For those that didn’t understand my position in part one… I’m not saying that people raised their hands and said, “I’ll be a slave!” Im saying, ACCEPTANCE is a form of choice. Indirect choice! If u are trapped in a desert for whatever reason dying of thirst and chances are if you start walking, even if its miles on end, you’d find water, but elect not to walk. The result of that choice is death. Indirect choice is no different than direct choice. They both invoke cause and effect. Slaves chose to be enslaved by NOT fighting for their freedom. That’s all I’m saying. People are so quick to play the slavery card. It’ll be nice if we didn’t utilize so much energy on past issues that we can’t change and focus on what we can change about those same issues we encounter today, but just with a different face.
I really didn’t want to step into this arena, but it has always been my insight that conversation brings forth understanding and understanding initiates change. I have to delve deeper into this topic in order to show the bigger picture. I make no apologies for my previous post #SlaveryWasAChoice! These are my perceptions, views and opinions based on what I see and feel. I’m glad you all respect that. The same way I not only respect your views and ideologies when you’re responding and/or commenting on my post, but I also welcome them. As I always say, “There’s nothing better in the world between two people than an understanding.”
The fact of the matter is, I love and respect all people no matter the race. My previous points were black people accepting slavery back then and even today’s form of slavery because we sit back and do nothing when we witness firsthand the conditions our people are being subjected to in this country. I was telling a good friend of mine that we, as a people, should have fought to abolish slavery. Had we unified and fought, slavery would’ve ended long before it did. And when slavery was abolished, as we knew it, it was because a white man said, “No More!” Makes me wonder had it not been for Abraham Lincoln ALL blacks would still be slaves today in the former sense.
Even then slavery didn’t end. It just took on another form. It evolved. We were still in the being told what to do, when to do, where to go and where not, what you could have and not have era of slavery. The civil rights movement was eventually born as a result. That was a beautiful time. Black people were sticking together, standing up for each other and fighting as a unit for a cause. We marched, boycotted, and risked our lives to be treated equally and fairly. When we realized that many white people supported our cause by fighting along side of us we fought even harder. America was at a stalemate. The white people that ran this country back then knew nothing like this was going on anywhere else in the world. They knew concessions had to be made in order for America to not only compete with the world, but be the frontrunner as well. So they relented, but not without some tricks up their sleeve.
Discrimination, heroin, movies like Superfly, low income housing (projects),. government assistance, crack cocaine and prisons were all strategically implemented by design to ensure slavery evolved yet again with another face. So that those oppressed as it was, along with the rest of the country, wouldn’t see it coming. And once we realized it, it’ll be far too late. Which brings me to my next point. But first, note:
What’s the most efficient way to cripple the numbers of a race or destroy that race altogether? Simple, stop it from reproducing!
Slavery has evolved into mass incarceration. Statistics have proven that 1 in 3 black males born in this age will be subjected to imprisonment. The biggest supporting fact is that NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE! Practically every road in life for the average black man and many black women leads to some sort of trap created by the conditions of our environment that was destined to be based on the strategic implementation of negativity the government pumped into our ghettos years ago. (Destitution, guns, drugs, lack of education, unemployment) Its easy to say you didn’t have to do this or that, but when your child is hungry you seize opportunities that are available; good or bad! Its called survival.
Again, TRAPS, MODERN DAY SLAVERY, MASS INCARCERATION! Black men are an endangered species. You know it, I know it, and THEY know it. Even still, we have the power to change it! And since Mr. Obama sold us out I’ll tell you how in #SlaveryWasAChoice3!
Melvin Robertson
DOC #582196
I can respect your opinion though I’ll never agree with the statement or how people are trying to rationalize it. A WHOLE race was sold into bondage, taken from their homes and ripped from their families. That is traumatic. We’ll NEVER comprehend the magnitude of what that experience was like for our ancestors. (Though we do see the effects of it over the generations that have came) They endured the most brutal forms of degradation, purposely kept apart, names being changed, rape, and much more. They were all forms of CONTROL. But I don’t need to tell you this right? That control, hatred, and dehumanizing behavior instilled FEAR. I think its easy to say what could or should have been done we cannot imagine.
People are all talk but still wont take a stand now even with all the resources and platforms we’ve gained and established. So I try not to take statements like these too seriously.
Speaking on the past is futile. We learn from it and grow yes but NOW is what is important.
Much respect.
A whole race was not enslaved. There were plenty of black people in or from Africa who were not enslaved. Perhaps systemically or philosophically enslaved, but not directly made into American slaves.
But what about ancient Egypt. There it was blacks who enslaved whites (Jews).
Or what about the Black Irish ?
I think it was a particular cultural ethics that brought about the concept of race as we know it today, which in turn made slavery unethical.
And then there is Freiere’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Where even the oppressor is oppressed.
Short-sighted and crazy. First of all, native Americans had Mexican slaves and Mexicans had Native Americans slaves in America alongside black slavery and this was not abolished. Secondly, Lincoln did not abolish it. There was an uprising of the populace. The people overthrew black slavery in America. Lincoln capitalized on this in order to win the war. If you read Lincoln’s speeches, he did not believe in whites and blacks living side by side as equals. He said the black people should be deported back to Africa. It was, historically, mainly white people that led the movement that that overthrew slavery, but this is only because they were the ones with the vote. Jews, blacks, Mexicans and Native Americans, along with many others did not have any political power whatsoever. To blame the black, unarmed slaves for not overthrowing their well-armed masters is ridiculous. No you blame all the people that were killed by the Nazis in World War II for not overpowering those militaries and escaping the death camps? It is equally ridiculous to blame whites for black slavery as 75% of white American families did not own any slaves at all and many were against slavery and did overthrow it. Also, the first court case about legal slavery of a black man in America involved a black master. That’s right. Many black slaves were owned by black masters and the black people who blame all whites for slavery never bring that up. Many of the black slaves that were brought to America were not kidnapped, like you saw in “Roots,” but rather purchased from their black slave owners in Africa and other places. People who blame all white Americans for black slavery are not playing fair. Many white families came to America AFTER slavery ended, and, if you look it up, you’ll see the statistics are true that even the white Americans that were here did not, as a majority, own black slaves. Certainly modern white Americans do not own black slaves and are not responsible for what a small minority of white Americans did well over a hundred years ago. Where are the black people that are outraged over the fact that Native Americans kidnapped white people and held them as slaves in the southwest, or the fact that Mexicans held slaves in the same region? Why are white people who have never had slaves always blamed for slavery?