Oh Sheesh, how stupid and wrong can people be. Another Akin style clean up required in Missouri’s southern neighbor... Come on people, be smarter than this!
Jus' sayin'
There is an argument to be made, but it’s best left unsaid as it is too nuanced for popular consumption.
would people who are here because their ancestors arrived as slaves rather be living in Africa right now?
I don’t think I call it a blessing, but I do note that darn few descendants of slaves would even consider visiting “the old country” let alone trade their miserable lives here for the unlimited opportunity there.
This is a distraction....all AP-Obama has now is to distract from the disaster of a Presidency.
It was not a smart thing to say for anyone planning to run for political office. But in most cases, it was true.
In the first place, virtually all of the slaves shipped to America were enslaved by Muslim Arabs or fellow blacks, not by the ship captains, who merely received them at the landings.
In the second place, while the life of slaves on plantations wasn’t all roses, it was a lot better than what they likely would have experienced back in tribal Africa.
In the third place, after the slaves were freed, the segregationists wanted to ship them all back to Africa. Very few of them agreed, compared to the number who preferred to stay in America. Why was that? Because there was still oppression, slavery, tribal warfare, and extreme poverty back in Africa waiting for them. Liberia was a relative exception, but even the Liberians found it hard to keep their new freedoms.
In other words, this was a stupid thing to say because the media will inevitably twist it. Even though it’s true. Truth is no longer a factor in the MSM propaganda world.
I knew I’d heard that phrase before and I fount the article from November 2010.
Slavery: Was It A Blessing In Disguise?
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=197377
It is an irrefutable truth that the descendants of slaves are many times better off than if they’d never had a slave ancestor brought to the USA. It is also one of the most politically incorrect things that can be said in today’s PC world. (Even though an occasional African-American will acknowledge it.)
Wasn’t it Muhammad Ali who said “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat?”
I would say askthe Australians of today whether they would go back to England or if they feel they are entitled to reparations.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-australian-penal-colony-established
The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia land in Botany Bay. Over the next 60 years, approximately 50,000 criminals were transported from Great Britain to the “land down under,” in one of the strangest episodes in criminal-justice history.
The accepted wisdom of the upper and ruling classes in 18th century England was that criminals were inherently defective. Thus, they could not be rehabilitated and simply required separation from the genetically pure and law-abiding citizens. Accordingly, lawbreakers had to be either killed or exiled, since prisons were too expensive. With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, transgressors could no longer be shipped off across the Atlantic, and the English looked for a colony in the other direction.
Captain Arthur Phillip, a tough but fair career naval officer, was charged with setting up the first penal colony in Australia. The convicts were chained beneath the deck during the entire hellish six-month voyage. The first voyage claimed the lives of nearly 10 percent of the prisoners, which remarkably proved to be a rather good rate. On later trips, up to a third of the unwilling passengers died on the way. These were not hardened criminals by any measure; only a small minority were transported for violent offenses. Among the first group was a 70-year-old woman who had stolen cheese to eat.
Although not confined behind bars, most convicts in Australia had an extremely tough life. The guards who volunteered for duty in Australia seemed to be driven by exceptional sadism. Even small violations of the rules could result in a punishment of 100 lashes by the cat o’nine tails. It was said that blood was usually drawn after five lashes and convicts ended up walking home in boots filled with their own blood—that is, if they were able to walk at all.
SNIP
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And then I would ask what is the difference between Australians who descended from prisoners and black Americans who descended from slaves.
Well, yes. That has been my thought for a long time and I include the homegrown varieties. There will b jihad against all non Moslems so long as there is any Moslem. Better to distance them from civilized society. They can draw from civilization but they cannot participate in civilization and they erode and corrode civilization when they infest it.
African-Americans are part of the 5% — the 5% of slaves (less than 500,000) slightly more lucky than the rest (about 10 million) to have made it to what is now the USA instead of somewhere else in the Western hemisphere.
I believe I have seen black writers/pundits say the same thing.
Sometimes, to this Canadian, the lack of party discipline in U.S. politics is astounding. Here, in Canada, if a couple of Members of Parliament, or Members of a Legislative Assembly had said something so incredibly stupid (especially during an election year); their respective party leaders would have instantly booted them out of caucus. They would literally be moved to the other side of the aisle, and made to sit beside the Opposition parties. They would not be allowed to run again, under the party’s banner.
There are times, when party discipline is too rigid; and it is often relaxed for votes of conscience — but, this would not have been one of those times.
Someone page the black American author - I believe worked for the ComPost at one time - who wrote a book several years ago giving thanks that his ancestors were removed by force from Africa and brought to America as slaves.
What ever happened to Liberia?
One thing is for sure. The US would have been better off had it not been kicked off with slavery established in the colony.
Our current President and his pals are determined to lay a bomb in their own nest and enslave everyone to avenge it. American leftist ideology is an inter-generational mental illness of self mutilation and suicide bombing.