Posted on 07/10/2003 7:06:23 AM PDT by areafiftyone
As President Bush continues to wend his way through a five-day trip to Africa, we can see some things about our country and our special-interest groups and our ideologues as clearly as we have ever seen them.
On his first day in Africa, he gave a speech in Senegal from Goree Island, where slaves were gathered and sold to Europeans after being captured by other Africans (something self-righteous Negro Americans ignore at every turn). The speech shocked many because no Republican President since Lincoln has ever seriously addressed slavery or its consequences with such direct eloquence and depth of vision.
In fact, had a Democrat given such a speech, the civil rights establishment and our domestic left would have flipped. He would have been praised for facing up to the dark slave voyages of our history. He would have been commended for acknowledging the horrors of the plantation experience and for rightfully celebrating the ongoing struggle of black Americans that so fundamentally brought our nation closer to the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence. A march might have been organized in his honor.
But Bush is a Republican, which means the partisan civil rights establishment cannot acknowledge the greatness of his speech because he is not supposed to have given it, and, if he gave it, the motives could only be crass. That is why that establishment needs to reiterate the nonpartisan stance of the old leadership, which never would have sold out to the Democrats - or the Republicans!
In fact, facing up to the grandeur of the speech might begin building a bridge the civil rights establishment could cross into meetings at the Oval Office, where it could raise issues and concerns only if it ceased being committed to another party taking over in November 2004. That is, if Negro Americans and our very nation would not be better served by a generation of new black leaders who understand how important it is to voice their preferences in the ballot box, not on the campaign trail.
Where Bush goes from here is not anybody's guess. He seems to have a grand strategy both domestic and African. But black GOP insiders say that although the party is good at making promises, it has yet to create a bureaucracy focused on supporting black Republicans and getting real work done, such as fulfilling some of the promises made by the Republican National Committee to black Republicans gathered in January in Washington by Armstrong Williams.
In terms of Africa, Bush should avoid committing troops but focus on encouraging Africans to form a peacekeeping black African NATO comprised of soldiers from across sub-Saharan Africa. Any relief packages to fight AIDS must be monitored so the conventional demon of African corruption does not run off with all the money, or most of it. And that area of the world deeply needs a Radio Free Africa, which could supply people across the continent with real news, not propaganda.
If Bush gets those things done or gets them solidly started, he will have done one hell of a job in African policy. Given that speech, anything is possible.
This will showcase the fundamental problem with Africa. Tribalism.
It will be a major accomplishment if anyone can get the different countries of Africa to actually cooperate at all.
No, he wasn't. Slave trade was no more a crime than salt trade. Slave was a reality and quite a natural state of affairs for most of humans' history and slave trade was practiced quite profitably for thousands of years.
How, if you want to criminalize the past and become a self-hating human... it's up to you but don't expect everyone to agree with you.
Most all of us agree with that, but evidently the imperial U.S. Supreme Court does not.
In 1857, they ruled that the black man was not a human being and was to be considered "property." To this day, the vaunted court has not repudiated that ruling in any way, so technically, they don't consider slavery to be a crime.
You sure about that?
You think about it.
Regardless, W said that slavery was one of the greatest crimes the humanity has ever known. He was not talking about America. His implication was that 'the world' has wronged Africa in ways that no other population was ever subjected to.
I don't think so.
I know that is the legal status of the Constitution, but my point is that until the inimitable Supreme Court rescinds, vacates, overrules or otherwise strikes down their opinion re: Dredd Scott, THEIR opinion is still on record that enslavement of the black race is legal.
They've never done this. They have always ducked under the "it's moot now because of the Thirteenth Ammendment" argument.
It's my contention that it is simply another indication of arrogance in the Court. After the atrocious rulings they have passed down this last month, it seems to be substantiated.
It is absolutely proper to point out, as you do, that slavery was common throughout the world, but it is also disingenuous to suggest that such slavery was always, or even usually, the same as slavery practiced in the Old South. Muslim slavery of caucasians involved raising them as an elite fighting group for the Ottoman rulers. The fact that despite possessing all the weapons in the society, and having superb military training, they never rebelled against their masters, is somewhat telling. It is also worth noting that a single Englishman, "Chinese Gordon," eliminated slavery in most of China and the Sudan. So it was hardly the same kind of entrenched social/governmental construct that it was in America, where the slave-South governments put the full weight of the state against ANY attempt to free slaves.
The Indians (by this, I guess you mean Aztecs, since they were the main tribe to sacrificially kill enemies for religious purposes) practiced slavery of enemy women and children, raising them in their own tribes. To my knowledge, most tribes (and all differed) did not use slaves as field labor, but incorporated them (as much as anyone taken in battle can be incorporated) into the tribe. Often, white "slave" captives were released, and many escaped, as policing was not exactly tight.
I don't follow the relevance of Hitler here.
Bush's comments were entirely appropriate, and it's amazing to see people continue to deny or obfuscate America's great sin. Had Jefferson, Madison, and others not acquiesced in the perpetuation of this sin, the nation would be so much further along spiritually, morally, and economically that we wouldn't recognize it.
Crouch, a die-hard liberal, has made a phenomenal concession, and it tells me that Bush is in fact making tremendous inroads in the African American community.
The "slavery" of the Old Testament was nothing at all like the racial slavery of the Old South, and yes, it was thoroughly immoral. In our society today, an abortion isn't a crime, but it is no more moral than slavery was in 1830. Legality doesn't equal right.
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