Blacks were by no means treated better during slavery than they are treated today. It is madness to seriously suggest such a thing. I am hoping Cyberken was using hyperbola to attack liberals. Else, he needs a serious history lesson.
As for blacks owning blacks, we are talking only of about 3500 black slaveowners at any given time, compared to some 500,000 white heads of household slaveowners (and when we multiply this figure by the whole family, the true number of white slaveowners comes to about 2.25 million). And whereas whites owned blacks almost exclusively for the purpose of exploiting their labor, blacks very often purchased other blacks to free them, holding them in ownership only technically. Indeed, the purchase of a slave for manumission was at one time the only way slaves could be freed. Undoubtedly there were blacks who exploited other blacks chiefly for labor, but their numbers were so small as to be statistically irrelevant.
The system of slavery was not only physically grueling and degrading. It was, most importantly, psychologically damaging. The blacks could not own property, could not marry, could not therefore pass wealth from generation to generation and were pointedly taught that they were unable, innately unable to live in America as full and valid humans. This centuries long deconstruction of the black mind impacts our society to this very day. It is why when Trent Lott makes his damnable statements, so many blacks feel angered and crushed. There are blacks alive today, living right now, who remember the psychological sting of having to look ever downward when in the presence of a white person, having to refer to him as "boss."
We've helped create a nation of hurt folks. I don't say it out of guilt. I say it because it is just dang true. To fix this mess we are gonna hafta avoid the callous, low-class barbarism of Trent Lott who, a mere 12 years or so ago said something to the effect of "There are no blacks here [in this area of Mississippi]! We'd be glad to send some up to ya." I am convinced Lott is a racist. And if I know it, certainly millions of blacks know it. To keep claiming Lott is no racist is likely to them a Republican fantasy-- or worse.
We are going to hafta purposefully avoid Lott's sort of barbaric callousness and be decent folks even if it kills us. Then as we also purposefully seek not to coddle blacks, but to instead treat them as we would anyone else, they will be free to reallocate and fight with all their resources instead of expending so many of them protecting against racism and wondering if we will stab them in the back as we have so many times in the past.
Too many white folks are either too eager to give blacks heaven or too eager to give 'em hell. We crazy - damned crazy. One day, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. |
