Posted on 06/20/2009 9:19:09 AM PDT by AJKauf
The Senate unanimously passed a resolution on June 18 that “apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws.”
Sorry, Senate, but you’re not speaking on my behalf. Slavery and Jim Crow were evil, all right, but your resolution is divisive and evasive. It is divisive insofar as it forgets E pluribus unum and suggests that some Americans need to apologize to other Americans, and of course the division is by skin color. It is evasive insofar as it inevitably but wrongly suggests that the problems facing African Americans today are in large measure beyond their control — that they are rooted in history and the still-present effects of that history.
I’ll be accused of just not getting it, and I am afraid that’s true. I do not understand why people who had nothing to do with two shameful institutions can or should apologize to people who may have nothing in common with the victims but skin color. And...
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
The apology du jour....
What in the hell? This is getting nuts. Are they going to DEMAND that the blacks in Africa that hunted down men and women to sell as slaves to the traders APOLOGIZE as well? The ancestors of the blacks who PROFITED from capturing and selling blacks to slave traders? Are they going to demand reparations from them as well?
All the Democrats should. They’re the ones who kept slavery alive followed by Segregation. KKK Byrd should be the first one to stand up and apologize ....
Fractures are forming within the black community over gay marriage. Democrats are very worried.
Not in my name.
Did the Democratic controlled Senate thank the Republicans for abolishing slavery and the Jim Crow laws?
The card Burris.....Find the Queen, Find the Queen.
DISTRACTION, Pay Back, you pick one.
An apology from the people or the generation who had nothing to do with it is pretty hollow—not to mention stupid.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t slavery get here long before America existed? Justa thought, but I was always under the impression that we inherited a pox delivered by someone else and paid dearly to cleanse it...what the hell do we have to apologize for? I think a heartfelt thank you from the slaves and thier heirs is in order...anyone heard one?
We’ll be camping in Gettyburg on the Fourth and training in to DC...I better reread my history books, I guess...was Gettysburg famous for some reason?
Is the Senate bord this week?
Hope Obama spoke up and said I’m sorry...
He is the descendant of slave owners, not the slaves...
Slavery in modern Africa
Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf.[1] However, slavery and bondage are still African realities. Hundreds of thousands of Africans still suffer in silence in slave-like situations of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves.
Modern-day enslavers also exploit lack of political will at the highest levels of some African governments to effectively tackle trafficking and its root causes. Weak interagency co-ordination and low funding levels for ministries tasked with prosecuting traffickers, preventing trafficking and protecting victims also enable traffickers to continue their operations. The transnational criminal nature of trafficking also overwhelms many countries’ law enforcement agencies, which are not equipped to fight organised criminal gangs that operate across national boundaries with impunity.
Slavery by African country
Chad
IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports children being sold to Arab herdsmen in Chad. As part of a new identity imposed on them the herdsman "...change their name, forbid them to speak in their native dialect, ban them from conversing with people from their own ethnic group and make them adopt Islam as their religion."[2]
Mali
The Malian government denies that slavery exists, however, the slavery in Timbuktu is obvious. Slavery still continues with some Tuaregs holding Bella people.[3]
Mauritania
A system exists now by which Arab Muslims -- the bidanes -- own black slaves, the haratines.[4] An estimated 90,000 black Mauritanians remain essentially enslaved to Arab/Berber owners.[5] The ruling bidanes (the name means literally white-skinned people) are descendants of the Sanhaja Berbers and Beni Hassan Arab tribes who emigrated to northwest Africa and present-day Western Sahara and Mauritania during the Middle Ages.[6] According to some estimates, up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of the population, are still enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.[7] Slavery in Mauritania was finally criminalized in August 2007.[8] Malouma Messoud, a former Muslim slave has explained her enslavement to a religious leader:
"We didn't learn this history in school; we simply grew up within this social hierarchy and lived it. Slaves believe that if they do not obey their masters, they will not go to paradise. They are raised in a social and religious system that everyday reinforces this idea.[9]"
In Mauritania, despite slave ownership having been banned by law in 1981, hereditary slavery continues.[10] Moreover, according to Amnesty International:
"Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention, it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant them official recognition".[11]
Imam El Hassan Ould Benyamin of Tayarat in 1997 expressed his views about earlier proclamations ending slavery in his country as follows:
"[it] is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Quran ... [and] amounts to the expropriation from muslims of their goods; goods that were acquired legally. The state, if it is Islamic, does not have the right to seize my house, my wife or my slave."[12]
Niger
In Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still slaves.[13] Slavery dates back for centuries in Niger and was finally criminalised in 2003, after five years of lobbying by Anti-Slavery International and Nigerian human-rights group, Timidria.[14] More than 870,000 people still live in conditions of forced labour, according to Timidria, a local human rights group.[15][16]
Descent-based slavery, where generations of the same family are born into bondage, is traditionally practised by at least four of Niger’s eight ethnic groups. The slave masters are mostly from the nomadic tribes — the Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou and Arabs.[17] It is especially rife among the warlike Tuareg, in the wild deserts of north and west Niger, who roam near the borders with Mali and Algeria.[18] In the region of Say on the right bank of the river Niger, it is estimated that three-quarters of the population around 1904-1905 was composed of slaves.[19]
Historically, the Tuareg swelled the ranks of their slaves during war raids into other peoples’ lands. War was then the main source of supply of slaves, although many were bought at slave markets, run mostly by indigenous peoples.[20][21]
Sudan
Francis Bok, former Sudanese slave. At the age of seven, he was captured during a raid in Southern Sudan, and enslaved for ten years.(Courtesy Unitarian Universalist Association/Jeanette Leardi)
There has been a recrudescence of jihad slavery since 1983 in the Sudan.[23][24]
Slavery in the Sudan predates Islam, but continued under Islamic rulers and has never completely died out in Sudan. In the Sudan, Christian and animist captives in the civil war are often enslaved, and female prisoners are often used sexually, with their Muslim captors claiming that Islamic law grants them permission.[25] According to CBS news, slaves have been sold for $50 apiece. [1] In 2001 CNN reported the Bush administration was under pressure from Congress, including conservative Christians concerned about religious oppression and slavery, to address issues involved in the Sudanese conflict.[26] CNN has also quoted the U.S. State Department's allegations: "The [Sudanese] government's support of slavery and its continued military action which has resulted in numerous deaths are due in part to the victims' religious beliefs." [2]
Jok Madut Jok, professor of History at Loyola Marymount University, states that the abduction of women and children of the south by north is slavery by any definition. The government of Sudan insists that the whole matter is no more than the traditional tribal feuding over resources.[27]
It is estimated that as many as 200,000 people had been taken into slavery during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The slaves are mostly Dinka people.[28][29]
Child slave trade
The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin.[30] The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 - $70 each by slavers in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon.[31] [32]
Ghana, Togo, Benin
In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family.[33] In this instance, the woman does not gain the title of "wife". In parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, shrine slavery persists, despite being illegal in Ghana since 1998. In this system of slavery, sometimes called trokosi (in Ghana) or voodoosi in Togo and Benin, or ritual servitude, young virgin girls are given as slaves in traditional shrines and are used sexually by the priests in addition to providing free labor for the shrine.[34]
Ethiopia
Mahider Bitew, Children's Rights and Protection expert at the Ministry of Women's Affairs, says that some isolated studies conducted in Dire Dawa, Shashemene, Awassa and three other towns of the country indicate that the problem of child trafficking is very serious. According to a 2003 study about one thousand children were trafficked via Dire Dawa to countries of the Middle East. The majority of those children were girls, most of whom were forced to be sex workers after leaving the country. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has identified prostitution as the Worst Form of Child Labor.[35]
In Ethiopia, children are trafficked into prostitution, to provide cheap or unpaid labor and to work as domestic servants or beggars. The ages of these children are usually between 10 and 18 and their trafficking is from the country to urban centers and from cities to the country. Boys are often expected to work in activities such as herding cattle in rural areas and in the weaving industry in Addis Ababa, and other major towns. Girls are expected to take responsibilities for domestic chores, childcare and looking after the sick and to work as prostitutes.[35]
The first slaves arrived here in 1619 from the islands...
getting ready to hand out the 2009 version of 40 acres and a mule -— .4 acres and a government motors pickup
Also, exactly who was responsible for those Jim Crow laws, which were finally overthrown at the time of Martin Luther King?
Every one of the politicians and leaders responsible for passing and enforcing those Jim Crow laws was a DEMOCRAT.
Do we ever hear anyone admitting to that? Do we hear Senator Byrd apologizing for his own part in this racist oppression? I think not.
Instead, there’s some vague sense that Republicans are the racists. I wonder why? Could malfeasance by the historians and the media, totally controlled by the left, have anything to do with it?
My ancestors had NOTHING to do with slavery or Jim Crow. But curiously enough, Obama’s ancestors on BOTH SIDES did. On his white side, they owned slaves. On his Muslim African side, they engaged in the slave trade.
How about an apology, Obama? Your ancestors had more to do with creating this injustice than most of ours.
kenyans selling kenyans to muslim slave traders:
http://www.jambokenya.com/jambo/kenya/history5.htm
If they were really sincere, every democrat would have to resign.
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