Slaveri is not a white on black crime. It's a rich on poor crime.

[PACOX]

I don't understand what it is your trying to say?

Because they bought from people who bought from African slave traders they where not involved?

What always confuses me about this argument is how it somehow paints negros as the victims rather then the perpetrators? They captured, raised, and sold the most slaves how is this somehow shoved onto another group of people for the evil they created?

African slavers were responsible weren't responsible for capturings, raising, and selling most of the slaves that would end up America. Most American slaves weren't from Africa or directly from Africa, they came from the West Indies. Nor where the African slavers directly involved in the institution of American slavery (or the Trans-Atlantic Trade for that matter). Its like saying a breeder is responsible for an owner turning their pitbull into a fighting dog, the gun manufacturer responsible for someone shooting up a function. Especially if said dog fighter or mass shooter start breeding their own dogs, making their own guns. The argument well the Africans were selling the slaves is only meant to somehow diminish the further inhumane acts of slave traders and plantation owners. Seriously trying to blame an entire institution on the lowest peg of the pyramid.

[Revamp Man]

It was both.

How many slaves in the US were white Americans?

none but there were more irish slaves and they were treated worse than blacks

[Stelio Kontos]

none but there were more irish slaves and they were treated worse than blacks

In the US? Preposterous.

[Macaquerie]

African slavers were responsible weren't responsible for capturings, raising, and selling most of the slaves that would end up America. Most American slaves weren't from Africa or directly from Africa, they came from the West Indies. Nor where the African slavers directly involved in the institution of American slavery (or the Trans-Atlantic Trade for that matter). Its like saying a breeder is responsible for an owner turning their pitbull into a fighting dog, the gun manufacturer responsible for someone shooting up a function. Especially if said dog fighter or mass shooter start breeding their own dogs, making their own guns. The argument well the Africans were selling the slaves is only meant to somehow diminish the further inhumane acts of slave traders and plantation owners. Seriously trying to blame an entire institution on the lowest peg of the pyramid.

Interestingly enough, several African countries have issued official state apologies for the slave trade.

[shadowmouse]

none but there were more irish slaves and they were treated worse than blacks

https://www.snopes.com/irish-slaves-early-america/

A facet of U.S. history largely unfamiliar to Americans themselves is the role of indentured servitude in the survival and growth of the original 13 colonies. The earliest settlers needed laborers, but only wealthy people could afford passage to the New World. This led to a system whereby those who lacked means were brought from Europe under contract to work off their passage, room, and board over a period of two to seven years, until they were considered to have earned their freedom. No fewer than half of the immigrants who came to the New World during the colonial period arrived as indentured servants.

Among the many thousands of impoverished Europeans brought over in this fashion were men, women, and children from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and elsewhere, but over the intervening centuries the notion has arisen that the Irish, in particular, were shipped to the New World as “white slaves.”

In fact, according to an article first published on the Internet in 2008 and endlessly recirculated since, Irish slaves were not only common in early America, they were more common than African slaves, and often treated more harshly. The article making these claims is usually credited to an individual named John Martin, who, in turn, found most of his “facts” in a 2003 article by James F. Cavanaugh called “Irish Slaves in the Caribbean.” It has gone by many names, but as of mid-2016, the most shared version of the Irish slave narrative was entitled “Irish: The Forgotten White Slaves,” and posted under the byline of a man named Ronald Dwyer.

Down the page:

Limerick-based research librarian and historian Liam Hogan takes aim at this notion in a series of papers debunking what he calls “the Irish slaves myth.” There were no Irish slaves in the Americas, Hogan says. People who claim there were are conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery — two distinct forms of servitude with more differences between them than similarities:

“White indentured servitude was so very different from black slavery as to be from another galaxy of human experience,” as Donald Harman Akenson put it in If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730. How so? Chattel slavery was perpetual, a slave was only free once they they were no longer alive; it was hereditary, the children of slaves were the property of their owner; the status of chattel slave was designated by ‘race’, there was no escaping your bloodline; a chattel slave was treated like livestock, you could kill your slaves while applying “moderate correction” and the homicide law would not apply; the execution of ‘insolent’ slaves was encouraged in these slavocracies to deter insurrections and disobedience, and their owners were paid generous compensation for their ‘loss’; an indentured servant could appeal to a court of law if they were mistreated, a slave had no recourse for justice."

The race factor


Hogan pins a 2014 resurgence of the Irish slaves narrative to increasing racial tensions within the United States, situating it within a larger world view desirous of absolving white Europeans of blame for the transatlantic slave trade that brought an estimated 12 million Africans to the New World in lifelong bondage:

"From Stormfront.org, a self-described online community of white nationalists, to David Icke’s February 2014 interview with Infowars.com, the narrative of the ‘White slaves’ is continuously promoted. The most influential book to claim that there was ‘white slavery’ in Colonial America was Michael Hoffman’s They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America. Self-published in 1993, Hoffman, a Holocaust denier, unsurprisingly blames the Atlantic slave trade on the Jews. By blurring the lines between the different forms of unfree labour, these white supremacists seek to conceal the incontestable fact that these slavocracies were controlled by — and operated for the benefit of — white Europeans. This narrative, which exists almost exclusively in the United States, is essentially a form of nativism and racism masquerading as conspiracy theory."

Quote may differ from original article's format because I wasn't able to copy the exact layout

[Mormolyce]

To be honest, that's always been a little surprising to me how Spartans have been lionized in the modern West, considering some of their practices. Athens had its issues, but compared to Sparta they were beacons of humanitarianism and progress.

And it's not ALL Frank Miller's fault! :P

Which reminds me. Recently there have been anti-foreigner attacks in Greece targeting mostly Pakistani laborers. The group claiming responsibility calls themselves Crypteia. In ancient Sparta, the Crypteia were, well, death-squads who every year were allowed to kill any helot they wished. They were usually the best students of the agoge, the Spartan military academy system, and the purpose of the yearly culling was to basically take out any helot who had power or prominence in any way. By taking out promising helots, they ensured the other helots would not rise up.

Frightening stuff.

It's truly horrifying that there could be a person who simultaneously knows who the Crypteia were and identifies with them.

[Stelio Kontos]

And it's not ALL Frank Miller's fault! :P



It's truly horrifying that there could be a person who simultaneously knows who the Crypteia were and identifies with them.

I wonder if someone in Hollywood did their homework, because I was thinking that the crypteia in some ways seemed similar to The Purge, and lo and behold, google provides:

https://moviepilot.com/posts/4027747

The idea of one part of society turning on another is not a new one, with societal purging based on religious, ethnic or political hatred happening many times in different cultures. The closest example of an actual, state-legitimized 'Purge' in real life happened in Ancient Sparta.

The Crypteia was a system in which every year, young Spartan warriors were legally allowed to kill the subjugated helot population without punishment. The ruling class were given permission to kill with impunity, and although The Purge is a right given to everyone within the movie, in practice, it is the callous, rich ruling class who are more able to abuse their power, killing the poor and vulnerable. This helped to keep the Spartans in power. Great for Spartans, pretty terrible for the helots, and let's face it, in this world of extreme rich and extreme poverty, most of us would be the helots in this scenario!

[Deleted]

For Christ's sake, people complained about it already, but could a mod please correct the title?
Please, it hurts me just to look at the general off-topic page and see it hanging there in this condition.
@Pendulous or any other mod, could you please change the I into a y?

[Macaquerie]

For Christ's sake, people complained about it already, but could a mod please correct the title?
Please, it hurts me just to look at the general off-topic page and see it hanging there in this condition.
@Pendulous or any other mod, could you please change the I into a y?

No, please don't change it. The mental level on which slavery apologists operate needs to be on full display.

[Mormolyce]

I wonder if someone in Hollywood did their homework, because I was thinking that the crypteia in some ways seemed similar to The Purge, and lo and behold, google provides:

https://moviepilot.com/posts/4027747

The idea of one part of society turning on another is not a new one, with societal purging based on religious, ethnic or political hatred happening many times in different cultures. The closest example of an actual, state-legitimized 'Purge' in real life happened in Ancient Sparta.

The Crypteia was a system in which every year, young Spartan warriors were legally allowed to kill the subjugated helot population without punishment. The ruling class were given permission to kill with impunity, and although The Purge is a right given to everyone within the movie, in practice, it is the callous, rich ruling class who are more able to abuse their power, killing the poor and vulnerable. This helped to keep the Spartans in power. Great for Spartans, pretty terrible for the helots, and let's face it, in this world of extreme rich and extreme poverty, most of us would be the helots in this scenario!

Pitch for 300: the heroes are the people who organised the Purge, who are defenders of democracy against armies of homosexual horror monsters.

[Deleted]

To be honest, that's always been a little surprising to me how Spartans have been lionized in the modern West, considering some of their practices. Athens had its issues, but compared to Sparta they were beacons of humanitarianism and progress.

Which reminds me. Recently there have been anti-foreigner attacks in Greece targeting mostly Pakistani laborers. The group claiming responsibility calls themselves Crypteia. In ancient Sparta, the Crypteia were, well, death-squads who every year were allowed to kill any helot they wished. They were usually the best students of the agoge, the Spartan military academy system, and the purpose of the yearly culling was to basically take out any helot who had power or prominence in any way. By taking out promising helots, they ensured the other helots would not rise up.

Frightening stuff.

Really not all that frightening if you put it in historical context. That is the part that people often "forget", to put things into a historical context. People often view things that happened in history through the lenses of our current generation, and that is just plainly wrong.

You have to realize that these Spartans were founded around 700 BCE and was "destroyed" around 400 AD. You have got to realize that in 700 BCE things just were very different over al. If you look around what was happening during that time then all of a sudden things like killing off certain people to maintain the status quo isn't exactly a weird thing. Things like sacrifice (child or regular humans) were common, it wasn't unheard off to effectively slaughter complete regions in order to not have hem revolt. Have a look at some of the campaigns the Egyptians had or the Romans for that matter. These were the entities that they (the Spartans) had to compete with. Hell, just look through the old testament, when the Jews came for their promised land, they pretty much murdered their way through the region leaving none alive. This was common business at the time as you would not want to leave a broken people that could revolt at a later date seeking justice for what was done to them.

This doesn't mean that im okay with whatever they did back in the day, but it does mean that given the time and place were this took place it wasn't exactly uncommon. Human history is littered with wars and atrocities, the further you go back the more insane it gets. When we look at these things through our current laws and sense of justice then all of history was pretty much "hitler".

This is the same for everything in history, including slavery. Slaves were treated badly, specially when you look at it through our current sense of justice. But when you look at how the rest of the humans were treated at that time, then all of a sudden the slaves didn't have it that much worse then the common poor folks. The common people didn't have it good, often the common people were starving and they only lived by the grace of their lords. After this age, during the industrial revolution, things got arguably worse, the children of the poor had to work from very young ages only to die at a relatively young age. Disease was rampant and doctors to help them were pretty much none existing even if they could pay for one.

Of course, none of this excuses slavery in anyway, nor how slaves were treated, but it does put things in perspective. Why would a slave owner treat "his property" any better then the common folks had it? Again, im not saying that it was okay for a slave owner to do this, specially not in our current set of value's. But through the slave owners perspective he wasn't doing it all that bad. Him not providing what we would call basic necessities for his slaves would not have been viewed as inhumane when most of the common people didn't have access to these basic necessities either.
Just imagine how people will look at us 300 years from now, do you think they will find it reasonable for us to let half of the planets people starve? In 300 years im pretty sure that people looking back at us would facepalm and sigh thinking, was this really the best they could do back then? I do not think their judgment over us will be any better as our judgment of the people during the industrial revolution and slavery before that.

[Mormolyce]

A lot of neo-nazis in Greece (I mean their party keeps getting reelected). The fact that history education here has always been exceedingly nationalistic (we have a military dictatorship not far past, that many are nostalgic about) does not help.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but it would be nice to be occasionally.

- - - Updated - - -

Really not all that frightening if you put it in historical context. That is the part that people often "forget", to put things into a historical context. People often view things that happened in history through the lenses of our current generation, and that is just plainly wrong.

The thing is, the Spartans were reviled for their practices in their time. Indeed many of the things we learn about them may well be exaggerations or inventions intended to denigrate them.

[Deleted]

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but it would be nice to be occasionally.

- - - Updated - - -



The thing is, the Spartans were reviled for their practices in their time. Indeed many of the things we learn about them may well be exaggerations or inventions intended to denigrate them.

Well, you have to remember here that this was over a period of a millennia, so just like things are changing now they were changing back then too. Practices that were praised at the beginning of the age might have fallen out of favor later on. Of course not everything that is said about them is 100% true, but what i was getting at was that having little regard for human life was kind of the norm back then.

[Marakesh]

False. Those "black" slave owners were mostly white racially speaking, and they received their fortunes and educations from their white parents. A black person coming out of slavery had a next to zero chance of becoming a wealthy plantation owner in the South.

https://www.theroot.com/did-black-pe...ves-1790895436

Really, this is well established history. Jews, Cherokees, everyone was in on it. This is not to say the racial component wasn't there on the whole and it wasn't considerably more harmful to black people, but your effort to make it the worst thing in history is as untrue as this Irish slave nonsense. (Now in the dark ages the Vikings did pillage Ireland and there were a ton of Irish slaves being exported. Very similar circumstances too, the Viking were opening up new land that didn't have settled communities on that scale. A pattern there.)

I have no idea what to say about your idea of a shade test on how black these slave owners were. African Americans today carry more of their white slave owners genetics than white people do. The average southern white is 5% black, in fact, I believe it was Gates himself who was going around trying to get southern KKK members to do DNA tests which was pretty funny.

[Vash The Stampede]

That's all fine and dandy, but you seem to be missing the part where those slavery systems weren't race-based, and rarely did the status of slavery pass from parent to child. You also have the issue where America was founded on enlightenment principles, yet still had a system of slavery in place which made the entire foundation of the society inherently hypocritical.

To the American Indians, that other tribe might as well be a totally different species. They did look at other tribes as lesser to themselves. Humans do this to make it look like what they're doing is ok. Make someone not human and suddenly your actions against them is justified.

Slavery in America was fueled by capitalism. Money talks and slaves work.

As for mutilation, American slave-holders happily practiced it. As did the racist whites that continued the practice of minority mutilaion after slavery ended. If you ran away from a plantation, you typically got your foot cut off. If you were accused of a crime, you could lose a finger, an ear, an eye, or even your genitals. After slavery ended, lynch mobs would typically take pieces of the victim home as trophies, right in the presence of their children. That practice lasted well into the 20th century.

The reason a foot was cute off by American Indians was because you were a sacrifice. If you were gonna die you don't need to walk. A slave owned by white men who had their feet cute off wasn't worth anything to them anymore as they can't work. Though I could see fingers and ears as they aren't essential to doing your job. But if you're the slave owner you typically didn't want your property damaged.

When white men owned slaves it's fueled by capitalism, while American Indians owned slaves they did so for religious reasons or just to show power to other tribes.

The reason that American slavery is a topic is because its practice flew in the face of its philosophical foundations, and its legacy stretched well into the 20th century, decades after its legal ending. African Americans (and frankly all Americans) still feel its effects to this day.

And that's why we had a civil war over it. But the reason we had slaves was not a race issue, but a financial one. It's the reason why anyone ever owned slaves. It's only a race issue after we abolished slavery. BTW, slavery can take many forms. Ever wonder what the difference is from working as a slave back then to working for minimum wage today is? The illusion of freedom. Many ex slaves knew this as their free life became much harder than when they were slaves.

BTW, where did anyone say that America isn't a great place to live? You can acknowledge that America did some terrible things in its past (that it shouldn't excuse or cover up) and still acknowledge that this country is a great place to live.

The popular topic today is that white men are bad mkay, but yet America, Australia, Canada, and Europe are not only the best places to live but the most open about race. Racism still exists but we're trying to stop it. Slavery has been abolished for over 100 years now. Yet the countries of non-white majority of people seem to not adopt similar policies. Particularly countries in Africa and the middle east where human rights violations is just not a priority.

Every country in some way has used slavery, and it usually starts with your own race selling off it's unwanted to potential buyers. Ancient Greeks had Greek slaves and in African countries today you have Africans with African slaves. North Korea sells it's own people around the world for slavery, and makes sure they don't run away by threatening to kill their family.

Just saying that white people aren't the biggest offenders when it came to slavery. Certainly aren't the current biggest offenders either, minus illegal sex trafficking and illegal slavery.

[satimy]

It’s amazing this thread hasn’t been locked yet

[primalmatter]

America offically stopped importing slaves almost 70 years before slavery was abolished, which means they had more than enough slaves that were already in US to sustain the institution. Africans traders were far removed from the system. When the US was importing, they usually got their slaves from European slavers, not African. The Africans also werent chaining people head-to-toe in the bottom of boats and throwing an excess "human cattle" overboard.

They held and sold them amd mlst importantly captured them. Your argument boils down to drug dealers are innocent because everyone who buys from them is doing something illiegal... thats not how it works.

[PACOX]

They held and sold them amd mlst importantly captured them. Your argument boils down to drug dealers are innocent because everyone who buys from them is doing something illiegal... thats not how it works.

If I said they were innocent, which I didn't. The role of the Africans were running the entire show. Its nothing but a disingenuous argument meant to sweep the inhumane treatment of American slaves under the rug.

[Dreadstar24]

..............

[endersblade]

Hey guys, I hate to break it to you, but just because pyramids weren't built by slaves (which they obviously weren't) doesn't mean there were no slaves in Egypt. And lots of those slaves died doing the heavy lifting of those stones.

Firsthand experience, eh? Glad to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, rather than, you know, experts and such.