Some of you Negroes in A-merry-ca sure "make me wanna holla". Take, for instance, my man Skippy Gates. Wasn't it just a few months ago that we all saw this Negro being hauled off in handcuffs and crying racism? Fortunately for him he was buds with the most powerful man in A-merry-ca, which led to beer on the White House lawn and not a rap sheet.
Now this Negro is telling folks in the majority population that slavery wasn't really their fault because, well, dem black folks did it to themselves.
"For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.
How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred."
Of course, Skippy Gates, like all the other apologist for slavery before him, misses the point. We all know that tribes in Africa were at war and sold other Africans to European slave traders. They were also in the business of slavery. But here is the thing. If we are going to buy into A-merry-can exceptionalism and hold up our founding fathers and those who helped to make A-merry-ca what she is as the standard-bearers of virtue, we are going to have to hold them to a higher standard. Isn't A-merry-ca supposed to be different? Didn't-white- folks come to this country to escape the type of ignorance and persecution that was taking place in Europe? So why excuse slavery -regardless of who was taking part in the slave trade?
" Our new understanding of the scope of African involvement in the slave trade is not historical guesswork. Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by the historian David Eltis of Emory University, we now know the ports from which more than 450,000 of our African ancestors were shipped out to what is now the United States (the database has records of 12.5 million people shipped to all parts of the New World from 1514 to 1866). About 16 percent of United States slaves came from eastern Nigeria, while 24 percent came from the Congo and Angola."
And what exactly is Skippy's point? That some Africans were bad so that as a race they all deserved to be enslaved and treated like chattel in the New World?
The problem with Skippy Gates and other Negroes like him is that they want so much to be relevant here in A-merry-ca. I guess he misses the shine he was getting during his beer summits with his O ness so he had to come up with this specious thesis to grab some headlines. There is nothing new here. Every first grader in A-merry-ca who studied history knows that Africans were involved with the slave trade, but Skippy felt a need to remind us to make his point.
And what I found particularly repulsive was his use of the reparations straw- man in his diatribe.
"THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage. "
Ahh, excuse me. What debate over reparations? Sorry Skippy, I am not sure what circles you run in, but I don't hear black folks asking for reparations here in A-merry-ca. That is, quite frankly, bullshit. It's just something that certain folks like to throw out there for red meat for others who think like they do. You know why those blacks don't work? They think A-merry-ca owes them reparations. You know why they all support Obama? They think he is going to give them something in the form of reparations. And so it goes. A-merry-ca, let me be very clear: You don't have to give me shit. Just don't f&*k with me while I am on my way to getting mine.
Skippy, you should be ashamed of yourself for taking the time to pen that load of crap. And the next time the po po drags your dumb ass off in cuffs I hope they will have a legitimate reason to bring you in. Maybe spending some time in a jail cell will give you time to rethink your position on slavery. Hey, then you can pretend that your jail cell is the bottom of a slave ship, and that the police officer who booked you was black.
205 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 205 of 205Oh Agape, that is not a photo of me, that is the photo of my child. But I am truly flattered by your assumption. She was the one who actually put it up, then I altered it. She does things like that to my screensaver, my facebook, my phone wallpaper etc. I left it because, as you may not be aware, I frequent parent friendly blogs outside "The Field Negro" on blogspot.
As for your environment theory, I live in a multicultural society, my background is also multicultural, I grew up speaking more than one language at home. I guess you assume most people in the Carib are dark skinned (strait "untouched" outta Africa) and don't have dear ancestors who were also mass raped by the white man, and the Spanish man, and the neighbor’s cat. People who were also stripped of their dignity and indigenous African beauty and cultures. I really need to find you a book.
As for the linebacker comment, in my culture, when someone says their "back is broad" they're saying they're not thinned skin to be emotionally affected by your insults, or they don't buckle in defeat to the "whippings" you may try to inflict across their backs – like our African ancestors. Didn't you figure that?
Btw, have you ever experienced touching a Dolphin? Have you even exposed your child/ren to different things outside the culture that you only seem to know? Don't hate on the animals and the Dolphins, you know they say so many blacks can't even swim.
And you seem to be the one who resents white females based on your comments about college and how you said they resent "light skinned" black women. You seem to be that kind, all your life you thought you had something over darker skinned black women, only to branch off and get a rude awakening from female outsiders. Now you try to find any link connection to the same darker skinned women/people, like your mock outrage on ancestral rape. And while you pretend that you didn’t benefit or had a hand in perpetuating the same colorism game that has caused them so much hurt. You resent white women, because you slightly got a taste of the privileges they have that you will never fully obtain.
Look how you tried to put down Maria, who has offered productive insight and opinions just like anybody else on this blog. Perhaps you were holding Maria to some higher expectation because she's white? It has to be that, because you take up shop with the resident cunumunu as an ally, and those rules don't seem to apply.
I have to run, but I will be on later if you need more enlightening...
I wonder which one of his white wives helped him with that....the ex or the current.
His whole "African American Lives" doc really enlightned me to the way this man thought. The major jist of his family ancestry search was to prove his great great great grandpa was white. Even though genetic and historical test disproved his theory he kept on following it and even said that he would teach his children this untruth. The man is educated but self hating like many well know black men.
And what about the jews that helped the Nazis? They too were beaten and subjected, but that didn't stop them from plotting with the Germans against other rich Jews thinking they too would get a cut of the money, they too beat and lined up other jews to go in the oven and toward firing squad.
No one has ever placed that much emphasis on blaming them for encouraging the damn Jewish holocaust. But yet, what is it about people disrespecting and down playing the inexcusable heinousness of African Slavery. or people always trying to to find ways to deflect some of the blame from the white enslavers? Would people dare give such courtesy towards the Nazis?
What we have to understand is that Europeans, due to tropical disease, did not have a real foothold in Africa until the 19th century, the infamous "Scramble For Africa". Before this, I doubt the vast majority of African's had ever seen a European, some might have never heard of them.
Africans did not see themselves as a united "black people" just as Europeans did not see themselves as a united "white race" until much later. When the slave trade with Europe started, the slave trade of Africans had been going on for hundreds of years, but to the Middle East. The attrition rate was so high, even today, in the Gulf Arab states the only genetic trace you can find of Africans is on the female side, due to black women being forced into sex slavery, men were generally worked to death, often castrated, etc.
In any case, the TransAtlanatic slave trade would not have been possible without the complicity of black African tribes who wanted to get over on other tribal enemies.
This is not shocking when the Spanish Conquistadors destroyed the Aztec Empire, they had support from local Native Tribes that also hated the Aztecs. These tribes did not see themselves as a "race" or a "people" their people were their tribe. Europeans, to them, were just a strange tribe from across the water, that had better weapons and strange animals, ships, etc.
Africans did not think of themselves as a "black race" until Europeans told them they were "n1gg@rs" and all inferior to the white colonial presence, but by that time, slave importation into the Americans had been halted, but for contraband (mostly by the British and later French).
It's funny that black folks are always so against slavery and pro-white man bashing for their role in the slave trade, but the fact is that in most areas of the world, until 200 years ago, slavery was normal and good. Even the bible condones slavery, Islam does as well.
Europeans enslaved each other in the past (ask the Irish and the Slavs, the root of the word for "slave"), Asians enslaved Europeans (Hun, Mongols). Arabs, Berbers, and Turks enslaved Europeans by the 10's of thousands (even Americans, which is one reason we went to war with the Barbary Pirate of Tripoli).
Let me say it again. SLAVERY WAS NORMAL.
You know why our ancestors were enslaved? (yes I'm African American) because they were weak. Weakness is provocative.
If you can't protect yours someone will take yours. THat is how it has always been. If blacks had the political organization, technological ability, and united identity larger than something the size of a "kingdom" (which is really an overlord tribe lording over other subordinates, think "Dark Age Europe") they would have prevented African colonization and stopped the slave trade if they wanted.
Every nation was not colonized by Europeans. Japan, Korea, Thailand, and China (*some coastal areas were but Europeans never tried to rule the entire nation, they just forced trade, because China was too large and organized it would have been impossible as the Japanese found out in WWII). If you read history when the Portuguese started enslaving Japanese, the Japanese kicked them out, burned some at the stake, crucified them. The Portuguese never returned.
Blacks in Africa were weak, so when you are weak you have to depend on the "goodwill" of others. Luckily unlike Arabs, Europeans, eventually came to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and two states enforced a ban on trafficking humans, the first known ban in human history (to apply to people not of their ethnicity). On the other hand Sauds had slavery until the 1950's!!! (black ones).
Lets keep it real, real to history...and stop the fronting and mass hating. Try reasoning sometimes and reading a damn book.
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