Posted on 11/14/2005 5:54:12 PM PST by Giddyupgo
Exactly. My foreign born daughter came home telling me some of her classmates were criticizing her because she didn't know everything there was to know about "black history". I told her to tell them to get off her case, she wasn't even born here, and had absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened here before she was born, so how is any of that her fault?
What did they call the Underground Railroad before 1825 (the year the first railroad was invented)? Underground Turnpike?
Let Jessie Jackson fork over the money he's bled er blackmailed -- out of large corportions over the years...
Same here. My people not only never owned any slaves, they were Methodist Yankees and ferocious abolitionists. One of my great-great-great-grandfathers owned a farm in Ohio that was a station on the Underground Railroad, and his brother was a colonel in the Union Army, serving in some of the worst battles of the war. They risked everything to free black slaves. If any reparations get paid, I want some as recompense for what my ancestors went through.
-ccm
Yeah, I have to laugh at all the black morons like Muhammad Ali who think they are poking a finger in The Man's eye by giving up their "slave names" for Islamic ones.
The Arabs were enthusiastic slavers long before and long after there was slavery in Europe or its colonies. They enslaved black Africans by the tens of millions, and in some parts of the Arab world there are still Muslims who own black slaves.
-ccm
While this may be true, it's irrelevant. I have heard enough bull$#!t about the "happy darkies" from apologists for the Old South, thanks very much. Freedom is worth more than any amount of food.
-ccm
A lot of them, once they got their freedom went back to the plantation because their former owners treated them better than the city folks did.
The Arabs also enslaved Europeans in large numbers; the Barbery Pirates were not just about stealing loot from ships. They made forays as far north as Ireland and perhaps Iceland for the sole purpose of kidnapping people for sale in the slave markets of North Africa. Talk about reparations, those calling for it should read a little more history which would probably cause them to shut up!!!
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~afroam/Faculty/Henry_Louis_Gates__Jr_/henry_louis_gates__jr_.html
I have always been mystified by racial grievance mongers who pontificate on the glorious Nirvana that their lives would be had they only been left in Mother Africa, notwithstanding the general quality of life there. Since most American blacks have some measure of Caucasian genealogical ancestry, and since slavery was the transmission belt that enabled the mixing of their black and white ancestor's gene pools,(whether by rape,semi voluntary or voluntary associations) than what they are really saying is that they and their decendents would rather not exist.
I acknowledge the kidnapping and suffering of my African ancestors, and the resultant decades of slavery, oppresion, and discrimination that amounted to a monstrous crime for them. But the result was me and my family living in a nation that provides the most liberty and opportunity for any African descended people on earth. I am profoundly grateful to be here. I welcome the opportunity for any clarifcation of the historical record, and should that clarification reveal more evidence of the often bestial nature of the American institution of slavery, than we should unflinchingly face and acknowledge it. The historical record should be properly contextualized, and honestly examined without any attempt to inflate the crime beyond the actual truth of the injustice. The endless racial navel gazing, racial identity posturing, and puffed up grievance mongering should be rejected for the PC irrelevance that it is.
The main reason that I am not entitled to slavery reperations is because I was NOT ENSLAVED. I grew up in an era in which I remember all of the visible (literally) signs of Jim Crow when I visited relatives in the south in the early 60's. I experienced numerous physical racial attacks as my newly acquired Souh side Chicago neighborhood underwent racial intergration. I experienced some minor racial discrimination at other times and places. The United States today is NO LONGER THE NATION THAT ONCE OFFICIALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IT'S CITIZENS, unless you wish to consider "Racial Preferences" for preferred minorities, Which is racism in the guise of cultural Marxism. None of that changes the fact that I am blessed to be a citizen of the greatest nation in the history of mankind, with a higher standard of living, opportunity and liberty than any other. I am proud to have enlisted and fought for this country as a soldier during the Vietnam era, despite all those who told me that no black man should do so on behalf of such a racist and oppressive nation.
Sometimes it seems as though the race industry merchants and class action lawyers would divide us into warring ethnic enclaves with mortar pits in the streets sniping at each other ala the Balkans, all of them seeking racial spoils with government help. This is nothing more than a cultural Marxist wealth redistribution scheme.
If I was ever to agree to a reparations scheme, this is the one that makes sense. Check out the Rev. Wayne Perryman's suit against the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!!! http://www.reparationscentral.com/lawsuits4.html
I agree and this shift hurts all political movements now.
There is quite a good book on this change of direction
see
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/377/
Fredoneverything.net
His articles on this subject are simply brilliant. And he has quite a few.
Okay...and I'm sending him a bill for my ancestors service in the Union Army.
This is an odd piece of revisionist history. I had family in parts of Florida, Georgia and all over southern Louisiana and east Texas before the War of Northern Aggression. In working on my genealogy and searching the census data I noticed that about one family in 5 owned at least one slave. In Louisiana the large plantations were owned by locals and I know of none owned be those still in Europe.
To paraphrase from a recent Charley Reese column: For those who never owned slaves, to apologize to those that were never slaves, shows them to be public fools.
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