Forbidden History: The distraction of racism and the great American lie

As usual air spoon, i tip my hat off to you as that was better than any history 101 class lecture.
s&f for you

Thank you for the information in the thread. Great historical perspective.

I want to say that I completely agree with you that most of the racism we experience nowadays is a result of the divisive propaganda continually being touted out in the MSM. Just look at the all of the headlines regarding the Koran burning pastor. Who really gives a F*** what some back woods pastor in Florida is gonna burn?

That being said, you seem to have stopped your history lesson at the end of the Civil War. I do not have time to provide an extensive reply; just want to point towards the Jim Crow and segregation laws prevalent in the South until mid century. Maybe look at the large increase in lynchings that occurred In the South after the 1st World War. When black soldiers came home from Europe and expected better treatment. I know this is somewhat of a separate issue from the OP, but there was actually quite a bit of whitey holding the black man down in the early half of the century.

Anywho, again thanks for pointing out some of the misconceptions regarding slavery and the actual racism that we see today.

Liberia was created by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe when they founded the American Colonization Society. Its capital of Monrovia was named after James Monroe, in fact. One reason that it was one of only two countries in Africa never taken over by Europeans was because it was always known to be part of the US sphere of infuence.

Jefferson thought that if blacks were freed they should be sent back to Africa, since he thought that US citzenship should be for whites only. Like many of the Founders, he thought that slavery was going to die out gradually, especially if it was not allowed to expand any further West. It probably would have died out, except that the great cotton boom of the 19th Century made it profitable again and gave it a new lease on life. That's why there number of slaves went from 500,000 in 1776 to over 4 million by 1860, and they were estimated to be worth over $2 billion dollars--that's 2 billion 1860 dollars, which was an astronomical sum of money.

When the abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison realized that slavery was not gradually becoming extinct like so many of the Founders had thought, they started to take more drastic actions against it.

I do think it's days were numbered though, since the British Empire abolished it in 1833 and even Russia abolished serfdom in 1861. Hamilton was right all along that as countries industrialized and mechanized, they simply would not need slave labor any more. How long did sharecropping last once machines were invented to plant and pick cotton and other crops? Not very long, since one guy riding around on a machine could now do the work of thousands of 'hands" in a much shorter time. So slave-like labor simply became uneconomical and not worth teh trouble.

reply to post by airspoon

I'm not for second suggesting that any of this is justified, though I am suggesting that it has been blown out of proportion and exaggerated for certain political agendas.

Your intentions are quite obvious throughout the thread and if anyone thinks otherwise, needs to practice up on their reading comprehension skills.

Its such a sad era in which you have to even make this statement, especially repeatedly. I understand that many will be quick to label you a bigot and racist just to discredit your argument and your intentions.

Much like the propagandist nonsense our political leaders have done in the past and are still doing today.

reply to post by 5MaveN5


I left out the so-called "Jim Crow" laws and the turmoil of the South in the 1960s because I feel it was due to the same divisive policies that creates the racism today and what we currently see as the reverse to those oppressive laws. From my understanding, the 1930s ushered in the false perception of how we saw slavery and the 60s were the culmination of the JC. Of course, the JC laws had been enacted since shortly after the war but they came to a head in the 60s and were more obvious due to the socio-economic variables converging around that time. Before this time period (30s), people knew the truth or at least somewhat and I can only guess it was because many Americans who lived through the era were alive back then and so you couldn't really fool the folks who saw it with their own eyes.

The 1930s were also a time of great economic hardship and the populations were eager for an explanation to their troubles and a distraction from the reality that was seizing their imagination. If we calculate the years leading up from the 1930-60s, it is just about right for the policy makers to have been manipulated into a black/white divide and a catalyst to spark that divide was the turbulent times of the 60s.

Also, before the 60s and the "thought revolution", many American (black, white, yellow, brown) were conservative and stuck to their own anyway. It was the "thought revolution" that ushered in a new era of acceptance and our modern comfort of diversity. It's when the generations were wanting and willing to integrate but were stopped by the same old stalwart laws that were enacted around the thought process of the time.

Before the 60s, blacks didn't really want to use white facilities and they didn't want whites to use their own facilities. For the most part, people were happy separated, in their own little groups of alike looking and minded people. Culture was according to your ethnicity and you lived within your culture. The same goes for whites but because of the era of diversity and the meshing of races, it was starting to be seen as oppressive. Laws that used to make everyone happy, were starting to only make people feel oppressed.

Like most laws that become outdated and don't fit in with the more modern socio-economic attitude, people rebel but these American laws just happened to be about race. We kind of see the beginning of the same thing with the marijuana laws, to where they used to keep most folks happy and they are now seen as oppressive, due solely to our modern acceptance of what was once not accepted by just about everyone. However, because it was due to race, people take it more to heart and as usual, the government is slow to change to the will of the people, if at all. The same rule applies, if you make enough noise and direct that noise appropriately, the government changes according to the will of the people. The civil rights movement was that noise and as expected, the government moved more slowly. If the government didn't move as slow as it had, laws would change to meet every fad or popular movement and we wouldn't have a stable society. It's just the nature of the game, for the government isn't a human entity and so can't discern between a fad and outright rebellion.

With that being said, I believe it was the civil rights movement that ushered in the influences who control the government to use race to divide us. They saw how polarizing and powerful the issue could be and seized upon the opportunity to keep it in the minds of the people. The 60s scared the infamous PTB, as the people united against the government and imposed their will on the government or they almost did anyway. The PTB could never allow that to happen again. Here, we had people of all different walks of life not only coming together for a common goal, but wanting to come together and when they did, TPTB had a very worthy and powerful opponent.

How do you keep that from happening again? You make the people hate each other more than they hate the oppressive laws. You seed uncivilized and unfair discourse and you direct the blame on each of them.


--airspoon

I knew the civil war wasnt really about the slaves, like I was taught in school.
But I never knew the freed slaves were given help to return to Africa. That is interesting.

Originally posted by airspoon
reply to post by 5MaveN5

 

Nip

Before the 60s, blacks didn't really want to use white facilities and they didn't want whites to use their own facilities. For the most part, people were happy separated, in their own little groups of alike looking and minded people.
--airspoon

Tuck

edit on 15-9-2010 by airspoon because: (no reason given)

Come on now, Airspoon, you are better than that. Better schools, better hygiene facilities - a seat on a bus?

Where are you getting this from? When you were referring to practices that took place 3 centuries ago then that is something that can be debated but you are now saying that people didn't believe they wanted or needed equality based on something like their race?????

This is starting to get just a little on the strange side - do you REALLY believe equality was not something to be aspired to, or even should be demanded?

AIRSPOON, you write some good stuff, but there are many inaccuracies in this post.

You are right that the African slaves sold to the New World were sold by their fellow Africans. Africa had a thriving slave trade with the Middle East for centuries before Europeans started buying slaves from Africa.

Slaves who came to the U.S. were the luckiest of the lot, but that is something few want to point out.

Racism is universal throughout humanity, but the modern attitude that so many want to promote for their own selfish interests is that only whites are capable of discrimination. This is a big problem in our modern times.

Slavery is a burden we have all had to bear, black and white, and the only people who benefited from it were the slave owners. Who are excluded from college, job and business opportunities for affirmative action? Not rich whites who are more likely to be the descendants of slave owners, but poor whites whose families never owned slaves., just as they are more likely the ones whose ancestors fought the war to end slavery.

Where you are wrong.

The Civil War was not fought over Tariffs, it was fought over slavery, and the Lincoln Douglas debates are the proof. Lincoln wasn't elected by East coast bankers, he was elected by the then North Western farmers who made up the majority of the U.S. population. They rightfully saw the Southern slavery plantation system as a threat to their way of life.

It wasn't so much about freeing the slaves, as Northern whites did not want free blacks in their communities, but about ending plantations, and the spread of the feudalistic society that plantations brought with them, that were a major threat to Northern family farmers, and the more democratic communities that they lived in.

Southern plantation owners wanted to extend their way of life throughout the west, and aggressively sought to do just that, as the battles in the Kansas territories, before Lincoln was even elected, proves. The plantation owners weren't trying to defend their way of life, they were trying to expand it in the western territories.

Here is the real truth.

Southern plantation owners chose to fight because they thought they could win. They got their butts handed to them, and they have been a bunch of sore losing spoilsports since.

Because of the position taken by southern plantation owners, the war between those who opposed slavery, and those who embraced it was inevitable.

Who defeated the Southern Plantation owners? The same people who voted Lincoln into power. The war in the West was lopsidedly in favor of the North who pushed the confederate armies all he way down into Texas, and marched across the South unopposed.

The Europeans powers were never going to intervene on behalf of the South, because they knew if they tried to send an army into the interior of the U.S., they would have gotten slaughtered. Chances are they would have been fighting Northerners and Southerners, with only the plantation owners on their side.

Most soldiers in the Confederate Army were conscripted. It is very possible that the majority of Southerners opposed the formation of the Confederacy.

I wonder how many Southerners realize that there is very good possibility, that their ancestors at the time of the Civil War opposed the Confederacy. Many Southerners actively fought against the confederacy throughout the South.

Bigotry and prejudice were common practices throughout humanity at the time. Whites in the South didn't want blacks to be free to run around their communities anymore than Northerners wanted freed black slaves in their communities. This is a hard truth. At the same time, most southerners resented the control of the plantation owners to which they were subjected.

The rich plantation owners controlled the local governments. Their families were stationed in key positions, local Judges, prosecutors, law enforcement. The average Southerner had little say about how things were done in their local communities.

I would say the civil war was primarily fought to end the institution of slavery, and not to free the slaves.

These are all hard truths that we are still working through to this day.

reply to post by something wicked


Who is to say they weren't better and who is to say that they didn't take of what was theirs? For instance, the housing projects aren't as nice as the apartment homes on Jewel St. It's not because they were built any different, it's because they were disrespected, not maintained and not cared for.

Furthermore, before the sixties, you really didn't really need to enforce segregation laws, as every one segregated themselves anyway. Black folks stuck together, as did whites, as did Chinese, etc... It was in the 60s when the younger generation wanted diversity that wasn't meshing well with the accepted norm.

We hear about better hygiene facilities, bathrooms and the like when segregation was the norm but it really depended where you were. A poor white area sure wasn't going to have better and/or nicer facilities than a more wealthy black area.

Remember that it isn't in our tradition to be socialist so just because one person or a group of people have something nice, doesn't mean that everyone else should too. If you can afford it and maintain it, then you will have something as nice as you are willing to put into it.

Furthermore, these things are blown way out of proportion. You find a case or two where two bathrooms are together, only one is much nicer and then you seize on it to claim that whites are racist and here is our proof. Come on man, deny ignorance, don't proliferate it.

White people weren't going into these places and messing them up or keeping them down. It's real simple, you maintain what you have. If I don't maintain my home, it is going to become dilapidated. I can't then blame my neighbors for having a nicer home and demand something be done for me too.

You have to understand that before the 60s, people segregated themselves. In fact, it still happens in our prison systems today. It wasn't until the "love revolution" of the 60s (and just before) that the younger generation wanting something more and it took time for the laws to catch up, just like everything else. Races stick together, always have and it is a very recent development that diversity is so popular. You can't really blame the laws for taking a couple years to catch up, for if they don't, then they would change with the winds and stability is something that wouldn't exist.

Your taking the common stereo type as reality, as if that is going to be accurate, especially with the premise of the thread.

--airspoon

reply to post by airspoon


WOW!!

Star and FLAG

I haven't gotten deeo into yet, but I wll and will post my rave reviews.

AWESOME job!!!!

reply to post by witness63


These are some good posts. Although I don't agree with your initial statement, many of the points you bring up I feel are important valid points.

Is it possible that Northern farmers were also affected by tariffs?

Slavery was clearly the biggest, most contentious issue, and the institution of slavery the primary source of conflict.

reply to post by poet1b


Poet, I have a meeting in a couple of minutes so I havent the time to answer you thoroughly. However, you are wrong and are misunderstanding the "Lincoln-Douglas debates". That was about the spread of slavery, not slavery itself. Nody with any real influence was suggesting that slavery should end in the South and putting weight behind any such argument. In fact, such a notion was only brought up long after the war had started and thousands of young heroes were already dead. You are confusing the spread of slavery with slavery itself. Furthermore, that was before Lincoln's election and we all know the difference between the stump and reality.

We actually have written from licoln and several occasions saying that he didn't want to end slavery.

As for the rest of your post, I'll read it and respond after my meeting.


--airspoon

reply to post by airspoon

Races stick together, always have and it is a very recent development that diversity is so popular.

I would say cultures stick together, and it is not a matter of race, but what one is comfortable with.

While Europeans initially segregated themselves by nationality, over time, they integrated. Where once they did not hang out together, today, English, Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Dutch, ect., live together without thinking about old world differences. Today, races are becoming more and more comfortable living in integrated communities.

reply to post by airspoon


No, I am talking about the spread of slavery.

Ending slavery, or what to do about the slaves should slavery end, was something that no one wanted to consider.

The institution of slavery sought to expand itself.

I have got to get going as well. Looking forward to your response.

reply to post by airspoon

First of all, not all slaves were whipped or lived in horrible conditions, as were prevalent in Africa. What you hear on the popular media and grade-school textbooks is hogwash for the most part or over-exaggerated instances that have been blown out of proportion for political interests and related to the issue as a whole. For the most part, things like that didn't happen.

Oh yes they did. And those "horrible" conditions didn't have a large hold in Africa. First off, there was no slavery to those tribesmen for the most part.. it was more like indentured servitude, though totally not it. Were slaves in the country able to become freemen and women after a set amount of time or became a part of the tribe? For that part. Then you must know that back in Africa, the treatment of the slaves was a reflection of men or women that kept them. So mistreating your slaves reflected badly on you.. hell slaves had the ability to KILL their owner if they were mistreated.. much better conditions than America.

Think about it... Do ranchers beat their animals today? No of course not. Does it happen at all? Sure, but it's the exception as opposed to the rule. On high priced animals such as horses, they are treated very nice and still not the accommodations we would want or expect, though it isn't the horrible picture painted for us in the popular media. With that said, of course their were your sadistic clowns who did not know how to effectively manage workers. Most slaves were simply unpaid workers who worked for room and board instead of currency and as 2nd class citizens.

We aren't dealing with animals here, who don't have the chance to revolt and attack their owners. You really should read up on the slave revolts in the Caribbean (i think it was there.. that or Brazil) and see what the reaction was in America. Do you know the average lifespan of a slave worker? Or the kind of work conditions they lived under? It is a far cry from making it sound like they were simply unpaid workers that were given breaks when they wanted and drank ice cold lemonade.

To give you a mindset of the average person's outlook on Africans during the early 19th century, they saw them as godless savages who couldn't care for themselves if left to their own devices. Slavery was actually seen as a favor to them, as in America and under the care of whites, they had food, shelter and sanitary conditions, all things that were lacking in their home country (for the most part).

THERE we go . Now i see the conditions in which this thread was constructed. As well as the bias. I would comment more.. but i believe it's gonna fall on deaf and already biased ears. Let's get to the rest of your reply

Contrary to popular belief, most slaves weren't locked down and thrown into a cage when they weren't working. On the larger plantations, their would be whole "towns" of slaves who lived in shacks - without locks on the doors - and maintained their families within these homes, where they would forge friendships with not only whites, but other slaves too. For the most part, it was like having workers who worked for room and board only. This train of being was the rule.

Uh... no.

If you had large groups of physically fit men and treated them bad, then rebellion would be the name of the game, as happened on a couple of occasions. Those rebellions were the hallmark of mistreated slaves and were rare, relatively speaking.

No there weren't.

Meh.. Honestly, i'm done reading. Critiquing your points will only cause us and others to take sides and point fingers, i'm not here for that. Otherwise, good post.. keep up the good work! At least you put thought and some research into this topic rather than rattling of points without any kind of work to back up your points.

reply to post by airspoon

In Africa, times were tough. Lack of food and adequate shelter as well as turmoil with warring tribes. Many Africans were dying of starvation so a contract to come to the promised land and work without pay for 10 - 20 years didn't sound like such a bad thing. This and the fact that Africa didn't even have a currency past trading jewelry or something of the sort. Working for pay just wasn't something they were used to anyway.

You HAVE to back that up with something. When slavery started.. i had no idea things where that bad in Africa or are you just making assumptions?

Originally posted by something wicked
reply to post by Power_Semi

 

Hi,

While I agree with your sentiments, I do not believe that only 0.01% of people either kept slaves or oppressed people based on their race at the time in question.

Regarding the point that there has never been racism, just a quick question as I'm guessing you are also UK based... do you think notices in B&Bs in England up until at least the 1970s stating 'no blacks, no dogs, no Irish' is not racist? I'm sure every other country could give similar examples. I wouldn't call a B&B owner a member of an elite group, but maybe that's just me.

edit on 15-9-2010 by something wicked because: whoops, put in the wrong percentage

I didn't say that "there has never been racism", I said that SLAVERY has never been about black vs white, so I'm not going to bother answering the following comments you made from that twisting of my words.

With regards to your questioning whether only a very small number of people owned slaves - well I am completely correct on that, and your response is a perfect example of the problem.

You've been so brain washed into thinking that white people abused the rights of black people by making them slaves, that you cannot or will not comprehend the truth.

In order to have a slave you needed to be very rich.

Most families in the UK couldn't even afford to feed themselves, never mind an extra mouth.

That's why their children were sent to work at 5 years old.

Besides that, what do you need a slave for when you have a whole family living in one room in a house that holds another 3 families and is falling to bits.

Every family in England didn't have a stable full of horses to attend to or the family silver to polish.

Most of them literally didn't have a pot to p*ss in.

I think you've been watchig too many of the BBCs nice and fluffy historical dramas.

reply to post by cenpuppie


You don't think there were good slave owners in the U.S.? Do you think it might be possible that the slave owners who treated their slaves better got more out of them? That the slave owners who abused their slaves were looked down upon in the U.S.?

Are you really going to claim that slaves in Africa were treated better? Do you know what they did to male slaves, especially those sold to the Middle East?

I think you are not willing to look at the true history.

reply to post by dalepmay


Great vid!!! I watched and you made so many important valid points..I'd love ot share this on FaceBook but unfortunately the majority on their could care less . They'd only be interested if I was was annoucing what I will do today or what store I'm shopping at

As an aside, did you know that prior to the slave trade with the West taking people from Africa, there were (for want of a better word) Islamic pirate ships that were capturing ships off the coast of England and Europe and taking those captives back to the East to be traded as slaves?

It has never just been one way.

As for how slaves were treated - they were a commodity. Someone had PAID for them.

Who do you think they'd rather treat like sh*t - someone from a local family that they can employ for peanuts and fire and replace at the drop of a hat, or someone they'd paid good money for?

It wouldn't make much sense to pay a lot of money for a man, and then beat him senseless so that he can't work, would it?