Discreet, the article's interesting, but a bit one-sided. data that questions evo psych doesn't necessarily refute it, but probably does call for modifications.
Thanks Roger,
It is almost two years.
Discreet - interesting thread. Just make sure you don't become enslaved yourself by stereotypes, generalizations, misinformation, assumptions and/or the internet (you've posted an awful lot in just one week - aren't you supposed to be in school :wink: sorry, but once a teacher, always a teacher). There is no bright side to slavery of any kind.
You can learn more about people and their histories by looking them in the eye, smiling at them, and asking them what they think and feel about something than you'll ever learn by just reading books and buying into theories. As an example, and to address one of your questions- my last teaching job, I worked in a school system in which we were encouraged to use the term "African-American". I asked the young men I was working with what they would rather be called - "African-American" or "black" - they told me they were more comfortable being referred to, and in fact referred to themselves, as "black". The experts, most of whom were white in this case, were wrong. It happens. Go to the source. Ask your black friends if they think slavery was beneficial for their people. That would take real courage. Good luck to you.
Are you sure Aidan?
...Couldn't he just take our word for it?..... I mean, in this forum, we have time to pause,and realize that he is simply making a serious, intellectual query. I think this is the safest place to make such a potentialy volatile statement. Just an opinion though.
Booman - I wouldn't advise him to make any volatile statements, and I hope he would use common sense in terms of who he chose to address his questions to - but yeah - I think if he has some black friends, as he stated he did at the very beginning - it would be interesting and enlightening to him to learn their views. In fact, I was thinking of asking the black people in my life what they thought about this. I find it very interesting - and it did make me stop and realize that if it weren't for slavery bringing people from Africa to the United States hundreds of years ago, I very well might not know so many people I know and love and call friends and family- (I'm married to a black man and have two interracial children). Of course, if it weren't for the potato famine, I probably would have grown up in Ireland. So adverse circumstances have affected many of our lives in one way or another. The question is - would it have been better if we had all stayed where we originally came from or is life in the US so much better that we should be grateful for the change?
Not knowing the racial make-up of this group who answered him, I can't
tell you if he should just take our word for it. As a white person - I don't think he should take my word about what black people should or shouldn't feel or be happy about. I do think he should allow black people to speak to their own circumstances. I just feel it's more respectful somehow to directly ask the people whom slavery affected most directly.
Discreet - to help you out in your quest for understanding (because I think it's important to try to understand differing perspectives and educate yourself - and I'm glad you are questioning)- I did pose the question to my husband. As a black man who grew up in the south and attended segregated schools and rode on the back of the bus for part of his childhood - I thought he was someone who at least had a little more understanding of the real effects of slavery and prejudice than someone, even another younger black person - who had never experienced any of those things.
I asked him if he saw a bright side to slavery, as in the end, it had brought him out of Africa and to the US. This is what he said, "I can't answer that question. Because there is no way of knowing what kind of place Africa would have been if its population of young, strong, healthy youth and adults had not been depleted by the slave trade. I have no accurate information with which to make a comparison. African-Americans and latter day Africans had their opportunity of knowing what life in Africa would have been like if slavery had never happened taken away from them."
My husband did say he sees absolutely no bright side to the prejudice and discrimination he endured in the US before integration - and he can only imagine that actual enslavement would have been infinitely and incomprehensively worse.
I also want you to know, he was not at all offended by the question, and in fact found it interesting to think about.
Quote:African-Americans and latter day Africans had their opportunity of knowing what life in Africa would have been like if slavery had never happened taken away from them."
To say nothing of the effect of the ongoing colonial influence on the bits of Africa that don't touch the Mediterranean, and the effect of the slave trade on that relationship.
Aidan wrote:Not knowing the racial make-up of this group who answered him . . .
That one's really easy: everyone here is the same race--the human race.
Well, except for me, of course, i'm canine. But one does not choose to be one of the elect, one is chosen. I don't disparage your for your many and glaring human faults.
Hey, buddy, i know where there's some carrion we could go roll in . . . guaranteed at least three days dead . . .
great. i had a bath yesterday, and i smell terrible.
Oh, Dog, i hate it when they do that . . .
Setanta wrote:Aidan wrote:Not knowing the racial make-up of this group who answered him . . .
That one's really easy: everyone here is the same race--the human race.
Well, except for me, of course, i'm canine. But one does not choose to be one of the elect, one is chosen. I don't disparage your for your many and glaring human faults.
Setanta - Thanks for being so understanding. Yeah, we humans can be quite obnoxious - but I'm one of those that dogs love - and babies too!
Walter Hinteler wrote: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.
Decimating Africa of it's male population is partially what made the African continent what it is today. Your argument, among many other things, is forgetting what made Africa 'worse' than America today and thus is fatally flawed.
TTF
Algis.Kemezys wrote:One thing that resulted from the selection process of salvery was only the strongest survived and the best of the race has thrived to be a collection of formidable atheletes.There music and style of dress have slowly been accepted into main stream culture and the brotherhood of the people has roots to ancient working models of clan community.
This is true, if you believe that evolution takes places in tens of years - which it does not. Evolution takes millions of years in humans and thus this argument is fatally flawed.
TTF
discreet wrote:Whether you think it is right or wrong IMO is just based on what society tells you what to think.
Even if this were true, your statement would just be what your society told you to state. Unless you believe you are the only person who is exempt from your own rule - which I don't think you do. Thus, your statement, above, is self referentially incoherent. If you can think this, and this is outside what your culture thinks, so can others, and your statement makes no sense.
I, not suprisingly, see total and complete lack of good reason in this thread.
TTF
How fortunate we are to have TTF to come along and set us all straight, expert not simply in logic, but in history and evolutionary science as well.
God, you crack me up.
This is one of the bright sides of slavery.
This is one of the bright sides of slavery.
