On another page poster Jim Thompson said: "....Sorry only whites can be racist. You see, over 200 years ago we had slaves. But the black people currently selling slaves in Africa for $500 each are just trying to make a living."
I replied:,...."Actually you make a point I agree with there. At least about the double standard about current slavery." However you guys had slaves far more recently than 200 years ago. I was held, so I was told, in the arms of a slave relative. This in 1950. I was six months old, and my great great...maybe another "great" grand-aunt then 96 held me.
She was born a slave, and freed when Union Calvary entered Ocean Springs Mississippi. She was 9 years old then having been born in 1854. So to me or at least certainly my folks. Slavery was a living memory thing...not back 200 years ago with George Washington, and his buddies.
On that point I may have missed it.
Has Black Lives Matters or any other radical black group said anything about Arabs selling Black Africans in the Slave Markets of Libya? Has the left had a position? Reminds me of when the Iranians began hanging Queers, and there was a thunderous silence from progressives on the matter. I mean what with they supporting these guys against U.S. meddling.
I recall when at a staff meeting at the Liberal radio station I wasted my life at. I raised the issue of our doing a special report on the lynching's of Queers in Iran. Stone dead silence from those I had thought my friends.
I'm reminded of what my grand-uncle Louis once said.
"Some people are just full of Shit."
6 comments:
Problem is... that reality has a nasty way of refusing to conform with ideology. Progressive, reactionary, liberationist, or otherwise. In re. the slave markets in Libya. I recall in the early 70s a dispute with a firebrand black teen in one of my youth groups who was guilt-tripping whitey for slavery, and pointing out to him that my ancestors did not go out into the jungle to capture his ancestors: we bought them from the local African kings who did the dirty work and brought them to the slave markets on the coast. Butch took my observation back to his mentor, who grudgingly admitted that strictly speaking, historically, I was right - but that didn't relieve the honky of his guilt for slavery one bit. Not that I said it did; I was just saying there was more than enough guilt around for everybody. And all this quite aside from the fact that my ancestors did not show up in America until well after the emancipation - something my father forcefully pointed out to me, when denouncing my involvement in civil rights, along with his observation that those inner city schools had been perfectly good for him when he went to them at the turn of the century - the 20th century - and he could not see why they were not good enough for the coloreds today. The old man was full of shit too: so long as I shared any of the historic and economic benefits of slavery (not to mention post-slavery Jim Crow), I share the guilt for it, and the responsibility to see justice done - even if I did haul my ass down to Holly Springs, Oxford and Jackson as a civil rights worker. Like I said, more than enough guilt to go around.
Your illustration raises the issue in another direction. Yes, there were escaped slaves, and later freed slaves, who actually intermarried with Indian tribes. But there were also black horse soldiers who served with distinction in the Wars of Indian Extermination. I can't swear to it, but I recall seeing that they were present at either Sand Creek or Wounded Knee - maybe both.
This morning, with news of Edwin Hawkins passing, sent me back to look at Woodstock videos. Struck me how overwhelmingly white the crowds were, at the same time how important a presence black performers - from Richie Havens kickass opening through the Hawkins Singers backing Melanie on White Dove later - had. Reminded me how much black music fueled the counterculture - but also how much honkies had been part of the community that provided a measure of support for the preceding years of the civil rights movement. Maybe, now that we suddenly find ourselves back in the 1950s, there is a lesson there: nothing was quite as black and white as we like to think, and even to the extent it is, we are not going to rescue what remains to be rescued until we take joint responsibility.
Just some musings of someone who has been around far too long. Don't know really what point I was going to make when I started this comment. Except that your uncle Louis is right.
He was always right.
Thank you for taking the trouble of posting.
Your points are understood by me, and appreciated...it's a complicated fucking ass mess, and no one or at least very very few are innocent.
I was having a chat with a fellow at work tonight, about an aspect of our nation's ongoing problem with racism, and he said the following:
"The world is so fucked up, its fucked up."
We laughed.
The first operating principle of black racism is to insist that it can’t exist. I first encountered this phenom while listening to a certain radical radio network about thirty years ago.
Z
Forgot to mention - last I heard, the people currently selling black slaves in Africa aren’t black, they’re Arabs. At least that’s what appears to be happening in southern Libya. But maybe I’m not keeping abreast of current events.
Z
Well no change there.
They did that for some centuries. Just re-opened the family business is all.
'Business btw is very good I read. Investment possibilities I imagine. This for any Black Lives Matters cadre with a pragmatic financial sense.
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