (from the North East) only met my grandmother (from Somerset) because he was billeted near her when he was serving in the British army during the Second World War. If Hitler had not come to power they would not have met, married and conceived my mother. I would not, therefore, have existed.
Since it is true of everyone that they could only have been conceived by a one particular man and one particular woman, and only at one particular time (one month either way and it would certainly have been a different egg, a second either way and probably a different sperm) it wouldn't take much of a disturbance in the time-line to erase us all from history. We are all beneficiaries of good and bad events in the past.

The question is, what follows from that? Do we have any particular moral duties that depend on those historical events that have demonstrably benefitted us? Do you, for instance, have any greater duty than I do not to be a Nazi, because you might be said to have benefitted from WW2?

I don't think you do. And I think that the same is true of slavery and racism. If I could prove that all my ancestors, and all my wealth, came from a country blessedly untainted by these evils, as soon as I'm part of British society I owe the same duties to my neighbours to make this a just society as anyone else does.

Also, if (by perhaps the most unlikely alternate history yet postulated on this thread) you personally were seriously tempted to become a Nazi, reflecting on the fact that you owe your existence to Hitler is unlikely to be the thing that dissuades you. I fear that it would instead be an argument on the contrary side. I don't like the "look at how white people benefit from racism" argument for the same reason, and think it's better (and truer) to say that everyone benefits from fairness.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I don't like the "look at how white people benefit from racism" argument for the same reason, and think it's better (and truer) to say that everyone benefits from fairness.
All well and good as an ideal, but not how it works. Those not on the receiving end of a particular discrimination often don't see it. Especially if they, personally, are not in an enviable position. So, without education, they are not likely to understand the inequity.
And fair is a relative and subjective term. Fair,to the vast majority of humans, is I'm getting a good go and the other person is not completely fucked.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I don't like the "look at how white people benefit from racism" argument for the same reason, and think it's better (and truer) to say that everyone benefits from fairness.
What about when the historical origins of those benefits are considerably more recent? For instance those who benefited from redlining.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
*Are there* any African Americans who feel better off because of slavery?
Yes, there are.

You hear from and read about them sometimes in the media, and you can find some if you go looking online.

There are countless other African Americans who would disagree with them, of course, so they don't "prove" my point.

What their existence does demonstrate is that the point can't be dismissed on the ad hominem grounds that it is merely a covert apologia for slavery by racist whites.
The idea is not new. In his autobiography, Up From Slavery (chapter 1), Booker T. Washington espoused a position along these lines:
quote:
Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. This is so to such an extent that Negroes in this country, who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery - on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive - but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.

Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did. The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means confined to the Negro.
Of course, I think one can legitimately ask whether Washington's statements of this kind were part of his political strategy.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
*Are there* any African Americans who feel better off because of slavery?
Yes, there are.
...but it's the wrong question. If you ask the question "how did you benefit from slavery?" then your feelings aren't important. What's important is the difference between you in this universe and the counterfactual you in a universe where the triangle trade and modern slavery in the Americas didn't happen.

[ 18. July 2016, 23:04: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
note that I'm not really addressing the question Josephine asked (which was the extent to which we, ie: to the most part not descended from slaves, benefitted from slavery) but a subsequent route the conversation took - which was whether the descendents of slaves also benefitted.
That's fair enough, Alan.

The point arose, not as any suggestion that US blacks have nothing to complain about, but rather to refute the over-simple idea that US society is divided on racial lines between those who have benefitted from slavery and those who have lost out thereby.

The economic mechanisms by which those of us who didn't inherit an antebellum mansion can be said to have indirectly benefitted from the wealth generated by slavery are much the same for all, black and white, north and south.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see how you can argue that a slave owner owes his slave nothing and also argue that a slave owner owes a slave treatment as a human being. Those propositions can't both be right.
I'm not saying that a slave owner owes his slave nothing. How do you get that ?

I'm saying that if a slave owner fails to treat his slave (or someone who the law of the land says is his slave) decently as a human being then to my way of thinking that's a personal wrong.

Which depending on the level of cruelty involved, may be likened to murder or assault or kidnapping or torture or various other serious crimes. Or alternatively may be shrugged off as just one of many ways in which expectations of human behaviour have changed over time.

I don't have to take any particular position on that spectrum.

Just note that if I murder or kidnap or torture you, my descendants are innocent of that crime...
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
Of course, I think one can legitimately ask whether Washington's statements of this kind were part of his political strategy.
It could have been. But it was rightly criticised in his time by other black leaders. Most notably, W.E.B Dubois. Washington was a great man, with many positive accomplishments, but in this he was wrong.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

The economic mechanisms by which those of us who didn't inherit an antebellum mansion can be said to have indirectly benefitted from the wealth generated by slavery are much the same for all, black and white, north and south.
No, not the same. The poverty rate of black v. white, the laws passed to deny black people rights, the illegal/unethical practices to deny black people the same advantages; those all result in something not quite the "same".
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
The point arose, not as any suggestion that US blacks have nothing to complain about, but rather to refute the over-simple idea that US society is divided on racial lines between those who have benefitted from slavery and those who have lost out thereby.

The economic mechanisms by which those of us who didn't inherit an antebellum mansion can be said to have indirectly benefitted from the wealth generated by slavery are much the same for all, black and white, north and south.
That's an interesting contention. I would argue that the system of segregation, sharecropping, and exploitation that followed in the wake of abolition were an attempt to prevent former slaves (and their descendants) from benefiting from the prosperity of their nation, including the prosperity "piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil" and the fact that this burden was applied to former slave and their descendants was not at all coincidental. I look forward to your explanation as to why this is not so.

I would also argue that institutions such as redlining in the mid-twentieth century were deliberately designed to exclude the descendants of slaves from the prosperity associated with the post-war property boom and redistribute the wealth of those persons to largely white contract sellers and other forms of loan sharks, and the fact that this burden was applied largely to the descendants of former slaves was, once again, not coincidental at all. Feel free to argue the contrary.

And I'd also point out that predatory policing practices, such as those uncovered in Ferguson, MO [PDF] are designed to serve the same general function of slavery, namely transferring the product of black labor into white pockets, and it is in no way coincidental that this burden happens to fall primarily on the descendants of slaves. Once again, I eagerly anticipate your explanation as why this is completely coincidental and/or an irrelevant and just burden.

I look forward to the explanation of how black Americans have had "much the same" benefit of America's prosperity since 1865 as has been enjoyed by its white citizens.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I'm not saying that a slave owner owes his slave nothing. How do you get that?
It follows logically from your dismissal as a "strange notion" that "those who have benefited from slavery [such as slave owners] owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it". If a slave owner owes his slaves no form of compensation, what does he owe them in your estimation?
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I don't like the "look at how white people benefit from racism" argument for the same reason, and think it's better (and truer) to say that everyone benefits from fairness.
What about when the historical origins of those benefits are considerably more recent? For instance those who benefited from redlining.
'Redlining' is the US term for choosing not to do business in mainly black areas, right? I'm not sure who does benefit from that. Obviously the affected consumers don't, and I can't see how it pays companies not to trade. More economic activity seems to me to imply more profits, more employment, less poverty, less crime, higher standards of living, more tax revenues, and better health and education. Artificially restricting economic activity on racial lines looks to me like a bad practice for everyone. I don't see any obvious benefits.

If you explain who you think has benefitted from redlining, why, what degree of culpability you say they have for it, and what you think they can and should do about it, I might be able to have a stab at answering your "what about".
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
All well and good as an ideal, but not how it works. Those not on the receiving end of a particular discrimination often don't see it. Especially if they, personally, are not in an enviable position. So, without education, they are not likely to understand the inequity.
If I'm ever tempted to think that there might be something in racist rhetoric (currently expressed, where I live, as 'concern' about 'uncontrolled' immigration), I silently recite the surnames of the doctors involved in my heart surgery. If that doesn't silence the inner racist, I mentally erase everyone whose parents were born outside England from my workplace, church, high street and social life. Concluding that without immigration, I might not be around to notice how much crappier my country would be tends to do the trick.

I might be unusual, of course. It might in general be better strategy to tell people who don't think they have benefitted from racism that actually it has made them much better off than it is to tell people who think that they have benefitted that in fact racism makes them worse off. I don't think that's intuitive, though. I think it needs to be argued for.

Until it's demonstrated that focussing on the benefits of prejudice is the way to go, l'm inclined to think that 'stop racism while you can still get a decent curry' is a better incentive than 'stop racism before it fills your pockets with so much cash you can't walk'.

[ 19. July 2016, 07:49: Message edited by: Eliab ]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I'm not saying that a slave owner owes his slave nothing. How do you get that?
It follows logically from your dismissal as a "strange notion" that "those who have benefited from slavery [such as slave owners] owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it". If a slave owner owes his slaves no form of compensation, what does he owe them in your estimation?
It seems clear to me that Russ is of the opinion that an actual slave owner owes compensation to his actual slave(s), but that the great-great-grandchild of a slave owner has no such obligation to the great-great-grandchild of a slave.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:

'Redlining' is the US term for choosing not to do business in mainly black areas, right?
Not quite what I was referring to:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/primary-source/redlining-holc-fha-wilkins-weaver

On the back of that there was a whole system of predatory lending that sprung up to take advantage of black people who had been refused loans by the FHA. Enforcing contracts that would have been deemed illegal - if the borrowers had had the legal resources to fight back.

This happened within living memory. A number of the individuals who built up large fortunes on the back of such practices are now dying, and passing on large estates to their descendants - their victims have been taking things to the courts, but most of them are in their 80s/90s and these things tend to drag on.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
What's important is the difference between you in this universe and the counterfactual you in a universe where the triangle trade and modern slavery in the Americas didn't happen.
No, what's important is that the slave trade did happen, and that generally speaking the descendants of those transported to America are better off than the descendants of those who wweren't.

The latter fact in no way mitigates the former fact, but they are facts nonetheless, and all the counterfactualising in the world is not going to change them.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Washington was a great man, with many positive accomplishments, but in this he was wrong.
Patronising him is not the same thing as showing how he was wrong.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
'Redlining' is the US term for choosing not to do business in mainly black areas, right?
Not quite what I was referring to:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/primary-source/redlining-holc-fha-wilkins-weaver
From a longer piece on the same subject:

quote:
In 1934, Congress created the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA insured private mortgages, causing a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size of the down payment required to buy a house. But an insured mortgage was not a possibility for Clyde Ross. The FHA had adopted a system of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. On the maps, green areas, rated “A,” indicated “in demand” neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, lacked “a single foreigner or Negro.” These neighborhoods were considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated “D” and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red. Neither the percentage of black people living there nor their social class mattered. Black people were viewed as a contagion. Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage.

“A government offering such bounty to builders and lenders could have required compliance with a nondiscrimination policy,” Charles Abrams, the urban-studies expert who helped create the New York City Housing Authority, wrote in 1955. “Instead, the FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws.”
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I'm not sure who does benefit from that.
Perhaps you simply lack the imagination of a certain predatory class of entrepreneur.

quote:
Three months after Clyde Ross moved into his house, the boiler blew out. This would normally be a homeowner’s responsibility, but in fact, Ross was not really a homeowner. His payments were made to the seller, not the bank. And Ross had not signed a normal mortgage. He’d bought “on contract”: a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither. Ross had bought his house for $27,500. The seller, not the previous homeowner but a new kind of middleman, had bought it for only $12,000 six months before selling it to Ross. In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full — and, unlike with a normal mortgage, Ross would acquire no equity in the meantime. If he missed a single payment, he would immediately forfeit his $1,000 down payment, all his monthly payments, and the property itself.

The men who peddled contracts in North Lawndale would sell homes at inflated prices and then evict families who could not pay — taking their down payment and their monthly installments as profit. Then they’d bring in another black family, rinse, and repeat. “He loads them up with payments they can’t meet,” an office secretary told The Chicago Daily News of her boss, the speculator Lou Fushanis, in 1963. “Then he takes the property away from them. He’s sold some of the buildings three or four times.”

Ross had tried to get a legitimate mortgage in another neighborhood, but was told by a loan officer that there was no financing available. The truth was that there was no financing for people like Clyde Ross. From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from “restrictive covenants” to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated.
So white homebuyers benefit from reduced demand, since they're not competing with black homebuyers for the same properties. Contract sellers benefit because government policy has made them the exclusive (and largely unregulated) means through which black Americans can (theoretically) buy houses. And, once again purely by coincidence I'm sure [Roll Eyes] , the net effect is the transfer of wealth from black hands to (largely) white pockets in exchange for no value. All this was only possible because of the way the United States structured its housing policy, so beyond the personal actions of individuals there's the collective action of institutions facilitating it all.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
No, what's important is that the slave trade did happen, and that generally speaking the descendants of those transported to America are better off than the descendants of those who weren't.

The latter fact in no way mitigates the former fact, but they are facts nonetheless, and all the counterfactualising in the world is not going to change them.
I don't see any reason for making this point other than mitigating the idea that slavery and the slave trade were moral wrongs. The idea slavery was beneficial to the enslaved has a long and sordid history (check out its mention in the Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession) almost exclusively in the service of pretending to mitigate the wrong of slavery.

I guess it's yet another one of those amazing coincidences that African-Americans are one of the few groups of Americans told repeatedly not to expect an American-style standard of living but should compare themselves to foreigners and be content with their lot.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I guess it's yet another one of those amazing coincidences that African-Americans are one of the few groups of Americans told repeatedly not to expect an American-style standard of living but should compare themselves to foreigners and be content with their lot.
African-Americans should be able to expect an American-style standard of living because of common human decency, not the history of slavery.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I guess it's yet another one of those amazing coincidences that African-Americans are one of the few groups of Americans told repeatedly not to expect an American-style standard of living but should compare themselves to foreigners and be content with their lot.
African-Americans should be able to expect an American-style standard of living because of common human decency, not the history of slavery.
You'd think so, but chiding African-Americans for their ingratitude over the benefits of their ancestor's enslavement and insistence that the proper basis for comparison is not their fellow Americans but rather a group of disparate foreigners is depressingly common.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:

Until it's demonstrated that focussing on the benefits of prejudice is the way to go, l'm inclined to think that 'stop racism while you can still get a decent curry' is a better incentive than 'stop racism before it fills your pockets with so much cash you can't walk'.
Wow, not being snarky, but that last sentence is difficult to take seriously.
A problem with your "let's just all be fair" approach is that very few people think they are advantaged. Another is that one can point to many white people* who are living in poverty, who life seems to have treated poorly. No one has said all white people will be rich or even comfortable. Economically, it is the opportunity that is not as present for brown peoples. It is one less barrier present.
It is also the ability to walk down any street without suspicion. To be treated by the police by circumstance rather than prejudice.


*White people because they are the default members. There are complexities and other prejudices, of course.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
'Redlining' is the US term for choosing not to do business in mainly black areas, right?
Redlining is drawing a red line around areas of a map in which you will not sell homes or business to black people. And it happens in the UK as well as America.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Washington was a great man, with many positive accomplishments, but in this he was wrong.
Patronising him is not the same thing as showing how he was wrong.
Patronising is more tone thing, than a words thing. You are inferring here. He accomplished much. He was wrong on this subject. How is that patronising?
As far as need to explain why; that is what this thread has been doing.
Saying that black people have benefited from slavery is akin to saying that a kidnapped child is better off than being with her/his birth parents because they are or poor circumstance and the kidnappers are better off whilst ignoring that the kidnappers are the people who caused the poor circumstance of the parents. And also ignoring that the kidnappers have regularly beaten and mistreated the child. And now, they beat her/him less, but still make the child sleep in the shed, feed them poorly, etc.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
It seems clear to me that Russ is of the opinion that an actual slave owner owes compensation to his actual slave(s), but that the great-great-grandchild of a slave owner has no such obligation to the great-great-grandchild of a slave.
And it would be a relevant sentiment if that is where things ended. But it isn't.
 
Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on :
 
I benefited no more than all whites living here from the US form of slavery/oppression of natives, which is rather indirect. My home stands on what was very definitely Powhatan land. and of course, just being white in the US means I have benefited in many indirect ways others have described.

But I can also consider my family history in Russia.. where a percentage of my ancestors no doubt owned serfs (slaves), and another percentage of my ancestors WERE serfs (slaves).

In addition, one ancestor (perhaps not direct, we don't know, but certainly in the family line) was a man called "the Russian Columbus", in that he "discovered" Alaska the way Columbus discovered the caribbean. He set up a monopoly on the fur trade, and forced locals to work for the company (to be fair, they did get paid for their work, but it wasn't optional).

I can't say that MY personal station in life can easily be attributed directly to benefits from those facts, but I'm sure I would not be who I am were all of my ancestors on the serf side rather than having some ancestors on the serf-owning side.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
An aspect of this topic that hasn't been mentioned is the human tendency to compromise and tolerate what it sees as minor evils.

The result is that nothing is often done to change things until something dramatic happens.

For example, Europe in the 1930s was eager to appease Hitler and would have been happy to compromise on his minor aggressions if they had stayed minor. But they did not, providing the needed motivation to unite against him.

If it had been possible to maintain the fiction that slavery was a benign and happy situation, it might have continued much longer than it did. Instead it was exposed as a cruel and evil institution, aided by the telling of true stories about it. If there had been no stories to tell, and if, for example, its inherent evil and cruelty had been masked under regulations that forced it to be humane, it might have been harder to whip up public sentiment against it.

In that sense the horrors of slavery, as also in the case of the horrors of Nazi Germany, hastened its demise.

So it might be said that everyone benefits from dramatically terrible things. When something becomes so bad that its true nature is obvious to most people, often it is only then that the motivation can exist to root it out.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Wow, not being snarky, but that last sentence is difficult to take seriously.
Good, because I intended it to be an obviously non-serious illustration of a serious point- namely that if you want to motivate someone to do something, persuade them that it is in their interests, as well as being the right thing to do.

quote:
A problem with your "let's just all be fair" approach is that very few people think they are advantaged.
Advantaged by racism? We're not. It makes us all worse off. It makes our societies absolutely shittier places to live than they could be. Giving up on prejudice would be no sacrifice at all. Racism is just fucking stupid.

Did anyone here read the 'redlining' link and think "well thank God I'm white!" and not "fuck, I wish that couldn't happen"? Isn't our society clearly worse, uglier, less pleasant, because of things like that? I don't see it as a benefit to me at all, and rather resent being told that I ought to.

Your approach seems to be that white people need to know how much racism benefits them, so that they will stop it. I think that there's a rather obvious flaw there. I think people need to know how much they miss out on because of racism, not how much they gain by it.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see any reason for making this point other than mitigating the idea that slavery and the slave trade were moral wrongs.
I don't believe you, because the issues have already been dealt with.

The first reason is that, like it or not, it is true that African American descendants of transported slaves are better off than the descendants of those who were not transported, and truth is quite an important consideration for many people.

The second reason is that it is important to realise that incidental benefits can flow from absolute evils, as in the case upthread of someone whose parents' romance blossomed as a result of his father's being stationed somewhere in the course of the war against the absolute evil of Nazism.

A third reason is that if there is any possibility of reparations, then they would be better given to African countries which were damaged by the slave trade than to relatively better-off African Americans.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Saying that black people have benefited from slavery is akin to saying that a kidnapped child is better off than being with her/his birth parents because they are or poor circumstance and the kidnappers are better off whilst ignoring that the kidnappers are the people who caused the poor circumstance of the parents. And also ignoring that the kidnappers have regularly beaten and mistreated the child. And now, they beat her/him less, but still make the child sleep in the shed, feed them poorly, etc.
No-one, least of all me, has pretended that slavery was anything other than evil, or that the experience of African Americans, even since slavery, has not been dangerous and difficult.

The uncomfortable fact remains that the descendants of those transported are today better off than the descendants of those who weren't, and your analogy does nothing to change that fact.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Analysis of the cost/benefit immediately becomes wildly difficult. If your great-great-grandparents had not been enslaved and dragged off from Ghana you yourself would not now be living in the White House, Michelle Obama. How can the one be balanced against all the other?
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

The uncomfortable fact remains that the descendants of those transported are today better off than the descendants of those who weren't
Why is it an uncomfortable fact? It's completely irrelevant, as is the way in which you compare the living standards of those who live in America to those who live in Africa
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Analysis of the cost/benefit immediately becomes wildly difficult. If your great-great-grandparents had not been enslaved and dragged off from Ghana you yourself would not now be living in the White House, Michelle Obama. How can the one be balanced against all the other?
It seems a difficult case to make that Michelle Obama is "today better off" than Barack Obama.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
Who knows? Maybe if Barack's ancestors had the good fortune to be enslaved, he'd be president today instead of Michelle! [Big Grin]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:


The uncomfortable fact remains that the descendants of those transported are today better off than the descendants of those who weren't, and your analogy does nothing to change that fact.
That's not necessarily a fact, as I've tried to explain in my previous posts. In any case, one could argue from various studies that the most fortunate kind of black person in the USA is probably one who isn't descended from Transatlantic slaves! Obama is the pre-eminent example.

Obviously, the USA is the richest country in the world, so the average person is probably more likely to have more material advantages there than in many other places. We hardly need argue about that, and it's not a particularly interesting point.

The problem with American wealth, though, is that its foundations are built not only upon the despoliation of Africa in previous centuries, but also upon the disadvantaged status of black slaves and their descendants in the USA itself. It seems somewhat indecent, therefore, to argue that a system that was efficiently designed to keep black people at the bottom should be described as advantageous to black people when they're still frequently at the bottom, relative to the rest of that society!
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Advantaged by racism? We're not. It makes us all worse off. It makes our societies absolutely shittier places to live than they could be. Giving up on prejudice would be no sacrifice at all. Racism is just fucking stupid.
I don't disagree with what you said, but it misses my point.
quote:

Did anyone here read the 'redlining' link and think "well thank God I'm white!" and not "fuck, I wish that couldn't happen"? Isn't our society clearly worse, uglier, less pleasant, because of things like that? I don't see it as a benefit to me at all, and rather resent being told that I ought to.
I have not told you what to resent. You choose that yourself. Redlining is meant to keep brown people separate. Whether one feels that beneficial to themselves is dependent on one's views.
quote:

Your approach seems to be that white people need to know how much racism benefits them, so that they will stop it.
No. My approach is informing them so they know the mechanics. Ignorance is no help as most people think they have no particular advantage over anyone else.

quote:
I think that there's a rather obvious flaw there. I think people need to know how much they miss out on because of racism, not how much they gain by it.
Convincing people that they are missing out is more difficult then simply informing them. Actual interactions with people help more.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
It follows logically from your dismissal as a "strange notion" that "those who have benefited from slavery [such as slave owners] owe some sort of compensation to those who have suffered from it".
Slave owners do not owe their slaves because they have benefitted from a wrongful act. They owe their slaves because they have committed a wrongful act against them.

If I murder you, I commit a wrongful act against your friends and family (and, to a religious person, against the God who made you). The person who fills your job has benefitted from your demise. They do not thereby owe your friends and family anything. I, by my crime, incur a debt - I owe your friends and family an apology and reparation. In some societies I would owe them weregild. Our society considers that for me to offer them money would cheapen your memory, and requires that I turn myself in - offer them the opportunity to see me appropriately punished for my wrongdoing. When I get out of prison they will say that I've "paid my debt to society".

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
...the system of segregation, sharecropping, and exploitation that followed in the wake of abolition...
...institutions such as redlining in the mid-twentieth century...
...predatory policing practices, such as those uncovered in Ferguson, MO [PDF]...[/qb]
Seems to me that what you're talking about here is the history of "official racism" in the US - the various ways in which low-level government bodies have unfairly discriminated against black people despite the top-level government decision that black Americans are full citizens.

Not sure what you're suggesting are the cause-and-effect relationships here. What you say does not convince me that you have a deep insight into the racist mind.

It seems obvious that black people have been disbenefitted (if there is such a word) by such official racism. And that this would not have happened if not for slavery.

Is slavery sufficient cause ? Is it that in every plausible alternate history in which there was slavery there was also this official racism ? Or could it be something to do with the particular way that US slavery was ended in our timeline ?

Have all white people benefitted thereby ? Or would white people in general be better off without Ferguson-style policing, better off without redlining, without segregation ?

Because if you want to say that these are mechanisms by which white people in general have benefitted from slavery and black people have not, then you need these two points - that this counts as a benefit and is directly attributable to slavery.

To clarify, the mechanism that I can see by which your average ordinary white person with no inherited wealth has benefitted from slavery is what you might call "trickledown economics" - that everybody benefits to some degree from additional wealth in a society. That's the benefit I can see that I "enjoy", and it applies to everyone.

If you think there are other benefits which apply to all whites and only whites, go ahead and make the case...
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Slave owners do not owe their slaves because they have benefitted from a wrongful act. They owe their slaves because they have committed a wrongful act against them.
The wrongful act was committed because of the benefit; they are inexorably linked.
The correct term is institutional racism The "official" bit ends when laws are made.
quote:

Seems to me that what you're talking about here is the history of "official racism" in the US - the various ways in which low-level government bodies have unfairly discriminated against black people despite the top-level government decision that black Americans are full citizens.
Government officials are not a separate breed, class or origin. They are citizens just as everyone else. Institution can enforce or strengthen behaviours such as racism, but it exists in society first.

quote:

It seems obvious that black people have been disbenefitted (if there is such a word) by such official racism. And that this would not have happened if not for slavery.
This statement should be enough for you to work out the rest.

quote:

Have all white people benefitted thereby ?
Has Every. Single. white person benefited? No. White people as a group do not have as many barriers, as bad a treatment or inherent prejudice against them.
quote:

Or would white people in general be better off without Ferguson-style policing, better off without redlining, without segregation ?
Broad prosperity follows lack of strife, so yes.

The building blocks of wealth of the US and UK were bought with the slave trade. So citizens within them will have the potential advantage that gives. And potential is the key word. That potential is blocked by melanin.

[ 21. July 2016, 02:05: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
It seems somewhat indecent, therefore, to argue that a system that was efficiently designed to keep black people at the bottom should be described as advantageous to black people when they're still frequently at the bottom, relative to the rest of that society!
"Indecent" in this context is merely an exploitative weasel word used for the purposes of virtue signalling and moral blackmail, and I am calling your bluff.

The issue is not decency or otherwise, but historical truth, and the truth is that despite all that African Americans have suffered and continue to suffer, they are still better off than they would be living in Africa with those whose ancestors were not traded (but might well have suffered sickening atrocities at the hands of African slave owners while avoiding sale to Europeans), and they are therefore beneficiaries of slavery.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
"Indecent" in this context is merely an exploitative weasel word used for the purposes of virtue signalling and moral blackmail, and I am calling your bluff.
That you ignore the current problems in Africa are the result in the same processes by the same people who engaged in the triangle trade and that infra-African slavery was on a massively smaller scale and would likely also be extinct by now is a fairly indecent position.
The historical truth is that slavery in the New World was a net deficit to those enslaved and Africa itself. That you use the devastation wrought by Europeans as a justification for the dependents of people kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed are better of being abused, killed, forced to live in poverty is ridiculous.
It is not emotional blackmail to point this out, it is weighing all the circumstance. And trying to isolate elements to prove a point is inaccurate and bizarre at best.

[ 21. July 2016, 05:39: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
...the system of segregation, sharecropping, and exploitation that followed in the wake of abolition...
...institutions such as redlining in the mid-twentieth century...
...predatory policing practices, such as those uncovered in Ferguson, MO [PDF]...
Seems to me that what you're talking about here is the history of "official racism" in the US - the various ways in which low-level government bodies have unfairly discriminated against black people despite the top-level government decision that black Americans are full citizens.
Seems to me like you're completely ignoring my earlier post on redlining. Either that or you're perversely describing the Federal Housing Administration as a "low-level government bod[y]", rather than a powerful entity setting mortgage policy on a national level. The effects of the FHA decision not to underwrite mortgages for African-Americans (or not to underwrite mortgages in any neighborhood where African-Americans lived, which amounts to much the same thing) was deliberately designed to stifle economic growth in black communities (credit is the economic lifeblood of a community) and to siphon off African-American wealth to unscrupulous lenders.

For various reasons whenever discussing institutional racism this kind of "few bad apples" mythologizing keeps cropping up, insisting that only a few, scattered "low-level government bodies", like the FHA or the Armed Forces, engaged in such things, whereas the "top-level[s]" of the U.S. government would certainly recognize that "black Americans are full citizens". (If only someone had thought to inform the President that the military was segregated, I'm sure something would have been done!) If there's a charitable explanation for this kind of revisionism it eludes me.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Have all white people benefitted thereby ? Or would white people in general be better off without Ferguson-style policing, better off without redlining, without segregation ?

Because if you want to say that these are mechanisms by which white people in general have benefitted from slavery and black people have not, then you need these two points - that this counts as a benefit and is directly attributable to slavery.

To clarify, the mechanism that I can see by which your average ordinary white person with no inherited wealth has benefitted from slavery is what you might call "trickledown economics" - that everybody benefits to some degree from additional wealth in a society. That's the benefit I can see that I "enjoy", and it applies to everyone.

If you think there are other benefits which apply to all whites and only whites, go ahead and make the case...
I think I already did. Federal policy of only underwriting the mortgages of white Americans seems like an enormous benefit, generating the post-war boom in housing-based wealth. The same policy impoverished African-Americans by artificially inflating housing costs for them and provided a barrier to prevent any of that post-war boom generated wealth from "trickling" into African-American neighborhoods.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The issue is not decency or otherwise, but historical truth, and the truth is that despite all that African Americans have suffered and continue to suffer, they are still better off than they would be living in Africa with those whose ancestors were not traded (but might well have suffered sickening atrocities at the hands of African slave owners while avoiding sale to Europeans), and they are therefore beneficiaries of slavery.
Still waiting for that explanation as to how Barack Obama managed to become the first African-American president despite not having the "benefit" of enslaved ancestors. Perhaps we shouldn't read too much into a single data point, but the fact that it is a single point and that Mr. Obama managed to succeed where no American "advantaged" by the enslavement of his or her ancestors seems to warrant some kind of explanation.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

I think I already did. Federal policy of only underwriting the mortgages of white Americans seems like an enormous benefit, generating the post-war boom in housing-based wealth.
.. and add to this the effects of the GI Bill and the way in which it was implemented (also at a time when many southern universities didn't admit blacks), and then add this to the way in which Social Security was rolled out.

quote:

Perhaps we shouldn't read too much into a single data point, but the fact that it is a single point and that Mr. Obama managed to succeed where no American "advantaged" by the enslavement of his or her ancestors seems to warrant some kind of explanation.
Obama also presents another illustration - that of how being 'white' is seen as somehow normative. As someone with a white mother and a black father, he's automatically seen as 'black'.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
It seems somewhat indecent, therefore, to argue that a system that was efficiently designed to keep black people at the bottom should be described as advantageous to black people when they're still frequently at the bottom, relative to the rest of that society!
"Indecent" in this context is merely an exploitative weasel word used for the purposes of virtue signalling and moral blackmail, and I am calling your bluff.
Wow! No one has ever thrown any of those particular words in my direction before! I was just trying to be polite and civilised rather than confrontational. I'm certainly not going to throw angry words about in order to condemn you or to change your mind. It's just a discussion.

On reflection, I do believe there's truth in the saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so I hope that the psychological and sociological trauma visited upon generations of African Americans in the USA (and indeed the descendants of Transatlantic slaves elsewhere) has somehow made something 'better' in a cosmic sense. It must be worth something. I hope it means something to God.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
That you ignore the current problems in Africa are the result in the same processes by the same people who engaged in the triangle trade
I have made it quite clear upthread that I recognise that many of Africa's current problems are the result of European exploitation, including slavrey.

Don't verbal me.

quote:
infra-African slavery was on a massively smaller scale and would likely also be extinct by now
If it had really been "massively small" there would have been no point in Europeans' buying into it, and there is no evidence whatsoever that a system that was well entrenched before European involvement would today be extinct.

quote:
That you use the devastation wrought by Europeans as a justification for the dependents of people kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed are better of being abused, killed, forced to live in poverty is ridiculous.[/i]
It is certainly ridiculous, because I didn't say it.

It is a lie which you have invented.

Nowhere have I said that slavery was justified, that Africa didn't suffer from it, or that life has been easy for African Americans.

All I have maintained is the irrefutable fact that the descendants of transported slaves in America are better off than the descendants of those from the same areas of Africa who were not traded.

I simply refuse to believe that you cannot grasp that.

[ 22. July 2016, 06:53: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Still waiting for that explanation as to how Barack Obama managed to become the first African-American president despite not having the "benefit" of enslaved ancestors.
Put some coffee on and hire some videos, because it's going to be a long wait.

While you're waiting, you might like to think about why I am not going to waste my time explaining how the fact that a descendant of slaves has not yet become president in no way obviates the fact that the descendants of transported slaves are still better off than the descendants of those who were not transported.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I hope it means something to God.
Spiritual blackmail is no improvement on moral blackmail.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

All I have maintained is the irrefutable fact that the descendants of transported slaves in America are better off than the descendants of those from the same areas of Africa who were not traded.
I'm not sure why you think this is relevant. There is no sensible counterfactual history where all those African Americans would be born in Africa instead. It's like suggesting they are better off than they would be if they had been born in 12th Century China.

At some point their ancestors arrived in America, just as many other people of other races did. From that point on their descendants lives have been - on average - worse than the lives of their non-black contemporaries because of slavery.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I hope it means something to God.
Spiritual blackmail is no improvement on moral blackmail.
Now you're just being melodramatic. I don't even know if you believe in God, but this is the Ship of Fools so I didn't think such a reference would offend you. There's no blackmail involved.

African Americans, I'm sure, will continue to hold a range of opinions on the matter, as is their right, considering that being 'better off' is a subjective concept, depending on which criteria one values most highly.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
All I have maintained is the irrefutable fact that the descendants of transported slaves in America are better off than the descendants of those from the same areas of Africa who were not traded.
I'm not entirely convinced that that is an irrefutable fact. It's mainly going to depend on how you define "better off".
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
There is no sensible counterfactual history where all those African Americans would be born in Africa instead.
You can take the view that there is no sensible counterfactual history. That what happened happened and we have to make the best of it and the might-have-beens are irrelevant.

That's a reasonable position to take. If you apply it even-handedly, to the man born and raised in the Southern mansion as well as to the man of African descent born & raised in America.

What's inconsistent is to pick and choose. To use a counterfactual in which there was no American slavery as normative, as what should have happened, when it suits you, and deny the validity of that way of thinking when the conclusions don't suit you.

In such an alternate history, with no transatlantic slave trade, Africa is precisely where the people who are currently African-Americans would be born.

You're uncomfortable with taking that fact as in any way normative, as implying that that's where they belong.

And rightly so.

Does anybody really want a world order which works like that ? Where the consensus as to what alternate history "should have happened" defines people's rights ? Better not to go there.

So think it through. Reject the idea that anyone should be compensated for the alternate histories that didn't materialise.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
In such an alternate history, with no transatlantic slave trade, Africa is precisely where the people who are currently African-Americans would be born.
One might as well ask where a child of a raped mother would have been born had the mother not been raped.

Aside from the metaphor, given the frequency of sexual abuse I would guess that many African Americans (perhaps even the majority) have a white male sexual abuser somewhere in their genealogy.

I would imagine many of them could be considered insufficiently grateful for the gift of life that gave them.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
In such an alternate history, with no transatlantic slave trade, Africa is precisely where the people who are currently African-Americans would be born.

You're uncomfortable with taking that fact as in any way normative, as implying that that's where they belong.
Plus it sounds an awful lot like the various conspiracy theories that any African-American without enslaved ancestry must have really been born in Kenya or somewhere.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

In such an alternate history, with no transatlantic slave trade, Africa is precisely where the people who are currently African-Americans would be born.
To be pedantic, most people who are currently African American wouldn't exist at all. For the reasons mdjion mentions as well as the fact that the route to America from Africa would have been different, resulting in different pairings.
But this tack you and KC take is ridiculous on many levels. The first, and largest, is that Europe raped Africa. They destroyed political and social structure, instigated and encouraged internecine strife, stole resources, caused famine, etc.
This myth that Africa entire was primitive tribes living in squalor and killing each other is sickening, racist rubbish. The European powers did not float up and just buy slave that were already on market, they turned it into an industry. And whilst they were doing that, they were in a mad race to control as much of the continent as possible with little regard to the indigenous. Even after the triangle trade stopped, the ravaging continued. Many of the reasons you see as Africa being so horrible to be born in are directly attributable to the very same process which resulted in theses "oh so lucky" black Americans. Yeah, they get to be abused by authority, kept in poverty, lynched and shunned in America! Better than the uncivilised treatment of darkest Africa.
And, a pedantic note: Whilst it is better to be black in the UK, it is not all sunshine and ice cream. Slavery, racism and the rape of Africa play part in that as well.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
One might as well ask where a child of a raped mother would have been born had the mother not been raped.
That's not a refutation of Russ's argument. I think his position (which, if I've understood it right, I agree with) is that the fact that someone has benefitted from a historical event does not make that event right, or place them in a state of moral indebtedness to those who's ancestors suffered from the same event. So while it is indeed true (and IMO undeniable) that a person conceived by rape has benefitted, the moral duty to refrain from, prevent, disapprove of, and to assist the victims of, rape is entirely unaffected whether or not one has rapists or rape victims in one's ancestry.

The premise of this thread seems to be that knowing how one has benefitted from historical slavery would make a difference to present duties. That seems to me to be no more valid than a similar conclusion based on a historical rape would be.

In observing that some African-Americans have benefitted from slavery by (a) being born at all, or (b) being born in a generally more prosperous country, it seems to me that Russ in emphatically not inviting the conclusion: "So slavery isn't that bad" or "So African-Americans have inherited a moral debt, too" he's inviting the conclusion "So what? That makes no difference to anyone's present day obligations". Which it doesn't.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
In such an alternate history, with no transatlantic slave trade, Africa is precisely where the people who are currently African-Americans would be born.
The underlying assumptions here are rather interesting. The premise seems to be that while people in Germany or China or elsewhere might have the initiative to voluntarily migrate to North America, no one living in Africa could possibly possess similar initiative. There's some pretty ugly history behind such assumptions.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Slave owners do not owe their slaves because they have benefited from a wrongful act. They owe their slaves because they have committed a wrongful act against them.
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Does anybody really want a world order which works like that ? Where the consensus as to what alternate history "should have happened" defines people's rights ? Better not to go there.

So think it through. Reject the idea that anyone should be compensated for the alternate histories that didn't materialise.
Again these two positions seem contradictory. On the one hand Russ is saying that a slave owner owes something to his slaves based on a "wrongful act", which seems to require an argument from what "should have happened" (i.e. the slave's non-enslavement). On the other, he rejects any kind of compensation based on "alternate histories that didn't materialise", such as a slave arguing that he shouldn't have been enslaved. I don't see any way to thread this needle.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

You can take the view that there is no sensible counterfactual history. That what happened happened and we have to make the best of it and the might-have-beens are irrelevant.
No, all I take for now is a somewhat narrower view; that the specific counter factual being posed is one where the particular set of people being reasoned about (African Americans) don't exist. As such I don't think that particular counterfactual makes much sense or has much relevance.

quote:

That's a reasonable position to take. If you apply it even-handedly, to the man born and raised in the Southern mansion as well as to the man of African descent born & raised in America.
Actually it's fairly arbitrary to take the position that one set of property claims should be honored and should be inheritable even as others are not.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
The premise of this thread seems to be that knowing how one has benefitted from historical slavery would make a difference to present duties.
To me at least, admittedly coming at this through the lens of my own experience, I understand the premise slightly differently—knowing how one has benefitted from historical slavery and how others still suffer the effects of historical slavery would make a difference to present understanding of both obvious and subtle racial inequalities and put us in a better position to find a just way forward.

I regularly hear one or more from other white people in the American South:

— Slavery ended 150 years ago, so why are we still talking about it. Move on already.
— My family may have owned slaves, but that was 150 years ago, and it doesn't effect me now.
— My family didn't own slaves, so it has nothing to do with me.
— My family didn't even come here until after the Civil War, so slavery has nothing to do with me.

Discussions about the ongoing effects of historical slavery are a challenge to move beyond such simplistic thinking and look at the ways that slavery and its racist after-effects—Jim Crow, separate but equal, redlining, etc.—have led to systematic privilege for some, including many whose families never owned slaves, but not for others.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The European powers did not float up and just buy slave that were already on market
That's precisely what they did.

The already existing and flourishing slave trade meant that that they could buy men and women from Arab and sub-Saharan African dealers instead of having to take off into the hinterland and hunt them down for themselves.

You're going around in circles, seemingly for the opportunity to exhibitionistically emote.

For the seventeenth time: agreed that slavery was a bad thing; agreed that European colonial exploitation of Africa is one of the reasons for its current problems; agreed that life has been difficult and dangerous for African Americans ever since the abolition of slavery; agreed that relatively better living conditions for African Americans compared to the descendants of the non-transported in Africa in no way justifies slavery.

None of this changes the facts that the slave trade happened, and that on balance today's African Americans are net beneficiaries of it.

[ 24. July 2016, 03:20: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The European powers did not float up and just buy slave that were already on market
That's precisely what they did.
Yes, the slave trade existed, but it was nowhere near the scale it became with the triangle trade.


quote:

None of this changes the facts that the slave trade happened, and that on balance today's African Americans are net beneficiaries of it.
For this to be true, Africa without the Atlantic slave trade and the accompanying ravaging of the continent would have to be as fucked up as it is today. And that is quite a condition on your premise.
And you have to have a fairly subjective definition of "better".
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The European powers did not float up and just buy slave that were already on market
That's precisely what they did.

The already existing and flourishing slave trade meant that that they could buy men and women from Arab and sub-Saharan African dealers instead of having to take off into the hinterland and hunt them down for themselves.
Yes, but the demands of the trans-Atlantic trade resulted in a boom in the trade in Africa. Many of the slave ports that flourished only existed because of the trans-Atlantic trade. Most of the African and Arab slave traders were only in business because of the trans-Atlantic trade.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see any way to thread this needle.
Look at this way.

Every choice conceptually creates an alternative history based on the path not taken.

If the choice made is a morally wrong choice, then people tend to feel that the alternative history "should have happened" instead of the real history. Also, if the choice made is a morally wrong choice, then some form of reparation for that wrong is likely to be owed.

It does not follow that every alternative history that we feel "should have happened" gives rise to a moral claim for compensation. (E.g. Should WW1 have happened ? And if not whom do we sue ?)

If A implies B and A implies C, then it does not follow that B implies C. That's probably a fallacy that there's some Greek name for...

It's entirely consistent to argue that there is no right to compensation (C) arising from an alternative history that should have happened (B). Giving examples of where a wrongful act (A) creates both does not prove what you want it to prove.

quote:
Originally posted by Croesus:
The premise seems to be that while people in Germany or China or elsewhere might have the initiative to voluntarily migrate to North America, no one living in Africa could possibly possess similar initiative.
Not at all. Real life is so complex that in general alternate history can say very little about individuals. The best we can do is to reason plausibly about the big trends. Mass migrations can be explained in terms of causes. Individual migrations are a matter of free will.

The possibility of individual Africans migrating to China or anywhere else is not ruled out. But to suggest that there would be a mass migration of Africans to anywhere, as part of an alternate history, would require some causal explanation.

You could argue, I suppose, that a slavery-free history would somehow lead to an event in Africa comparable to the Irish Potato Famine, which would cause mass migration of Africans to America. If that's what you think, I look forward to hearing the reasoning.

But it seems to me that the opposite case is being put forward by lilBuddha - that everything in Africa would be sweetness and light if it wasn't for transatlantic slavery.

Needless to say, I don't believe that either.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
One might as well ask where a child of a raped mother would have been born had the mother not been raped.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
That's not a refutation of Russ's argument...In observing that some African-Americans have benefitted from slavery by (a) being born at all
I think it is a refutation. I accept that whether someone benefits directly or indirectly doesn't determine morality. That seems obvious. If a kidnap inadvertently saves a victim from an earthquake it doesn't change the morality of the kidnap. But my refutation is the application of that logic in this instance.

You wouldn't describe the child of a raped mother as having benefited from his/her mother's rape. It's true to say that the benefit or lack of benefit doesn't influence the morality of the rape, but I have a problem with asking the question whether the child of the raped mother benefits in the first place.
 
Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
The premise of this thread seems to be that knowing how one has benefitted from historical slavery would make a difference to present duties.
To me at least, admittedly coming at this through the lens of my own experience, I understand the premise slightly differently—knowing how one has benefitted from historical slavery and how others still suffer the effects of historical slavery would make a difference to present understanding of both obvious and subtle racial inequalities and put us in a better position to find a just way forward.


Exactly.

quote:
I regularly hear one or more from other white people in the American South:


And not just in the South. I've heard those sorts of statements from white people everywhere.

I understand wanting to turn away from the past. But I think it's important to look at it and acknowledge it, so you can see the effects that it's still having. And seeing them, it might be easier to figure out what needs to be done now.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

You could argue, I suppose, that a slavery-free history would somehow lead to an event in Africa comparable to the Irish Potato Famine, which would cause mass migration of Africans to America. If that's what you think, I look forward to hearing the reasoning.

But it seems to me that the opposite case is being put forward by lilBuddha - that everything in Africa would be sweetness and light if it wasn't for transatlantic slavery.

Sweetness and light. That is sooo precious, but wrong. What I am saying is that Africa would be better of id Europeans had not been greedy, racist, rapine bastards. Better, not perfect.
What you appear to be implying is that a continent which saw the rise and fall of civilizations whilst Europe sat in huts would find no way of coping with modernity, despite flourishing trade and abundant resource.
Tell me how this is not racist? Tell me how this is not revisionist?
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
And not just in the South. I've heard those sorts of statements from white people everywhere.
I have no doubt of that. I've lived my entire life in the South, though, which is why I qualified it that way.

I do think statements such as the examples I gave are particularly discordant here, where remnants of slave labor, including many public buildings, abound. (Sometimes I wonder if some of these folks think that all slaves either worked in the fields or served in the house.)

Of course, if we're talking public buildings, there's always the United States Capitol and the White House.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Africa would be better of id Europeans had not been greedy, racist, rapine bastards.
Correction: technologically superior "greedy, racist, rapine bastards" ("...we have got/The Maxim gun, and they have not").

Morally. there was nothing between Africans and Europeans.

quote:
a continent which saw the rise and fall of civilizations whilst Europe sat in huts
Historically rather dubious.

Obviously there is some truth in it as regards Ancient Egypt, but this discussion is about sub-Saharan Africa where the slaves came from, and despite the emergence of a number of relatively sophisticated kingdoms and empires across this region over the centuries, there is little evidence of anything which could be grandiosely described as a "civilization", certainly one which provided any markedly better way of life for its members than did Europe.

[ 25. July 2016, 11:00: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Morally. there was nothing between Africans and Europeans.
Why make that point? It strikes me as highly dubious to try and weigh the morality of two enormous and overlapping groups of people in the balance.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
There is little evidence of anything which could be grandiosely described as a "civilization", certainly one which provided any markedly better way of life for its members than did Europe.
Is one example enough?

But again I don't understand your point. Are we comparing Africans and Europeans to work out who is "better"?
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
The common practice among Europeans from at least the 12th Century was to define themselves as civilised, and that anything which didn't conform to their own standard as un-civilised. So, nations and empires which didn't create cities of stone that last for centuries were considered un-civilised. Not having a written language, or holding religious beliefs that were not a reasonable approximation to the Christian faith, and structures that didn't look like an episcopalian church was another mark of non-civilisation. And, of course, the absence of certain technologies was a massive indication of not being civilised - a currency, the wheel, horse back riding etc.

And, of course, if you look at Africa and judge how civilised a nation was by European standards it will fall below Europe. That's almost by definition. But, so what if somewhere like the Kingdom of Kongo was structured around villages that moved every decade or so and hence were non-permanent structures? Or, that they didn't use wheeled carts to move their produce? Or, their clothing didn't conform to European standards of modesty? Does that make them less civilised?

Long after the end of slavery, the attitude hadn't changed. It was the burden of the white man to civilise the ignorant savages of Africa (and, of Asia and the Americas). Sadly, that colonial attitude is still alive and well in far too large a proportion of our nations.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
No, none at all. Why would there be?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see any way to thread this needle.
Look at this way.

Every choice conceptually creates an alternative history based on the path not taken.

If the choice made is a morally wrong choice, then people tend to feel that the alternative history "should have happened" instead of the real history. Also, if the choice made is a morally wrong choice, then some form of reparation for that wrong is likely to be owed.
This is where the contradiction comes in. You can't argue that "some form of reparation for that wrong is likely to be owed" and that we should "[r]eject the idea that anyone should be compensated for the alternate histories that didn't materialise". You're arguing that reparation is owed for past wrongs, but that compensation should never be owed for past wrongs (a.k.a. "alternate histories that didn't materialise").

I also question how you can decide something is "morally wrong" if you reject any consideration of what "should have happened". Morality is all about what should and shouldn't happen.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Croesus:
The premise seems to be that while people in Germany or China or elsewhere might have the initiative to voluntarily migrate to North America, no one living in Africa could possibly possess similar initiative.
Not at all. Real life is so complex that in general alternate history can say very little about individuals. The best we can do is to reason plausibly about the big trends. Mass migrations can be explained in terms of causes. Individual migrations are a matter of free will.

The possibility of individual Africans migrating to China or anywhere else is not ruled out. But to suggest that there would be a mass migration of Africans to anywhere, as part of an alternate history, would require some causal explanation.
I'm a bit perplexed by the sudden right turn there. I argued the people living in China and what would become Germany managed to immigrate in numbers to North America and asked why you believe those living in Africa couldn't possibly have the same initiative as just about everyone else living on the eastern edge of the Atlantic. You respond by speculating on African immigration to . . . China? [Confused] Not someplace usually known as a destination for immigrants. Is the idea of Africans voluntarily immigrating to North America so alien to you that you can't imagine it even hypothetically?

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
You could argue, I suppose, that a slavery-free history would somehow lead to an event in Africa comparable to the Irish Potato Famine, which would cause mass migration of Africans to America. If that's what you think, I look forward to hearing the reasoning.
I don't need to postulate an hypothetical event, the well-known collapse of the west African economy* in the 16th century coupled with labor demands in the New World would have been a powerful motivator. The combination of bad local economic prospects and strong labor demands coupled with opportunity were sufficient motivators for virtually every other group of immigrants to the New World. I ask again why you believe Africans are so uniquely lazy and shiftless that, unlike every other group given the opportunity, they'd rather starve at home than immigrate?


--------------------
*The main export commodity of the west African region involved in what became the trans-Atlantic slave trade was gold, and the price of gold cratered as soon as Spain started hauling it back by the galleon-load from its Aztec and Inca conquests.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
And, of course, if you look at Africa and judge how civilised a nation was by European standards it will fall below Europe. That's almost by definition. But, so what if somewhere like the Kingdom of Kongo was structured around villages that moved every decade or so and hence were non-permanent structures? Or, that they didn't use wheeled carts to move their produce? Or, their clothing didn't conform to European standards of modesty? Does that make them less civilised?
You make a good point Alan but chose an unfortunate example. Kongo was a more urban and settled society than many in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its capital M'banza-Kongo, visited by Portuguese missionaries in the 1480s before any meaningful Atlantic slave trade commenced, was a substantial city with a developed hinterland of supporting farming communities. The kingdom was relatively centralised, administered from the capital by a form of royal and clan bureaucracy that was familiar to contemporary Europeans.

Further, the tradition of slavery was then already long established in Kongo and in all the kingdoms and empires around it. The Portuguese went on to disrupt that trade, but only by becoming a voracious new customer which Kongo couldn't supply without raiding far and wide across its borders.

The prevalence of slavery within Africa is one reason why it is pretty difficult to speculate meaningfully about what 21st Century Africa might have been like had the Atlantic slave trade never happened. Another is the Arab demand for African slaves. This trade was at least as extensive as the Atlantic trade and far more enduring, and it might simply have expanded further still if the Atlantic trade have never materialised.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Is the idea of Africans voluntarily immigrating to North America so alien to you that you can't imagine it even hypothetically?
Ira Berlin estimates that 1 in 4 black Americans are first or second generation African immigrants.

[ 25. July 2016, 17:29: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Russ--

Since you believe that African-Americans benefited from the slave trade, are you saying that makes slavery ok?
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The common practice among Europeans from at least the 12th Century was to define themselves as civilised, and that anything which didn't conform to their own standard as un-civilised.
As indeed, so did the Chinese and Japanese in particular - various of the empires in the sib-continent, Persia and the Americas to a range of lesser degrees.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Russ--

Since you believe that African-Americans benefited from the slave trade, are you saying that makes slavery ok?
Not as I read his posts. Russ has repeatedly said that he believes that slave-owners committed a wrong against their slaves. ISTM that a necessary concomitant of that is a belief that slavery as an institution is wrong.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Gee D--

However, some people take a view that if something good happened in the wake of something bad, it's ok--even good--that the bad thing happened. ISTM that Russ is at least dancing on the edge of that.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
However, some people take a view that if something good happened in the wake of something bad, it's ok--even good--that the bad thing happened. ISTM that Russ is at least dancing on the edge of that.
A result of the holocaust is that in the west anti-Semitism is regarded as a hateful evil. Before that anti-Semitism was common to the point of being the norm throughout Europe and America.

I don't believe that anyone would say that this good result in any way justifies the holocaust.

It is very common for evil things to have some kind of good consequences. This is just the way that things work, and it in no way justifies the wrong.
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Russ--

Since you believe that African-Americans benefited from the slave trade, are you saying that makes slavery ok?
Which still leaves out the problem of the descendants of slaves have clearly benefited LESS from slavery than the descendants of slave owners.

So, Russ, let's say I steal your car, but afterwards I occasionally give you a ride to the store. Would you feel better about the loss of your car if I explained that since you're getting the occasional free ride, you're better off than if you didn't have a car at all?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Here is a link (PDF) giving a, relatively, short brief of how Europe fucked Africa. It is asinine to claim African Americans are better off in America when the process which brought them there ravaged where they were brought from.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Is one example enough?

But again I don't understand your point. Are we comparing Africans and Europeans to work out who is "better"?
Kush was not sub-Saharan, but you and AC make a fair semantic point as regards the word "civilisation".

It is a very elastic term which can be used to describe a wide variety of cultures and societies - though the truth remains that there was never a time when any sub-Saharan civilisation was such that contemporary European civilisation could be comparatively be described in terms of Europeans sitting "in huts".

No, we are not trying to work out whether Africans or Europeans are "better".

I was just correcting lilBuddha's Manichaean implication that Africa was a civilised, peaceful haven of light that was destroyed by the dark forces of belligerent, barbarian Europe.

Africans exploited their fellow Africans just as badly as Europeans did, just less efficiently.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Here is a link (PDF) giving a, relatively, short brief of how Europe fucked Africa.
For the umpteenth time, no-one is denying it.

quote:
It is asinine to claim African Americans are better off in America when the process which brought them there ravaged where they were brought from.
It. Does. Not. Follow.

For the umpteenth time, the fact that European exploitation was one factor in Africa's current problems does not change the fact that today's African Americans are the beneficiaries of their ancestors having been transported to America.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Gee D--

However, some people take a view that if something good happened in the wake of something bad, it's ok--even good--that the bad thing happened. ISTM that Russ is at least dancing on the edge of that.
No, I don't think he's dancing on the edge, because his view is not that you set out. All he is saying, at least as I read him, is that the present day lot of African Americans generally better than the lot of those in the countries from where the ancestors came. He's not saying that the lot of African Americans is generally equal to that of white Americans either. It most certainly is not and I would not be surprised if that of the descendants of those inhabitants displaced from their lands by European settlement was even worse.

The other point he's tried to make is that there is no value in compensating the descendants of slaves for the wrong done to their ancestors. I have much more trouble with that, but would have less if that were coupled with some expression along the lines that we as a society should introduce programmes designed to address the needs of all those in a particular position regardless of their ancestry.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is a very elastic term which can be used to describe a wide variety of cultures and societies - though the truth remains that there was never a time when any sub-Saharan civilisation was such that contemporary European civilisation could be comparatively be described in terms of Europeans sitting "in huts".
It depends which part of Europe you're talking about. Axum would have compared favourably with northern and eastern Europe during the Roman Empire and early middle ages; I would suppose that the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts could have looked down on anywhere in contemporary Britain.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
The idea that the African internal acquisition and use of slaves was just the same as (but somehow less effective) than the large-scale transportation, brutalisation, dehumanisation and deculturation of Africans on the way to and in the Americas is a curious one. I've never come across a scholarly account that likens the two experiences of slavery in this way.

Of course, slavery has existed throughout human history. Europeans were perfectly willing to enslave each other. In fact, it's been noted that the Transatlantic slave trade took off at the point when slavery was dying out in Europe. I'm inclined to think that wasn't a coincidence. What made the one economically undesirable could well have made the other economically desirable.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Europeans were perfectly willing to enslave each other. In fact, it's been noted that the Transatlantic slave trade took off at the point when slavery was dying out in Europe. I'm inclined to think that wasn't a coincidence. What made the one economically undesirable could well have made the other economically desirable.
A big issue was the fact that European slaves, or indentured servants, were not economically desirable, due to their tendency to die like flies in the Americas. Africans were resistant to malaria.

A side benefit was that Africans proved to be less likely to try to kill their masters than some of the other population groups tested.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You wouldn't describe the child of a raped mother as having benefited from his/her mother's rape. It's true to say that the benefit or lack of benefit doesn't influence the morality of the rape, but I have a problem with asking the question whether the child of the raped mother benefits in the first place.
Would you have just as much of a problem with people suggesting that the child, due to its heritage, is a victim of rape?
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
So, Russ, let's say I steal your car, but afterwards I occasionally give you a ride to the store. Would you feel better about the loss of your car if I explained that since you're getting the occasional free ride, you're better off than if you didn't have a car at all?
I think a better comparison would be that you steal Russ' car, and that causes him to us public transportation, which puts him in touch with a new group of friends who help him become a millionaire.

Maybe he's better off, but you still go to jail.

But I would dispute that African-Americans are better off than those in Africa. Africa is by and large a wonderful place, with very low crime rates and beautiful, loving people. Terrible things do happen there, as they do everywhere, but Europeans and Americans get a hugely slanted view from watching the news.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
I think we can look at this another way. The claim is that black Americans are beneficiaries of slavery. So the claim is that slavery had both costs and benefits and those benefits were shared by slave owners and their erstwhile slaves who now reap the benefits of American freedom and prosperity. (Holds hand over heart whilst America the beautiful swells in the background.)

However, is the prosperity and freedom which black people enjoy the direct consequence of slavery? Indeed not. If it were the case, those who claim it, would also claim that slavery itself was a beneficial institution and that, indeed, had black Americans remained in chains they would, nonetheless, be better off than had they remained unmolested in Africa. I note that they are rather coy about making that particular claim. The claim is that they were incidental beneficiaries of slavery. The historical facts are that, by and large, American slaveowners treated their 'property' abominably until the Union Army taught them that Southern chivalry counted for nothing when it was put up against men with a righteous cause, who could fight worth a damn, and that subsequently they did everything in their power to immiserate their erstwhile slaves, and their descendants, until the Civil Rights agitation led to changes in legislation which led to the vote, adequate schooling and prosperity. Inasmuch as Black Americans are well off, it is partly due to the Emancipation Proclamation and very largely due to their own efforts in bettering themselves.

Put it another way. If I abduct Kaplan Corday this evening and imprison him for five years in my sex dungeon and he goes on to write the best selling memoir: "Five Years In Callan's Sex Dungeon" which, after he sells the film rights, goes on to win a dozen Oscars and makes him rich beyond the dreams of avarice, we would not, in ordinary English usage, describe him as a beneficiary of my attentions and if he were to launch a civil suit against me, I think that I should get short shrift from the judge were I to make that point.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Europeans were perfectly willing to enslave each other. In fact, it's been noted that the Transatlantic slave trade took off at the point when slavery was dying out in Europe. I'm inclined to think that wasn't a coincidence. What made the one economically undesirable could well have made the other economically desirable.
A big issue was the fact that European slaves, or indentured servants, were not economically desirable, due to their tendency to die like flies in the Americas. Africans were resistant to malaria.

A side benefit was that Africans proved to be less likely to try to kill their masters than some of the other population groups tested.
That's true, but I wasn't even thinking of indentured labourers (whose status as 'slaves' not all historians would accept without qualification). I was thinking of slavery on the European continent itself, particularly Southern Europe where slaves of various ethnicities were being bought and sold until the late Middle Ages. Black slaves were apparently quite common in Portugal the mid-1400s. They were also used in Madeira and the Azores, and other islands that Portugal captured.

It was the Portuguese, of course, who pioneered the Transatlantic slave trade in Africans. They established the first trading relationships with African coastal kingdoms, and built the first slave forts. They created the first large imperial colonies on the coast of West Africa, and were the first Europeans to take African slaves to the Americas (i.e. to Brazil) at the beginning of the 1500s.

[ 26. July 2016, 12:32: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Here is a link (PDF) giving a, relatively, short brief of how Europe fucked Africa.
For the umpteenth time, no-one is denying it.

quote:
It is asinine to claim African Americans are better off in America when the process which brought them there ravaged where they were brought from.
It. Does. Not. Follow.

For the umpteenth time, the fact that European exploitation was one factor in Africa's current problems does not change the fact that today's African Americans are the beneficiaries of their ancestors having been transported to America.
So, if someone broke into your home, raped and killed your mother, kidnapped your family, stole and sold the contents of your home, split up those of your family that survived and beat and raped you then improved their home with the proceeds of the sale of your home's goods and fixtures; you would consider your child, who is also beaten and raped and abused, to be a beneficiary of the process simply because someone perceives the house of their tormentors to be "better" than the damaged one their grandparents owned?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You wouldn't describe the child of a raped mother as having benefited from his/her mother's rape. It's true to say that the benefit or lack of benefit doesn't influence the morality of the rape, but I have a problem with asking the question whether the child of the raped mother benefits in the first place.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Would you have just as much of a problem with people suggesting that the child, due to its heritage, is a victim of rape?
I think it is quite likely that child would have a difficult childhood as a result of their means of conception and I think they would be entitled to feel negatively towards their biological father. I wouldn't use the term victim though - it doesn't seem to fit the situation very well and is too much of an all encompassing label for their existence in this setting.

I do think it would be more sensible (and more moral) to ask "how have they suffered because of rape" than "how have the benefited because of rape". The latter question seems obscene to even contemplate.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I think it is quite likely that child would have a difficult childhood as a result of their means of conception and I think they would be entitled to feel negatively towards their biological father. I wouldn't use the term victim though - it doesn't seem to fit the situation very well and is too much of an all encompassing label for their existence in this setting.
Of course, to be properly analogous to the issue being discussed in this thread it would have to be the child's great-grandchildren who are claiming to have suffered because of the rape of their great-great-grandmother, and demanding compensation from the other descendants of their great-great-grandfather (the rapist).
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The idea that the African internal acquisition and use of slaves was just the same as (but somehow less effective) than the large-scale transportation, brutalisation, dehumanisation and deculturation of Africans on the way to and in the Americas is a curious one. I've never come across a scholarly account that likens the two experiences of slavery in this way.
Then as a starter perhaps I could refer you to this review and to the articles cited in its references.

https://www.aehnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/AEHN-WP-6.pdf

It's a comfortable myth that slavery within Africa was always benign, and cannot be compared to the brutal experiences of those traded across the Atlantic (or traded across the Sahara).

As it did elsewhere in the world, slavery within Africa took multiple forms. This did include some forms which had more in common with what we would consider to be indentured service than with our images of slavery shaped by the Atlantic slave trade. These may have been people working to repay a debt for instance, or handed over as some form of security.

Somewhere beyond those arrangements were situations where slaves may in the first instance have been taken by violence, handed over as tribute or whatever, and transported a long way from their familiar culture, their kin and any hope of escape or rescue, but whose long term situation was not one of chattel slavery and endless brutality. They may have had reasonably humane treatment and some hope that they (or more likely their children or grandchildren) could be freed and accepted into the culture into which they had been forcibly relocated.

But some African empires were established on the back of industrial scale chattel enslavement of neighbouring peoples, on terms that were every bit as brutal, violent, dehumanising and deculturalising as the experience of slaves traded across the Atlantic or across the Sahara.

But the point is not the trite one that history is often more complicated than we would like it to be. The point is that because of this it's exceptionally difficult to show with any kind of convincing analysis that particular modern populations anywhere owe any identifiable proportion their present wealth or poverty to the Atlantic slave trade (or for that matter the Saharan slave trade).
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I think it is quite likely that child would have a difficult childhood as a result of their means of conception and I think they would be entitled to feel negatively towards their biological father. I wouldn't use the term victim though - it doesn't seem to fit the situation very well and is too much of an all encompassing label for their existence in this setting.
Of course, to be properly analogous to the issue being discussed in this thread it would have to be the child's great-grandchildren who are claiming to have suffered because of the rape of their great-great-grandmother, . . . .
At which point the analogy fails, because unlike a single instance of rape and its effect on the child conceived in that rape, the effects of slavery—a legal status into which one was born because ones parents were slaves—clearly continue to be experienced by the descendants of slaves.

quote:
. . . and demanding compensation from the other descendants of their great-great-grandfather (the rapist).
I admit I'm a bit baffled by what seems to underlie much of this discussion, which is an implication that the only reason for considering how those of us not descended from slaves might have benefitted from slavery is for the purpose of reparations. I think there are other valid, more basic reasons for asking the question—a better understanding of often unacknowledged privilege being chief among them.

I would hope that a better understanding of privilege would prompt changes that lead to a more just society. Reparations might be a component of what that more just society looks like, or they might not. Reparations would certainly not be the only thing on the table in any event.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Russ--

Since you believe that African-Americans benefited from the slave trade, are you saying that makes slavery ok?
I don't see how treating other human beings as objects could be an OK thing to do.

And I don't see that any slave-owner who might say "Your descendants will thank me for this" as he brandishes the whip is getting himself off the hook to any meaningful degree.

My original point was only that the distribution of benefits and disbenefits of slavery is rather more complicated than some would paint it.

I don't believe those who might say "we are all guilty" or "they are all victims" either. Life's complicated...
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:

The prevalence of slavery within Africa is one reason why it is pretty difficult to speculate meaningfully about what 21st Century Africa might have been like had the Atlantic slave trade never happened.
This is exactly what the slavery was wonderful for the descendants of slaves proponents are doing. They are postulating an Africa that would have as many problems as the current Africa, regardless.

Many, if not most, European cultures' development was intersectional. Development spread by contact. It is rather ridiculous to suppose that Africa countries could not have benefited the same way. If you read the link below in this post, they were indeed doing so until forced to after this by colonising powers.
quote:

Another is the Arab demand for African slaves. This trade was at least as extensive as the Atlantic trade and far more enduring,
True, but incomplete and misleading. Arabs took 1,300 years to manage what the Atlantic trade did in only 300.
quote:

and it might simply have expanded further still if the Atlantic trade have never materialised.
Might. You are engaging in the same speculation that you say is so difficult.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

I was just correcting lilBuddha's Manichaean implication that Africa was a civilised, peaceful haven of light that was destroyed by the dark forces of belligerent, barbarian Europe.
Can you point to where I make this claim? I would be ever so grateful. Here, again is a link which describes damage done.
If you cannot manage the reading, here is an excerpt from the preface.
quote:
The
African economy was significantly changed by the Atlantic slave trade through the process of imperialism and the economic policies that accompanied colonization. Prior to the "Scramble for Africa," or the official partition of Africa by the major European nations, African economies were advancing in every area, particularly in the area of trade.
quote:

Africans exploited their fellow Africans just as badly as Europeans did, just less efficiently.
Some Africans exploited as badly as the entire Atlantic trade.
And it isn't about the efficiency as much as scale. And the accompanying ravaging of an entire continent.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I think it is quite likely that child would have a difficult childhood as a result of their means of conception and I think they would be entitled to feel negatively towards their biological father. I wouldn't use the term victim though - it doesn't seem to fit the situation very well and is too much of an all encompassing label for their existence in this setting.
Of course, to be properly analogous to the issue being discussed in this thread it would have to be the child's great-grandchildren who are claiming to have suffered because of the rape of their great-great-grandmother, and demanding compensation from the other descendants of their great-great-grandfather (the rapist).
We're only 150 years past slavery, so I think you have a few too many generations in there, especially if you consider the way slavery was virtually extended thru Jim Crow, KKK terrorism, and the new Jim Crow.

So how many generations are too many to demand compensation? I think we can agree that one or two generations is not too many: when someone dies with a large outstanding judgment due to their misconduct, that debt isn't wiped away at their death, it's levied against their estate so that their heirs do not benefit from their ancestor's misdeeds.

Similarly, in 1988 the US paid reparations to Japanese-Americans unjustly interned during WW2-- 44 years later. Some had died, so the reparations were paid to descendants. A good chunk of the taxpayers who paid those reparations were not alive in 1940s when the internments happened, others would have been much younger than the voting age. Very few would have any active responsibility for the decision. Yet all American taxpayers paid the debt incurred by our ancestors.

So lets turn the question around: if 44 years (2 generations) is not too long to absolve descendants of responsibility, and 150 years (6 generations) is, then where is the line: 3? 4? 5?

[ 26. July 2016, 18:34: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:


It's a comfortable myth that slavery within Africa was always benign, and cannot be compared to the brutal experiences of those traded across the Atlantic (or traded across the Sahara).
[...]

But some African empires were established on the back of industrial scale chattel enslavement of neighbouring peoples, on terms that were every bit as brutal, violent, dehumanising and deculturalising as the experience of slaves traded across the Atlantic or across the Sahara.

It would be curious to claim that any kind of slavery could be deemed 'benign! I should make it clear that I wasn't suggesting that.

However, the possibility that Africans were happy to deculturalise each other in a way that was comparable to the Transatlantic experience is very interesting. I'm sure that thought would keep our black urban theologians very busy for a while....

Thank you for the link. It's certainly one I'll keep.

[ 26. July 2016, 18:47: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
The prevalence of slavery within Africa is one reason why it is pretty difficult to speculate meaningfully about what 21st Century Africa might have been like had the Atlantic slave trade never happened.
This is exactly what the slavery was wonderful for the descendants of slaves proponents are doing. They are postulating an Africa that would have as many problems as the current Africa, regardless.

Many, if not most, European cultures' development was intersectional. Development spread by contact. It is rather ridiculous to suppose that Africa countries could not have benefited the same way. If you read the link below in this post, they were indeed doing so until forced to after this by colonising powers.
I take your first point, and of course I agree with you that it's untenable to argue that slavery was a benefit either to those enslaved or to the communities from which they were taken.

But the paper you link to seems to muddle its way between discussing the impacts of slavery and those of colonialism without ever clearly articulating its point. I agree though that some African nations and empires had historically traded with each other and beyond. Obviously I agree (because I posted it above) that their historical trade in African slaves was hugely disrupted by the sheer scale of the Atlantic trade. This clearly had adverse effects on other historical trading relationships too. Selling African slaves to the Atlantic trade became more lucrative than traditional trades in copper, gold, ivory and ebony. Hence the loud objections from many African rulers to the ending of the slave trade by the British in 1807: places like Dahomey had economies which were by then based almost entirely on procuring and selling slaves.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
Another is the Arab demand for African slaves. This trade was at least as extensive as the Atlantic trade and far more enduring,
True, but incomplete and misleading. Arabs took 1,300 years to manage what the Atlantic trade did in only 300.
I didn't intend to be misleading. I said that the Arab slave trade took at least as many Africans as the Atlantic slave trade and that it was more enduring. It was also every bit as brutal and inhumane as the Atlantic slave trade. 1,300 years is a bit of a stretch, but 900 is feasible and still makes your point.

Mine though was that the Atlantic slave trade was only one factor in the development of Africa, and it ended 200 years ago. The Arab slave trade was another, which impacted Africa more widely and for longer and it ended far more recently (indeed hasn't wholly ended even now). The upheavals inherent in colonialism likewise affected much more of Africa and are still ongoing. The Atlantic slave trade clearly had impacts but they have been overlain by other more recent factors of comparable magnitude. Identifying the impacts specifically attributable to the Atlantic slave trade is impracticable.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
and it might simply have expanded further still if the Atlantic trade have never materialised.
Might. You are engaging in the same speculation that you say is so difficult.
I intended this as an example. What I was trying to point out is that if we imagine history with one significant event or factor omitted then we also have to assume that other events that we haven't excluded from our hypothetical history would also have been altered by that change. If millions of people had not been shipped across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800 (and millions more displaced or killed by the wars and raids that procured them) it's not reasonable to assume that all of those people would have led idyllic and productive lives untouched by other troubles.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
What I was trying to point out is that if we imagine history with one significant event or factor omitted then we also have to assume that other events that we haven't excluded from our hypothetical history would also have been altered by that change. If millions of people had not been shipped across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800 (and millions more displaced or killed by the wars and raids that procured them) it's not reasonable to assume that all of those people would have led idyllic and productive lives untouched by other troubles.
People keep accusing me of saying Africa would be a paradise were it not for Europeans. I've said nothing of the kind.
And, I've not spoken of a single event. Slavery was part of the continued process which has objectively caused massive problems in Africa whose effects continue to this day. Yes, different political and cultural entities interfered and exploited each other. But not to the scale as did the Europeans.
It is not a massively far difference from excusing the Holocaust because most of Europe also disliked the Jews.

[ 26. July 2016, 19:34: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
People keep accusing me of saying Africa would be a paradise were it not for Europeans. I've said nothing of the kind.
And, I've not spoken of a single event. Slavery was part of the continued process which has objectively caused massive problems in Africa whose effects continue to this day. Yes, different political and cultural entities interfered and exploited each other. But not to the scale as did the Europeans.
It is not a massively far difference from excusing the Holocaust because most of Europe also disliked the Jews.
I've not sought to downplay or excuse the wickedness of the Atlantic slave trade. (I've acknowledged the evils of colonialism too, although as the topic is slavery I've tried to stick to that, which I don't think is too difficult given the slave trade ended more than two generations before the Scramble for Africa began.)

The European trade in African slaves was an evil thing, but it's not the only evil thing that happened in Africa. Recognising the existence of African slaving empires and the Arab slave trade, both of which killed and traded even more Africans than the Europeans did (before, during and after the period when the Europeans were doing so) doesn't minimise the wickedness of the Atlantic trade. I'm not suggesting that these other evils mean that the Atlantic slave trade didn't have a terrible effect on Africa, only that the passage of time and the influence of other terrible things makes that effect extremely difficult to quantify.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:

The claim is that they were incidental beneficiaries of slavery.
Precisely.

No-one is arguing that slavery was anything other than an obscenity - that is a straw man (person?)

quote:

If I abduct Kaplan Corday this evening and imprison him for five years in my sex dungeon
Yes, I get a lot of that....

Seriously, the analogy would have to run along the lines of my investing my massive profits in a family business which succeeding generations maintained and expanded.

Then - and note that this is the sole point of the extension of the analogy - it would not be inappropriate for my great-great-great-great- great- whatever grand-children to be described as incidental beneficiaries of the evil of sexual abduction.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Seriously, the analogy would have to run along the lines of my investing my massive profits in a family business which succeeding generations maintained and expanded.

Then - and note that this is the sole point of the extension of the analogy - it would not be inappropriate for my great-great-great-great- great- whatever grand-children to be described as incidental beneficiaries of the evil of sexual abduction.
For the analogy to work, however, your descendants would have to continue to suffer from the evils of Callan and then, to establish through their own efforts, prosperity and liberty.

So you have the American slave trade from the seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century, and then the continuation of slavery until the Emancipation proclamation and then the racist laws that prevailed in the South until the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and then the subsequent struggles by black people until the present day. So, eventually, you have a scenario where black people, or at least some of them, are doing all right. But this was not a consequence of slavery except in the comparatively trivial sense of one occurrence happening after another occurrence. The prosperity of African Americans happened despite slavery, not because of it. I repeat, they are beneficiaries of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement and their own endeavours. Explain, if you will, why they should give the credit, instead, to the peculiar institution.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
An observation:

The comments about African-Americans being incidental beneficiaries from slavery sound, to this American's ears, sound rather like the folks who've defended slavery by saying, "Oh, they were happy! They liked being slaves! And they learned to be Christians!"

I know Russ is in Ireland, and I don't think Kaplan is an American (?). So maybe they don't have the cultural background to realize that their comments come across as tone-deaf, at *best*, and possibly much worse than that.

I'm NOT saying either of you are racists. But, in an American context, your comments dance around that edge--however unknowingly and unintentionally. And that's why you keep running into a wall in the conversation.

FWIW, YMMV.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Hence, in part, my analogy with calmly discussing the benefits of rape to the offspring of a raped mother. The very question sounds slightly nonsensical at best and obscene at worst.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
I'm not suggesting that these other evils mean that the Atlantic slave trade didn't have a terrible effect on Africa, only that the passage of time and the influence of other terrible things makes that effect extremely difficult to quantify.
predicting alternate history is difficult, yeah. Hasn't prevented a few on this thread from being certain Africa was destined for the scrap heap regardless.
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:

I know Russ is in Ireland, and I don't think Kaplan is an American (?). So maybe they don't have the cultural background to realize that their comments come across as tone-deaf, at *best*, and possibly much worse than that.
One needn't be American to understand this. One doesn't even need to have a fantastic grasp of history. One need only perform 5 minute search on the internet to be sufficiently filled in. Or even, perhaps, participate in a thread on who benefited from slavery.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
Luckily the United States provides a kind of "natural experiment" for the proposition that slavery is beneficial to the descendants of the enslaved. Different states abolished slavery at different times. Massachusetts in 1786, New York gradually in the 1820s, the states formed out of the old Northwest Territory never had legal slavery, and the Southern states held out until the mid-1860s. If enslavement is beneficial to people, or at least their descendants, it would seem reasonable that the descendants of those who had been enslaved the longest (i.e. those in the Deep South) would have derived the greatest benefit from enslavement relative to their earlier-freed peers. Interestingly most slaves did not seem to find this logic convincing. A lot of people are willing to make sacrifices and undergo privation in order to benefit their children (or other descendants), and yet enslaved African-Americans for some reason were willing to undergo tremendous risks and hardships to deliberately deprive their descendants of the benefits of enslavement. Maybe it was some kind of mass insanity that made people so willing to deprive their children of the benefits of slavery.

Also notable is the way African-Americans decided to GTFO of the regions where slavery persisted the longest and which were therefore, by the your reasoning, the places where they could derive the greatest benefit of their previously enslaved condition. It's almost as if African-Americans were ungrateful for the benefits forced upon them!
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Much as it pains me to be fair on this issue I think you're missing their argument Croesus. It isn't that slavery per se is beneficial, but rather that having been "rescued" from benighted Africa to land of the free (irony intended) was of benefit. Obscene as the argument is for the reasons I described earlier, it doesn't follow that time in slavery would be beneficial.

As an aside I think one can argue that slavery was detrimental to the enslavers and the national as a whole as well. The brutalizing and degrading effect on morality of society must have been terrible. There's an argument that it hinders economic development when society is structured around unwaged unskilled labour and I believe that was influential for some anti-slavery discussion leading up to the civil war. I mention this as an argument is also obscene as a response to discussing the impact on the slaves, however technically supportable it might be.

And I don't think it is relevant in terms of discussing the economic outcomes. The fact that if I hadn't been robbing the corner-shop I might have been engaged in much more fruitful industry and been better off and mixing with better society isn't relevant to discussing my gains from the robbery.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Much as it pains me to be fair on this issue I think you're missing their argument Croesus. It isn't that slavery per se is beneficial, but rather that having been "rescued" from benighted Africa to land of the free (irony intended) was of benefit. Obscene as the argument is for the reasons I described earlier, it doesn't follow that time in slavery would be beneficial.
Which makes the argument somewhat deceptive, doesn't it? It claims to be an argument about how the descendants of slaves benefited from slavery (as per the thread title), but what's actually presented is a case for the benefits of kidnapping.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I know Russ is in Ireland, and I don't think Kaplan is an American (?). So maybe they don't have the cultural background to realize that their comments come across as tone-deaf, at *best*, and possibly much worse than that.
Sounds like you're objecting to anything that challenges the stereotype of blacks as victims...

But as you say, cross-cultural misunderstandings can occur, particularly when it comes to reading the overtones of what is said rather than the actual words.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Sounds like you're objecting to anything that challenges the stereotype of blacks as victims...
quote:
Originally posted by Russ in the same post:
...when it comes to reading the overtones of what is said rather than the actual words.
Those two statements are really struggling for room in the same post. Care to reflect on them?
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Much as it pains me to be fair on this issue I think you're missing their argument Croesus. It isn't that slavery per se is beneficial, but rather that having been "rescued" from benighted Africa to land of the free (irony intended) was of benefit. Obscene as the argument is for the reasons I described earlier, it doesn't follow that time in slavery would be beneficial.
Which makes the argument somewhat deceptive, doesn't it? It claims to be an argument about how the descendants of slaves benefited from slavery (as per the thread title), but what's actually presented is a case for the benefits of kidnapping.
Basically, what you have is the following sequence:

Bad Event
People Move Somewhere Else
Descendants of Said People Have A Better Life Because of Prevailing Economic and Political Conditions Somewhere Else.

Now in this instance the bad event is slavery, the people moving somewhere else are kidnapped slaves and the descendants enjoying a better life are African Americans. But if the logic of this is correct then everyone who has moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event is a beneficiary of the bad event. So Irish Americans are beneficiaries of the potato famine, Ukranian Americans are beneficiaries of the Great Famine, Armenian Americans are beneficiaries of the Genocide, the Falashas in Israel are beneficiaries of the Ethiopian famine, Arab refugees from Saddam Hussein or the Assad regime are presumably, if they live in a free country with a high standard of living, beneficiaries of the policies of said regime, und so weiter.

Sophistry is the kindest description of such an argument.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Ireland benefits greatly from having English as its first language. It is hard to imagine its scientists, writers and business community being to operate as effectively on the world stage without fluent English. Thank goodness for the civilizing influence of empire.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
At which point the analogy fails, because unlike a single instance of rape and its effect on the child conceived in that rape, the effects of slavery—a legal status into which one was born because ones parents were slaves—clearly continue to be experienced by the descendants of slaves.
I guess it depends on whether you think racism was caused by the slave trade or the slave trade was caused by racism. If you are in the former camp then it's obvious that the difficulties experienced by African Americans in the modern day are due to the slave trade, but if you are in the latter camp (as I am) then it's equally obvious that the problems of today have a common root cause (racism) with the slave trade but are otherwise causally unconnected.

Windmills turn because of the wind, and trees sway because of the wind. That does not mean windmills make trees sway.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Explain, if you will, why they should give the credit, instead, to the peculiar institution.
Nice try, but no cigar.

This is the sort of sophistry found in the infamous, "When did you stop beating your wife"?

The concept of "credit" does not enter into it, one way or the other.

The word is meaningless in describing an accidental process whereby some Africans were transported and others were not, and whereby the descendants of those unlucky enough to be caught up in the evil of the slave trade are now lucky enough not to have perfect lives, but at least to live in a country with a higher standard of living then the ones which their ancestors came from now enjoy.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
"Oh, they were happy! They liked being slaves! And they learned to be Christians!"
OK, just to clarify the situation, no, slaves did not like being slaves, and no, slavery cannot be justified by the slaves' exposure to evangelism.

Happy?

quote:
I'm NOT saying either of you are racists.
That sounds about as sincere as, "Some of my best friends are African American/Jewish, Asian".

It is a veiled threat that anyone who disagrees with your position is going to get smeared a racist, and I am calling your bluff.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I guess it depends on whether you think racism was caused by the slave trade or the slave trade was caused by racism. If you are in the former camp then it's obvious that the difficulties experienced by African Americans in the modern day are due to the slave trade, but if you are in the latter camp (as I am) then it's equally obvious that the problems of today have a common root cause (racism) with the slave trade but are otherwise causally unconnected.
No, it doesn't depend on which way you look at it. I don't think the problem can be parsed that simply.

Yes, racism led to and enabled the slave trade. But slavery reinforced and institutionalized that racism, and it did so in ways that continued long after the abolition of slavery, and in ways distinct from the racism directed at other non-white groups in America. To me, at least, what is obvious is that racism and slavery can't be separated in the way you're attempting.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Explain, if you will, why they should give the credit, instead, to the peculiar institution.
Nice try, but no cigar.

This is the sort of sophistry found in the infamous, "When did you stop beating your wife"?

The concept of "credit" does not enter into it, one way or the other.

The word is meaningless in describing an accidental process whereby some Africans were transported and others were not, and whereby the descendants of those unlucky enough to be caught up in the evil of the slave trade are now lucky enough not to have perfect lives, but at least to live in a country with a higher standard of living then the ones which their ancestors came from now enjoy.
There are lots of ways to describe a process in which large numbers of Africans were abducted, put on slave ships, transported across the Atlantic Ocean and then sold to the highest bidder to work as slaves, in order to keep American plantation owners in the style to which they had become accustomed, but I really do not think that "accidental" is the mot juste in this instance.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
everyone who has moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event is a beneficiary of the bad event.
Net beneficiary, yes.

Which is neither a mitigation of the badness of the bad event, nor a denial of the fact that the best thing would have been for the bad event not to have happened in the first place.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I really do not think that "accidental" is the mot juste in this instance.
Some able-bodied Africans were abducted and traded, and others were not.

Some became slaves and stayed in Africa. and some were sent to America.

Some were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught by slavers, and others escaped.

ISTM that "accidental" in these circumstances is precisely the mot juste.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
everyone who has moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event is a beneficiary of the bad event.
Net beneficiary, yes.

Which is neither a mitigation of the badness of the bad event, nor a denial of the fact that the best thing would have been for the bad event not to have happened in the first place.
So, to advert to one of the examples that I gave and which you conveniently refrained from citing, the descendants of Ukrainians who got the hell out of Dodge during the collectivisation of agriculture and fetched up in the US are beneficiaries of the Holodomor? Sorry, net beneficiaries?
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I guess it depends on whether you think racism was caused by the slave trade or the slave trade was caused by racism.
Excellent point.

While slavery has existed for thousands of years in many parts of the world, it has not had the same lasting effects where racism has not been as acute.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
So, to advert to one of the examples that I gave and which you conveniently refrained from citing, the descendants of Ukrainians who got the hell out of Dodge during the collectivisation of agriculture and fetched up in the US are beneficiaries of the Holodomor? Sorry, net beneficiaries?
Only if they, in your words, "moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event."

If they didn't benefit then, no, they are not a beneficiary.

But, as was said, this doesn't make the bad event OK.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I really do not think that "accidental" is the mot juste in this instance.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Some able-bodied Africans were abducted and traded, and others were not.

Some became slaves and stayed in Africa. and some were sent to America.

Some were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught by slavers, and others escaped.

ISTM that "accidental" in these circumstances is precisely the mot juste.
You haven't spotted the difference between human agency and accidental? It seems a particularly unfortunate word to choose when talking about one of the most major human rights abuses perpetrated on a systematic legalized basis.

We trip over by accident, we don't acquire, abuse and rape several million slaves by accident.

I think you might mean that the selection of victims was arbitrary on the part of the perpetrators.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
So, to advert to one of the examples that I gave and which you conveniently refrained from citing, the descendants of Ukrainians who got the hell out of Dodge during the collectivisation of agriculture and fetched up in the US are beneficiaries of the Holodomor? Sorry, net beneficiaries?
Only if they, in your words, "moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event."

If they didn't benefit then, no, they are not a beneficiary.

But, as was said, this doesn't make the bad event OK.
So, if a victim of the Holodomor moved somewhere else and found a better life they are a "net beneficiary" of the Holodomor? Seriously?
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
That love bug Bill O'Reilly says that slavery isn't so bad, since you are housed and fed. My favorite response on this page is the offer to feed and house Bill O'Reilly, if he will become the writer's slave.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
That love bug Bill O'Reilly says that slavery isn't so bad, since you are housed and fed. My favorite response on this page is the offer to feed and house Bill O'Reilly, if he will become the writer's slave.
Heck, I don't even need him to be a slave in the particular free-labor sense. I would consider it a public service if I could exchange free food/housing for O'Reilly just shutting up and saying off the airwaves. He can spend his days scoring oxy and downloading porn for all I care as long as he just shuts up.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
So, if a victim of the Holodomor moved somewhere else and found a better life they are a "net beneficiary" of the Holodomor? Seriously?
Not if they didn't "benefit." If they did benefit then they are a beneficiary by definition.

That said, I can't imagine someone seeing themselves as a beneficiary of something like that. So I agree with you.

In any case, it is still terrible.

But history is full of ironic stories like this, where some unfortunate event turns out be a stroke of good fortune.

I would never put slavery in that category. It is wrong no matter how you look at it. Nor do I agree that the descendants of slaves are in general better off than their relatives in Africa. Africa is a beautiful place.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Kaplan--

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
"Oh, they were happy! They liked being slaves! And they learned to be Christians!"
OK, just to clarify the situation, no, slaves did not like being slaves, and no, slavery cannot be justified by the slaves' exposure to evangelism.

Happy?

quote:
I'm NOT saying either of you are racists.
That sounds about as sincere as, "Some of my best friends are African American/Jewish, Asian".

It is a veiled threat that anyone who disagrees with your position is going to get smeared a racist, and I am calling your bluff.
No. No threats. You and Russ seemed puzzled that people didn't get what you're saying. ISTM that what you said came across as the same sort of ideas that many racist Americans have espoused. You're not Americans, and I know that cultural attitudes and history can seem very different to someone outside that culture and country. I figured that you just didn't understand, because you weren't here to soak all that up. So I worded my post very carefully, trying to let you both know why you're running into a wall in the conversation. Other people have pointed out similar things.

It's the way your comments, worded as they've been, have come across to this American's ears. IMHO, if you want Shipmates to understand what you mean, you might adjust your wording and explanations.

That's it.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
everyone who has moved somewhere else and found a better life because of a bad event is a beneficiary of the bad event.
Net beneficiary, yes.

Which is neither a mitigation of the badness of the bad event, nor a denial of the fact that the best thing would have been for the bad event not to have happened in the first place.
That last bit, about the "best thing", seemed to be missing from your explanations.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Which is neither a mitigation of the badness of the bad event, nor a denial of the fact that the best thing would have been for the bad event not to have happened in the first place.
That last bit, about the "best thing", seemed to be missing from your explanations. [/QB][/QUOTE]

You don't think that my description of slavery as an "obscenity" might just possibly have implied as much?
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You haven't spotted the difference between human agency and accidental?
You haven't spotted the difference between the deliberate, planned objectification and commodification of African men and women for the purpose of profit on the one hand, and the accidents of luck which resulted in some Africans being enslaved and traded and others escaping that fate (which was what I was writing about) on the other?
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Which is neither a mitigation of the badness of the bad event, nor a denial of the fact that the best thing would have been for the bad event not to have happened in the first place.
That last bit, about the "best thing", seemed to be missing from your explanations.
You don't think that my description of slavery as an "obscenity" might just possibly have implied as much? [/QB][/QUOTE]

Not when you keep saying that people are better off because it happened.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
the descendants of Ukrainians who got the hell out of Dodge during the collectivisation of agriculture and fetched up in the US are beneficiaries of the Holodomor? Sorry, net beneficiaries?
Yep.

Any immediate emigrants thereby escaped continued Stalinist dictatorship (such as the Yezhovshchina) and poverty post-1933, as well as WWII, which ravaged Ukraine (which was part of what historian Timothy Snyder called Bloodlands, the region of Eastern Europe most devastated by deliberate killing of civilians).

It was a "net" gain because their escape to a better and safer way of life in the US had to be weighed against the challenges of acquiring a new language, culture and social network, as well as dealing with the horrors they had experienced, something they probably never got over.

The net gain for their current descendants is far greater, because they have grown up in the US and avoided the difficulties of first generation immigrants, and because while they might have a cerebral knowledge and abhorrence of the Holodomor (or not; this thread alone shows the extent of historical ignorance), their forebears who suffered and died are likely just names and photographs, so they are unlikely to sufer the same visceral horror as did their migrant ancestors who would have known and loved personally many who were starved to death.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You haven't spotted the difference between human agency and accidental?
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
You haven't spotted the difference between the deliberate, planned objectification and commodification of African men and women for the purpose of profit on the one hand, and the accidents of luck which resulted in some Africans being enslaved and traded and others escaping that fate (which was what I was writing about) on the other?
It might be what you were talking about but what you wrote was not so precise. It still looks and sounds bad to have the word "accidental" applied to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Would you be happy using that word in connection with the holocaust? The accidental murder of some Jews while others escaped?

[ 28. July 2016, 05:43: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Not when you keep saying that people are better off because it happened.
Part of the problem for me is that people are very happy to claim even tangential things as benefits white people have gained from slavery, while not accepting that black people have also benefitted from them.

A few excerpts from page 1 of this thread:

quote:
Economists estimate that pretty much every American has benefitted from slavery/oppression of indigenous persons. During 200 years of slavery/forced settlement the US built up an enormous reserve of wealth which is what pretty much everything built upon.
"Every American". Note: not "every white American".

quote:
The slave trade is part of what made the UK wealthy. The wealth of the UK is the reason I got my education and healthcare and why I am where I am.
Education and healthcare in the UK are not restricted to white people - they are available to all. Therefore all in the UK have benefitted.

I see no reason why I, as a white person, should count my education as a benefit of slavery but the black people with whom I shared classes should not.

quote:
I think one of the reasons why it's so uncomfortable is that if we really look and acknowledge the way we (Americans anyway) are still benefitting from slavery, the logical and just conclusion is that it will cost us something. It might cost us economically as we see that reparations for centuries of last wages are owed to the descendants of slavery.
These two sentences sum up the dichotomy at work here, because there are a heck of a lot of people who are both beneficiaries of slavery (see above) and descendants of slavery. Should they pay reparations to themselves?

It's just not as simple as saying white people have benefitted and black people haven't. There's a whole host of factors at play, and everyone in America, Britain, etc. has benefitted. I'll grant you that some have benefitted more and others less, but race is only one factor among many in determining who falls into which category, and any discussion about how to make our current society fairer that uses slavery to justify a starting point of "white = oppressor, black = victim" is missing several points.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
I see no reason why I, as a white person, should count my education as a benefit of slavery but the black people with whom I shared classes should not.
That's a fairer point. Slavery was long gone in the British Empire (at least officially) by the time the Political Nation realised that there was some sort of case for sharing the burgeoning national wealth with the Plebs. Education in the UK came about as part of the dawning realisation that the claims of the working class to a share in political power could hardly be denied indefinitely, and if they were to be given the vote, it would be as well if they knew a bit about the world they lived in. Hence Macaulay's comment about civilisation being a race between democracy and education and Forster's remark that "we must educate our masters"; on introducing his Education Act, after the Reform Bill of 1876.

Of course, there is a fairly salient difference between the UK, where Lord Mansfield ruled that slavery was illegal in the UK in 1772, where the slave trade was abolished in 1806, and where slavery in the British Empire was abolished in 1833 and where descendants of slaves constitute something like 1% of the population, most of whom came here in the 1950s et. seq. from the Caribbean, and the US where slavery on US soil continued until 1864 and where the, more numerous, descendants of slaves were subsequently denied civil rights for another hundred years.

I'm genuinely agnostic about reparations for slavery but my general view is that British contrition can be best expressed through the foreign aid budget. That's clearly not the case in the US.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
If they did benefit then they are a beneficiary by definition.

That said, I can't imagine someone seeing themselves as a beneficiary of something like that.
I don't see anything implausible about the idea that someone whose great-grandfather had a really tough life might find themselves in a better situation as a result.

You are rightly distinguishing between thinking that such a statement is untrue - as a historical / economic proposition - and objecting to the emotional implications that might be read into a word like "beneficiary".

It's the proposition that we should feel some particular emotion - grateful, guilty, sorry, whatever - about events more than a lifetime ago that needs to be examined.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
I think what some of us are objecting to is the sleight of hand which says that if a number of disparate events happen sequentially, the first bad and a least some of the subsequent good, it is possible to claim that the persons concerned are beneficiaries of the first event. They are not. They are beneficiaries of the subsequent events.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
And I don't think it is relevant in terms of discussing the economic outcomes. The fact that if I hadn't been robbing the corner-shop I might have been engaged in much more fruitful industry and been better off and mixing with better society isn't relevant to discussing my gains from the robbery.
But the more abstract, indirect, and involuntary the 'benefit', the more natural it is to consider counterfactuals.

What's my gain from robbing the store? You can get that answer by counting the cash I stole. What I might have done instead (and deliberately chose not to do) is, as you say, irrelevant.

What's my gain from having a robber as a father? You can, indeed, perform a similar calculation and ask how much of the money he stole got spent on me and my upbringing. But it would not be unreasonable for me to point out that he contributed nothing for long periods while imprisoned or on the run, and despite the gains, I would, on the whole, have been better off as the son of an honest man.

What's my gain from robbery in society as a whole? Here it seems to me positively bizarre to count up how much cash I have only because someone far-removed from me in the chain of transactions once stole it, and not also consider the social costs to me that also result from such crimes. To get the full picture of what robbery as a social institution means to me, you really do need to conjecture some sort of alternative reality in which it is at least provisionally assumed that no one ever robbed anyone.


The problem with the "what's your benefit from slavery?" question is that the "compared to what?" supplemental question hasn't been answered, and there even seems to be an objection in principle to the idea of asking that.

I see the answer much as I would the general question about robbery. Yes, some of the cash in my wallet probably has been stolen before it came to me. Some of my ancestors possibly were robbers. The wealth of my country is to some significant extent built on stolen goods. But adding up my net personal gains, and weighing them against the social costs, I think that I'm a net loser from the institution of theft. I'd rather have been born in a world where stealing had not so much as been imagined.

Likewise slavery. Likewise racism. I didn't and don't benefit from it.

[ 28. July 2016, 12:27: Message edited by: Eliab ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Part of the problem for me is that people are very happy to claim even tangential things as benefits white people have gained from slavery, while not accepting that black people have also benefitted from them.
Once again; black people do not benefit equally. Laws and practices were developed to specifically exclude them from doing so. More pronounced in the US, but not exclusive to them.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
apparently the myth of the benevolent slaveholder runs deep: plantation tour guide speaks out
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Part of the problem for me is that people are very happy to claim even tangential things as benefits white people have gained from slavery, while not accepting that black people have also benefitted from them.
Once again; black people do not benefit equally. Laws and practices were developed to specifically exclude them from doing so. More pronounced in the US, but not exclusive to them.
NOBODY benefits equally. Some have more, others have less.

To repeat what I said before: it's not as simple as saying white people have benefitted and black people haven't. There's a whole host of factors at play, and everyone in America, Britain, etc. has benefitted. I'll grant you that some have benefitted more and others less, but race is only one factor among many in determining who falls into which category, and any discussion about how to make our current society fairer that uses slavery to justify a starting point of "white = oppressor, black = victim" is missing several points.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Part of the problem for me is that people are very happy to claim even tangential things as benefits white people have gained from slavery, while not accepting that black people have also benefitted from them.
Once again; black people do not benefit equally. Laws and practices were developed to specifically exclude them from doing so. More pronounced in the US, but not exclusive to them.
NOBODY benefits equally. Some have more, others have less.

To repeat what I said before: it's not as simple as saying white people have benefitted and black people haven't. There's a whole host of factors at play, and everyone in America, Britain, etc. has benefitted. I'll grant you that some have benefitted more and others less, but race is only one factor among many in determining who falls into which category, and any discussion about how to make our current society fairer that uses slavery to justify a starting point of "white = oppressor, black = victim" is missing several points.
I understand that you think that what you are saying is reasonable, but it is also bullshit.
No one is saying that only black people have any disadvantage or that race is the only disadvantage one can have. What is being said is that being black is an intensifier to every other disadvantage. Take Stephen Frye. Would anyone doubt that he is British? Or even, English, the most quintessential element of Britishness. And yet one side of his family has only been in the UK since the mid-20 Century and the other for barely 200 years.
Many Brits of Afro-Carib descent have a UK white parent, some of whose families have been on the bloody island for more than a thousand years. Who do you think is considered more British? Who do you think, everything else being equal, will have more disadvantage? This, in countries built on brown backs, is what we are discussing.
"Wah, everybody suffers" is willfully ignorant at best.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Part of the problem for me is that people are very happy to claim even tangential things as benefits white people have gained from slavery, while not accepting that black people have also benefitted from them.
Once again; black people do not benefit equally. Laws and practices were developed to specifically exclude them from doing so. More pronounced in the US, but not exclusive to them.
NOBODY benefits equally. Some have more, others have less.

To repeat what I said before: it's not as simple as saying white people have benefitted and black people haven't. There's a whole host of factors at play, and everyone in America, Britain, etc. has benefitted. I'll grant you that some have benefitted more and others less, but race is only one factor among many in determining who falls into which category, and any discussion about how to make our current society fairer that uses slavery to justify a starting point of "white = oppressor, black = victim" is missing several points.
I think the problem is that race frequently impacts on and even overrides class (which is probably what you're hinting at). For people of colour, it's not straightforward to separate the two.

For example, in the Americas, middle class black people are frequently those who come from relatively light-skinned (i.e. noticeably mixed) families. This is not a coincidence. Yes, there's less 'shadism' now (although the canny can still spot it), but it has left its mark.

Black people are not 'victims', destined to be blown about by the vagaries of life. But for them, in a 'white' society, success is far less likely to be down to 'social capital' inherited smoothly from one generation to another. Even black children with qualifications and from middle class families may find themselves (as some research shows) less successful at 'getting on' than their white middle class counterparts. Skin colour can still be an unspoken factor in social acceptance, and career progress.

There are indeed internal barriers which seriously need to be addressed (and every black parent ought to address them explicitly as they raise their children) but the point is that those internal barriers, like the external ones, come from somewhere. They have currency for historical reasons.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one is saying that only black people have any disadvantage or that race is the only disadvantage one can have.
Could have fooled me.

quote:
What is being said is that being black is an intensifier to every other disadvantage.
All disadvantages intensify each other.

quote:
Who do you think is considered more British?
By whom?

quote:
Who do you think, everything else being equal, will have more disadvantage?
"Everything else being equal", you could say the same for any disadvantage. That's what "everything else being equal" means.

[edited coz iPads are hard to type UBB code on]

[ 28. July 2016, 21:27: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one is saying that only black people have any disadvantage or that race is the only disadvantage one can have.
Could have fooled me.
The deception you feel may come from a more proximate source than you imagine.

quote:

quote:
What is being said is that being black is an intensifier to every other disadvantage.
All disadvantages intensify each other.
I've enough interaction with you to refuse to believe you as stupid as this statement is.
If all things are the same, save race, the darker skinned person will face greater adversity.
quote:

quote:
Who do you think is considered more British?
By whom?
I've never seen, nor heard of, a white, UK born person being told to "go back where they came from" or being called a "bloody foreigner" just on the basis of appearance. Definitely happens to tan, brown and black UK born.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
The accidental murder of some Jews while others escaped?
No, the very deliberate (certainly after the 1942 Wannsee Coference, at any rate) attempt to murder all Jews, while others escaped, some as a result of accidents of luck.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
You don't think that my description of slavery as an "obscenity" might just possibly have implied as much?

Not when you keep saying that people are better off because it happened.
The fact that the African-American descendants of transported slaves are generally better off than the descendants of those who were not transported does not make one iota of difference to the fact that the original slave trade was obscene.

You are clutching at straws.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
What's my gain from robbery in society as a whole?...

Likewise slavery. Likewise racism. I didn't and don't benefit from it.
Imagine that the robbery was committed by one group on another group in a sustained and systematic manner. And that I bear an external mark which indicates some relationship with the group that were robbed. And that this external mark continues to be a stigmatizing sign and to disadvantage me.

How can someone in the group that is not stigmatized say there is no benefit to them? I don't know how many jobs I've missed out on because of colour and you don't know which you have got because of colour. But the law of averages says there have been some. We could say the same about police stops, friendships, access to social groupings. You might not personally be responsible for any racism, there may be no need to feel guilt or any particular emotion, but to deny the benefits of privilege seems unsustainable to me.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
The accidental murder of some Jews while others escaped?
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
No, the very deliberate (certainly after the 1942 Wannsee Coference, at any rate) attempt to murder all Jews, while others escaped, some as a result of accidents of luck.
That's certainly more carefully worded than "...an accidental process whereby some Africans were transported and others were not".

[ 29. July 2016, 06:51: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I think what some of us are objecting to is the sleight of hand which says that if a number of disparate events happen sequentially, the first bad and a least some of the subsequent good, it is possible to claim that the persons concerned are beneficiaries of the first event. They are not. They are beneficiaries of the subsequent events.
The main difficulty here is establishing clear cause-and-effect relationships. Which events were caused by slavery and which would have happened anyway ?

One approach is cross-sectional comparison. If we"re saying that race-based slavery is something unique to the USA, then things that are common between the USA and other countries cannot have been caused by slavery.

So for example any likeness between Ferguson-style policing and policing in other countries is not an effect of slavery.

The other difficulty seems to me to be confusion between benefiting from an event - assessed by a comparison against counterfactual which has no moral implications - and choosing to collude in or being an accessory to an event, which takes upon oneself some of the moral responsibility for that event.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I understand that in law the liability for damages is assessed partly in terms of foreseeablity.

For instance if you make a bicycle with brakes that don't work and I go into a truck then that is foreseeable and you are liable for my injuries. If on the other hand the accident delays my travel and I end up missing a train and being mugged hanging the station looking for another train then that isn't foreseeable and it doesn't count for assessing damages.

Maybe we should attach a similar concept to benefits, particularly at a population level. Chaos theory applied to social science presumably leads to all manner of unpredictable unassessable consequences, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the foreseeable consequences.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I think what some of us are objecting to is the sleight of hand which says that if a number of disparate events happen sequentially, the first bad and a least some of the subsequent good, it is possible to claim that the persons concerned are beneficiaries of the first event. They are not. They are beneficiaries of the subsequent events.
The main difficulty here is establishing clear cause-and-effect relationships. Which events were caused by slavery and which would have happened anyway ?

One approach is cross-sectional comparison. If we"re saying that race-based slavery is something unique to the USA, then things that are common between the USA and other countries cannot have been caused by slavery.
Race-based slavery happened throughout the Americas, not just the USA, and one can see racial, social and cultural commonalities in all of those societies - certainly as far as the descendants of slaves are concerned.

There are also differences, naturally, depending on how slavery was implemented, whether there were large numbers of white settlers and/or indigenous inhabitants, the laws governing the interaction between black and white, the religions involved, etc.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:

quote:
What is being said is that being black is an intensifier to every other disadvantage.
All disadvantages intensify each other.
I've enough interaction with you to refuse to believe you as stupid as this statement is.
If all things are the same, save race, the darker skinned person will face greater adversity.
That is true. But as I said before: "everything else being equal", you could say the same for any disadvantage. That's what "everything else being equal" means.

If all things are the same, save wealth, the poorer person will face greater adversity.

If all things are the same, save gender, the woman will face greater adversity.

If all things are the same, save social class, the lower-class person will face greater adversity.

I could go on, but you get the point. Do you disagree with any of those statements? If not, then what exactly is so stupid about my original statement?

quote:
quote:

quote:
Who do you think is considered more British?
By whom?
I've never seen, nor heard of, a white, UK born person being told to "go back where they came from" or being called a "bloody foreigner" just on the basis of appearance. Definitely happens to tan, brown and black UK born.
So your answer to "by whom" is "racists"? I can't argue against that, but I thought you were making a more general point about Britishness.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I understand that in law the liability for damages is assessed partly in terms of foreseeablity.

For instance if you make a bicycle with brakes that don't work and I go into a truck then that is foreseeable and you are liable for my injuries. If on the other hand the accident delays my travel and I end up missing a train and being mugged hanging the station looking for another train then that isn't foreseeable and it doesn't count for assessing damages.

Maybe we should attach a similar concept to benefits, particularly at a population level. Chaos theory applied to social science presumably leads to all manner of unpredictable unassessable consequences, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the foreseeable consequences.
Yes, that's a fair analogy and the underlying principles of that - the sheer remoteness of the loss from the first person's fault - is one of the reasons why it is difficult to identify what the cost of the slave trade has been to remote descendants of slaves alive now. There are similar legal principles around the involvement of a new cause of loss, a new act intervening in the sequence of events which reduces or overwhelms the extent to which the person initially responsible for the first wrongful act can fairly be held responsible for all events which follow. In 200+ years a lot of subsequent events interfere with the sequence of events.

This is one reason why it is relatively uncontentious for Germany to agree to pay compensation to individual victims of the Holocaust and their immediate next of kin, but raises many issues of fairness and justice for modern day Portugal to be asked to compensate modern day Brazilians for the wickedness inflicted on Africans trafficked from the Kingdom of Kongo in the sixteenth century to a place that later became Brazil.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
...and the underlying principles of that - the sheer remoteness of the loss from the first person's fault - is one of the reasons why it is difficult to identify what the cost of the slave trade has been to remote descendants of slaves alive now.
I don't think remoteness is the principle, rather foreseeability is. Although there's a correlation something could be very remote but foreseeable (i.e. the painting your great-grandfather stole from my great-grandfather is still in your possession - remote but foreseeable) or very proximate but not foreseeable (e.g. the day after the painting was stolen my great-grandfather's wife flew into a rage at his carelessness and divorced him).

Likewise if you take human labour worth billions of dollars away from a nation it is entirely foreseeable that there is a loss. The difficulty here though becomes identifying what the nation states involved are, who the most deserving population might be and who the complicit parties are.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

I could go on, but you get the point. Do you disagree with any of those statements? If not, then what exactly is so stupid about my original statement?
As hard as conservatives are trying to make it, the possibility of changing one's level of wealth exists. Gender does come closer, but that is changing rapidly.
Analogies are difficult and I must admit to being a bit nonplussed at the moment.
Assuming sincerity in your argument, I wish to express my point in the most edifying manner possible, but cannot at the moment. Frustration and incredulity cloud my mind.
One thing that does come to mind is the wage gap. White workers with the same qualifications will get better jobs, and receive better pay, than black people. Again, gender is the only thing that comes close, but black women will have less opportunity than white women.

quote:
So your answer to "by whom" is "racists"? I can't argue against that, but I thought you were making a more general point about Britishness.
I am. Well, perceived Britishness, anyway. NOt going to go into a definition of racism tangent. But there is also the near mythical people who dislike immigrants of any stripe. Children of white immigrants blend better than those of colour.
Type "Quintessential Briton" into a search engine and it is a long way to brown. Even for those who truly accept anyone born in the UK as British, melanin doesn't come to mind equally.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I've never seen, nor heard of, a white, UK born person being told to "go back where they came from" or being called a "bloody foreigner" just on the basis of appearance. Definitely happens to tan, brown and black UK born.
And then, on the other side of the pond, there's the whole birther movement... of which Trump was a ringleader.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I don't think remoteness is the principle, rather foreseeability is. Although there's a correlation something could be very remote but foreseeable (i.e. the painting your great-grandfather stole from my great-grandfather is still in your possession - remote but foreseeable) or very proximate but not foreseeable (e.g. the day after the painting was stolen my great-grandfather's wife flew into a rage at his carelessness and divorced him).

Likewise if you take human labour worth billions of dollars away from a nation it is entirely foreseeable that there is a loss. The difficulty here though becomes identifying what the nation states involved are, who the most deserving population might be and who the complicit parties are.
I don't think you can divorce remoteness from the equation though. Certainly if you take human labour with a value of billions of dollars away from one part of the world then in the following generation or two there will be a deficit in that place that can be directly attributed to the absence of that labour. Move on another ten generations though, with the intervening years affected by wars, famines, disease, migration and so forth, and it becomes much harder to see what current deficits affecting that place still flow from that original wrongful act.

And, as you say, even if you accept that some part of the deficits affecting that place now must necessarily still be attributable to that wrong, albeit that you can't really measure it, what do you do about that? Who is responsible now for these ancient wrongs? Who should be recompensed? How should that be calculated?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:
...Move on another ten generations though, with the intervening years affected by wars, famines, disease, migration and so forth, and it becomes much harder to see what current deficits affecting that place still flow from that original wrongful act.
Slavery in the US ended in 1865. That's 6 generations. Difficult to know where to draw the line, but with the stolen painting example how many generations down would you say the robber's family don't have to give it back?

This is a question for all those artifacts in British museums from Egypt, Greece, South America and all over the world. Should they be returned or was it too long ago and possession has been transferred?

It's quite a perverse incentive for just kicking the discussion along really.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Gender does come closer, but that is changing rapidly.
Race is changing too. Not as quickly as I'd like, and with further to go, but it is changing.

quote:
Analogies are difficult and I must admit to being a bit nonplussed at the moment.
Assuming sincerity in your argument, I wish to express my point in the most edifying manner possible, but cannot at the moment. Frustration and incredulity cloud my mind.
For one thing, I'm not using analogies. Nor, for that matter, am I disagreeing with you that race is still, despite the best efforts of decent human beings, a disadvantage. I'm just disagreeing with the suggestion that race is such a disadvantage that it always outweighs any other advantage/disadvantage someone may have.

quote:
One thing that does come to mind is the wage gap. White workers with the same qualifications will get better jobs, and receive better pay, than black people. Again, gender is the only thing that comes close, but black women will have less opportunity than white women.
Do you think you're disagreeing with anything I've written here?

quote:
I am. Well, perceived Britishness, anyway. NOt going to go into a definition of racism tangent. But there is also the near mythical people who dislike immigrants of any stripe. Children of white immigrants blend better than those of colour.
Type "Quintessential Briton" into a search engine and it is a long way to brown. Even for those who truly accept anyone born in the UK as British, melanin doesn't come to mind equally.
Speaking only for myself, I could make a pretty long list of the traits that make a "quintessential Briton" before skin colour featured at all. If it featured at all.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Love of cricket*, beer and chicken tikka masala seem to be the key boxes to tick.

* need to support the right side though.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Slavery in the US ended in 1865. That's 6 generations. Difficult to know where to draw the line, but with the stolen painting example how many generations down would you say the robber's family don't have to give it back?

This is a question for all those artifacts in British museums from Egypt, Greece, South America and all over the world. Should they be returned or was it too long ago and possession has been transferred?

It's quite a perverse incentive for just kicking the discussion along really.
We were talking about the deficit in Africa arising from the abduction of the slaves, which stopped in 1807. A large number of those taken as slaves had been trafficked across the Atlantic as much as 200 years earlier than that.

The stolen painting is a poor analogy for these purposes. Even 20 generations later it may still be able to be returned as recompense if a rightful heir could be identified.

It's not really a question of whether the wrong was done 2 generations ago or 10. What is relevant is whether you can do anything about it, and in most circumstances (other than those involving a specific identifiable stolen item that isn't perishable) the practicality of putting right that wrong diminishes over time.

In the case we are considering here, nobody is arguing that the Atlantic slave trade was anything other than a shocking crime, an obscenity. The guilt of those who did this is accepted without quibble. But aside from acknowledging this, what in practice can you do about it which doesn't involve perpetrating modern injustices?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I am. Well, perceived Britishness, anyway. NOt going to go into a definition of racism tangent. But there is also the near mythical people who dislike immigrants of any stripe. Children of white immigrants blend better than those of colour.
Type "Quintessential Briton" into a search engine and it is a long way to brown. Even for those who truly accept anyone born in the UK as British, melanin doesn't come to mind equally.
This interview [warning: video auto-play] seems a good illustration of this phenomenon.

Longer, written analysis here.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
One thing at a time. My point was to say that remoteness by itself wasn't an issue here. I agree there are some practical difficulties to address, but first off is the desirability of doing something about it.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
I think the practical difficulties is what is hampering progress in the discussion of race and privilege. Because, consciously or unconsciously when we start talking about the benefits white Americans or Europeans still receive from past slavery our minds immediately leap ahead (as we've seen on this thread) to the question "how could we ever repay such a debt/right such a wrong?" But the answer is too daunting to consider, but so is the notion of leaving the debt unpaid. So we rationalize it away because to do otherwise is far too uncomfortable
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
How can someone in the group that is not stigmatized say there is no benefit to them?
I'm trying to approach this with caution because "You are arguing with mdijon about race" is really very high up on my personal list headed "Signs that you are probably wrong", but I honestly don't get that.

Unless you're starting from the assumption that we begin life as personal rivals, how do I benefit from you being stigmatised? I like a lot more people than I hate, so having a characteristic that functions as an entirely arbitrary social disadvantage is going to hurt more people who I might be persuaded to care about than it will people who might become my enemies. Unless and until life brings us into direct conflict, I find it very easy to wish you well and desire your prosperity. I gain nothing from your ambitions being frustrated until I have a rational cause to dislike you.

So I can see the disadvantage to you from racial prejudice. I completely fail to see the benefit to me.

quote:
I don't know how many jobs I've missed out on because of colour and you don't know which you have got because of colour. But the law of averages says there have been some. We could say the same about police stops, friendships, access to social groupings. You might not personally be responsible for any racism, there may be no need to feel guilt or any particular emotion, but to deny the benefits of privilege seems unsustainable to me.
Trying to unpick that a bit, yes, OK, if I got a job because racial prejudice helped clear the field, then that is an advantage I got from racism. I'm not arguing with that.

But that's only half of the balance sheet. The rest of your post gives the other side. There are, from a quick google, about 2 million people in Britain (2011 census) identifying as "Black". Is it good for me that 2 million of the citizens of my country aren't given a fair scope to develop their talents? Obviously not. That will make my country less prosperous. I could easily be selfish enough to want every transaction involving me to be grossly unjust in my favour, but I want every other employment decision in the world to be fair, because it benefits me when the people I deal with are as competent as possible.

Is it good for me that 2 million of my neighbours get harassed by the police and consequently, many of them will view the police with suspicion? No. That clearly makes me less safe. I want the police to be impartial, and (deservedly) trusted.

Is it good for me that 2 million Britons are discouraged from socialising with me, are tempted to view me as at least a potential racist and adversary, and are people whom I might be tempted to see as marginalised, and therefore threatening? No. That's quite blatantly a shit way to organise a society.

Obviously it would be daft for me to claim that I'm as much of a victim of racism as some who could from personal experience multiple that list of disadvantages many times, but nonetheless it is true that racism works overall to my disadvantage. I don't even need to add that it's morally wrong. I can be as self-interested as all hell, and racism still acts against my best interests as a comfortable middle-class white guy. Therefore it probably works against everyone's best interests.


When talking about benefits, are we giving different answers to the "Compared to what?" question?

I'd agree, of course that in a racist society, whites will be "better off", considered as a class, compared to notionally-equivalent-in-all-other-respects blacks. But it is also true, that whites in a racist society are as a class "worse off" compared to white (or black, because it wouldn't matter) people in a notionally-equivalent-in-all-other-respects non-racist society. Racism hurts me compared to non-racism. It hurts other people much worse, but that is not enough to make it an net benefit to me.

In that sense, it's like any other targeted disadvantage. Afflictions like cervical cancer, sickle-cell anaemia, and (in the UK at least) HIV disproportionately affect certain demographic groups, which I happen not to be in. I have the advantage, compared to those groups, of a much reduced risk of those conditions. But its not really an "advantage" in absolute terms. I'd much rather those conditions didn't exist. It is much more likely - overwhelmingly so - that they will hurt people I care about, and that they will damage my society, than that I will ever be a net beneficiary of them. Clearly I'm not a "victim" of any of those illnesses in anything like the same way as someone who actually has the condition, but they still, overall, make me worse off than I would be in a world in which they had been completely cured.

Racism's like that, isn't it? Even though I'm in the group least hurt by it, it's still bad for me, and it would still be in my selfish best interests to eradicate it if I could.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
The problem with my argument Eliab is that you are just too far gone in enlightened self-interest. If one is aware as much of the indirect harm to one's own existence as a result of dysfunctionality in society then I think that clinches it and there is little to be gained by looking at the direct benefits.

However the indirect benefits of a non-racist society are much harder to quantify than the direct benefits of the privileged group. In a zero-sum world there are x jobs available and therefore white applicants have a benefit as a result of racism. Arguably a non-racist society would have everyone richer and, as you say, the comparison should be whites in non-racist vs whites in racist society.

I'm sure I remember reading that some in the American North argued slavery was detrimental to society in producing a work-force orientated around unskilled, untrained and oppressed workers with violent oppression as a primary output of the more "skilled" workers. A society with waged workers with the motivation to progress was a healthier model. Hence the prediction was that the North would industrialize and develop but the South would stagnate.

I certainly want to believe all that about the indirect effects, but it is very hard to prove and even harder to quantify. Whereas the direct effects are more tangible and easier to describe.

A more complete statement of the problem might be to say that a member of the privileged group benefits in the here-and-now zero-sum world, albeit at the expense of being in a dysfunctional and impoverished society which, the more enlightened they are, eclipses any selfish zero-sum benefit.

It's a tricky point to balance though, especially when talk to a member of the discriminated-against group in direct response to a statement regarding the direct benefits. It doesn't really fit in 140 characters.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I'm sure I remember reading that some in the American North argued slavery was detrimental to society in producing a work-force orientated around unskilled, untrained and oppressed workers with violent oppression as a primary output of the more "skilled" workers. A society with waged workers with the motivation to progress was a healthier model. Hence the prediction was that the North would industrialize and develop but the South would stagnate.

I certainly want to believe all that about the indirect effects, but it is very hard to prove and even harder to quantify. Whereas the direct effects are more tangible and easier to describe.

A more complete statement of the problem might be to say that a member of the privileged group benefits in the here-and-now zero-sum world, albeit at the expense of being in a dysfunctional and impoverished society which, the more enlightened they are, eclipses any selfish zero-sum benefit.
David Chappell gives an extraordinarily well researched and documented exploration of American history from the time of slavery thru Jim Crow in his book A Stone of Hope.

Chappell's interest is more in social change-- how did social change occur and why-- more than economics, but the economic aspect of it is obviously a factor so gets significant attention in this highly detailed book.

One of the interesting things he notes, along the lines of what you suggest, is that slavery and Jim Crow were quite detrimental to poor whites who were competing with slaves/lowly paid blacks for low-wage jobs. It was advantageous to upper-class whites, obviously especially landowners/ slaveowners, some of whom were able to become fabulously wealthy.

Even more interesting, perhaps, was his observation that defense of slavery/Jim Crow/discrimination was even stronger among poor whites, despite the fact that it was contrary to their economic interests, than it was among the wealthy whites who directly benefitted from these systems that suppressed wages of both blacks and whites. Chappell observed that there is a psychological motive at play where humans like to feel they have the edge up on someone. Being the "2nd lowest" instead of lumped in with the lowest disadvantaged group in the south was of greater psychological benefit to poor whites than the economic benefit of joining with blacks to raise all wages.

Arguably, I think you can see this dynamic still at play today among certain segments of American voters-- particularly Trump supporters.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It was advantageous to upper-class whites, obviously especially landowners/ slaveowners, some of whom were able to become fabulously wealthy
That does sound like a very similar argument to the one I was trying to reach for. One could extend further with the point that probably only a few were that fabulously wealthy and likely would have been fabulously wealthy even in a alternative system with waged workers - but perhaps without the surety that their children's children would remain on top of the pile in a quasi-feudal society.


quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
.....his observation that defense of slavery/Jim Crow/discrimination was even stronger among poor whites, despite the fact that it was contrary to their economic interests
That does sound familiar. We also saw during the introduction of Obama-care that vociferous opposition and Obama-Hitler posters were often carried by people who likely couldn't afford health insurance and could have benefited most from Obama-care.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It was advantageous to upper-class whites, obviously especially landowners/ slaveowners, some of whom were able to become fabulously wealthy
That does sound like a very similar argument to the one I was trying to reach for. One could extend further with the point that probably only a few were that fabulously wealthy and likely would have been fabulously wealthy even in a alternative system with waged workers - but perhaps without the surety that their children's children would remain on top of the pile in a quasi-feudal society.
In UK society, those families with land and properties in the UK would have remained wealthy whether or not they were involved in the slave trade. Some younger sons of those families and slave traders could have built fortunes on the slave trade. It is very difficult to disentangle what was built with the proceeds of slavery at this distance.

It's not just Liverpool, but Bristol too is built on the proceeds of the slave trade. Some of the West Country estates were built by slave traders. One of the houses I know has the heads of slaves on the top of the gateposts instead of the more traditional pineapples or other symbols. The original house has gone; all that remains is the home farm, now in other hands.

A local house to here, near London, was an estate as given to one of William the Conqueror's men that was absorbed into the local monastic lands. In Tudor times it was given to Henry VIII as part of the wheeler dealing as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. QEI gave it to a royal favourite and it was inherited by his daughter. It fell into disrepair and was sold on to someone who made his money from slavery and he rebuilt a Georgian pile on the same estate grounds in a slightly different position. It was then bought by a family who made their money in the railways who extended in Victorian excess before being burned down in Edwardian times and sitting as a ruin ever since.

Very difficult to split out how much benefit from slavery there.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
A project at UCL several years ago found that when slavery was finally abolished in the British Caribbean, a large amount of compensation was paid to British people who had inherited slaves. Many recipients were not the fabulously wealthy, but members of the gentry and middle classes. A large number were widows.

This research is just one way of engaging with the question of who benefited from the British trade in slaves.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
In a zero-sum world there are x jobs available and therefore white applicants have a benefit as a result of racism.
The short-term zero-sum argument is more often heard in terms of "immigrants are taking our jobs" - not an argument I'd expect to hear from your good self.

Seems to me that yes you probably can point at jobs that would have gone to a black person if not for racism and jobs that would have gone to an indigenous person if not for immigrants. But that in both cases the longer-term impact is the other way - that society gains from immigration and loses from racism.

But it's not clear to me that racism as such is a legacy of slavery. Arguably, that legacy is the extent to which racism is worse in societies which had slavery (at whatever point in history you want to take as a reference point) than in comparable societies which did not.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pottage:

The stolen painting is a poor analogy for these purposes. Even 20 generations later it may still be able to be returned as recompense if a rightful heir could be identified.
Seems to me that the return of a stolen painting

- is restitution rather than compensation. Not sure how much of what one can say about one carries over to the other, but they're not quite the same thing

- requires the item to be identifiable. Even if great-great-grandfather left a written confession to having stolen a print of "Girl with a pearl earring", no-one is going to "return" anything unless there's some evidence as to whether it's the one on your wall or the one on your cousin's wall that was previously stolen.

-should be to the estate of the long-deceased owner and thence to the nearest living relative rather than trying to construct an alternate history in which it wasn't stolen. Such a history might conclude, for example, that in the absence of the theft the painting would have been destroyed when the house burned down.

- needs to be in response to new information (rather than seeking to overturn a historic legal decision on any other grounds). I don't know the legal details, but it seems to me that when someone dies, the process of law is supposed to settle all the debts of the estate and confirm that the heirs have good title to the inheritance that remains. If no-one at that time knew that "the contents of the house" included a stolen painting, then that's new information and a reason to revisit the question of who is the rightful owner. If on the other hand the original owner knew perfectly well that the deceased had borrowed a painting of his and raised no objection to it being included in the estate, then it's not clear that the heirs of the original owner have any right to reopen the question (perhaps in the knowledge that it has subsequently become valuable).
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
In UK society, those families with land and properties in the UK would have remained wealthy whether or not they were involved in the slave trade.
Benefit from the slave trade does not just reside in the people directly involved. The overall wealth of the nation was fed by slavery and the dependent and beneficiary industries as well. The sun that wasn't setting shown on many exploited backs. That the descendants who benefit would exclude the descendants of the exploited is a sad state.
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
A project at UCL several years ago found that when slavery was finally abolished in the British Caribbean, a large amount of compensation was paid to British people who had inherited slaves. Many recipients were not the fabulously wealthy, but members of the gentry and middle classes. A large number were widows.

This research is just one way of engaging with the question of who benefited from the British trade in slaves.
ISTM, compensation is too limited a window to see much. The benefit of slavery and other exploitation goes far beyond those who participated directly.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Seems to me that yes you probably can point at jobs that would have gone to a black person if not for racism and jobs that would have gone to an indigenous person if not for immigrants. But that in both cases the longer-term impact is the other way - that society gains from immigration and loses from racism.
That is very close to what I did argue. Some individuals are more interested in their own short-term gain than in society and vice versa.

Between the immigrant vs indigenous and racist benefit vs non-benefit arguments there is one crucial difference. In the first the desired output is to prevent immigration. In the latter the desired output is to make a privileged group aware of it's privilege.

If the argument is followed through in the first case then society becomes poorer for the sake of preserving jobs for the locals. That is a choice that societies can make.

In the latter the privileged group might become aware of the harm it is doing to society by hanging on to privilege.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
But it's not clear to me that racism as such is a legacy of slavery.
Of course it isn't clear that it is *a* legacy as in an a=>b model. However I think it should be considered straightforward to argue that the legacy of slavery is a dehumanising and stigmatizing of slaves and ex-slaves and those who look like ex-slaves and their offspring.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
lilBuddha, the benefits to the UK and other countries from using the resources and manpower of the developing world are much wider than slavery. It's one of the problems of cheap anything, something somewhere has been abused: any or all of the land, the people or the animals involved in the production of those goods. But that is a continuing ill.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
lilBuddha, the benefits to the UK and other countries from using the resources and manpower of the developing world are much wider than slavery.
That is a point I have been making at various points on this thread. But the main point I was making in this exchange is that tracing the benefit to slave owners is too limited. The country as a whole benefits from such a massive influx of cash. Though, then as now, the majority of that benefit resides with the rich.
quote:

It's one of the problems of cheap anything, something somewhere has been abused: any or all of the land, the people or the animals involved in the production of those goods. But that is a continuing ill.
The thing that sickens me is that those we exploit could be paid a decent wage and work in safe conditions and we could [i]still[i/] have cheap goods and the importers and manufacturers make healthy profit.
Greed and apathy.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
it should be considered straightforward to argue that the legacy of slavery is a dehumanising and stigmatizing of slaves and ex-slaves and those who look like ex-slaves and their offspring.
Sounds plausible. Are you suggesting that this stigmatizing happened primarily in the countries that had slaves ? Or that the whole world saw the US first having black slaves and then becoming the world's most powerful country so that the stigma is universal ?
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
There's a middlish option as well.
Stigma happening in countries that had slaves (even if not on mainland). Then as these countries become powerful in other countries they apply the stigma.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
About eight years ago I was astonished to hear or read an American saying of Obama that he was advantaged as a black man by not having the taint of slavery.

And a Caribbean student doing teaching practice at the school I taught in revealed that African immigrants looked down on the Caribbeans because they had been slaves.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
it should be considered straightforward to argue that the legacy of slavery is a dehumanising and stigmatizing of slaves and ex-slaves and those who look like ex-slaves and their offspring.
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Sounds plausible. Are you suggesting that this stigmatizing happened primarily in the countries that had slaves ? Or that the whole world saw the US first having black slaves and then becoming the world's most powerful country so that the stigma is universal ?
I would say inevitable rather than simply plausible within the countries that engaged in a racially-based slave trade, and plausible for the wider world. Even in parts of Africa there remains a stigma surrounding descendants of slaves where these can be defined as a separate ethnic group.

In Liberia there was a curious circle of history where the freed African-American slaves established dominance over Liberian African populations, and in East Africa among the mission societies the freed slaves were regarded as superior in status to the local African population. (Today they are rather stigmatized, although that is fading).
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
ISTM, compensation is too limited a window to see much. The benefit of slavery and other exploitation goes far beyond those who participated directly.
Certainly. But I said it was just one way of looking at it.

I was also thinking of Curiosity killed...'s previous post, in which he referred to the difficulty of establishing exactly how much individuals and families benefited financially from slavery. The research I linked to showed that in some cases this can actually be proven, at least at the point of abolition.

Out of interest, were slave owners in the USA compensated upon the abolition of slavery there?

With regard to another of Curiosity's points, it should also be said that a number of trading families and businesses in Birmingham and wider the West Midlands also gained financial advantages as a result of the slave trade. The metal trades benefited especially, e.g. guns, nails, shackles, manillas (a form of currency).

Lloyd's Bank was set up in Birmingham as a result of finances gained in such trades. Ironically, the Lloyd family were Quakers, as were a number of other families that made their living from selling potentially destructive metalware. The Galtons, for example, made guns designed for the West African market.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Compensation for slave owners was being discussed in the US government just before the civil war. I believe Lincoln was in favour, but plans were overtaken by events (i.e. secession).

Slave owners were compensated in British colonies in East Africa in the early 1800s, although the implementation was a bit fraught with the need to prove current enslavement to avoid being scammed.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
With regard to another of Curiosity's points, it should also be said that a number of trading families and businesses in Birmingham and wider the West Midlands also gained financial advantages as a result of the slave trade. The metal trades benefited especially, e.g. guns, nails, shackles, manillas (a form of currency).

Lloyd's Bank was set up in Birmingham as a result of finances gained in such trades. Ironically, the Lloyd family were Quakers, as were a number of other families that made their living from selling potentially destructive metalware. The Galtons, for example, made guns designed for the West African market.
The connections between Taylor's and Lloyds Bank and the slave trade are fairly thin I think, unless you count the fact that a number of their first customers may by implication be assumed to have derived some unknown proportion of their income from supplying the trade. Members of the two families were abolitionists in fact.

Galton's involvement in the slave trade was significant, and caused tension with the Society of Friends from which I think he had to withdraw at least for a time. Birmingham supplied a lot of the guns and other ironware that were traded for slaves; Manchester much of the cloth. Other manufacturing centres also got in on the act - copper bracelets and trinkets were mass produced in Swansea for example.

It's certain that the slave trade contributed to the Industrial Revolution and to the development of the huge colonial trading enterprises of the north European countries. But it's easy to overstate that contribution. Throughout the period when the Atlantic slave trade was at its height it only ever represented a tiny proportion of Britain's overall export trade in manufactured goods for example. Even within the trade across the Atlantic (so disregarding the far larger and more profitable markets in Europe and Asia) more manufactured exports went directly to the North American colonies than ever went to West Africa.

http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/history/paper113/harley113.pdf
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
[QB]Out of interest, were slave owners in the USA compensated upon the abolition of slavery there?
Slaveowners in the District of Columbia were compensated for the emancipation of their slaves. I believe this is the only example of the federal government compensating individual slaveholders for a mass emancipation.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
But it's not clear to me that racism as such is a legacy of slavery.
There is at least a correlation between the rise of race as a category in Western thinking and the rise of the slave trade.
 
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :
 
IMO there is a necessary link between the slave trade and racism because of the Enlightenment. If all men (and women) are born equal and, therefore, enjoy equal rights then the only way the enlightened slave owners who wrote the US constitution could justify the practice was to deny that their slaves were fully human. Ditto democracies having colonies.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
I've often wondered why we still call it 'colonialisation' when a more honest term would be 'invasion and occupation'.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
And pillage of valuable products.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
IMO there is a necessary link between the slave trade and racism because of the Enlightenment. If all men (and women) are born equal and, therefore, enjoy equal rights then the only way the enlightened slave owners who wrote the US constitution could justify the practice was to deny that their slaves were fully human. Ditto democracies having colonies.
Similarly, Soong-Chan Rah for one suggests in The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Western Church from Cultural Captivity that racism is the product of Western slavery. Prior to Western slavery, you see more tribalism and nationalism, but not racism per se-- the suggestion that there is such a concept as "race" that creates different sub-groups of humans, and the quasi-scientific mythology that there's some genetic explanation for the superficial differences among races. Rah would agree with Kwsei that the concept of "race" was invented after the fact to justify the practice of Western race-based slavery.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
We all like to think of ourselves as good people.

This bit of common sense pop psychology goes a long way to explaining the link between slavery in the 17th-19th centuries and the persistent racism of today. The cruelty and injustice of such a system is readily apparent to even a casual observer, much more so to an active participant. Racism provides a reassuring cover story for all that. In other words, contrary to some assertions here earlier, people didn't own slaves because they were racists, people became racists because they owned slaves.

We can actually see this progression at work in American history. If we look at the slaveholders among the founding generation there is a significant amount of discomfort about slavery. Thomas Jefferson held that relations between master and slave involved "the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other" and that the institution was an affront to God. Patrick Henry held slavery to be "as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistant with the Bible and destructive to Liberty". Despite these beliefs, Jefferson never managed to free more than a handful of his many slaves. During the Revolutionary War Henry was responsible for organizing patrols in Virginia to prevent slaves from joining the British (who had promised freedom in exchange for military service). Henry also acquired slaves throughout his life and, to the best of my knowledge, never emancipated any of them.

So given that we all like to see ourselves as good people, something has to give in this tension between our self-perception and our participation in "lamentable Evil" (to borrow Henry's phrase). As Jefferson and Henry's biographies demonstrate voluntarily ending slavery was not usually seen as a viable option even by those who claimed to find it unjustifiable. So the perception of slavery as evil had to go.

Fast forward half a century and you find people like John Calhoun arguing that slavery is a positive good. And not just good for slave owners, but good for the slaves themselves.

quote:
Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.
(That sounds vaguely familiar.)

John Calhoun and his contemporaries were not worried about the morality of slavery in the way that Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, et al. were. For Calhoun the circle had been squared by positing those of African descent as incapable of liberty and needing white 'supervision' (scare quotes, not an actual Calhoun quote) to accomplish anything. So slaveholders of Calhoun's generation were able to see themselves as good people, especially compared to those abolitionists who, through either ignorance or deliberate cruelty, would sentence slaves to the rigors of freedom for which they were ill-suited.

Another couple of decades and we get Alexander Stephens calling Jefferson out in his "Cornerstone Speech":

quote:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This is essentially Calhoun again, but in plainer language and with less emphasis on benefits to the enslaved.

So looking at the historical record we see more or less exactly what we'd expect to see if racism is a product of slavery rather than its cause; a gradual increase of racism over time and a transition from a Linnean-type system of classification to the kind of herrenvolk white supremacy still causing problems today.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
The concept of characteristics being inherent in groups predates the Atlantic slave trade. Though it is not quite the same, so is often called proto-racism. The "scientific" classification of racism can indeed be directly associated with slavery and colonialism.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
About eight years ago I was astonished to hear or read an American saying of Obama that he was advantaged as a black man by not having the taint of slavery.

And a Caribbean student doing teaching practice at the school I taught in revealed that African immigrants looked down on the Caribbeans because they had been slaves.
One of the sad things about the Transatlantic trade is how it complicated and indeed poisoned the relationship between black people in Africa and in the Americas. If Africans sometimes look down on the diaspora as the descendants of slaves, the latter may look down on Africans as 'uncivilised' due to having had less prolonged interaction with the 'white man'. I should think all black intellectuals in the Americas have tried to address these issues at various times.

In the USA, to be black but without transported slave ancestors is still very useful; recent African immigrants and their children have statistically greater educational and financial success than black people who've been there for generations.

As for Obama, it's undeniable that he benefited from the cultural and educational capital of his white middle class maternal family. The challenge was that many African Americans consequently found it hard to see him as one of them at election time. He had to work hard at convincing them - which some saw as a long-term, calculated strategy. But you can see in 'Dreams from My Father' that the struggle for an identity was a preoccupation of his youth. Children born to the black descendants of slaves, especially if they were raised in a family or community of others like themselves, wouldn't have quite the same kind of struggle.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
We all like to think of ourselves as good people.
ISTM, this is not only behind contemporary racism, but the refusal to acknowledge contemporary disparity and inequitable treatment.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

In the USA, to be black but without transported slave ancestors is still very useful; recent African immigrants and their children have statistically greater educational and financial success than black people who've been there for generations.
They do not feel constrained by the same mold.
It demonstrates the fallacy many have regarding the effects of direct oppression.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
Originally posted by Croesos:

quote:
Fast forward half a century and you find people like John Calhoun arguing that slavery is a positive good. And not just good for slave owners, but good for the slaves themselves.

quote:

Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.
(That sounds vaguely familiar.)
This reminds me of the Conservative students at my university, who used to argue that the standard of living among blacks in Apartheid South Africa was better than it was for black Africans in many other countries.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
This reminds me of the Conservative students at my university, who used to argue that the standard of living among blacks in Apartheid South Africa was better than it was for black Africans in many other countries.
This argument used to really irk me.

I spent a summer in South Africa during apartheid after living in West Africa for a year.

I was surprised at how much worse the life was for blacks in South Africa.

Before that I had not really understood the magnitude of the difference.

I visited again last year and would say that the same still holds true.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
As for Obama, it's undeniable that he benefited from the cultural and educational capital of his white middle class maternal family. The challenge was that many African Americans consequently found it hard to see him as one of them at election time. He had to work hard at convincing them - which some saw as a long-term, calculated strategy.
[citation needed]

In his 2004 run for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama faced Alan Keyes, who had the supposed advantage of being an African-American descended from slaves. Obama was still able to get 92% of the African-American vote. This is pretty comparable to the 95% of the African American vote Obama received in 2008 and the 93% of the African American vote he received in 2012. If there's any evidence African-Americans have "found it hard to see [Barack Obama] as one of them at election time" I'm not aware of it. If anything I'd argue the reverse case, that despite Obama's ties to his "white middle class maternal family" it's white Americans who find it hard to see Obama as one of them. There are very few African-Americans who will maintain that Obama is secretly a Kenyan or a Muslim or some other category that inherently makes him "un-American" (i.e. not one of us). That seems like a largely white preoccupation.

[ 02. August 2016, 14:59: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
I'm well aware that almost all African Americans voted for Obama. But that wasn't to be taken for granted. As I said, he had to work to engage with the 'black issue', precisely because of his background. His grassroots campaign worked hard to boost the black vote in poorer areas rather than just assuming that those people would vote for him anyway.

You can find any number or Youtube videos and newspaper articles online that asked whether or not Obama was 'black enough' during the election campaign. This article outlines some of the race issues raised by both black and white Americans as Obama made his way to the White House.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I think Alan Keyes was one of the first public figures to voice loudly the argument that Obama wasn't a real African American. He was, curiously enough, a Republican politician in the running for a senate seat against Obama.

I see others also brought up the same issue during election and during the presidency and Rupert Murdoch was obviously very well placed to touch sensitively on the issue. But I don't know of any poll data showing that the issue was of widespread concern.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
I don't know how a poll could have formulated a meaningful question for that issue! It's probably more a topic for cultural research.

I see from googling that there have already been books written about this very issue. When he leaves office there are likely to be more.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I found some referenced here and a not very well considered one here.

So clearly it can be done.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

In his 2004 run for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama faced Alan Keyes, who had the supposed advantage of being an African-American descended from slaves.
Though you are disregarding Keyes sbizarre views alongside a bizarre set of verbal mannerisms.

quote:

If anything I'd argue the reverse case, that despite Obama's ties to his "white middle class maternal family" it's white Americans who find it hard to see Obama as one of them.
I'd agree with you, though it's really a different point to the one Svitlana was making. It speaks quite powerfully to what is seen as normative that Obama - who is biracial - is almost always referred to as black when his race is mentioned.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
CBS interview;

KROFT: Yet at some point, you decided that you were Black?

OBAMA: Well, I’m not sure I decided it. I think if you look African American in this society, you’re treated as an African American. And when you’re a child in particular that is how you begin to identify yourself. At least that’s what I felt comfortable identifying myself as.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

In his 2004 run for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama faced Alan Keyes, who had the supposed advantage of being an African-American descended from slaves.
Though you are disregarding Keyes' bizarre views alongside a bizarre set of verbal mannerisms.
Not at all. The fact that "Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy." should have been a race-neutral characteristic. In other words it should have been just as much a factor among the white voters of Illinois as among the black voters of Illinois. If Barack Obama's non-enslaved background was going to be some kind of electoral penalty with African-Americans, as SvitlanaV2 suggests, then we'd expect African-American voters to give a larger percentage of their vote to Keyes than their white fellow voters. What happened was the opposite. Keyes claimed 8% of the African-American vote and 31% of the white vote.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
CBS interview;

KROFT: Yet at some point, you decided that you were Black?

OBAMA: Well, I’m not sure I decided it. I think if you look African American in this society, you’re treated as an African American. And when you’re a child in particular that is how you begin to identify yourself. At least that’s what I felt comfortable identifying myself as.
Mixed race is a complicated thing. In America, the lighter the skin, the better the reception. To a point. But one is black as long as the colour shows. Mixed race doesn't really exist as a category. Not in the way one is treated by society in general. There are distinctions within cultural groups, but these are, IME, secondary. At least when the mix is white and something else.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Even in parts of Africa there remains a stigma surrounding descendants of slaves where these can be defined as a separate ethnic group.
From your experience, is there a qualitative difference between racism in the UK towards Afro-Caribbean people (where there is a history of plantation slavery) and racism towards other racial groups such as Pakistanis (where despite colonialism there wasn't actually slavery as such) ?

You see what I'm getting at. How much difference does the fact of slavery actually make ?
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If Barack Obama's non-enslaved background was going to be some kind of electoral penalty with African-Americans, as SvitlanaV2 suggests, then we'd expect African-American voters to give a larger percentage of their vote to Keyes than their white fellow voters. What happened was the opposite. Keyes claimed 8% of the African-American vote and 31% of the white vote.
But you're ignoring the politics. African-Americans vote Democrat by huge margins. Keyes was not only batshit crazy - he was a batshit-crazy Republican.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Croesos

I didn't say it was a 'penalty'. It was a challenge to be overcome. And it was overcome to the extent that Obama became more appealing than the alternatives.

Moreover, as the campaign progressed we learned more about Obama's engagement with African American issues. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright/Louis Farrakhan kerfuffles disturbed many commentators, more white ones than black, but they were proof that Obama had actually been deeply embedded in a struggling African American community, and had at the very least had attended an AA church and had spiritual advisors! All this showed that there was indeed more to Obama than the clean-cut do-gooder and Harvard old boy - as much as Africa Americans admired those aspects.

African Americans also knew that Obama had to appeal to white voters, and accepted his denunciation of both Wright and Farrakhan. I think they came to recognise the double-consciousness inherent in Obama's position, and appreciated his skill at managing that. I don't think any of the other black candidates were as adept at speaking to different constituencies. Of course, I'm not American, and don't know much about the other black candidates, so that's just the impression I got from the media during the campaign.

Finally, African Americans routinely vote Democrat, so that was a plus for Obama. His engaging personality was clearly also an advantage he had over his adversaries.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
. . . Harvard old boy . . . .

Of course, I'm not American . . . .
Sorry to chuckle, but when I read "Harvard old boy," I had thought "she is English, isn't she?" Then I got to the second quoted line. [Big Grin]

But seriously, I think your impressions are on track.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Is there a qualitative difference between racism in the UK towards Afro-Caribbean people (where there is a history of plantation slavery) and racism towards other racial groups such as Pakistanis (where despite colonialism there wasn't actually slavery as such) ?

You see what I'm getting at. How much difference does the fact of slavery actually make ?
Social studies indicate that British people have tended to differentiate between African Caribbean people and Asians from the Indian Sub-Continent.

Earlier in the 20th c. Pakistanis and Indians were often thought of as quiet, unobtrusive people. There seems to have been some admiration for the ancientness of Indian civilisation even while disapproving of Asian irrationality and barbarous religious practices (so-called).

Europeans have historically been more ambivalent towards African Caribbeans. The men in particular have been pathologised as violent, mentally backward, destructive and over-sexualised. The 'sus' laws were often focused on black men, not on Asians. Sometimes there's also been a sense that African Caribbeans are a people without a culture of their own, neither African nor European and hence confused about their identity; also, in the mid-late 20th c., noisily Christian in a secularising culture, and hopelessly Victorian in their attempts to raise their children....

Interestingly, for those who cared about such distinctions, Africans were viewed a little differently, as you can see in a novel from 1957, 'City of Spades'. There were fewer Africans in Britain at that time.

Nowadays, of course, the spotlight is generally off black Caribbean men (who are now often scattered among the white working classes, and outnumbered by Africans in any case) and on Asian Muslim men, whose cultural cohesiveness and close family structure are less admired than used to be the case during the era of multiculturalism. Times change....

(Refs may be available.)
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
there a qualitative difference between racism in the UK towards Afro-Caribbean people (where there is a history of plantation slavery) and racism towards other racial groups such as Pakistanis (where despite colonialism there wasn't actually slavery as such) ?
Yes, a huge one. The typical black stereotype is mentally deficient, strong and athletic and a good manual worker. The Pakistani is studious and an assiduous shopkeeper.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
You see what I'm getting at. How much difference does the fact of slavery actually make ?
No. It doesn't seem like a very reliable test. It seems very likely to me that racially-based slavery dependent on seeing a particular race as deficient and not deserving of human rights has a wider impact than the immediate historical event. And we observe ongoing racism in society. It seems like a smoking gun to me.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
we observe ongoing racism in society.
Indeed we do.

We also observe that children tend to go through a stage of development in which they will pick on, exclude and bully individuals who are different, whether in how they look (skin colour, height, weight) how they talk, how they dress. That's part of "fallen" human nature that has to be overcome by learned behaviours.

In northern Europe, it seems that some people are concerned over immigration. They feel that "their" country isn't what it used to be, that it's being "taken over" by foreigners who look, sound, smell, behave differently, who are not-us.

It seems to me that these two factors (and perhaps particularly their interaction?) are the roots of much of the racist behaviour that occurs - the discrimination in the workplace, the "hate crimes" directed at obviously-non-indigenous people, etc.

And that an alternate history in which transatlantic slavery didn't happen wouldn't change either the human nature or the concerns over immigration. So there would still be racism of the northern european variety.

My impression is that the situation in the US is a little different. That the country has historically welcomed migrants. And that although at the present time there may be concerns over immigration, these are focused more on the border with Mexico. Whereas much of the racist behaviour that occurs relates to a black underclass that is a direct legacy of slavery.

US-based Shipmates can doubtless tell me from their experience how inaccurate that perception is.

Accurate or not, it follows that I don't buy the idea of a simple causal connection between slavery and racism. Racism happens in other places in ways that are not obviously slavery-related. No smoking gun here.

But it may be that we're using "racism" in slightly different ways ?
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I don't buy the idea of a simple causal connection between slavery and racism. Racism happens in other places in ways that are not obviously slavery-related. No smoking gun here.

But it may be that we're using "racism" in slightly different ways ?
Well, the Transatlantic slave trade probably didn't influence how Dutchmen view Azerbaijanis, or how Tanzanians see Bangladeshis! But that's not what anyone is claiming.

The racism at issue here refers to how Europeans and people of European heritage (and other nations that have been influenced by European culture) have developed their attitudes towards people who are of African heritage.

European colonising ventures in general would have had a broader influence on racial attitudes, in the sense that asserting racial superiority became a prominent thing in Western culture, not simply racial difference. Indeed, the Victorians developed a hierarchy of different races (with the Irish lower on the scale than the Anglo-Saxons). The Transatlantic slave trade and the consequent European colonisation of Africa would certainly have fed into all of that.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Racism happens in other places in ways that are not obviously slavery-related.
You might as well say that lung cancer occurs in ways that are obviously not related to smoking, therefore you don't buy a simple causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

A culture treats black people as sub-humans that can be bought and sold and denied human rights for hundreds of years. After they stop black people are still treated badly.

No simple causal relationship will do here though if we can find other groups of people who are also treated badly?
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You might as well say that lung cancer occurs in ways that are obviously not related to smoking, therefore you don't buy a simple causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
It could well be that 150 years after effective government action to end smoking, all the lung cancer that then occurs will have causes other than smoking.

If by "racism" you mean Victorian ideas of racial superiority then that's a dead duck. Who believes that these days ?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
By racism I mean prejudice or discrimination. I think that's pretty standard.

I don't think the government has effectively ended it 150 years ago.

This is really very simple. For several hundred years several million people are kidnapped and enslaved. The justification is that they are black, and black people don't need human rights. Subsequently although slavery ends there is direct continuity in time and space with poor treatment of those same "sub-human" people.

Now granted you can end up with racism and prejudice against all sorts of different groups of people for all sorts of reasons, but it strikes me as rather desperate to not see a direct continuity in this case.

Hence my parallel with smoking. There might be no way of knowing that you weren't exposed to radiation unknowingly that caused your lung cancer, or have a genetic predisposition and were unknowingly switched at birth but in the presence of a 20-per-day 30 year smoking habit then despite all talk eschewing simplistic causal relationships I still bet it was the cigarettes that did it to you.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The racism at issue here refers to how Europeans and people of European heritage (and other nations that have been influenced by European culture) have developed their attitudes towards people who are of African heritage.
As with bullying, there are two sides to this issue.

Every society and culture has its own ingrained attitudes and tendencies towards people who are not of their society and culture. Some are open and welcoming, inclined to see visitors from elsewhere as good and special, others less so.

That is one half of the equation.

The other half of the equation is that every society and culture has its own reputation among other societies and cultures. They may be seen as admirable, dangerous, primitive, advanced, or in any number of other possible ways.

The worst is when a group that is not especially inclined to see others in a positive light interacts with a group that it regards as having a poor reputation. That is racism.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The worst is when a group that is not especially inclined to see others in a positive light interacts with a group that it regards as having a poor reputation. That is racism.
I'd have said the whole concept of a group having a poor reputation is racism.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

If by "racism" you mean Victorian ideas of racial superiority then that's a dead duck. Who believes that these days ?
We're not Victorians, but their world has influenced our world.

FWIW, it seems pretty obvious to me that some 'races' are still treated as somewhat lesser than others. There's the whole question of expectations, external and internal. And the USA in 2016 has a 'Black Lives Matter' movement, the very name of which suggests a persistent experience of inequality.

Whether black people should care so much about white perceptions is another question.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Being shot does focus the mind.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Mixed race is a complicated thing. In America, the lighter the skin, the better the reception. To a point. But one is black as long as the colour shows. Mixed race doesn't really exist as a category. Not in the way one is treated by society in general. There are distinctions within cultural groups, but these are, IME, secondary. At least when the mix is white and something else.
Thanks for saying this. Where I grew up the racial minority of note was indigenous people, North American Indians. I didn't understand that several of my classmates were considered "black" by anyone. It didn't code. Some were about as dark as Obama or Colin Powell (one of the USA generals). Who are about as dark as some of our Ukrainian people. Who were a secondary target of racism.

It was clear to me that the "us" included everyone who spoke English "properly" and without a native accent (meaning not like a NA Indian) or Ukrainian accent (Ukrainian means also Polish and people from the broad area between). The Ukrainian prejudice has largely ended due to assimilation. We're just getting around to addressing the indigenous racism, with another Royal Commission having been struck just this week (Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women).

One point is that the USA/UK memes of slavery and Africa don't apply everywhere. Though we get generally get the sense that many think they do.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The worst is when a group that is not especially inclined to see others in a positive light interacts with a group that it regards as having a poor reputation. That is racism.
I'd have said the whole concept of a group having a poor reputation is racism.
Excellent point. Agreed.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
Not that it is any excuse, but people today don't always appreciate the extreme nature of some of the cultural differences between population groups many centuries ago.

When they first encountered each other such radical differences, combined with the general ignorance and superstitious nature of people on all sides, were bound to inspire some negative results.

The real moral issue is not that so much racism ever developed, although it was certainly wrong. The real moral issue is that it persists today, when people should know better, and when the differences are comparatively insignificant.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
People should know better. Yes they should, but Brexit and Trump have taught us that they often do not.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:

This is really very simple. For several hundred years several million people are kidnapped and enslaved. The justification is that they are black, and black people don't need human rights.
That sounds like you're saying racism created slavery. I thought you were arguing the opposite - that slavery created racism ?

I can see an argument that many white people came to think of black people as slaves because all the black people they met were slaves. Because the black enslavers and the black people who had nothing to do with slavery tended to stay in Africa. Whilst many black slaves were transported to the Americas (and a few to Europe) where the white people were.

And that's a prejudice - a form of pre-judging. ("Oh look - there's a black man crossing the street. He's probably somebody's slave..."). So by your definition that's racism already.

From a situation where different races played different roles in society, it's not a big step to the idea that different races may have different roles in God's Plan for the world.

So I can see that you might think that intellectual racism - all those Victorian skull-measurers trying to find out the scientific cause for the
accepted superiority of the white race - got a big boost from the fact of slavery.

That just doesn't seem to relate very strongly to the motives behind acts of racism in contemporary Europe.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
That sounds like you're saying racism created slavery. I thought you were arguing the opposite - that slavery created racism ?
Racism was used to defend the practice of slavery by Europeans.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

That just doesn't seem to relate very strongly to the motives behind acts of racism in contemporary Europe.
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Russ, this can't be the first time you have ever discussed the definition of racism. Sure, you can play with semantics and find prejudice has various different uses and try to use that to undermine a very standard definition of racism. But what's the point? That racism doesn't exist?

I also don't follow your intent in trying to pin down whether slavery caused racism or racism caused slavery. Chicken, meet egg. Discuss.

Again, what's the point?
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
The point is simply that the question of how people have benefitted from slavery requires an understanding of the counterfactual - the alternate history in which all other things are the same except for those things caused by slavery.

Comprehending that alternate history requires a much more rigorous understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships involved than anyone here seems interested in.

What I'm hearing is "racism, slavery, colonialism - it's all the same thing". Which is using words in a way that doesn't increase anyone's understanding of history and prevents meaningful discussion of the real relationships between these different historical events.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
The point is simply that the question of how people have benefitted from slavery requires an understanding of the counterfactual - the alternate history in which all other things are the same except for those things caused by slavery.

Comprehending that alternate history requires a much more rigorous understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships involved than anyone here seems interested in.

What I'm hearing is "racism, slavery, colonialism - it's all the same thing". Which is using words in a way that doesn't increase anyone's understanding of history and prevents meaningful discussion of the real relationships between these different historical events.
Agreed-- but your request for a simplistic explanation of the real relationships is, while desirable, unrealistic. Correlation doesn't work that way. Events occur in a context, in a way that the inter-relation of events gets messy and complicated. Being able to identify which of several factors came first or which single factor caused another factor is usually impossible-- hence the whole "chicken and egg" saying. The best we can do is what we have done here-- hypothesize about the probable relationships and correlations.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
What I'm hearing is "racism, slavery, colonialism - it's all the same thing".
No, I don't think anyone is saying that. I'm certainly not. What I am saying is that one can't draw a linear diagram with those three things in a line, but on the other hand there are links between these three events.

You seem to want to leap to saying that therefore that precludes a coherent discussion. I imagine it to be very hard to get anywhere in any sort of historical discussion with that approach. It seems better suited to a piping and instrumentation diagram.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
What I'm hearing is "racism, slavery, colonialism - it's all the same thing".
No, I don't think anyone is saying that. I'm certainly not. What I am saying is that one can't draw a linear diagram with those three things in a line, but on the other hand there are links between these three events.
By "links" do you mean "causal links" ? So that you can say that A was one of the factors causing B ?

Or are you only pointing out a similarity between these three different facets of European history - that Africans were on the sharp end in each case - and saying nothing about causation ?
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Racial theory in the modern times was developed to justify mistreatment of others. Nazi racism was influenced by racist theory generated by those justifying the Atlantic slave trade as was Japanese treatment of other "races" during WWII.
Tribalism exists, tribalism causes problems. Racism has a virulence that far exceeds tribalism and has roots in the Triangle Trade.

I suppose it doesn't help that, in the UK, racism is used interchangeably with tribalism. But they are not the same thing.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Hang on, are you asking about contemporary racism or the slave trade? It's pretty bad form to ask a question about one and respond to the answer as if it was about the other.

But that said, tribalism means "our tribe against the rest". So it's hardly a refutation of the point to say that quite a few of "the rest" were treated the same way.

The interesting thing is how the definitions of "us" and "them" change depending on how much of the world is being considered. Two villages might be bitter rivals on the local stage, but will still combine into one "tribe" at the national or international level. I've long thought that the day aliens arrive on Earth will be the day everyone on the globe suddenly puts aside their differences and come together as one, because then "human" will become a tribe to be defended against the new "other"...
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
[qb]What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Hang on, are you asking about contemporary racism or the slave trade? It's pretty bad form to ask a question about one and respond to the answer as if it was about the other./QB]
As we have seen/explained already on this thread, you cannot discuss the one w/o discussing the other. If we're going to talk about where contemporary racism comes from, unless we think it suddenly sprung up last week, we're going to talk about possible historic causes.


quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

The interesting thing is how the definitions of "us" and "them" change depending on how much of the world is being considered. Two villages might be bitter rivals on the local stage, but will still combine into one "tribe" at the national or international level. I've long thought that the day aliens arrive on Earth will be the day everyone on the globe suddenly puts aside their differences and come together as one, because then "human" will become a tribe to be defended against the new "other"...
The theme of Independence Day and pretty much every other sci-fi film.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Tribalism exists, tribalism causes problems. Racism has a virulence that far exceeds tribalism and has roots in the Triangle Trade.

I suppose it doesn't help that, in the UK, racism is used interchangeably with tribalism. But they are not the same thing. [/QB]
I think you've got it about right, lilBuddha.

If racism is ideas of innate racial superiority/inferiority, something distinct from tribalism - the discrimination against the foreigners-among-us - then I can agree that racism would be greatly reduced in a history without slavery. Even though tribalism wouldn't.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I agree with the ideas expressed although not necessarily the labels. There are different versions of racism of varying levels of perniciousness, but certainly there is a form which involves feelings of superiority which was likely reinforced by slavery and persists to date.

Tribalism and regarding other groups as other will always be with us, the expression of it and place it is given in society is strongly dependent on governance and the precedents of history.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
Read that first and thought "Oh good, we agree on something".

Read it again in more cynical mood, and it seems like you agree that there is a phenomenon that is to a significant degree the result of slavery and a phenomenon that is not. But want to apply the label "racism" to both of them equally ?

But maybe that's too cynical. Perhaps I should just ask what labels you'd use to distinguish these two different phenomena ?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Racism has a standard definition which I quoted previously. There's also a UN definition;

quote:
the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
Do you have a different definition?
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
I think that's a good definition, but it includes elements such as descent, nationality and ethnic origin which are much more indicative of age-old and ubiquitous "tribalism" than more modern concepts of "race". It doesn't seem to help if your aim is to differentiate racism and racist discrimination as we commonly understand it now (and which is often claimed to have derived from the Atlantic slave trade) from the general tribalist dislike/distrust of The Other that was/is just as prevalent in ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome or China, medieval Japan or Europe, colonial India or the 21st Century Western democracies.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I don't think race has any place as a modern concept. There is no satisfactory scientific or genetic definition of race.

Race is simply an arbitrarily defined grouping of ethnicities which, at one time, had some pseudo-science applied to it.
 
Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
Race is one of those words that means something different in different eras. At one time it was a synonym for nationality, but now when a lot of people use it the term has connotations of the (relatively arbitrary) classification of humans into broad types by reference to common physical characteristics. I agree that doesn't really have any proper science behind it.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Race is simply an arbitrarily defined grouping of ethnicities
Any such grouping is, by definition, arbitrary.

If you have two villages, A and B, where which village you are from is considered significant then (almost by definition) they have to be neighbours (if village B was so far away that is was unknown to village A then that wouldn't be important - just that you weren't from village A. And, it's a simple exercise to show that "not from village A" applies for all villages, including those closest to A). Neighbouring villages, even those currently very antagonistic towards each other, would have had a significant exchange of people between them - therefore it won't be necessary to go very far back in time before you find an ancestor for everyone from A who was from B (and, vice versa). The distinction of "from A" or "from B" is based on an arbitrary number of generations you trace ancestry.

The same would be true for tribe A and tribe B, except the number of generations would be larger.

When you come to nations then the same applies, with the added complication that the borders of nations are also fairly arbitrary, and usually fluid over history.

And, of course, the same is true of "race".

So, racism is just another form of the "you're not from around here" prejudice common to many villages. The boundary between "racism" and "tribalism" is thus as arbitrary as the supposed distinctions between tribes and races.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Exactly. If one divides up organisms into different species then there are biological definitions that can be applied. Strain-structuring exists in some organisms where different grouping can be identified that cluster according to certain characteristics (most useful when this is based on genetic typing).

With human beings there are no neat genetic clusters, just diversity without clear-space in between any clusters. One can arbitrarily throw a hoop around certain clusters, usually prompted by something like a national boundary, a continent or an external characteristic such as skin colour, but these clusters always have other populations just around the edges of the cluster excluded by an accident of where the line is drawn.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Alan and mdjion,

Think about Centrifugal Force. It does not exist as a discrete force, but rather a way of describing the effect of real forces.
Racism, too, serves this function. Yes, one can discus tribalism, economic factors, etc. that have lead to slavery and other gross treatments of peoples, it is simpler, and for most more clear, to discuss racism as a distinct phenomenon.
At least for general discussions. Calling racism tribalism can lead to a dismissal of current problems that need to be solved to remove inequity.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Calling racism tribalism can lead to a dismissal of current problems that need to be solved
So on the one hand there's no such thing as race, and the prejudice and discrimination that we see is all a manifestation of tribalism.

And on the other hand you want us to pretend that there's a Thing called racism which is an urgent and serious problem that we need to solve ?

Good job you're not a doctor - prescription is supposed to follow on from diagnosis.

Within reason, it doesn't matter what labels we use for these phenomena as long the labels are used clearly and consistently. Honest communication should be the aim.

I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism. The other is that its linked to the idea of rights, so that if two people disagree as to what the Rights of Man might be then they can't have a common understanding of what is and isn't racism.

The idea of tribalism seems to overcome both these issues - if you're prejudiced against people of another tribe then that's true regardless of what status that grouping of people may have and regardless of what rights you think people have or should have.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

Good job you're not a doctor - prescription is supposed to follow on from diagnosis.
Cute. But I shall answer your comment seriously anyway.
Race does not need to exist to have racism as racism is based on the perception of race. And that is why the U.N. definition works.
It does not quite conflate as you indicate.
quote:
any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin
Your Kerry example is ridiculous as they would still be perceived as Irish as indeed are the people of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Tribalism is part of the genesis and continuation of contemporary race problems, but it is not the entirety of them. Therefore the word is not comprehensive enough to illustrate the problem.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism.
That really isn't what the definition says. The UN may have made some mistakes but I think they've thought this one through a bit more than that. Nation is mentioned in a list not as an exclusive criteria. The equivalent would be a doctor focusing on presence or absence of one symptom and refusing to diagnose appendicitis in anyone without a fever.

Race doesn't exist as a scientific concept. It's an arbitrary social construct. People develop prejudices around arbitrary social constructs. That prejudice is called racism.

(If you want to argue that race exists as a scientific concept go ahead and provide some evidence).
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
There are two points pertinent to this discussion that I learned from my years working in India.

First, caste demonstrates that race is not uniquely pernicious as an arbitrary method of categorising human beings.

Secondly, racism is not peculiar to white Westerners; I had personal experience of Indian contempt for Africans.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism.
The use of the word "descent" in the UN definition seems to be a general catch all. For example, it covers all instances of second or third generation immigrants being told to "go home", regardless of whether "home" is Africa or Kerry.

quote:

The other is that its linked to the idea of rights, so that if two people disagree as to what the Rights of Man might be then they can't have a common understanding of what is and isn't racism.
Sorry, I don't follow. If two people disagree what the Rights of Humans are then they disagree about Rights. I don't see how that reflects on what racism is [Confused] If both people apply their understanding of Rights regardless of descent then they aren't racist, if they apply their understanding of Rights differently depending on descent then they are racist. The particular manifestation of racism (eg: the people discriminated against) will probably vary, but that's obvious anyway - racism is no less racism if it's Scots prejudiced against English, Japanese prejudiced against Gaijin, or white Americans prejudiced against Black Americans.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
First, caste demonstrates that race is not uniquely pernicious as an arbitrary method of categorising human beings.
I'm not sure anyone has claimed that unique status for racism.

Though, under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.

quote:
Secondly, racism is not peculiar to white Westerners; I had personal experience of Indian contempt for Africans.
In other words "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". That others are committing the same sins as we do does not make our sins any less sinful.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
If I said I'd observed "White contempt for Africans" I would need to qualify that by explaining that I'd observed some individual white people who were racist shits. Not implying that I'd observed something about the white race.

Likewise one may make observations about aspects of Indian culture, which include the caste system, or observations about some Indians, but "Indian contempt" is too strongly identifying a characteristic with a race.

And as Alan has said, all have fallen etc. So what?
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.

quote:
That others are committing the same sins as we do does not make our sins any less sinful.
Perhaps not, but in the case of this particular sin, infinitely more subject to comment, analysis and condemnation.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
You think the West has been unfairly criticized for racism and it would be better if we spent more time focusing on the caste system? Is that it?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.
That is an incredibly ridiculous statement, well worthy of a certain orange-hued politician.
That would be classism. Context matters if one wishes to be accurate.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Your Kerry example is ridiculous as they would still be perceived as Irish as indeed are the people of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Tribalism is part of the genesis and continuation of contemporary race problems, but it is not the entirety of them. Therefore the word is not comprehensive enough to illustrate the problem.
I don't think that's all that different from what Russ is saying.

He's saying that there's this universal human tendency to be prejudiced against other groups, and that can be about all sorts of things - locality/class/nationality - and is calling that "tribalism". That sort of thing isn't a legacy of slavery because its always been with us.

Then there's the modern sort of racism, which (arguably) is a legacy of slavery. It doesn't just say that the other group are my rivals, it says that they are inherently a lesser breed fit only to serve. Bad science used to be deployed in justifying that division of humanity into different races, so that we could see black people as a fundamentally separate category to white people. We don't believe the science any more, but the discredited categories are still part of our discourse. Racism in this deeper sense is more than just tribalism (which is what I think you and Russ are both saying in different ways).

An example of the distinction I remember is the row a few years ago when the former Top Gear presenters took the piss out of the Mexicans. When we discussed it here, there was a conceptual gap between those people (almost all not Americans) to whom "Mexican" is just a nationality, and other people (largely but not entirely American) to whom "Mexican" refers to a race. The first lot either excused or condemned the presenters for being insensitive, laddish, crass, shock-humourists - tribalism, the same sort of thing as taking the piss out of the French or the English - whereas the second lot judged the comments as racist and therefore were more likely to think it completely unacceptable.

There's a difference between seeing people as "not us" and seeing them as an inferior type of being. The second of those I think has been enormously strengthened by the legacy of slavery.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You think the West has been unfairly criticized for racism and it would be better if we spent more time focusing on the caste system? Is that it?
It would possibly be better if Indians themselves spent more time focussing on the caste system.

There is, and has been, plenty of racism perpetrated by the West, for which it is, and has been, justifiably criticised from both within and without.

However there has always been just as much injustice (such as racism and casteism) in the rest of the world, too, but it receives far less attention, from both within and without.

Mention the term "racism", or just about any other form of discrimination, in just about any context, and the automatic assumption will be that white, Western racism is in mind.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.
That is an incredibly ridiculous statement, well worthy of a certain orange-hued politician.
That would be classism. Context matters if one wishes to be accurate.
This is an incredibly ridiculous statement, reminiscent not so much of colouring one's hair orange, as of sticking straws in it.

That is because classism has no necessary connection with descent.

You do not irrevocably inherit a fixed working-class, middle-class, or whatever, status - these can change, both up and down, from one generation to the next.

Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Race is a social construct. There isn't going to be a water-tight definition of a social construct.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
However there has always been just as much injustice (such as racism and casteism) in the rest of the world, too, but it receives far less attention, from both within and without.
So what is the implication for individuals - that one shouldn't raise questions regarding racism in the West without a proportionate mention of caste and injustice elsewhere in the world? This seems like what-about-ery.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

Mention the term "racism", or just about any other form of discrimination, in just about any context, and the automatic assumption will be that white, Western racism is in mind.
Well, given that we live in countries where this is the primary dynamic and that this thread was begun within that framework, it makes perfect sense.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
Kinda sorta. It can be granted to non-nobles. It can be ended.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Classism has no necessary connection with descent.

You do not irrevocably inherit a fixed working-class, middle-class, or whatever, status - these can change, both up and down, from one generation to the next.

Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
I don't think you're quite right about class. In the British context it can be hard to escape your ancestors, certainly within a few generations. Class here is partly about certain inherited cultural sensibilities and assumptions, not simply about one's job or financial status.

It's true that class expectations have changed over time, along with changes in the culture and disposable incomes, but there's less social mobility in this country than is often supposed.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

Race does not need to exist to have racism as racism is based on the perception of race.
If you want to use the word "racism" to denote the ideology of inferior races - the perception of humankind divided into distinct races some of which have less-than-desirable inherited genetic traits - that's fine by me. So long as you're upfront and consistent about it.

Seems to me that with that sort of definition,

- observing that Irish culture has a problem with drink is not racist

- using red hair as a marker of probable Irishness is not racist (although conceiving of Irish people as a genetically distinct redheaded population might be)

- declining to invite a redheaded candidate to a job interview on the grounds that they probably have a drink problem would be an example of prejudice and discrimination but not racism

Would you agree ?

If the example is changed to talk about African people with dark skin as a marker, would you still agree ?
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Race is a social construct. There isn't going to be a water-tight definition of a social construct.
It is interesting that the word "racism" didn't even exist in English until the 20th century.

Hard to fight an idea when negative language describing it doesn't exist.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Hard to fight an idea when negative language describing it doesn't exist.
That rings like an important insight to me. I had a colleague who was the victim of attempted date-rape in college 30 years ago. It involved spiking her drink. She didn't report it and (probably rightly) assumed no-one would take any notice if she did. She had been unable to categorize her experience and hence didn't have an action plan for responding to it.

Today it would be categorized as date rape and people in organizations with responsibility would know what was expected as a response.
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
Harold Godwinson (Richard II, James II...) would have been fascinated to hear that.

Have you never heard of the Tichborne case?
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

- using red hair as a marker of probable Irishness is not racist (although conceiving of Irish people as a genetically distinct redheaded population might be)
Using red hair as a marker of Irishness is stupid. The majority of Irish people don't have red hair, and most redheads outside Ireland aren't Irish. (They may have some Irish ancestry, but aren't terribly likely to have "Irish culture."

If you want markers for Irishness, I'd suggest that being in Ireland and having an Irish accent should probably top your list.

quote:

- declining to invite a redheaded candidate to a job interview on the grounds that they probably have a drink problem would be an example of prejudice and discrimination but not racism
As you describe it, it's exactly racism. Very inefficient, stupid racism, but exactly racism. You don't want to hire people you perceive as being Irish because you think they're going to be drunks.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
using red hair as a marker of Irishness is stupid. The majority of Irish people don't have red hair, and most redheads outside Ireland aren't Irish.
Absolutely. Never said otherwise.

quote:

If you want markers for Irishness, I'd suggest that being in Ireland and having an Irish accent should probably top your list.
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.

quote:

As you describe it, it's exactly racism. Very inefficient, stupid racism, but exactly racism. You don't want to hire people you perceive as being Irish because you think they're going to be drunks.
I think lilBuddha has it right again. It's racism if it"s based on a perception that Irish is a race.

Rather than a nationality, a culture or an ethnic origin ?

Racism is then like a kind of genetic determinism - a belief that some group of people have negative personality traits because of the paricular cluster of the human gene pool that they come from. And acting on such a belief.

The idea that Irish culture has some sort of problem with binge-drinking is a commonplace that you'd hear on RTE radio quite regularly. That's not the issue.

Seems to me that...

...thinking that an individual necessarily has characteristics of a group that they belong to is prejudice.

...Racism is a particular type of prejudice, thinking that personality traits are inbuilt into an ethnic group.

...acting on prejudice is discrimination.

...and acting on any discomfort one might feel because people from another group are not "one of us" is tribalism.

Unless you can put it better...
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.
Although I have a friend who's name is very much like O'Shaughnessy but who is Malaysian. Inter-marriage, adoption, all these things have a way of messing up all these old markers-- and hopefully helping tear down some of these tribal walls.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.
Although I have a friend who's name is very much like O'Shaughnessy but who is Malaysian. Inter-marriage, adoption, all these things have a way of messing up all these old markers-- and hopefully helping tear down some of these tribal walls.
There's also the way the freed slaves adopted surnames. I've known quite a few African Americans with, say, Irish or Scottish surnames.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners? I thought that one of the frustrations of being taken into slavery was that the slaves didn't just lose their freedoms, homes, languages and rights but they also lost their names.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners?
And descendants that have surnames of actual Scottish and Irish heritage as well.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I did debate about going into the parentage of some of those freed slaves and their surnames as a result, but was struggling with the phrasing.
 
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
Posted by Russ:
quote:

- observing that Irish culture has a problem with drink is not racist
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita. The top ten (according to the WHO 2010 report) are Belarus, Rep of Moldova, Luthiana, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Andorra, Hungary, Slovakia and Portugal. I don't recall moments when Belarus is seen on the world stage as a nation of drunkards and alcoholics and it would be a slur to portray all the people of Belarus in this way, but I can recall plenty of times when Ireland is portrayed in this way, alongside being thieves, fighters, backward, inbred and red headed with freckles. Certainly Ireland hasn't often done itself any favours in how it portrays itself, very often playing into the hands of those who would deal in racial stereotypes, but racial stereotypes they remain.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
By contrast, if you go to the Medieval literature aorund the period of the Anglo-Norman expansion into Ireland the Irish are described as sober, it's the Anglo-Normans who are portrayed as drunkards*. Perhaps that particular problem in Irish society is something else that the English can be blamed for.

* I saw it on Time Team, Tony wouldn't lie to us, would he?
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Perhaps that particular problem in Irish society is something else that the English can be blamed for.
Is there a problem in any society that the English have never been blamed for?
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners?
And descendants that have surnames of actual Scottish and Irish heritage as well.
In some cases ex-slaves also picked their own surnames after emancipation.

Also, it wasn't inevitable that a white ancestor would 'give' his surname to his illegitimate offspring. In France and the French colonies this wasn't the custom.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita.
Hmmm, this report by WHO* puts Ireland at #7. Ireland, as a country, drinks more than most. Attributing this to an innate behaviour is racist, attributing as a national trend is not.

*Sort by consumption, scroll down to where the NO DATA meets the highest consumption and count from there.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Is there a problem in any society that the English have never been blamed for?
The breakup of the Macedonian Empire?
 
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita.
Hmmm, this report by WHO* puts Ireland at #7. Ireland, as a country, drinks more than most. Attributing this to an innate behaviour is racist, attributing as a national trend is not.

*Sort by consumption, scroll down to where the NO DATA meets the highest consumption and count from there.
That's "recorded" alcohol consumption, but record keeping practices aren't uniform across countries. If you sort the WHO data for "total" per capita consumption, Ireland is only 21st - somewhere between France (18th) and the UK (25th).
 


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