Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 6 - 10.9.2007.6

Continued from Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 5...

6.THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA. – F*** you Medved. I’m sorry but I had to say that as my anger is huge. How dare Medved say that. How could he possibly assume that?

If there were no African slaves, I feel it’s obvious there is no America as it exists today. There would have been fewer and smaller cities everywhere, incredibly less agriculture would have been grown to be traded. Less money means less arms and ships to defend America from the British, or others. Perhaps the effect means no America at all. And that means world history from that point completely changes in manners NONE are able to accurately comprehend.

But of the things I can say, my ancestors would not have died by the millions. I’m sure the children and families of those lost would have been better having their father or mother still live. I know that without slavery MILLIONS of families would never have been broken up. That would be better. I know that MILLIONS would not have had to live worse than cattle and livestock for their lifetimes, nor would they need to see their children born into an equal life and taken from them. I know that untold numbers of women would not have been raped (men too for that matter), and their children from these forced encounters viewed as non-existent. I know that untold thousands upon thousands would not have been mutilated and murdered for sport or as punishment for trying to be free or not doing their job properly.

I can imagine that the word N***** might not have the same meaning it does today and has for centuries. I can imagine that I would not be treated as an object of fear as I go to and from work. I can imagine that my ancestors would not have had to strive to be considered equal for 100+ years. I can imagine that my father, mother and grandparents would not have been denied a place to live solely for their color of skin.

How much are those things worth? How much more when multiplied by 346 years?

It is only the greatest level of conceit and self-aggrandizement that could allow anyone to claim that the lives of anyone is better with 346 years of racism, murder, abuse, mutilation, sexual abuse, degradation, insults, and I fear to imagine what else. If this was such a positive effect on the African Americans of today, I ask that Medved, his family and friends all be sold into slavery under the same conditions of the past for the next 346 years. I’ll even grant him just 89 years. I’ll guarantee that at the end of that time his descendant s will live in a nation of stronger economics and greater education than now. Is he willing to volunteer? Would anyone of sane mind?

But wait, your descendants will have better lives. Isn’t that worth it? According to the all-knowing and generous Medved, and those that think like him, it is. Someone give him Prozac.

**I will end this line of discussion here, but I will continue the response under another title - Real points on reparations**

Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 5 - 10.9.2007.5

Continued from Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 4...

5.WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION. – That is just insulting. Of course America did not create slavery. Medved insults the intelligence of his readers to again debate this issue. It is not the question of the existence of slavery that is in question. It is the actions of America with slavery that is the subject. Again this is obfuscation of the subject.

The blame is the fact that American slaves had no rights, unlike indentured servants, and were not considered or treated as human beings. That is indisputable. Unlike slaves throughout history, such as the Romans, the Greeks, and others where slaves were considered 2nd class citizens and were able to either integrate or elevate themselves to part of the society American slaves were considered property similar to chairs. Livestock were more ingrained in American society.

Even today, the concept of a cowboy (a term created to describe slaves that worked with cattle) and movies of them feature more scenes and plot involvement with cattle than African Americans. From start to finish it’s denial and obfuscation. Even for over 100 years after the 13th Amendment African Americans were not able to integrate into American society due to segregation and Jim Crow laws.

Perhaps if Medved considers time according to geological parameters he would be correct in saying it was a quick change. But to my knowledge there is no other society that had slaves or indentured servants (which are quite different I say again) that treated them in the same manner as American slaves. They may have been treated badly, but they were human. African Americans were not. So the comparison is flawed, because being a 2nd class citizen for 500 years (exaggeration) is not the same has being less than a cow, horse, pig, or chair for 300+.

And I will add that, if other nations had slavery, of any form at any time in history I could care less. The discussion is American slavery. The issue is American reparations for American slavery. What the Roman, or the Brazilians did and for how long is an interesting side note but it does not justify nor resolve the American issues. This may be a wonderful way to avoid the actual argument, but it does nothing to resolve it. It’s sidestepping the issue. Medved should realize that most of us can see this and should stop insulting us. Deal with the issue.



“When magistrates in Massachusetts discovered that some of their citizens had raided an African village and violently seized two natives to bring them across the Atlantic for sale in the New World, the General Court condemned “this haynos and crying sinn of man-stealing.” The officials promptly ordered the two blacks returned to their native land. Two years later [1648], Rhode Island passed legislation denouncing the practice of enslaving Africans for life and ordered that any slaves “brought within the liberties of this Collonie” be set free after ten years “as the manner is with the English servants.” ”



Oh how kind and merciful. Thank you Medved for showing me the compassion that America had at the time. 2 slaves out of MILLIONS that died in forced transit, and countless others killed on American soil, were sent home. I can sleep better now.

The kind people of Rhode Island decided my ancestors should ONLY be enslaved for a decade. Well that is better than a lifetime, how gracious of them. Too bad that the number of slaves in Rhode Island did not approach the perhaps hundreds of thousands that were sold for a lifetime of slavery during the very same time period.

Continued in Part 6...

Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 4 - 10.9.2007.4

Continued from Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 3...

3.THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT. – Slaves that arrived in America had a value. Those that died in the slave ships were just flotsam. To ensure profitable trips, cargo ships overloaded their ships planning ahead of time for the deaths of a portion of the Africans.

By your own admission, probably millions of Africans died and there was no accounting for them. Just as there is no accounting of the chairs that were lost on those same voyages. How many people need to be killed for how long to claim genocide? How many died in the Holocaust? How many Serbians died before American troops were sent with the U.N. to stop the genocide? In Darfur today, it is considered genocide in action with over a million dead and that has been ongoing for 4 years at least.

By your own admission slaves died en route to America for 300 YEARS, creating millions of dead, not counting untold numbers being killed once in America. Remember, you don’t need to account for, nor is it a crime to kill livestock. Slaves were less valuable than many livestock and there was no full accounting of them. How do these numbers not reach Genocidal numbers?

Is it not a genocidal act because a far smaller number of Slaves lived than the total dead? By that logic some have denied the Holocaust. That is no less an ignorant answer. Just because the total population of Africa was not killed does not make it less of a horrific and despicable act.



“By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse.”



As you stated slavers overcrowded their ships because they knew as many as 1/3 would die in the forced transport. That sounds like a deliberate slaughter. Causing the expected death of hundreds if not thousands of a specific people at a time, each time they moved their ships. While you try to drive sympathy to the slavers, I fail to join in that opinion. They committed knowing Genocide, without pause since they claimed that Africans were not human.

Your further argument, implying that ALL slaves were considered as valuable as livestock, fails as well. First I’m not grateful that some slave owners felt as much pride in some of their slaves as they did their cattle or horses. The fact that some were selected as breeding stock does not make me feel better either. It is inhumane.

Further it means that some slaves were NOT given this favored status. Much like some horses and cattle were put down to improve the heard, your logic means the same happened to slaves. The loss was considered acceptable. Since the value of ALL slaves was not the same, murder of some was par for the course as it would be with any livestock.

4.IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. – Again you lie. America was not a manufacturing economy. That is a fact. America at that time was an agricultural nation, exporting sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Those were huge cash crops. Those crops came from slave labor.



“50% of U.S. exports in 1855 were cotton”





“American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860… the number of slaves in America grew from 700,000 in 1790 to 4,000,000 in 1860”





“New York rose to its preeminent position as the commercial and financial center of America because of cotton. It has been estimated that New York received forty percent of all cotton revenues since the city supplied insurance, shipping, and financing services and New York merchants sold goods to Southern planters. The trade with the South, which has been estimated at $200,000,000 annually, was an impressive sum at the time.”



While the North made huge amounts of money from providing slaves, equipment, insurance and trade for the South, it was the crops of the South that was the source of American income until the industrial revolution took hold.

One of the primary causes of the Civil War was the fact that the North, without the agricultural trade from the South could not sustain itself. Prosperity in the North was only attained from the slave labor in the South. From 1619 until well in the 1800’s America was a farming nation that is fact. We made virtually all our money at that time from that income source, again a fact.

Another fact that needs to be noted is that Northern slaves were used to build the infrastructure that became the North. They were used to build city, streets, buildings and everything else. Similar work was done in the South. Jim Crow laws were in massive effect in the growth of the West. There is no aspect of the nation that exists today that does not have its roots in Slave labor. That is a fact.

America could not exist as it does today without slave labor. Thus all the wealth that exists today has at its roots African Americans and their unpaid work, their blood, and their inhumane treatment and living conditions. There is no amount of double talk or distraction that takes away from these facts.

Continued in Part 5...

Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 3 - 10.9.2007.3

Continued from Responding to Michael Medved's rant against reparations Part 2...

2.SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS. – Not only is this absurd, it is a lie. It is factually in accurate. American history includes and is part in parcel tied to the 13 colonies. We accept as American history everything from the first colonists beyond. In fact the ‘discovery’ of America by Christopher Columbus (who was not the first European here and thus why we are called America and not Columbia) is considered a national holiday. To deny that portion of our accepted history is to minimize everything about America.

The 13 colonies all have slavery. That is a fact. The northern colonies had more indentured servants, but there were slaves. To deny that is a lie. It is an attempt to romanticize the facts. It is also true that the northern colonies took on abolition after a time, to deny the initial action is to sidestep history. You know better.

Further the first African slaves were recorded in the American colonies in 1619, which does not mean slaves were not here before then. 89 years later as you claim, they were still slaves before the Declaration of Independence. In fact slavery existed in America from 1619 until its formal end in 1865. That’s when de facto slavery took over with Jim Crow laws and sharecropping. The Jim Crow laws were in effect, to varying degrees, as late as the 1970’s. If we only count until the Civil Rights acts (which should not have been needed if the 13th and 14th Amendments were actually enforced) then slavery lasted roughly 346 years.

Math and time do not change because you prefer to view it a certain way. If you wish to parse split hairs you can, but that does not change facts. It just allows you to view things in a manner that will let you sleep at night and live with your head in the sand.



“Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage.”



How can you not connect the cause with the result? Without slavery there is no Jim Crow. As you admit, slavery continued de facto under a different name for over a century after the 13th Amendment. For something ‘indefensible’ you seem to provide many defenses.

As for your claim of



“Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves.”



Exactly what time frame are you using for that claim? Given the fact that slavery existed for some time in all 13 colonies, then was predominant in the south for at least the 89 years you are willing to provide for, and then continued de facto under Jim Crow, there are centuries of Whites that owned slaved for some period of time. And those that owned slave did not own just one. They owned several families, working in the fields and the homes. So to say, arbitrarily and for your conscience, that only 5% of today’s White population is descended from slave owners is a farce. I would guess that if you count from the start of slaves in America, which includes the colonies that we count as America, then I would guess that the number could be at least as high as 25%.

I submit the extended family of Thomas Jefferson. Denied acknowledgement for centuries yet proven as descendants, how many other African Americans share tied ancestries to White American slave owners going back centuries. Oh, and don’t forget that many slaves were not documented as they were not considered humans, so you cannot give an accurate guess as to who owned slaves where and when.

Continued in Part 4...

Some racial slurs some American schools teach - 10.4.2007.1

You can comment here and at Black & White Blog, a blog I co-author to discuss issues from both the African American and White American viewpoints. I invite everyone to take a look and give their thoughts.

I want to thank my friend Shay for pointing this out to me.

School is about education. We all go there to learn. Learn about history of the world and the nation. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. But some schools feel there are other things that kids need to learn.



Of all the things that kids could learn about Slavery and the Civil War, how does this help? Where does knowing this word expand the mind and promote new thoughts? In what way could this be construed as being positive in race relations?

Maybe the school should have had the word REPARATIONS on the cross word, defined as – What America refuses to do or discuss, though it’s been done for Native Indians and Japanese Americans.

Perhaps another word may have been APOLOGY, defined as – Words never spoken by any President or Congress to African Americans in any form.

I would even go with MODERN DAY, defining that as – Impossible to exist without the work, sweat, and blood of African Americans Slaves that built the economy and infrastructure of America from roughly 1619 to 1865, and continued under Jim Crow laws until 1968-ish.

If they wanted to be controversial they could have used 13th AMENDMENT defined as – America opens its eyes and suddenly realizes that human beings exist in colors beyond white and pink.

Final part of response on comment about Rep. Virgil Goode - 12.24.2006.3

Final part of reply on comment...

As to your final point of imposing views. Islam is not imposing anything on America. There have been Muslims in the world long before there was an America. There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world today (by some estimates) and that number is growing as it has been for centuries. Islam has not changed a single law in America. Actions of a small group of men that have a religious faith have caused change in America. It was not their religion but their actions that created the change. That is no different than Timothy McVeigh (non-Muslim), Eric Robert Rudolph (non-Muslim), or Pearl Harbor (Japan is mostly Shinto and Buddhist and during the time of World War II the emperor was regarded as a religious figure). In each case it was the actions and not the religion that caused change.

But if Rep. Goode is to impose his view then that is a problem. It violates our basic principles. The freedom of religion is one of the founding beliefs of this nation. To say that any religion should be restricted is to violate that principle. If one religion can be restricted then any can be. Why not restrict Jews, or Buddhists, or Lutherans. Where does it end, and who has the right to choose?

In addition Rep. Goode would restrict non-European [non-Caucasian] immigrants to this nation. I’m not speaking of illegal aliens, but legal immigrants. His basis is that too many Arabs and Muslims are entering the nation. He said this in an interview with Fox News on the same day I wrote the original post. That sounds racist to me. That is the voice of fear and stupidity. To my knowledge and understanding Rep. Goode has never met Rep. Ellison or any Muslims, yet he seeks to enact actions against both. Where does that come from beyond fear and ignorance and, I think, prejudice. It seems blatant and wrong. It goes against the principles of the nation and sets a precedence for future conditions by which citizens can be judged. Religious bias leads to racial bias and vice versa. Conditions on, or preferences of, citizenship leads to second-class or non-citizenship. I see that little different that how slaves were seen before and after the 13th and 14th Amendments. That is a road I never want to go down, nor allow my nephews and nieces to see.

Personally Rep. Virgil Goode can believe whatever he wishes. His religion is his personal choice as is the manner in which he acts with people of different races and religions that are not his own. That is a right that America is founded on. But as a representative of his state and a member of the government, he does not get that choice. He must work with all other members of the government to advance America, and not just his personal views. Whether he and any of his constituents like it or not America is made up of a mix of every religion and race and group in the world. That is one of the facts that make us great. The sum of our parts makes us greater as a whole. For Rep. Goode to impose his limited views is to weaken the nation and to reduce what America is.

That is the danger and the problem. Those are the issues at hand. To see it any other way is, to me, subterfuge and denial.

This is what I think, what do you think?

Part 2 Part 2 of reply on Rep. Virgil Goode's letter - 12.24.2006.2

Part 1 Reply to comment on Rep. Goode's Letter - 12.24.2006.1