But on Africa trip he's soaring (Good Read!)

NY Daily News ^ | 7/10/03 | Stanley Crouch

[Joe Hadenuf]

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.

LOL, lots of them around. They feel so guilty, they want my money too!

[LS]

Jewish "slavery" applied only to a) men and women who opposed the Hebrews in battle or b) to men or women who were in debt and used it as a type of "indentured servitude." BUT! No matter what the slave's origin in coming to the master, every 7th year was "Jubilee," and ALL slaves were to be offered their freedom. If they chose to remain slaves (for example, a "gentile" might want to stay with the people of Jehovah for obvious reasons), there was a procedure to mark them. Nevertheless, there were strict rules about treatment of menservants and maidservants. They were NOT "field slaves" like the South; it was not RACIAL, as it applied even to Hebrews; and it was not PERMANENT.

Most important, the Hebrews were prohibited from snatching people simply for profit---this was called "manstealing" and was punishable by death. By the standards of the Bible, EVERY ONE of the Southern slaveholders should have been executed.

[Moonman62]

How could Thomas Jefferson believe there could be a Right to enslave another human? Where were HIS rights?

He didn't believe in the right to enslave. If he had his way, he would have freed his slaves and sent them back to Africa. As it was, he taught them trades and paid them wages. Don't fall for the PC bullcrap that's out there intended to tear down white males and their accomplishments.

[LS]

No, there are legal/constitutional ways to do these things. You are asking for a "big government" performance that is just as out of kilter as the decisions handed down last week. There is NO provision in the Constitution for a Court to specifically overturn the statements of earlier courts without a case brought before it; and since the 13th amendment means that slavery ended, there would never be another slave case for the Court to "rescind" its previous statements.

[LS]

Lincoln certainly blamed the right people.

[LS]

Wrong. There is extensive research on Jefferson, who PUBLICALLY always touted "freedom" for slaves, but never freed a single slave in his custody until after his death. He always found excuses, and they always related to $.

It is one thing to reject PC, which I do, but it is quite another to overly-glorify a man who in private never did what he called for others to do in public. Washington did, and Franklin did.

[GretchenEE]

Here's the text, cited above, for any who missed it.

President Bush Speaks at Goree Island in Senegal
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030708-1.html
July 8, 2003

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. President and Madam First Lady, distinguished guests and residents of Goree Island, citizens of Senegal, I'm honored to begin my visit to Africa in your beautiful country.

For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty. Today we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.

At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history.

Below the decks, the middle passage was a hot, narrow, sunless nightmare; weeks and months of confinement and abuse and confusion on a strange and lonely sea. Some refused to eat, preferring death to any future their captors might prepare for them. Some who were sick were thrown over the side. Some rose up in violent rebellion, delivering the closest thing to justice on a slave ship. Many acts of defiance and bravery are recorded. Countless others, we will never know.

Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined, and sold at auctions across nations in the Western Hemisphere. They entered societies indifferent to their anguish and made prosperous by their unpaid labor. There was a time in my country's history when one in every seven human beings was the property of another. In law, they were regarded only as articles of commerce, having no right to travel, or to marry, or to own possessions. Because families were often separated, many denied even the comfort of suffering together.

For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions. And yet in the words of the African proverb, "no fist is big enough to hide the sky." All the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.

In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, then why not me?

In the year of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of the time to a higher standard of humanity. "God tells us," wrote Equiano, "that the oppressor and the oppressed are both in His hands. And if these are not the poor, the broken-hearted, the blind, the captive, the bruised which our Savior speaks of, who are they?"

Down through the years, African Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of African Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were granted by the Author of Life, and regained by the persistence and courage of African Americans, themselves.

Among those Americans was Phyllis Wheatley, who was dragged from her home here in West Africa in 1761, at the age of seven. In my country, she became a poet, and the first noted black author in our nation's history. Phyllis Wheatley said, "In every human breast, God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance."

That deliverance was demanded by escaped slaves named Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, educators named Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and ministers of the Gospel named Leon Sullivan and Martin Luther King, Jr. At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the powerful. And some have said we should not judge their failures by the standards of a later time. Yet, in every time, there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name.

We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery "an evil of colossal magnitude." We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom, and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race. By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.

My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

In the struggle of the centuries, America learned that freedom is not the possession of one race. We know with equal certainty that freedom is not the possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes leads America into the world.

With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there is suffering, and liberty where there is tyranny. And these commitments bring me and other distinguished leaders of my government across the Atlantic to Africa.

African peoples are now writing your own story of liberty. Africans have overcome the arrogance of colonial powers, overturned the cruelties of apartheid, and made it clear that dictatorship is not the future of any nation on this continent. In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation -- leaders like Mandela, Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat. And many visionary African leaders, such as my friend, have grasped the power of economic and political freedom to lift whole nations and put forth bold plans for Africa's development.

Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa are full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world. Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace. Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger, we will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology. In the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tide against AIDS in Africa.

We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries. Yet, eventually, the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced -- what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island Prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.

May God bless you all. (Applause.) # # #

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

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.

Talking about crimes against humanity, I happen to know a thing or 2 about the Janissary phenomenon. Some of my ancestors lived in places where the local Christian princes were obligated to send the Turks precise amounts of gold, wheat, cattle and, yes, BABIES. The babies were then raised to be soldiers and nothing else. The only father they knew was the Turk sultan. They had no identity, knew nothing of their true parents or the country they came from. And, when the Christian princes rebelled and stop sending the little boys to the Ottoman 'Gate', the first military units send to pacify them were these Janissaries, possibly killing their own father or brothers, raping their own mother or sisters.

This lasted for hundreds of years.

Wouldn't you rate the above as a higher crime? Only curious.

I'm not going to go into the details of the Maya, Aztec or Inca bloody customs. But it's certainly not the innocent picture you are suggesting. It was last summer when I visited a Mayan baseball field were the 'ball' was someone's head and... guess what... the WINNING team was literally dismembered after winning their game.

[Moonman62]

Wrong. There is extensive research on Jefferson, who PUBLICALLY always touted "freedom" for slaves, but never freed a single slave in his custody until after his death. He always found excuses, and they always related to $.

Jefferson said he'd have freed his slaves if it were legal to do so. He treated them more as employees than slaves. As to why he didn't free them, I don't think you know.

[AAABEST]

What a grand President we have.

WTF is so "grand" about giving 15 billion of money that doesn't belong to you to dictators and making a speech.

Any old jackass can do that. It takes no effort, courage or any virtue whatsover.

[CyberAnt]

I agree - that's what I've heard too!

[nightdriver]

"It's not in the court's charge to change language that has already been re-defined constitutionally."

I realise that it's like asking for a chunk of the moon, but the Dredd Scott decision can not be rationally adjudicated even from the pre-thirteenth ammendment version of the Constitution.

I rankles that there is no recourse. It can easily lead to thoughts of other means that are definitely illegal.

[LS]

I absolutely know why Jefferson didn't free his slaves: he needed the MONEY for MONTICELLO, which, as all his records show, was constantly in debt.

I hardly think holding people against their will is "treating them like employees." Don't think there were too many slaves who thought that way, either. That is why they left southern plantations by the hundreds to get to Union-controlled territory and enlist in the Union Army. Some "employees."

[LS]

I'm well familiar with the Mayans and the Incas and, yes, the Jannissaries, who nevertheless themselves viewed their position as "elites" and who reacted badly when the Jannissary corps was "opened" to non-slave members in the 1300s or so. Regardless, this is a looooonnnng way from chattel negro slavery in America, and I think you well know it.

[LS]

I know what you mean. It is stupid that the court would even have that in its record.

[jla]

fyi

[Moonman62]

I absolutely know why Jefferson didn't free his slaves: he needed the MONEY for MONTICELLO, which, as all his records show, was constantly in debt.

Slaves were a burden. It's true that Jefferson went broke, but if he was doing it for the money, why did he pay them wages? If slaves were such big money makers, why wasn't Jefferson a rich man?

I hardly think holding people against their will is "treating them like employees." Don't think there were too many slaves who thought that way, either. That is why they left southern plantations by the hundreds to get to Union-controlled territory and enlist in the Union Army. Some "employees."

And many slaves stayed right where they were. You're trying to equate the treatment of Jefferson's slaves with some of the worst.

[Trust but Verify]

I guess there are a few details about the 15 billion you don't know about. Like how they aren't going to be just writing checks to corrupt governments. I'm sure that makes no difference to someone like you, though, who likes to B&M about everything.

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

If you are familiar with the Turks' criminal practices, perhaps you can picture a country where, each year, every little village must produce its share of live babies to be delivered to the Turk. Imagine the heartbreak.

Then, years later, when the Turk's Janissaries come to town to do some killing, imagine how the locals felt about it. Their own babies returning to punish them for giving them up to the Turk in the first place.

If that's not an enormous crime of 'history', then I don't know what is. Bush refered to crimes of history, not of 'recent history'. The African slave trade was a mild process compared to some far bigger horrors and the humiliation inflicted by groups of humans upon other
groups of humans.

I guess I should be asking for preparations too.

[LS]

No, I well know that Jefferson was among the more benign slaveowners. But that doesn't change the fact that he had his ENTIRE LIFE to free them, yet didn't.

There is a true story of a runaway slave brought to court in Indiana for a possible return. The judge asked if he was beaten, and he said, "Oh, no. Massa was good to me. We were the best of friends. Hunted and fished togehter."

Q: What was your food like?

Slave: "Oh, it was good. Ham and taters. At Christmas we got a roast pig."

Q: What kind of living quarters did you have?

Slave: "Massa gave us a nice cabin with flowers around it."

Judge, Q: "Well, I don't understand. If things were so good, why did you run away."

Slave: "Well, yo' honor, the job is still open if you'd like to apply for it."

This is a true testimony from an Indiana court. Jefferson's words and ideas were great, among the best in human history, but you fool yourself if you think that his character matched his words. Simply put, he was in debt because of his spending---any biography of J. will reveal that, and he needed slaves "wages" or not (which, when you are a slave, is meaningless) to run his plantation. And yes, even with slave labor, numerous plantations were in deep debt because of the lack of capital/machinery innovation due to an ENSLAVED WORK FORCE that had no stake in improving the productive process.