Posted on 06/07/2003 8:23:19 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
Few Americans have heard of the National Slave Memorial Act (HR 196) that proposes to erect a National Slave Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Last year, Senator Trent Lott made this suggestion whilst groveling at the feet of black politicians and civil rights activists after his remarks supporting the 1948 presidency of then segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond. Since then a few Republicans have joined with Democrats to co-sponsor the National Slave Memorial Act.
Supporters say the National Slave Memorial Act will begin the racial "reconciliation" and "healing" process. It's amazing how people can say this with straight faces and believe it. We've heard this claim as justification for one government program or another, most recently being former President Clinton's "Race Initiative." How much healing and reconciliation did it produce? It simply produced a forum for charlatans, demagogues and race hustlers. If a slave memorial is built on the National Mall, it will simply become a media backdrop for the likes of race hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Black Congressional Caucus to spew their anti-American venom and call for quotas and reparations for slavery.
There's no way the National Slave Memorial Act could become law without the assistance of useful idiots in the Republican party. You'll recall that "useful idiots" was a term coined by Lenin to describe mindless Western do-gooders who were helpful to communists but nonetheless detested. Republicans can't believe that their support for the National Slave Memorial Act will deliver them more black votes and greater acceptance by the Democrats; that's assuming Republicans have a modicum of good sense. The only other reason why they might support the Act is to assuage their feelings of guilt for the injustices of slavery that made a mockery of the values expressed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Guilt is one of the worse human motivations. It promotes self-serving actions while ignoring or discounting the effects of those actions on the object of the guilt. I recall my first year as an assistant professor of economics at Temple University in 1973. Black students had demanded that a course in "black economics" be taught. What's worse is that some of my colleagues were giving the demand serious thought. Not being able to convince me that there was such a thing as black economics, I asked several of my colleagues what would be their responses had some Polish or Italian students demanded a course in Polish or Italian economics? I answered the question for them telling them they'd probably kick the rascals out of their offices.
That was just the tip of the guilt iceberg. One Temple University colleague took me to lunch and confided to me that he was having numerous academic problems with his poorly prepared black students. I asked him what was his response to their poor preparation. He replied that he tried to take into consideration racial discrimination and the poor education they received. I asked him how did he assign grades to which he responded: If they come every day and look as if they're taking notes, I give them a "C". After I recovered, I told him that's very much like having a dog in an English class and one day the dog sits on his hind legs and says, "You not po da do dat." You'd give the dog an "A". Why? You don't expect the dog to speak at all and no matter what he says you'd deem laudable.
Motivated by these and other experiences, sometime ago I created a "Certificate of Amnesty and Pardon" for guilt-ridden Americans of European ancestry (available at: www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew) under "Gift" on my web page. I now extend that gift to Congress and White House supporters of the National Slave Memorial Act.
Walter E. Williams
c25-03
June 2, 2003
Not me. I'm offended by it.
If they hate my history, I hate theirs. Tyrn about is fair play.
-archy-/-
I might agree, under circumstances involving a reasonable chance of historical accuracy, or fair and open debate, upon a level playing field. But that's not the case. The other side intends and has been promoting nothing less than the ethnic clensing of history, and will alow only their voice to be heard. So be it. Silence them.
-archy-/-
Not quite. In the USA, it was 76 years (1789 to 1865)
Try checking out a public school sometime. It is very common for black males to use shame and guilt as a weapon to cajole white girls into sexual liasons. Any who refuse are quickly asked, "so what are you, racist?", and in most cases they quickly and meekly change their position. Aisde from overhearing it in the halls and hearing about it from the kids, I also have read several confiscated notes with the same theme.
Not quite. In the USA, it was 76 years (1789 to 1865)
Well, yeah. In the actual United States of America themselves as created in the Constitution, that's correct. But IIRC, African slaves arrived with the first settlers of Jamestown in 1609. That makes it more like 250 years. And don't try and argue that those folks weren't Americans. They were Americans in every significant moral and spiritual sense except the flag they flew.
Snidely
Funnily enough, they wouldn't have been doing that if the slavers hadn't been there looking for slaves.
There were not white armies hording blacks out of Africa without the aid of other blacks.
Armies? No. Significant numbers of men with guns? Yes.
It's worth noting here that African slavery was not originally a racially-motivated thing; the concept of "race" didn't gain currency until the mid-1600s, while Africans were first enslaved in numbers in the 1500s. The racial character of American slavery came about as the system evolved to where the overwhelming majority of slaves (really indentured servants at the time) were black, and laws were put into place to keep it that way. Prior to that, slaves were largely indentured, and of a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds.
Snidely
Actually there were no significant numbers of men with guns. The black slaves had already been captured by the black slave traders before the slave ships arrived. When the slave ships docked on the west coast of Africa, the black slaves were already chained and ready to be loaded onto the slave ships.
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