The bright side of slavery

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*I am by no means promoting racism and in my opinion i am not racist and think racism is ignorance* although i will admit i hate the fact that black people are stereotyped and even worse that black people tend to want to be that stereotype. Some of the african american kids at my school try to act like "thugs" and bring in knives even though there is no reason for it and some of the kids actually are better off and have more money than i do.... Yet they feel like sell outs i guess if they don;t act tough. This is only some though i have had friends that are black and they are hillarioius usually funnier then any of my white friends and when they act themselves they re fun to be around. Anyways.....

As bad as slavery was i think you could argue that it actually benefited african americans in todays society. United States would have never been so successful if it wasnt for the cheap method of using slaves as workers was a reason why the US was able to grow into what it is today. Slaves had a very hard lifestyle but it was no worse then if they had been left in Africa. Slaves were sold to white men by their own people and in Africa life was very tough happiness was scarce. Life was not paradise in the US but slaves were fed and clothed and in a sense were better off. Also not every American owned a slave it was usually the few rich southern farmers that could afford a large work force of slaves. Slavery was already going on in other regions of the world before slaves ever came to the US.
In today's world blacks have equal rights just like everyone else and if not for slavery there would not have been so many blacks with the privelllege and opportunities that they have in the US. If not for slavery they may have still been in Africa where your next meal is not assured. Now we have dikembe mutombos and mohammid ali's. Making millions of dollars. Im not sure they would have been so successful if there athletic abilities were used to hunt animals instead of shoot hoops or knock out other boxers.

Slavery was terribe but good things came from it, thankfully due to human rights activists like martin luther king. I also think that african americans take everything too personally. You cannot make any joke or comment without worrying someone might take it offensively. Yet when i went to a private school in dc which i was one of 4 white kids in my grade i was constantly teased given the name white boy. And how because i was white i could not play sports as well or get hot girls. Yet i never took it too personally i just found it funny sometimes. If you were to change the tables and have 4 black kids in a white school and call them names and what not it is racism.

What makes me even more mad is that if i were to go on a shooting spree right now and kill 8 people and one of them happened to be black, it is considered a hate crime....Not the fact that im mentally unstable.

Whata think on this issue. Please don't view me as being racist i just like to think about things in different lights

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Excuse me for saying this in as blunt a way as possible, but this is insane bull-crap! Seeing things in different lights is fine... but there is a point where you open your mind so far all reason and taste falls out and you are left with nothing but a gaping empty chasm.

Let's apply your "logic" elsewhere?

Would you say there was a bright side to the holocaust, seeing as it brought about the state of Israel....

Would you say there is a bright side to rape? It has brought about children.

What about the bright side to 9/11. It has increased our consciousness and patriotism?

Was there a bright side to kids being molested by priests?

Do you see the problem with your logic?

Slavery was a crime against humanity that encompassed murder, the rape of children and torture.

If you are the kind of person who doesn't mind making jokes about about Nazi's putting people in ovens, or Iraqi's killing kidnapped civilian workers... then there is nothing I can say.

Most of us are uncomfortable with jokes about the savage brutality that people have suffered.

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I was bringing up the point that life was worse in AFrica then life in the US where as all of your other examples, people were taken out of their accustomed life styles and tortured ie Holocaust Slaves were punished but rarely tortured until their death

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I'm not going to touch this one with a 40 foot pole. But I would like to commend you Discreet for having the courage to ask these questions (knowing that you are in the clear minority on this issue).

Mostly I just wanted to commend you on the title. It is a beautiful juxtaposition of "bright side" and "slavery." I am quite impressed. It certainly is eye catching. Is it strange that I enjoy things like that? Smile

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Discreet wrote:

I was bringing up the point that life was worse in AFrica.

From what sources do have this conclusion - as far as I've read, life in 16th/17th/18th and even early 19th century was better for Africans in Africa than in slavery.

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Actually, life in Africa in freedom was and is at any time better than being in slavery.

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How can anyone see a bright side to slavery?

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There must be something wrong with your current a** hole because someone is about to rip you a new one.

You are one brave person...somewhat delusional but brave none the less.

Oppression never worked in anyones favor. If you are going to make a statement like that, you had better include the Irish too. And all of the other immigrants who worked for pennies.

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Interesting when someone comes from out of nowhere to post something totally inflammatory. Makes one wonder if the poster seeks out forums to post these views, then disappears again...

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Have you read about the slave trade that took slave from Africa to bring them to the United States. People were stuffed three deep into ships with no room to even sit upright . About one half of the people brought across even survived. You can read more from this eyewitness account.

Saying that life was better as a slave in the US then free in Africa is sheer idiocy. People had been living just fine there for thousands of years. There are people who live similar agricultural lives in small villages now, would selling them into slavery be doing them a favor?

If you ever find yourself in a difficult situaion... would you like to be sold into slavery?

The fact is that many slaves died in captivity from abuse, or just from neglect as they lost their value. They were basically treated as livestock.

Slavery was a horrible thing. Many people were mercilessly slaughtered.

To suggest that somehow the slave traders were doing the slaves a favor is ludicrous.

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The only wealthy people in Africa were the leaders of tribes that were selling their own people. IF you wern't a slave in the US you were most likely a slave in Africa. Plus Africa is hot as balls and by coming to the states weather was nicer, but on a more serious note without slavery don't you wonder whether or not people would have been enlightened enough to go to war and die for their own slaves. I.E. the North. In all other countries that had slavery no one would have been willing to divide a nation over whether or not slavery was right or wrong and i know no one in Africa cared enough to start a revolution and stop slavery. Slavery led to civil rights movements which led to blacks being equal.

Heres a famous article on the issue
http://law.gsu.edu/federalist/Horowitz.htm
Heres a more liberal view on the issue:
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/LAW/03/columns/fl.sebok.slavery.03.29/

Keep in mind i am not supporting slavery or saying that it was right. Im just interested in hearing what pp l have to say on the topic and show that there were some benefits from slavery if you find any other articles relating to this topic please share
Im still in HS so i have the ignorance of youth to blaim if no one else agrees with me.

I dont want to sound apathetic but does anyone else seem that african americans have taken the slavery thing too far. Most white americans are afraid to say anything relating to race around blacks or even touch on the issue. When i say "blacks" i mean nothing derogative by it and i hope no one finds it offensive but saying african americans just doesn't seem right its like saying Caucasian vs saying white. If someone talks about the "white" race i don't find that offensive am i alone? I think blacks should let by gones be by gones and put the past behind them. If somone in my family was punished by a black man a couple hundred years ago i don't think id hold that black race accountable. Just because we had some southern racist farmers doesn't mean you should take it out on all the whities, plus black people need to loosen up when i ride metro in dc through bad parts im actually afraid to look a black man in the eye for fear of doing something wrong. That isn't how i should go through life. I don't want to be racist i just want to talk with him eye to eye....hes making it uncomfortable by acting tough cause bet tells him too

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Discreet wrote:

I was bringing up the point that life was worse in AFrica then life in the US where is all of your other examples people were taking out of their accustomed life styles and tortured ie Holocaust Slaves were punished but rarely tortured until their death

if slaves weren't mistreated, it wasn't for altruistic reasons. slaves were property, like farm animals; the slaveowner protected his investment by not abusing them.

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discreet, I would like to use a quote here, and I usually don't do that:

"I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."--Voltaire.

After that, my young friend, you are on your own.

Doesn't anyone here remember Noah?

Seriously, discreet, I think you might have done better using another adjective. You can always change it.

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Discreet wrote:

The only wealthy people in Africa were the leaders of tribes that were selling their own people.

You gave two links, with have only distantly to do with the history of Africa.

You above quoted sentence doesn't show any deeper knowledge about this subject either.

(Who were the only wealthy people in the Colonies or early USA, btw?)

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You are dead wrong in two respects. First, there is no doubt that slavery was horrible. Read the first hand account of a slave ship I posted, and read other first hand accounts. Then imagine yourself being owned by someone who treated you as an animal, who had the legal right to kill you, and would torture you (flogging) if you showed any independance. Do you doubt that this is a horrible way to live?

Your information about Africa is also wrong. Africa has a ancient culture. People lived decent lives (as they did in American, and Europe any everywhere else) for thousands of years. They lived in villages, had families, worked, farmed had wars and everything else.

You seem to think that most people in Africa were slaves ... where did you get this idea?
-----

I don't know what you are trying to say when you point out that the people of the time weren't willing to fight for the rights of slaves... this seems irrelevent.

I will point out that there were pogroms (i.e. massacres) against the Jews in Europe for years before the holocaust happened. No one was willing to go to war for this either.

This just proves that humans have been willing to accept horrible evil many times in history.

You should understand that Slavery, like the Holocaust was a horrible crime against humanity. This is why we are uncomfortable with what you are saying.

What happened to the vi ctims of these crimes was horrible.

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ebrown_p wrote:

Have you read about the slave trade that took slave from Africa to bring them to the United States. People were stuffed three deep into ships with no room to even sit upright . About one half of the people brought across even survived. You can read more from this eyewitness account.

Saying that life was better as a slave in the US then free in Africa is sheer idiocy. People had been living just fine there for thousands of years. There are people who live similar agricultural lives in small villages now, would selling them into slavery be doing them a favor?

If you ever find yourself in a difficult situaion... would you like to be sold into slavery?

The fact is that many slaves died in captivity from abuse, or just from neglect as they lost their value. They were basically treated as livestock.

Slavery was a horrible thing. Many people were mercilessly slaughtered.

To suggest that somehow the slave traders were doing the slaves a favor is ludicrous.

I brought up slavery in the US was better than life in AFrica not the slave trade conditions everyone knows those were the worst times for slaves. Having to crap on themselves...But my argument is that without slavery people might not have realized that blacks were people too and that they should have equal rights and in the case of the civil war these feelings people died for.

The only merciless onslaughts you speak of were northerners dying to free african americans

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Are you willing to make the same argument about the Holocaust? There was terrible anti-Semitism before the Holocaust. After WWII (largely because of the concentration camps) people realized that Jews were people and should have equal rights.

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Again i am not saying slavery was right. I think in general America has brought some of the worst attrocities onto the world but i just want to see if i can argue the other side. Often times ill argue things for the sake of an argument....Yesterday i nearly got kicked out of history class for saying a similar thing "That we actually helped the indians." My argument was we brought them sanitation where as they pooped in the nearest hole and had no sanitary laws. Also now indians are rich of owning casinos. WHICH I KNOW IS A SMALL PERCENTAGE MOST INDIANS ARE ACTUALLY REALLY DEPRESSED AND YOU ALWAYS HEAR ABOUT INDIANS BEING ALCOHOLICS CAUSE HONESTLY I THINK THEY WERE TREATED WORSE THEN SLAVES

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Discreet wrote:

...plus black people need to loosen up when i ride metro in dc through bad parts im actually afraid to look a black man in the eye for fear of doing something wrong.

If I had the kind of twisted logic that you hold, young man, I'd be afraid to look a black man in the eye also. I don't know what they're teaching you in school today but it's obvious, from your posts, that you're still not hearing the true story about slavery in America.

You're young. There's always hope.

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A-yup, the entire argument rests on the contention that, for the individuals in question, life was better as a slave in the west than it was in Africa -- a statement that awaits support. The tendency is to assume that life in Africa and always has been abhorrent. This is not necessarily true for the present, and many of the ills that plague sub-Saharan societies today are the result of the past 150 years or so of outside rule followed by completely inept internal plutocracies governing over lands with completely artificial borders. "Wealth" hardly comes into it -- the slave trade helped disrupt traditional economies in Africa. I believe there is evidence (though I feel like pulling the "Africa" tome off the bookshelf and thumbing through it to verify this) that the slave trade dramatically redistributed wealth within African society to the elite, making conditions more miserable for the many. So, there is a good chance that some of the misery many of us in the west attribute to life on the African continent is itself the result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

I'm not sure I would put a whole lot of credence into the argument that slave labor was the driving force in growth of American economies, either. I'd be interested in seeing an economic analysis of slavery in large-scale agriculture.

Got some stones to start this thread, though, discreet (which turns out to be a very odd screen name indeed).

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The bright side of slavery

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