One of my cousins posted something the other day about encouraging children to read a book called Barracoon. It's the story of an interview with one of the salves on one of the last slave ships to reach the US and his subsequent life here.
I'll start by saying that I have no objections to children learning the accurate Truth about the slave trade and slavery in the US, I think it's important. I do think that there are some issues with age appropriateness with some children.
I think the book sounds interesting and I'll likely read it sometime this year. But I'm not as interested in the book, as I am in the messages people take from the book. I read the initial post and the comments, as well as some Amazon reviews and the things that struck me the most was how many people were only focused on the US part of the system. Not much anger at the Africans and Arabs that ran the slave Trade in Africa, not much anger about the reality that life in Africa was marked by tribal conflict, wars, captivity for the losers, hunger, disease and the lot. I'm not trying to minimize the horrible nature of slaver in the US or give those who engaged in it a pass in any way. What I am trying to say is that maybe we should broaden our context a bit and apportion blame/responsibility more broadly than so many do.
8 comments:
Indeed. As I understand it, America was not the biggest buyer of slaves at that time. Yet, we're only to focus on slavery as a "white racist" thing. The perspective of the modern progressive is anti-white, not pro-minority. As such, there is great difficulty in getting an accurate understanding of the times, particularly as it involves the slave trade, if the info is through modern progressive outlets. Here's an important suggestion: if info comes through leftists, it's most likely skewed at the very least, and tainted in general and one should run away as quickly as possible. The modern progressive is incredibly untrustworthy.
Obviously we can demonstrate that the US was not the largest importer of slaves, that slavery has existed in all cultures and throughout history (until White, European, Christains stopped most of it), and is more prevalent today than it's ever been. Yet those on the left choose to ignore the larger context and focus on a small slice of US history as the greatest example of the evil of slavery.
I believe that it is important to understand all aspects of slavery in the US, as US citizens. I also believe that it is more important to put our energy into dealing with actual slavery in 2024, that in bitching about history. It'd be amazing if all the people bitching about part of US history would put all that effort into ending slavery today, there is absolutely no reason why they couldn't mobilize and work to eradicate modern slavery. But they don't. I think there are a few reasons why they don't.
1. Most of them are so focused on bashing the US for it's history that they don't have the bandwidth to focus on modern slavery.
2. They're cowards. Most modern day slavery is taking place in countries where you can be killed for all sorts of reasons.
3. They're lazy. It's so much easier to post crap on social media and feel all warm and fuzzy, or go to a "protest" long enough to get a good Tik Tok video than to get on a plane and go to the places where slavery thrives.
4. They're stupid or uninformed. They've been indoctrinated into a worldview that focus on trashing the US and not wanting to offend certain groups, that they just don't know what's going on.
All your four points are incredibly accurate and true, though very likely still not comprehensive in terms of describing the failures of the modern progressive regarding this issue. Indeed, one needn't leave the country to address actual slavery, as the human trafficking enabled by those like Dan who support the open border policy of the moron he supported for president is an example of slavery in our midst. The victims of those exploiting that policy are truly enslaved those who weren't providing social services in demanding payment in money and flesh in order to be allowed by them to cross our sovereign border. Dan regards this fact as an wild and unsupported claim.
I would also remind...perhaps adding a point #5, that the lefties puke out all this nonsense about American history in order to rationalize bed behaviors of too many of the black community. All negatives which befall them are solely the result of an institution which has been outlawed in the country over 150 years ago. It has nothing whatsoever to do with failures of character. It's just nasty white men.
They weren't intended to be comprehensive, just representative. Although I am convinced that this notion that posting on socials or waving a sign for a few minutes actually accomplish anything is a more serious problem than it might seem.
Obviously one could fight slavery 2024 by heading to the southern border and going up against the coyotes and cartels who engage in human trafficking, which is dangerous and inconvenient. Hell they could hang out a truck stops or go to Vegas for the Super Bowl if they were really concerned enough to get of their asses and do something hard that entails personal risk.
I do agree that there are significant issues within the black community which have led to where we are today, absolutely. We all know the best way to make generational change and increase generational wealth in any community is education, stay drug/alcohol free/don't father multiple children by multiple women/get a job... It might not get you rich quickly, but a couple of generations of men who'll sacrifice for their families and things will be noticeably better.
Naw...it has to be systemic racism, which is rampant and so ingrained we white people don't even realize just how racist we are! Even if we suspect we might be...and of course we are simply because we're white...we couldn't begin to fathom to what degree we are, as its probably worse than we could ever imagine. What we need is a white-guilted modern progressive who claims to be a compassionate Christian to give us the real scoop.!
Well, you're right. It could be something that is undefinable, immeasurable, vague, and not quantifiable that's causing all these problems. Or it could be that we can look at the "data" and draw some rational conclusions.
But whose data? Those of the evil old white racists who look objectively at human behaviors which compel their conclusions, or the modern progressive who need their narrative validated by choosing to ignore data which doesn't help them? It's a tough call...a difficult conundrum...given the truly objective are constantly demeaned by the subjective.
You know, all weak attempts at humor aside, I find it strange that "the other side" isn't concerned with adopting a narrative because of what objective observation affirms rather than insisting upon positions clearly formed without regard for facts. That is, "this is what I believe, so I must find facts to support what I believe", rather than, "these are the facts, so as a result of knowing those facts, this is what I believe". It's like choosing to believe fire is cold despite the facts proving otherwise.
I think that the presumption is that it's possible to look at all of the data, and for those trained in that sort of analysis to move past some of the "bias". I'd argue that things like health outcomes, life expectancy, GDP, infrastructure, etc would be pretty much objective numbers.
I agree that there is a temptation to adopt ones narrative regardless of what the data tells us, and then to simply dismiss the data that doesn't fir.
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