@QatzelOk wrote:
What do you mean, losers? They destroyed the genetic makeup of the entire African-American population of the Americas, these "loser" racist slave-owners and slave-breeders. As technology and knowledge changed since Roman times, the breeding of humans also evolved and became more intense.
It probably reached its zenith of "mad science" in the Americas in the 1600s-1700s, but we may see even worse manipulation of human potentional through intentional degradation of DNA... in the future. Now it's possible to inject stupidity into people. You don't even have to breed them for a few generations; they can be made dumb and complaint in seconds with a needle.
I do not agree with your assessment of the situation. They had to survive those slave ships. Full of crammed in people who got seasick and vomited, weren't allowed a clean potable water bath, and had to endure horrible conditions. Treated like chattel. Many just preferred to jump off the side of the ship when they were taken once a day up for fresh air and exercise. They would jump off and drown. The despair must have been palpable.
Once they got to shore and were washed down and fed for a few days and their teeth cleaned and they were oiled up and presentable they were taken to the auction block. Where the women were stripped down from the waist to display their breasts and could be seen as good breeding potential and sometimes just taken naked and had their vaginas inspected by a finger or a stick. I had to read these documents. I was horrified at the lack of respect and dignity they had to endure. And endure it they did. They were in survival mode. Total and absolute fear of losing their lives. An unknown land, and unknown futures. But they had hope for something better. That is what motivated them Q. No one can live in fear forever. People wrongly or rightly have to believe in something better. That is why religion is so ingrained in the African American community. That is what defines them. If the world is that ugly to you? And you want to survive it? You have to have faith. You have to have hope for a better world. If not in this one? The next one. The world beyond the slavery, the indignities of being raped by some horrible man or being told to have sex on command with some other slave that is also scared of being whipped or disciplined by torture for disobedience.
I found it appalling how that institution was implemented in the USA. But it was the law for many years in the colonies and in the US Southern slave code states of the USA. It was normalized.
It was the law in the Caribbean islands too for a long time.
Do you think it ruined them genetically Q? Why? What it did was pick the ones who survived disease, stress, bad working conditions, and every fucking horror known to humankind. And STILL, they persevered. I see it in the Yucatán peninsula all the time. Felipe Carrillo Puerto. A Mayan activist. Killed as a young man. But he accomplished a lot of change in his short life. I see his name everywhere here. On schools, streets, buildings of import, and parks. Everywhere. I read up on that man. Interesting man.
There are many stories of uprisings against the Spanish here who called themselves
La Casta Divina or the Divine Caste. The people who rule due to the will of God. That is the kind of arrogance they had.
The slaves of the Americas were oppressed brutally. For a long time. Mothers could not keep their children and had their kids sold off as if they were prize calves at a fair. Husbands were sold off as if they had not had a wife for years and children, and when the master's property was threatened by the bank for unpaid bills? Sell off a slave or two and get up to speed on the payments. It did not concern them that the man had a family and children who he saw raised every day for decades on the same plantation. All of it was for nothing. He was just a way for the Master to get his money.
Judging the slaves as ruined genetically by forced breeding? They were surviving. How they did it? I think about what that would do to my
spirit?What would it do to your spirit Q? Having all those things done to you? Could you have survived it and found a way to continue forward? Life is hard for people who had to endure injustice, oppression, and unfairness for centuries. It teaches you a lot of lessons about what being strong in this world is.
If you never were taught to read or write or were given time to get an education how does that feel like? What becomes your world? If you listen to the tapes of ex-slaves who were first recorded in the late 18th century? They talk about techniques they would use to make their burdens easier to bear. Such as some women who's job it was to haul big bails of cotton to the cotton mill. She said how she had bits of cloth she would gather and place on her lower back so the little bits of cotton that were sharp and could make you bleed was not able to make her back bleed at the end of the day. She was clever in how to make things go more smoothly by shifting her weight just so and being able to carry the load without it slipping off frequently. Those kinds of daily concerns were her world Q. The world of a slave.
So many people really do not understand what that social and economic condition was like for thousands upon thousands and millions upon millions of people. The ones doing the labor that was forced out of them. Yet here we sit today, people who identify with the institutions that implemented such horrors. Who thinks that all that history does not have a heavy weight to extract from the ones who had to witness and experience that psychologically? How could they act like free people with a great education and a great sense of the possibilities of life if all they have known has been cages, and prisons, and restriction and ignorance of knowledge beyond surviving another day? How can they be attached to their kids when they know the kids are going to be ripped from them and taken and nothing they can do about it? How can they think about being attracted to some person of the opposite sex and having sex from love and caring and not rape and terror?
You have to understand a human being's context in order to make sense of how they lived their lives, and what they did to survive it. In order to make sense of their inability to be what free people have the ability to be.
I find the African Americans remarkable. Resilient and very great in their ability to find a path to hope and to faith. They survived and persevered. Despite every obstacle in their way.
Sure, there were buffalo soldiers, even African Americans who fought on the Confederate side too. Why? The model they had for what being a 'decent' human was? Was the role of Masters, white people, and so on. Their original cultures were literally beat out of them and if they wanted to communicate they had to do it in English. Not in Mandinka, or Mende, or Bantu, or Lucumí, or Yoruba, etc. None of the African languages survived that horror. The African Americans had to be the most committed to the New Land of all ethnicities. It was either learn or DIE.
Assimilate or DIE. Accept Christianity and white cultures or DIE. They had no real community to preserve their ways from Africa, and they had the ability to make lasting emotional ties taken from them, torn from them like their ability to say yes or no to something like sex, or when to eat or when to do something that meant being truly independent from the Master and the institution of slavery, it was all taken from them. The family unit is the first society for everyone. If you are not allowed to have a family? How strong are your ties to any community at all? They made a community in their churches and in their own way. Despite the lack of power on every level to be able to have authority in their own homes. They had no rights Q. It was stripped from them like their clothing was on the auction block.
Yet the racists in this thread think that they were born that way eh? No. They were not born that way. They were being human. Adapt or perish. What has kept us alive as a species for thousands of years forging ahead and being able to live another day? It is a testament to what makes us such great living beings. We are earning our place here, and we are earning our right to call ourselves human. Despite the inhumanity, we display to each other.
You would think the racist mind would learn that the more you try to destroy your fellow human beings with inhuman actions and lack of real decency? You only define what being human is really about eh?
Q, I would never judge slaves and how they had to act in terrible conditions. You just have to be glad they survived. And now they do have a better world. But, it is far from done. A lot left to make a better world. A lot of work to be done still.
- By wat0n
- By Unthinking Majority
- By litwin