blastingas10

If someone flies a white power flag, it's certainly racist. If someone flies a black power flag, it damn sure is racist as well. Only white people can truly be racist? That's a load crap. If I get jumped by a bunch of black guys, it's not a hate crime? But if a black guy gets jumped by a bunch of whites, it is? There are black people who are every bit as racist as white people.


Of course he would

Mr November

The slavery element of the civil war was inflated by the north to gloss over the more legitimate details of contention for the history books. As much as I'm an advocate of equal rights and against slavery, I also think its useful to consider how common place slavery is in human history, and how easy it would be to accept if you'd grown up in a society with it. And it's especially the case with American history that has such strong ties between slavery and racism contemporarily - but these should be looked at as separate issues as well. A lot of this discussion ends up being too heavily influenced by the narrow historical context that we've all been presented growing up.

midnight rain

Slavery may be common place in human history, but slavery based on race is unique to the United States.

Also, the slavery element definitely was not inflated by the North. I suggest you look up some of the speeches from Secession Commissioners of the South for a little insight as to their main reasons for war.

Mr November

I was almost ready to say that slavery based on race was unique to the US but then I stopped myself because while it's the greatest contemporary example of race based slavery, its not the only place that used black slaves - and throughout history any kind of differences between people has been "useful" in distinguishing which groups might be used as slaves - race normally being an obvious one. But in the US racism and slavery are especially well tied together.

And I don't mean to say that slavery was a non-issue in the war, only that this kind of good vs. evil/right vs. wrong slant that you can put on the war was a bit overplayed by the victors. A major reason slavery ended up being abolished was probably just that it became more expensive to own slaves than it was to hire workers and have them clothe, feed, and house themselves. It seems kind of silly to pretend that an epidemic change of heart could induce that kind of massive social change.

midnight rain

Do you have another historical example of slavery that was determined by race?

Oh I agree that the North weren't completely innocent as they still treated blacks pretty poorly in the North (though not to the extreme of the South). Still a lot of Northerners were against the institution of slavery (abolitionists) for religious reasons or whatever else and even more realized that slavery just made our country look bad and behind the times.

The Civil War was years in the making. There was no "epidemic change of heart", it had existed for a long time before the war started.

Owning slaves was definitely cheaper than hiring workers, by the way. It had nothing to do with costs, otherwise the South would've most likely been on board for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mr November

Well aside from Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe during the same general time period I don't know of any examples that were quite as clear cut - mostly because in other places, although the slavery has been racially based it's been more diverse about the different racial groups enslaved. I'm pretty sure though, that in one way or another Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, Russia, the Mongols etc have all used racially determined slavery (but not as clear cut as blacks and whites more like slavs and romans or whatever).


I think the abolitionist thing started with the Spanish and then the US got a kick in the ass when Britain jumped on board, but in the grand scheme of things, and considering the old testaments stance on slavery, it still seems to me like a pretty sudden change of heart for slavery to be abolished over a 100 year period based on religious reasons - I suspect there were some other reasons but I can only speculate without doing serious research.

On a large plantation slavery was still extremely cheap especially considering the standard of life. But in the cities and developed areas (think of Europe more so than the American South) there were enough people to work the land without slaves. Slavery tends to be profitable in farming, mining, primary labour etc. But industrialization and slavery don't mix as well - which is why we now have something even "better" than slavery - sweatshops. Considering the way the economics of slavery works, it kind of makes sense which places were for it and which were more likely to go against it. Its kind of telling that this whole shebang took place right on the cusp of the industrial era.

blastingas10

Obviously, African-Americans aren't the only people who have had it rough. Maybe it's just because I live in America, but it seems like African-Americans have such a spotlight on their past, and everyone is supposed to sympathize with them so much. What about Jews? I don't see as much attention given to their peoples tragic past.

Janszoon

Dude, are you kidding me? Type "movies about" into google and the first history-related search option it suggests is "movies about the holocaust".

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midnight rain

I don't agree with that.

What I will say though is that African Americans seem more prone to constantly bringing up their past suffering while Jews don't feel the need to remind people of it every 10 minutes. Just an observation I've made, and it kind of lessens my sympathy when they're always acting the victim, as if they've gone through anything near what their ancestors had to.

blastingas10

That is also something I was trying to say.

While there may be movies about the holocaust, and maybe there is a Jewish month, but I've never heard of it and I doubt I'm the only one. The media definitely publicizes the whole black history month a lot more.

The holocaust also ties in with Hitler, and the war, so there are definitely going to be a lot of movies about it. It's just better movie material.

My main point is that the media doesn't spread the message of the Jews history near as much as African-Americans history. I don't think I've ever seen a TV commercial about jewish history month, I've seen plenty about black history month. And Public schools, at least in my experience, don't educate about Jewish history near as much as they educate about African-Americans.

Good point about Native Americans. They were probably ****ed over more than any race, but not much is said about it. Maybe because there aren't many left, because our ancestors killed so many; and it just had to be done, so **** em, lets throw a holiday for the blacks and just try to forget about the Indians.