By Suthenboy
Without modern mechanized methods of farming it is necessary that humans hands perform that labor. That doesn’t mean mass human labor is necessary to become wealthy; without sophisticated machinery, daylight to dark toil is necessary just to have enough to eat. This economic reality gave rise to forcibly capturing people and coercing labor from them. It goes by the common name of slavery and it was universally practiced by all cultures on earth at one time. It was seen as a normal practice and though everyone would object to becoming a slave, neither slave nor master objected to it as an institution. It was just considered the way things are. As technology advanced and our means for creating wealth became greater, the need to co-opt the labor of others lessened. With the spread of the ideas born of the Western Enlightenment slavery quickly became regarded as less the way things are and more the way things should not be. It is now rightly reviled by Western Civilization, but in many ways its shadow hangs over us. The cost of slavery was high in lives and in moral currency. Slavery debases not just those held but the slaver as well. Slaves are deprived of their freedom and the slaver of his humanity. The stone age indigenous peoples of the Americas could not be successfully enslaved. The kind of confinement and structure it required was so alien to them that they simply died when it was imposed on them. The solution was, of course, to replace them with Africans. The slave trade was as old as time in Africa and still thrives today. Europeans desperate for labor in their new colonies eagerly stepped into that market.
I live in the deep south. The Antebellum plantations that pepper my state mostly operate as tourist attractions these days. A few are still profitable as farms but tractors perform the backbreaking work, not humans. If you drive the River Road between Natchitoches and New Orleans, braving the stifling heat and humidity to tour some of these vast forerunners of modern industrial agriculture, you will get an idea of what a monumental struggle it was to produce wealth in the wild and expansive Mississippi flood plain. If you have ever worked in agriculture, your experience will give you a better idea of the scale of the superhuman effort that required.
Of the 12-13 million Africans brought to the Americas as chattel, only a small fraction, some 400,000, were transported to the United States. Right from the start, this practice was controversial. Western European culture was more enlightened than any on earth at the time. The idea of individual liberty blossoming here and the glaring conflict that holding men as property presented with liberty was…I won’t sugarcoat it… problematic to say the least. Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence, summed up the prevailing opinion nicely when arguing against slavery “Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil.”
In the United States, the slave trade was somewhat unique in that it had strong racial overtones. Everywhere else, a person’s race had little to do with slavery. Historically, slavery was an equal opportunity employer. The slaves here, aside from those held by the indigenous people, were exclusively Africans. The feeble justification was that blacks were inherently inferior, that exposure to western civilization would improve them and advance their race.
That evil practice was ended and not just by the advent of modern machinery and cheap energy or the dawning of a new morality. The intractability of those advocating for slavery eventually had to be overcome with powder and shot. The scale of that destructive war, both in lost property and blood, exceeded anything up to that time and every war after it until WWI. With that the barbarism of enslaving human beings was extinguished in the United States.
Still, the ghost of slavery haunts us all. The advent of 1863 saw President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and after the war he attempted to repatriate those who had been enslaved by birthing the nation of Liberia on the west coast of Africa. Still, there are remnants of that ghastly practice with us. The gussied up corpses of those plantations are still here. Driving south from Alexandria on the old Baton Rouge highway, you will see cabins that housed slaves still standing, now housing renters. The fields and orchards are still here, worked by the relentless plodding of tractors.
At the end of the Civil War, the vast majority of those that had failed to perpetuate a primitive and outdated economy gathered what they could in wealth and property, fleeing to lands more amenable to their culture. The war had brought to a head the animosity between the conflicting cultures of enlightenment with primitivism, so they slipped away from the wrath of the victors. They would have been fools to stay and dead ones, at that. Anyone curious enough can travel to remote towns in various Latin American countries and find bizarre places where Antebellum America still lives, places where those seeking to escape revenge found a refuge to perpetuate that way of life.
Despite the reminders around us, are those ghosts really ours? There is not a person alive in the United States today who has been held in bondage, nor a person alive today who has held another in bondage. Though the struggle was great, every descendant of slaves today enjoys equal standing before the law, on paper anyway, to every other citizen. Those that care too often thrive on equal footing with every other ethnicity.
The vast majority of the white population here does not even have ancestors who held slaves. I can trace my own family back to the late seventeenth century in the Americas, and not one of those individuals held slaves. On my mother’s side, there are only abolitionists, and on my father’s side, no one wealthy enough to afford the purchase of slaves. The majority of white Americans are descended from immigrants that arrived on these shores after slavery was abolished. This is the most common legacy of white Americans today.
In history, the United States is remarkable in the social and cultural progress it has achieved. In less than 200 years, we progressed from a culture that more resembled the old world order, to one that is most unique, one that holds liberty and the sovereignty of the individual above all else. Our founding principles allow us to cast off the yoke of history and forge ahead to new, better cultural ground. In many ways we have dragged the rest of the world with us, though they still have some catching up to do.
These days, my old bones are more comfortable at home. I prefer good food, a warm fire, and, most of all, the company of my wife; but this was not always the case. I have travelled to many places in the world, and one of the things that struck me was the racism and tribalism outside of the U.S. The perception of the U.S. by the rest of the world of America as a country eaten alive with racism, appears to me to be projection. Racism as it exists here in America is mild in comparison to the rabid, virulent racism almost everywhere else.
Why, then, we still struggle so much with the question of race is an interesting and important question. Go ahead, give it your best shot.
Comments
234 responses to “Identity Politics Part 1: If You Can’t See the Chains Does it Mean They Aren’t There?”
Well done. I always wanted to read you in a longer form then a post.
Keep it up!
Seconded. I love the style – I read it in Sam Elliott’s voice 😉
Suthen, I agree with you that the US is far and away the least racist place in the world. We get the bad rep, but everyone gets a shot here, regardless of the doomcrying.
Thanks for the article.
I need to remember to read less quickly when sick.
I initially read that as “everyone gets shot here” and was about to complain.
Well, that is what most Europeans think…
Reminds me of a British sketch set in a travel agency.
“Do they still shoot tourists in Florida?”
“Mainly, sir, yes.”
Complaining because you feel left out?
Sometimes, you eat the bar…. and sometimes the bar eats you.
Coo-ers Beer
“Say, friend – you got any more of that good sarsaparilla?”
“People just pay me to talk“
Damn, I kept expecting the chick to jump him right then and there.
All that and Katharine Ross, too…Damn!
When some European co workers learned where I was from they made some tacky assumptions and wanted to know why we treated blacks so poorly. I pointed out that despite what they had been told my home town was probably the least racist city in america. The question of how to live and work together had been solved generations ago to such a satisfactory level that we had the highest per capita concentration of black wealth in the nation. The strongest black middle class in the nation. The city itself has been largely black run for nearly a half a century. Today the race hustlers boogie man is no longer “white flight” it’s gentrification. I pointed out that unlike them I had lived with black people my whole life. Had black teachers, bosses, neighbors, friends. To which the responded by pointing out that we seemed to have a problem picking our state flag…
Tulsa?
“Why, then, we still struggle so much with the question of race is an interesting and important question. Go ahead, give it your best shot.”
Money and power.
Frederick Douglass
Damn, I’ve forgotten how much I like his prose.
Dude was obviously racist.
tl;dr, y’all seems like racists to me
Is Part 2 gonna be pro-slavery? Gilmore should hold his comment for that section.
Somebody organise a god damn Oxford-style debate! Track down Irish for that one. kakakakakaka
“Because it helps cover up the massive failures of the Great Society programs in alleviating the problems of Blacks in America, and allows the Left to point fingers at invisible culprits, “DONT BLAME US”
made me think of this.
Bullseye.
See here:
https://www.thenation.com/article/whats-killing-americas-black-infants/
The above article, which I saw on Facebook last week, tries to blame higher black infant mortality rates on discrimination.
Not once do they even consider the possibility that Great Society programs are largely responsible.
They are.
Head shot.
They need more white people around to set a good example.
/Do these people even read what they’re writing?
Well, duh. It’s worked in schools hasn’t it?
What Gilmore said. Nice piece, Suthenboy.
I haven’t read through to the end, yet (old habits die hard), but I’m compelled to offer this up: my father was born on a farm in Ohio in the early ’30s. He remembers milking by hand, farming with horses, and the gangs of grain harvesters who used to come through when the wheat matured, and all the rest of the dawn to dusk backbreaking shit that had to be done every single day. He’s a big fan of tractors, combines, automatic milking machines, and “industrial” farming in general.
All the fucking retards who run around equating Monsanto with “Beelzebub’s Virulent Toxins, Ltd” should be forced to work on an “authentic” farm for a week before being strung up by their heels.
yes.
Even more enlightening would be for many of these urban-resident “organic” fetishists to actually visit a few organic-farms and compare contrast what they’re actually doing compared to the “conventional” ones. it may surprise them to discover that they are more or less identical, save for slightly different compounds being used for fertilizers and pesticides. Basically, much of their beliefs about food supply rely on a naive belief in some mythic pastoral ideal where Mom+Pop hippy-farms gently coax food from the soil with goodwill & happy-thoughts in the midst of some otherwise wild landscape.
We live in an era of almost miraculous abundance. Even our poor have lives that, only a generation or two ago, would have been considered untold extravagance. For most of us, work consists of less than a quarter of our time, much of it spent in relative comfort doing something we’ve chosen to devote our time to. To put it bluntly, we can afford mythic pastoralism. And, really, thank God Almighty for that prosperity. But, unfortunately, that prosperity eventually gets to be assumed to be a fact of nature and not the result of thousands of years of technological progress. The same sort that fetishizes “organic” agriculture more often than not thinks electricity is simply something that flows from the nearest socket and water is something that comes out of the faucet.
My favorite example of this is that Nathan Rothschild, who was probably the wealthiest man in the world in 1830, died of a simple bacterial infection that our society will literally treat the poorest person of for free.
That’s impossible, because as we all know, money buys outcomes.
+ Happy Ending
Sure, there are the things that would be science fiction. But, I just look at the way things have changed in my own lifetime (and I’m by no stretch of the imagination an old man). When I was a kid, a long-distance call was a big deal. Today, if I don’t call my mother across the country on a weekly basis, I’m in big trouble. When I was a young, my father had a coronary bypass. At the time it was a rare, dangerous and cutting edge surgery. Today, the only reason it’s rare is that there are so many alternatives. Hell, when you go get a cup of coffee at McDonald’s, you’re getting stuff, that was considered gourmet coffee (Arabica beans) when I was growing up.
And, again, that’s just my lifetime. And I’m not that old. I think about how the world must be different from the one my parents grew up in. My Dad peddlers visit his house trying to sell things when he was growing up. He used to regularly go to a family friend’s farm to get chickens and see them being killed right there for family dinner. My mother literally had an outhouse growing up. And neither grew up particularly rurally. And that’s just two generations. And even in that short span of time, you start to see the outlines of life without all of this miraculous technology looks like.
But, it’s funny. This all seems to escape so many people not that much younger (and in some cases older) than me. They can’t fathom a world where food doesn’t come from the supermarket, cars never get flats, electric power is never more than a light-switch away and absence of wi-fi isn’t a national crisis.
An opportunity to post this!
Calvin Coolidge lost his 16 year old son in the mid 1920’s as a result of an infected blister while he was President.
Thanks, Monsanto!
And to roughly quote Walter Williams:
You think all these farmers and ranchers are busting their ads to make sure people in NYC have steak and potatoes?
They don’t care about MYers, they
* care about NYers. Those workers are being selfish and trying to make money by acting greedy.
It just so happens their greed works out better for them AND the NYers who like steak and potatoes.
I love making this point to urban city dwellers. It is insane how few people it takes to supply food for all our urbanites. All of it is because of big corporate farms.
Not only that, but the fact that I can buy Fuji apples from New Zealand any time I want for $2/lb is something that my father never thought he would see. He says his favorite present for xmas as a kid was a crate of fresh fruit that a family friend would send from Honduras. It was such a treat from the canned/jarred stuff they were used to eating in winter.
While I am an Eisenhower baby I am not “that old” in my mind. When I was growing up fresh asparagus was a few weeks in spring thing. Kiwi fruit? Who ever heard of those? The gift to bring eastern relatives? Coors since it was unavailable to our relatives from the mid-west. I live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and year round I can get anything to eat that I would desire and alcohol from around the world. Big agriculture and modern distribution systems have made the world a better place. When I was young the food related problem of poverty in the US was vitamin deficiency diseases, now it is obesity.
A few months ago there was a great article on Cafe Hayek that the richest men in the world in 1915 were much poorer than a “poor” American today.
Lurker from the other site here. I posted a few times there but can’t seem to keep my blood pressure down when doing so, so now I just lurk again. Learned a lot about critical thinking and Libertarianism from the commenters, so I followed them here. The other site just went full retard and I need some sanity away from the constant social media derp wave.
*waves, goes back to cave*
nice avatar.
Thanks.
The articles here are great. Regarding racism, the current climate seems to stem from a desperate to not admit wrongdoing. The SJWs see monsters in every shadow in order to ignore their own shortcomings. They’d have to admit to the failures of their own systems of choice. They can’t exist without a host (in this case minorities) and would cease to be if they ever had to face the reality that their opponents just aren’t who they make them out to be.
I often think of SJWs as the church ladies of the modern day. Same old busybodies, different style.
Indeed. If you read up on the connection of Progressivism with the Social Gospel, the religious connection/motivation becomes clear.
Who wrote this crap?
I think the publishers need to get on this author’s ass about proofreading before sending stuff in. Geez.
Proofread? Psh. When I send them stuff I just make sure it feeds through a spellchecker.
We pay our editors exactly what they are worth!
My experience is that I can read things 8 times, then it goes up to the public and I say, “oh shit.”
Great piece, hope we get more from you.
Thank you Brett. That is exactly what happened. I must have read over it, edited, added, changed at least a dozen times. Now I see how much I missed.
As with many things, when it comes to editing, you get what you pay for.
Excellent job, Suthen.
Thank you. Three parts so two more coming.
Euphemisms!
What’s this about poofreaders? I like Oscar Wilde’s stuff, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
“Arise, Sir, from that semi-recumbent position!”
Exceedingly well written, Suthen. Your writing is top-notch.
This crowd-sourcing model seems to be working quite well if the metric is “interesting and thought-provoking content.”
This site is getting better by the day, using that metric. But if the metric is “getting invited to cocktail parties” this is a miserable failure.
Thank you wdalasio. I have never published anything before outside of a couple of academic junk that no one ever read. I took the plunge having no idea how it would be received. It is impossible to judge your own work so outside criticism is vital.
As long as racial greviance can be leveraged into money and power the struggle with the question of race will continue. It won’t go away until either the entire human race is the same coffee with cream tan or we’re all killed by sentient robots.
It won’t go away until either the entire human race is the same coffee with cream tan
Most of the ‘Hispanic’ world is just that, and *shocker*, there is still plenty of variance in the amount of tan. With a lot of segregation in some of those places based upon it.
So sentient killer robots is the only solution.
I’ll take racism over genetic uniformity or sentient killer robots. It’s the least boring and least dead option.
If you get far enough south in South America, blue eyed caucasions start to become just as numeros as the ‘people of color’. I suppose they’re still people of color since they don’t speak English as a primary language. Not really sure. I can’t keep up with these prog rules. I think they’ve maybe already thrown Asians out of the club for being too successful.
Genes are not like syrups in a blender. They’re more like pixels in a bitmap. You’ll never get the “Ambiguously brown future”.
“blue eyed caucasions start to become just as numeros as the ‘people of color’. I suppose they’re still people of color since they don’t speak English as a primary language.”
Isn’t white a color, at least the version of white that white people have?
No, white is NOT a color. Get woke already!
What about “white devil”?
Still not a demon of color.
Well, obviously, the white devil is real. How else do you think a totally peaceful and tranquil world erupted into chaos and violence?
Whatever you say pinkie.
Same in China. Tan skin = outdoor laborer = ew. People will always find a way.
I saw the same thing in Mexico. Having very dark skin might get you labeled a Guatemalan. Which seemed to be sort of an insult. In Brazil, some women in wealthier families will avoid the sun like the plague for fear of their fair skin getting darkened.
That’s because they’ve read Gone with the wind.
Why isn’t there an edit button? I must have misplaced an italic tag, and now I’l stuck with it. 🙁
Working at 7-11 got you down? You tired of people thinking that you move around Trick them all with our Status Spoofer 2000 System.
Step 1: Avoid the sun in every capacity that you can. Use suntan lotion, wear long sleeves, wear idiotic robot visor shades and safari hats. Wear our patented Status Spoofer SPF60 underneath full body-covering clothing. In 3, maybe even 2 months, you’ll be HUES lighter in no time.
Step 2: This is possibly the most important step: grow out the fingernail on your pinky. Both pinkies means double the status. Nobody will ever know that you clean TOILETS for a living or mop the floors at a WET MARKET unless you want them to know.
Or you’ll be orange, which means you can be speaker of the house or president.
Who needs Vitamin D anyway?
When I was a kid, I think I was maybe 10, my father had a friend who was using that self-tan lotion named QT. He kept on using it and then turned the worst color of orange. Me and my friends started calling him ‘the tangerine’ and taunted him mercilessly. He sort of freaked out and tried to figure out a way to get it off, but it came off in streaks, lol, he was all spotted. Poor guy.
+
You always put me down cause I only look good in orange
Oh why did I read the youtube comments? *sigh*
Youtube comments. Yeah, all of them in my experience are some variation of ‘Fuck you, faggoot!’.
One might be reminded of a very old army joke:
Drill Sergeant greets the new recruits, tells them that the Army is now integrated and there is “no black and white; we’re all green!”
“Now, everybody get on that bus, light green to the front, dark green to the back!”
“…the entire human race is the same coffee and cream tan…”
I doubt that would end it.
It will degenerate into Blondes vs. Redheads.
I’d bet on the redheads.
Not having a soul is a distinct advantage in warfare, I suppose.
Yeah, but then we’ll all tribalize and fight each other over what we atheists should call ourselves. (Allied Atheist Alliance or die.)
The majority of white Americans are descended from immigrants that arrived on these shores after slavery was abolished. This is the most common legacy of white Americans today.
And even if it wasn’t – fuck generational racial guilt.
The counter-argument is, “You may not have personally been responsible, but you are essentially an inheritor of the wealth created by this system.”
Now, I think that’s a shitty argument- after all, the benefits are shared across ethnic groups- but it’s an argument that must be understood and answered.
and where was there none? what time exactly are they thinking everything was tits?
It’s like climate change. Ok, what temp is the best? why?
I’ve never seen an attempt to provide evidence of this assertion. It’s kind of like the assertion that compelled racial diversity = good. No evidence, but it just feels truthy enough to justify an entire worldview. And it’s a necessary condition for that worldview, which is held (and required) by their social circle, so discarding the beliefs is not an option. With so much social acceptance on the line, it’s most comfortable just to not question it.
And the advantage of not having to provide evidence is not having to defend that evidence from scrutiny. As many have described already, it’s a de facto religion.
That’s part II OMWC.
I am still waiting to cash out on both my white privilege and my inherited slave wealth…I grew up in a single wide trailer and lived off food stamps. Perhaps my check was lost in the mail?
The food stamps were your check.
If food stamps were that check, many communities should consider themselves repaid in full for the past.
works for me
But you don’t get dirty looks at the laundromat. Nor do womenfolk clutch their purses away from you on the bus. You are the embodiment of blessed.
Good work, Suthen.
I find difficult to put thought to paper in a form that doesn’t make me question my own intelligence. “Am I babbling? Do I sound like I can barely write my name in the dirt with a stick?” Putting your own name on a piece of work to be seen by strangers (and even friends) is hard to do, especially taking criticism without wanting to reach through the wires and strangle someone.
*it – thereby proving my own point.
I think we can overlook some errors considering the circumstances.
PERFECTIO!NHK!@N!
I’m just trying to give excuses for my typos!
Yes, I had all of those questions but took the plunge anyway. I am hoping for criticism of my writing just like everyone has been criticizing arguments for years with this crowd. That is how it gets refined.
Nice job, Suthen. It was a very good read and I’m looking forward to part 2.
I had no idea about some Confederates packing up and moving south. I will Google it, but are there any references you could recommend?
From Vice about Brazil.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/welcome-to-americana-brazil-0000580-v22n2
See, this is what happens when white people are allowed. You either get deplorables, kulaks, wreckers, or Confederados. Happens every damn time.
Americana, that’s it.
I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about some town in Brazil …Americatown? Americaville? Something along those lines anyway. That was ten or more years ago. I really got to know about it by running across the places myself. It is surreal. Southern accents, plantation homes, the whole bit. They dont have official slaves anymore of course, but super cheap labor bordering on indentured servantry. They dont much like to talk about it either.
Of course after seeing it my thought was “of course this is what happened. They couldn’t stay. Why didn’t I think of this before?”
A lot of interesting things happen/have happened in Brazil.
Nothing surprises me about Brazil, due to the fact that os Brasileiros sao um pouco loucos.
Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, slaves escaped and made their way to remote locations in the hills and jungles and build their own cities and culture. They were called Quilombo (runaway slaves). Very interesting story. There was also a city in Brazil named Fordlandia, built for workers in Ford’s eventually failed effort to build a sprawling rubber plantation. There’s also or was a city in Brazil where all the children born there were twins. I could go on all day.
And of course, the Nazis are there under the Amazon in their lair, just waiting to come out and get us. Probably will be soon as their secret leader is now in the Whitehouse.
“slaves escaped and made their way to remote locations in the hills and jungles and build their own cities and culture. They were called Quilombo (runaway slaves). Very interesting story.”
Here we called them Miccosukee.
Brazil seems to attract a collection of weird commune societies. There’s also Canudos, the anarcho-Christian community that fought the early Brazilian government, made up of a lot of ex-slaves.
It won’t go away until either the entire human race is the same coffee with cream tan or we’re all killed by sentient robots.
*edges toward betting window*
“Kill us, Skynet, you’re our only hope!”
In the United States, the slave trade was somewhat unique in that it had strong racial overtones. Everywhere else, a person’s race had little to do with slavery.
I would possibly edit this and make it more generally ‘Triangle Trade slavery’ than just the United States. Caribbean and South American slavery systems were notoriously race based as well.
It is interesting that they had to refine racism in order to justify something that enlightened 16th – 19th Century westerners could recognize as evil.
Enlightened and Could be the key words there. Which did not describe the majority of the Western population until Scandinavian, French and British abolitionism became a thing in the late 18th century.
But it did not describe any part of any other society in the world at that time.
You need to provide an actual description of ‘enlightened’ before you can make that claim. If you’re arguing that there were only abolitionists in the West, that’s utter nonsense because abolitionism has been, for example, a part of East Asian discourse since early Taoism.
16th century ‘enlightened’ Europeans were still practicing war rape and sackings, same as nearly every other culture. The idea that 16th century Europeans were somehow uniquely enlightened is just as nonsensical as the opposite idea that they were pure evil.
You are right John. I will do that.
“Driving south from Alexandria on the old Baton Rouge highway, you will see cabins that housed slaves still standing, now housing renters. ”
There are spots I can rent to house my orphans!?
Also, nice article.
Were you wearing Seersuckers when you wrote it?
and drinking a mint julep.
I’m suspecting that all of those are full of Suthen’s orphans, 20 to a room. This is just a cover article for that fact.
When is he not wearing seersucker?
A: He wears a COL Sanders suit (w string tie) when the seersucker’s getting cleaned.
What I find fascinating is that there was a time when Col. Sanders wasn’t immediately recognizable.
*looks down at jeans, cowboy boots, button up shirt*
I dont think I own anything seersucker, but thank you. That was my first foray into the world of public discourse, aside from commenting that is. It took them a while to get it up so I was wondering if my writing was so bad that they weren’t going to. I thought I had crashed on takeoff. Most likely it was the unpolished state of the work I sent. I will put more time in it on the next one.
The majority of white Americans are descended from immigrants that arrived on these shores after slavery was abolished. This is the most common legacy of white Americans today.
Not me, Pal. My progenitors arrived in a wooden boat with canvas sails. It had “Mayflower” painted on the side.
You kids Get offa muh Lawn!
Mother’s side came over to escape Cromwell’s Irish campaign. Fathers side just prior to The Revolution. I figure we have been here long enough to be considered indigenous. All you other dirty furriners need to go home.
There are many who derive money and power from racism, but there are others who have a real sense of purpose defending aggrieved groups, even when they are essentially fighting straw men. Being angry and offended give some people a reason to wake up in the morning.
The grievance industry really has a life of it’s own now.
Great essay, Suthen and can’t wait for the other parts! My whole family is from the Delta area of Mississippi and every time I visit there (which is usually during the summer) I wonder how on God’s green Earth could anyone work those long hours in the field. Oddly, enough my family still lives in the area where most of their ancestors were once slaves (Grenada County) and their relationships with the whites are fairly cordial. I’m not going to go as far as to say that they hang out with each other on the weekends but it’s not like the whites are trying to still burn their houses and hang their men as many on the Left wants you to believe. As a black man, I’ve had to hear stories from my grandparents (stories that they got from their grandparents) about the awfulness of slavery and it forces me to put my life and problems into perspective.
I could be like my peers and constantly blame everything on racism or rise above that nonsense and realize that those that came before me, sacrificed and suffered a lot for me to have a comfortable life. Living a life of perpetual victim-hood is a new form of slavery in my humble opinion.
Northern white people like black people in theory, but not in practice. Southern white people like black people in practice, but not in theory.
I think a lot of that is down to culture more than race.
Shssss. Thats part III.
OK. Good work, BTW.
Thank you Ed.
Ya’ know, I just now remembered that you are Black. You had mentioned it before, several years ago, but I had forgotten. I am glad you enjoyed the article.
“whites are fairly cordial” describes it pretty well in general but nearly everyone has friends not of their own persuasion. As a matter of fact, purely by coincidence, a fellow that I have told a few stories about dropped in unexpected just as this article was put up and before I could comment twice. He is a young black man that practically grew up in our home. He came by to have the wife and I meet his new girlfriend whom he intends to marry (thank god, he has sewed enough oats, he needs to quit while he is ahead). Also he wanted for me to sell him a pistol as he just got a new job that requires him to carry. Unfortunately for him I am an old man and most of my stuff is considered ‘classic’ or even ‘antique’. I dont have any of those fancy plastic modern contraptions (get off my damned lawn!) so I sent him to the gun dealer.
The relations between the ‘races’ in the south is not at all what people outside the south believe it is. I find the vast majority here to be mostly colorblind. Of course we have those on both sides of the fence that aren’t that way but they are a small minority.
BTW, next time you are down this way and feel like catching some fish let me know. We just refurbished two guest rooms.
*looks at map*
Oh, that is a five hour drive. Well, no matter, the invitation stands.
“it forces me to put my life and problems into perspective.” <——- That is no shit. Life just two generations ago was a struggle for everyone that most people now cannot fathom, and that doesnt even take into account the poor state of medical care or other unusual difficulties that life is so fond of throwing our way.
Sowed.
Money and Power. There is an awful lot of both to be had by working in the racial grievance mongering industry.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
…Booker T. Washington, 1911
All the Europeans are descended from slaves too. It’s just a few more centuries removed, usually with the long transition as serfs and peasants, and they don’t teach history for shit. (The Russians didn’t free their Russian slaves until 1723 and emancipated their serfs in 1861)
Some of the most brutal work in the early colonies was done by indentured servants. I suspect that how slaves versus indentured servants were treated is comparable to how I drive my own car versus a rental.
I drive rentals more carefully because I don’t want to be liable for the full cost of something I don’t get to keep.
I park them carefully, I drive them like a maniac.
Good ol’ practical UCS.
(The Russians didn’t free their Russian slaves until 1723 and emancipated their serfs in 1861)
You are right, they dont teach history for shit. Would it surprise you to know that it is common practice in that part of the world to use POWs as slaves? They dont send them home when the war is over. They are slaves for life. Some of the last germans captured during WWII just died in Russia, as slaves. Most of the countries over there do that. I think China does too. A year ago one of my father’s friends died. He was in the Wehrmacht and was captured by the Russians. Very interesting guy. Incidentally he was in Ratzinger’s (the nazi pope) outfit and was acquainted with the guy. When I would ask about him he just said “I didn’t know him well. The pervers kept to themselves.” I had to look that one up. When I found it I thought, oh, of course.
They sold him as a slave to a Polish farmer, he and one other german. They worked the farm for a year while they formulated their escape plan. They decided to run away when the corn got chest high (to hide and travel in). They travelled at night and slept in the day. He said sometimes they could hear the dogs that were tracking them and had to get up and run more. After three nights of running and not eating they came upon a peach orchard. They ate as many peaches as they could and then lay down to rest. When the sun came up they discovered the peaches were riddled with worms. They didn’t care. They ended up running all the way to France before they could surrender to Americans.
I didn’t know about this at all, and I’m fascinated. Anyone know of a good reference to read more about this aspect of the war, and these people’s stories? (Has Sevo come over here yet?)
SB makes a classic point. One example is Stalingrad. Over 90,000 Germans were captured. Most estimates record under 9000 ever returned to Germany. The last were released in 1955 and reported that others were still in captivity.
Nice read. Having done a good chunk of my growing up outside of North America, I have always found the self-flagellating attitude of the modern white progressive to be bizarre. The vast majority of them did not, in fact, have ancestors who profited from the use of slave labor.
The ongoing attempts at revising American history to pretend the country was “built on the labor of slaves” is also blindingly ignorant as to demographics. If white people were in fact lazy and unproductive parasites who were propped up by black slave labor the US would never have become the wealthiest nation in history.
It may well be an exaggeration to say “the country was built on the labor of slaves” but just seeing a man-made feature like the Great Dismal Swamp Canal is just as able to convince someone of the significant contribution of slave labor in building what we now take for granted.
It might help to recognize that very little of the modern white progressive’s flagellation is self-flagellation. It’s always about establishing their status relative to other white people.
Excellent – one nitpick:
“The advent of 1863 saw President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and after the war he attempted to repatriate those who had been enslaved by birthing the nation of Liberia on the west coast of Africa.”
Liberia as a country was founded *before* the Civil War, with the American Colonization Society (ACS) working together with the U.S. government to send free black people there (some black were freed on *condition* they go to Liberia). The ACS offered its colonization program as (a) a cure for American slavery, (b) a way to Christianize the natives and (c) a way to get the free black population out of the U.S. But most blacks, free and slave, stayed in the U.S.
Lincoln was sympathetic to colonization and tried his own colonization schemes. After all, as he sensitively told a black delegation, if there weren’t blacks in the U.S. there wouldn’t have been a war (“gosh, Mr. Lincoln, I guess we owe this country an apology!” /sarc). So Lincoln tried to send some freed slaves to Haiti where a bunch of them died.
By 1865, Lincoln had cottoned on (ha!) to the idea that colonization might not be ideal, and he even was moving toward endorsing some degree of voting rights for former slaves. We don’t know how far he would have gone down that road, since he was shot.
This may sound a bit insensitive, and it is. Modern Blacks in the United states benefitted a lot more from slavery than any whites do. It’s the vehicle that got them to the United States, evil or not. Modern Black should thank their lucky stars that their ancestors were brought here. They have it a lot better here than they would in Liberia.
Meh. I’d rather live in modern day Gaborone or Nairobi than Detroit.
If those were your only options, then sure. However a person living in Detroit has a lot more choices of where he might migrate if he chose than one living in Nairobi.
::steps away from this thread::
File it under “Stuff nobody wants to admit.”
Years ago I read an account of a white American and his black friend who travelled throughout Africa. At one point they met a black African who gave a short, heated lecture on how the white American’s ancestors had kidnapped the black American’s ancestors and taken them to America. Wasn’t he angry about that? The black American turned to the white one and said: “Thank you.”
Actions meant as evil may turn out to the good – Christians at least believe that, with the Crucifixion.
But we still blame Judas, because he wasn’t *trying* to do good, he was trying to sell out his divine Master.
And conversely, actions meant to be good may turn out to be evil. I’m looking at you, Gigantic metastasizing welfare state.
“A bit insensitive”
Truth often is. In this instance that wasn’t always the case. Plenty of people used to acknowledge this and not just apologists for slavery.
On the list of quotes I remember – “Thank God my Granddaddy was on that boat!” – Muhammed Ali when asked what he thought of Africa after his first visit to the continent.
Interesting, thanks.
Lincoln wasn’t shot. He was beat to death with a hammer.
Where’s that fat piece of shit goin?
Thank you Eddie.
Very nice, Suthen.
If I had the time and energy, I could probably answer your “why we struggle so much with racism” question using some, maybe all, of the Iron Laws. Which, BTW, are posted here as a “Resource”. Thanks, Glibs!
I made it! (watches HnR get smaller and smaller in rear view mirror)
I need an avatar. Suggestions?
Good article, Suthenboy!
Try Yog.
I was thinking Zod.
https://bonsteele.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/kneel_before_zod.jpg
Duh.
That doesn’t look like Yog.
I thought that too on the nose. But you’ve sold me.
Who’s got a link to shreek being cat-assed? I missed it.
It was a bit ago, I think afternoon links?
I need an avatar. Suggestions?
One of those poker-playing dogs. Or a fruit bat.
The caning of Charles Sumner just doesn’t do it for you anymore?
Then why do you call yourself P[reston?] Brooks?
Poker playing fruit bat?
…with a cane.
Thanks Suthen, I enjoyed the read.
I had a drinking buddy here, an expat Brit that wrote some “desert southwest” feature stories for a few of the London papers. He wrote a couple of books I found enjoyable. A few years ago he packed up and moved to Mississippi and of course wrote a book. I think you might enjoy it. Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta
Yeah, I think others hit the nail on the head. The progs created the ghetto, and now use the ghetto to play identity politics come election time. Sort of like how ME dictators use radical Islam to focus their people on hating the jews instead of focusing on the sorry state of oppression they live under.
Still interested in what exactly it is that Trump is going to try to rebuild our inner cities. No amount of spending and rebuilding is going to work. the Democrats will just bait the residents into burning it down, and they will. Only the removal of 5-6 decades of all Democrat party rule is going to make it fixable. More than half of Baltimore is a sprawling ghetto. It just ranges in degree of ghetto from bad to 3rd world apocalypse.
Cut taxes? Wean them off the federal teat? Those two things would go a long way but yeah, so many barriers are imposed at the state and local level.
We’re back to them burning it down.
Lower taxes, let people get out of SS. Make it a lot fucking easier to open a business.
Ok, we’re going to let anyone who wants start a business. As soon as they take the required 4 year $50,000 training. So as to assure public safety… for the children.
Lisences can be applied for, the fee is $500. 4-6 weeks wait period.
Renewed annually.
Fees will be applied if you do not renew before the deadline;267 days after the initial application date.
Some time ago you had talked about all the boarded-up row houses in Baldimor, and in response to that I searched some of these for sale listings/foreclosures, and they were full on Mad Max like you had indicated. But man, if you wanted to own city blocks for relatively cheap, there or Detroit would be ripe. Tempting to buy some just for the lulz, sit on the property for a few decades, and see what happens.
I didn’t exaggerate at all, you really can’t.
You can buy houses like that in Baltimore for next to nothing. But you can’t live there and any attempt at a renovation will probably end badly in one way or other.
“Tempting to buy some just for the lulz, sit on the property for a few decades, and see what happens.”
You’ll have a ginormous tax bill for one thing.
Yep. Until the neighborhood is full on gentrified, be prepared to guard it 24/7 so the new hvac, plumbing, windows and doors don’t disappear the day they are installed.
I grew up outside Detroit. Many areas weren’t destroyed and still have beautiful homes. Last I looked you could buy a well maintained 6-7 bedroom mansion with carriage house etc for less than a condo in the Bay Area.
Blocks are trickier, it’s hard to find a completely vacant block and anyone still living there isn’t likely to move.
While there are some areas that your pipes and windows may get stolen, some areas are quite nice and gentrification has improved entire districts like midtown and cork town.
Everything bad you’ve ever heard about Detroit is probably true, but no one ever mentions the good parts.
Or in a lot of cities there are hundreds of acres of formerly packed blocks with maybe one or two houses remaining per block. It’s eerie.
Did you look at the back taxes and titles on those properties? Might be worth a peek.
Like out of morbid curiosity? Nah, didn’t get that far. I bet it’s a mess.
The caning of Charles Sumner just doesn’t do it for you anymore?
Then why do you call yourself P[reston?] Brooks?
Not a new avatar for me. I was (s’posedta be) quoting Agent Cooper. I think sometimes I slip up and use *i* instead of the [site-specific] *em* for italicized quotes.
I’ve got a body of work invested as Brooks. It started as a few intermittent references to decorum among our elected representatives. (I always expected Joe to flash on the reference and accuse me of horrific racism and slave-nostalgia.) Handle-jumping annoys me; especially when it’s a naked ploy by trolls to get people who have learned to ignore them to read their comments again, which is another reason to prefer this site to the old one.
*I have no problem with the banhammer getting dropped on Cuffy or any other deserving troll. Almost all of us who have migrated here are all too familiar with our stalker(s) obsessive-compulsive need to “disprove” libertarianism or whatever the fuck it is he/she/it thinks it is accomplishing.
I’m waiting for Mary to get starved in response to lack of content on Reason and start trying to take stuff from here.
Last couple of evenings I’ve been lurking around over there, AmSoc is half of the comments.
that’s because there are three AmSocks now. Way too confusing
Is he arguing with himself again?
No one knows.
We should allow Mary to post here and give her a regular column.
C’mon. It’d be great reading.
I think a Henry Darger novel would be more coherent.
+1 Vivian Girls
She knows about us.
Gamboltarians?
Remember when she had her own blog and she cut and pasted H&R comments into her site? I had several comments over there.
Yeah, didn’t she recently twit something at ENB either mentioning this site or at least giving the impression she knew about it?
I think it was dalmia, but i dont follow her twitter.
Over at TSTSNBN, the 2nd comment on the intern article is hilarious.
Is there a reason we’re not naming it?
(Swiss bait!)
No one really knows.
It sounds like Lovecraftian – They Who Shall Not Be Named.
Or like the Senate rules – “the other body” this, “the other body” that.
*narrows gaze*
Is there a reason we’re not naming it?
Professional courtesy?
Pity?
Illiteracy.
Class. We have it (or are at least faking it).
Cut taxes? Wean them off the federal teat? Those two things would go a long way but yeah, so many barriers are imposed at the state and local level.
Before they went nuts at R*ason, somebody blogged a few articles about how the geniuses at Detroit City Hall were beefing up their code enforcement operations, in an effort to stamp out entrepreneurialism among the little people.
So, I’m gonna assume no Democrat city hall will ever relax their grip.
It could also be that they’re just trying to squeeze as much money out of them as possible. I mean, they can’t be that stupid and evil, can they?
Why cant they be?
So, now that we’re all safe over here, I can reveal the secret of FOE:
In the future, somebody invents time-spamming. You can’t travel in time, but you can send comments back in time.
These “retro-viruses” are usually used to diacredit political opponents or to create demand for products that aren’t even availablr yet, but some individuals use the technology for personal satisfaction.
You know who else used technology for personal satisfaction?
everyone?
The entire nation of [deleted for offensiveness]?
Biff?
I mean, they can’t be that stupid and evil, can they?
Good one.
I remember my two years in China well.
Chinese racism is accepted and held dearly by every single economic class in that country. They truly consider blacks to be animals, and have no qualms telling you about it. If it was internationally acceptable, they probably wouldn’t even allow them in the country.
Beloved Hippo Killed
Beloved hippo? Seriously? Hippo’s are dangerous animals that will eat your face off. But, dicks out for Gustavito, I suppose.
Imma stickin’ with Harambe.
There is a lot of fucked up going on there. Yeah, hippos, mostly the males, are living, breathing nightmares. Unstoppable monsters with 24 inch tusks and a maw that can crush a whole man in one bite. However, most people killed by them are trampled when they startle a hippo that is out of the water browsing on the banks. The panicked hippo makes a 30mph dash to the water and inadvertently flattens the person. Despite all of that the sicko that did this should be hanged.
I think I will look into the current state of wild hippos in the Amazon basin. That is an interesting story.
I will say it again – America is the worst country, except for all the others.
Thanks for this, Suthenboy. It’s a complicated topic.
P Brooks – until today I never knew where your handle came from, had always assumed it was your name.
Longtime lurker at other sight, never posted. Just wanted to give a shout-out to Suthenboy, great read. Doubt I’ll have much to contribute here, but I was impressed someone knew where Natchitoches was. The whole Cane River region has a very complex racial history, and I lived it growing up. Of course the entire state has a complex racial history. One of my friends grandmother owned the Cherokee Plantation, and we spent a lot of time playing in, around, and under it, I’m sure in the old slave quarters.
Nice to hear from you SandMan, and thank you. I spent a couple of semesters at NSU. I am pretty familiar with the area generally. I only live a few miles south now outside of Colfax. Interesting. When did you leave?
What was the name of the settlement north and on the other side of the river with no roads to it? It was populated entirely by Creoles. I wanted to go see it once but was warned; “You aint from there. If you aint from there you dont go there. They’ll send you back down the river and keep your boat.”
You’re probably thinking about Melrose? There is a large population of mulattos in the vicinity, most were very nice to me, not sure how Heroic though. An interesting take on the stratified culture, is a book (fiction) “Children of Strangers”, if you have never read it. Of course, times have changed. I left in ’77.
It was north of town, maybe around Pierre Bayou? North of Natchitoches but not as far as Campti. Oh, and it was on the red, not the cane.
“There is not a person alive in the United States today who has been held in bondage, nor a person alive today who has held another in bondage. ”
For a magazine called Re… Glibertarians, they’re already trying to control our sex lives!
Great article Suthen. Look forward to the next parts. I have also been around the world quite a bit and spent years in Latin America. Anyone who thinks the U.S is a particularly racist country doesn’t have a clue how the rest of the world operates or have very deep historical knowledge. I am still amazed at the number of (supposedly) educated people I have met that don’t seem to realize that slavery was the norm up until very recently in almost all cultures. Shit, it wasn’t outlawed officially in Saudi Arabia till the 60’s and Mauritania until the 80’s.