Should they?
Really? can you point us in the direction of such findings?
And the ones who don’t?
“Got on”?
The criminal. Why should he blame the victim?
Nope. I hope your question isn’t serious.
I asked about guilt regarding enjoying the benefits, not about guilt for the sins of their ancestors.
It’s very easy to find African-Americans who feel they have benefitted from their ancestors coming to the US as slaves. First you read the memoir by the Washington Post reporter Keith Richburg, called “Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa”, and if you do a little looking, you’ll run across plenty of similar people. I even worked right next to such people when I was taking low-paid factory jobs as a student. They know the slaves suffered, but they think that by the late 20th century the advantages to them far, far outweighed the disadvantages.
Nobody is to be blamed for the sins of others, even if they were their ancestors’. However, [size=150]thinking[/size] the wrong deeds as above criticism or something that had to be done is a whole different story.
We’re back to Jamie’s “I know a man/woman/friend/dog who…” ploy.
The point is not that you know a few black people who feel they have benefitted from their ancestors’ enslavement. I’d like to know how you feel and what you’d say to the ones who claim they haven’t benefitted.
Would you say to them “Well f*ck off back to Africa then. See how you like life over there!”?
What ploy? I happen to have gotten around a lot and met a lot of different kinds of people. And they talk to me.
A LOT of black people…
Not from the enslavement, but from the fact that the enslavement happened here and not in, say, Nigeria.
The ones who claim they haven’t benefitted are generally in two categories:
People who don’t take advantage of the opportunities available to them, such as the crackhead I met who was panhandling outside the supermarket the other day, or the people who drop out of high school and sit on the porch all day.
People at universities who have been indoctrinated into the ideology of victimhood. These people witness things changing, but continue to think things haven’t changed. They sit well-fed in the university classrooms – often on scholarships – or later in well-paid professions, own their own house and more than one car, and claim to be disadvantaged.
No, I would never say that. However, I’ve seen black people say it to other black people.
Yes, we know. You’ve met a person for every situation in which you back yourself into a corner. :lol:
And, here we gooo!
You just can’t stop, can you? What did you say to that crackhead?
LOL! This gets funnier by the mo’. I don’t suppose you’ve met any white people who said that to black people, have you?
End as you mean to go on:
I have a broad range of acquaintances over many years, and I’m empirically oriented. Their examples come to mind in many various situations. The problem for you is that my own experience usually backs YOU into a corner. Since my real-life experience conflicts with your ideology, you pretend I’m making it all up.
You, on the other hand, when backed into a corner – and even when not – love to bring out “investigative journalism” that cannot be substantiated and “academic” papers that spin folktales.
I said, “I’m sorry sir, but I can’t help you.”
I could have given him some money, but that wouldn’t have helped him. He’s already fed and housed by the government or by relatives, and he wants the money for drugs or booze. I’m not a social worker or an experienced missionary evangelist who cleans up drunks and dope fiends, so I couldn’t help him that way. Giving him money would have made his problem worse. So it wasn’t a lie that I couldn’t help him.
Today a guy who’d just been sprung from jail came up to my car, and when I rolled down the window he said, “Salem aleikum.” He claimed to have been released from jail minutes before (which is plausible) for driving on a suspended license, and that he needed money to travel to the state capital about two hours away. He said he had no money because all his family was in Iraq, but he was very obviously not from Iraq but from Yemen. I didn’t give him any money either, because about a half hour’s walk away there’s a big mosque where the people could do a better job of evaluating his situation and dealing with it.
I haven’t personally witnessed any whites tell this to blacks, and it’s relatively unlikely in the United States, because white Americans generally have a huge fear of being accused of racism, whether they are really racist or not. Generally, whites say it to each other about blacks or other whites (and even about their own kids) who think they’re disadvantaged but are not. I’ve only witnessed blacks tell this to other blacks.
Among the more amusing situations are the ones where an African who has finished graduate school in the US, has a lucrative job, and thinks America is the greatest place the the world – almost the Promised Land – encounters a minimum-wage African-American store clerk who says “the white man” is preventing him from advancing in life. Some of those conversations are really something to see.
African students sometimes tell me privately about how embarrassed they are of the behavior and thinking of lower-class African-Americans and how much it upsets them when someone mistakes them for an African-American. One of them was doing African hair braiding to put herself through college, but she was at the same time appalled that so many of the clients she dealt with preferred to pay her $400 to do their hair, but wouldn’t put the same money into savings or into anything to improve their minds or economic prospects. She was very livid about it.
LOL! Your vicarious references are supposed to back one into a corner.
I love to bring in many sources. Strange how your detestation of journalists - unless they are Republican/right-leaning - and academics leaves you to imagine that such people always spin folktales, but the you expect us to believe YOUR “I knew/know someone who…” folktales . Strange.
So you didn’t ask him how he got that way, right? And out of that brief “meeting” you could conclude that he was a person who hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunities available to him, right?
And I thought you’d had “a broad range of acquaintances over many years”.
Not sure what you mean there. Are you saying that no US black people are being prevented, by US white people, from advancing?
In general, African students are arrogant, come from a money background, and have not experienced the same things that many US black people have. Tell me, Jamie, your African hairdresser, and similar stories, do you think they are general? Do you really think that the majority of poor US black people can reach the highest heights that you yourself seem to live in?
Jamie, you’re far too kind.
I’d say “Get a job”, which would be far too harsh in Molly’s view… even though a job would be
I don’t want to be a harsh person, but sometimes the whiners need a swift kick in the pants… a little motivation can do wonders.
Now… if someone’s really trying but simply is not succeeding, that’s when i’m glad to help.
But a person has to decide for himself to turn his life around. Nobody else can do that for him.
As for descendants being culpable for the sins of their forebears, I say that’s hogwash. I can’t control what my peops did back in the day, any more than I can control what my offspring will do when I’m gone. In the end we really only control our own actions, manipulation at present be damned.
hehe
“Do you really think that the majority of poor US black people can reach the highest heights that you yourself seem to live in?”
I know this wasn’t addressed to me, but it oozes Communist/liberal defeatism, which I cannot allow to go unscathed:
Yes, Molly, anyone in this country – African-Americans included – can succeed. There are things like handicaps that might impede someone’s progress toward greatness, but even handicaps can be overcome (look at Hawking).
Even if a person is dumb and unable to take advantage of all the economic and social liberties that are offered here, it profits him nothing to be pessimistic.
Ninety-six percent (or some such lofty figure) of all American millionaires are self-made – IE, they made their fortunes on their own.
But to be successful, most people have to WANT TO BE successful, believe that they can be successful, and take (sometimes risky, time-consuming and/or difficult) steps toward becoming successful. Not many people become successful by being lazy.
Everyone here has an opportunity to try. Those who don’t try, but who whine about not being rich, cannot bitch about it. Those who try and fail – hey, there are no guarantees. When there is economic liberty, there cannot be economic equality. The two cannot exist together, because some are simply better at making money (and whatever goes into that – endless list of attributes) than others. But are the rich villains? Mostly not, imo. We rely on our captains of industry to create jobs for the rest of us – I can stomach people being obscenely rich because I believe in free enterprise and because those people generally create a lot of opportunities for others.
But there are degrees of success, and a person doesn’t have to be a millionaire to consider himself successful. Compared to what their lot would be back in Africa, most African-Americans are indeed pretty lucky to be here. They at least have opportunity to try to succeed here. They’re gernerally not dodging bullets at the local polling station or UN grain drop-off station.
So I take it you’re not a big fan of the idea of paying reparations for slavery. 
hehe, ahhh, NO
Can you imagine the issues with figuring out
a) How much each white person owes, and
b) How much each black person gets
?
What would A and B be based on? Would white people pay based on whether or not their ancestors had slaves? Would black people collect based on how many of their ancestors were slaves?
How could either be proved – how good was the record-keeping back then, and have those records been saved? Are they reliable, and how could that be proven?
It would just be a mess. And that’s just the practical side of it.
I think the best we can do is treat each other with respect now, teach our kids to do the same, and pray that they continue to improve mankind in that capacity. We can’t move forward if we’re constantly looking back. We can’t end racism by dwelling on race-based policy.
It’s common for people who make massive fortunes to have failed more than once. Some really rich people have had two or three failed businesses before they get one right. It’s all about risk and persistence.
Would black people whose black ancestors owned slaves have to pay? Would black people with 1/5 white blood (the majority of the black population of the US) have to pay 1/5? And would they have to pay money to themselves?
I read one columnist acknowledging that mess but saying that the whole thing would be worth it if it meant that that was the end of whites’ perceived responsibility to the aggrieved black population. Most of the proposed reparations schemes sound like enormous sums, but they only amount to about $25 for each black person in the US (but of course, their lawyers would take some of that). The writer thought that $25 per person was a bargain price if it meant no more affirmative action, no more tax money going to scholarships, housing programs, free food, etc., to counteract problems bogusly claimed to be “the legacy of slavery”.
yep – good points/questions all, imo.
It would be a quagmire, and not help us – at all – to become less racist than we are right now. (And hey, we’ve made great strides over the last 140ish years… and we need to keep that going, look at each other as people and not colors)
Somehow I doubt it would be only $25 per person though. Wouldn’t such a negligible amount only infuriate the fire-stokers to a greater degree?
I’m learning about this with our “on the side” motion picture production aspirations – every door thus far has been closed to us, but we still have multiple irons in the fire… and just one of them has to pay off.
hehe
(keeping my fingers crossed)
What do you mean? What are you doing?
A day-job buddy of mine (writer/director) and I (biz director) are part of a group of four people formed to produce and sell motion pictures.
We have multiple contacts and some things look promising currently – the point of that last emission was to say that I can understand how it takes hard work and failed attempts to make an idea profitable. I feel that pain, as our friend Mr. Clinton might have said.
hehe