The Civil War hardly ended the subjugation of the Blacks in American and it's foolish to think so.
FL.. This is a touchy topic, but let's not fail to realize that before blacks migrated from plantations (as freed slaves) to the cities, those ghettoes were inhabitied by the Irish and other immigrants.
lib.niu.edu
And then there were the Chinese who came to work under almost slavelike conditions on the railroads.
And then there were the Italians, Sicilians, and many other ethnicities....
All of them spent time in the urban ghettoes of the early US, suffering similar degradation as blacks. In fact, the Irish were considered lower than blacks by many Anglo-American, especially given the historic strife and alien Gaelic language. They were forced to do the absolute dirtiest and most dangerous tasks, such as working in coal mines.
As for reparations, white caucasians were certainly not the first to practice slavery. The Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, and Muslims widely practice Slavery. In fact, the word Slave derives from the involuntary servitude of various slavic tribes.
wikipedia.com
But these reparations folks don't seem to have named any African governments in their lawsuit. Funny that!!
After all, most of these slaves were sold into such condition by African kings (some still holding power) who sold their conquered foes into slavery, instead of slaying the men and integrating the women into their own tribes.
But then again, maybe, in a very ironic and twisted manner of logic, the descendants of MALE slaves, who were captured warriors) should be paying restitution to the slave traders who saved them from almost certain death at the hands of their African captors.
There are NO clean hands in the history of the slave trade. But there are too many folks ignoring the CURRENT slavery going on in Africa and the Middle East, and seeking to absolve their OWN ancestors from selling each other's tribes off into slavery.
Hawk |
