What do people really know about slavery

[malaise]

How does anyone suggest that enslaved Africans who were captured and dragged to foreign lands had a better family life as slaves? Are these people really that sick or that stupid? How fucking stupid or insensitive is that statement.

Fuck you Bundy - you racist pig.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. They're sadists and psychopaths, and therefore evil. nt

[malaise]

6. More importantly they are revisionists

THey are making this shite up as they go along.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

33. That too. nt

[demosincebirth]

2. I guess they don't know when and how the Blues got started

[malaise]

5. Yep I figured out that 'happy blues' is one hell of an

oxymoron ages ago.

[AverageJoe90]

14. No they don't. Some of them probably don't even know the *meaning* of the term "blues".

"Blues" was a genre of usually melancholy songs.....and much of that was definitely rooted in the sufferings of African-Americans in slavery and the longing to be free, etc.

TBH, I'm not all that good at articulating myself on the fly sometimes, so I'll let others take over for me(including clarifications, if needed or recommended) if they want.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Conditions on slave ships were particularly atrocious

The slaves were packed in like sardines, and many of them did not even survive the voyage.

[malaise]

4. but but but

we were happy, sang songs and had a great family life - massa was so good to us as he whipped us, lynched us
as we willingly picked cotton, planted cane and suffered from vile acts from the Thomas Thistlewood's of the slave trade.
Martin Bashir was fired for wishing some Thistlewood reality on Sarah Palin but Hannity can race bait alll day and cheer on the likes of white supremacists like Bundy.
I am so angry tonight

[Dirty Socialist]

10. I Read Somewhere

That 2/3rds of them didn't survive the trip.

[Ecumenist]

18. ABSOLUTELY and IN FACT, the migration of pelagic sharks CHANGED due to the

the numbers of bodies and HUMAN BEINGS thrown into the Atlantic Ocean on the during the leg of the Middle Passage that went from AFRICA t the NEW WORLD, whether the Caribbean or the Americas.

[Jamaal510]

7. Bundy made the case for why

Black History Month and African American Studies courses are still needed. He should know better. The conditions on the slave ships were deplorable, slaves were frequently separated from their kids, masters pitted slaves against each other and had them distrust each other, and they used every type of torture in the book to punish their slaves:
[IMG][/IMG]
Also, slaves were lucky to get fed enough to avoid hunger, but even with the food they did receive, it wasn't exactly nutritious and many of them were malnourished.
As I think more about this, it makes me increasingly furious that these bigoted clowns are wearing rose-colored glasses when it comes to the nation's past.

[malaise]

12. I think schools are way more important

but they don't want the truth taught in public schools

[BainsBane]

8. That argument was a key justificaiton slaveholders used

in order to justify slavery. They argued they were saving Africans by rescuing them from the "Dark Continent" and introducing them to Christianity.

Bundy is obviously and idiot and racist, in addition to a total hypocrite since he's received govt subsidies to the tune of a million dollars.

[malaise]

13. It was a lie then and it is a lie now

+1,000

[Ecumenist]

20. Never mind that the CHRISTIAN CHURCH in Ethiopia Has been in existence

far LONGER than the Roman Catholic CHURCH. Many slaves were MUSLIM and far from IGNORANT. The rate of being able to read was FAR higher in the SLAVES that were KIDNAPPED from the Continent than in the People who kidnapped them.

[BainsBane]

21. Ethiopia wasn't an area targeted by slavers

Most came from West Africa, through Senegambia, the Bight of Begin, and Angola. The Portuguese did go as far as Mozambique, but I'm not aware of much slaving in the area around Ethiopia.

[Ecumenist]

23. It doesn't matter. The comment that somehow the continent of AFRICA was "PAGAN

& Savage" and that by enslaving their citizens were saving them the the SAVAGERY of the entire continent. I am a member of a family and know two others who count amongst their ancestors ETHIOPIAN people who were bought @ Arab slave markets and SOLD into european Slavery, so although the VAST majority of slaves in the new world were West african NOT ALL OF THEM WERE.

[BainsBane]

24. No, but for the period of slavery in the Americas

European slavers did not purchase slaves through Arab traders. They did buy them from Muslims and other Africans along the West Coast, Angola, and Mozambique. Mercantilism predominated for most of the period of the transatlantic trade. It was a closed economic system, and only traders licensed by the European crowns were allowed to sell slaves in the colonies. Clandestine trading of course occurred, but they were largely acquired by the same trade routes. Some of the enslaved did know Arabic, however. Hausa Imams knew Arabic and taught it to other Hausa and Yoruba slaves and freedmen in Brazil. Some Arabic documents remain from a Muslim slave revolt in Bahia, Brazil, in 1835. Portuguese and Brazilian documents also list the ethnic/linguistic origin of slaves.

I'm not saying the argument slaveowners used was justified. Only that captives were not Christian, but that didn't mean they were all pagan. Clearly Muslims were not pagan. Slaves were compelled to convert to Christianity once in the new world, so the religious justification for slavery gradually gave way to racism as a justification.

[Ecumenist]

34. BAINSBANES...These two ancestors of mine came to the US in the 17TH century

Do you HONESTLY believe that they adhered ALL the time to their EUROPEAN LICENSES? I have NO reason to lie about my Habesha gggggrandmothers who came to these shores from an ARAB slave market by a creepy slaver. Just as there were slaves IMPORTED from Africa AFTER the 1808 to the Americas, THERE WERE SLAVES bought into this country via ARAB slaves markets, who ended up here. The nearest we've been able to trace her is to Dire Dawa, although it was NOT named that at the time she lived.
funnily enough. I have a second infusion of North African blood when my GGGrandfather, (AN IRISHMAN from County Claire Ireland) met and married my GGGrandmother who was from MOROCCO and was Amazigh & Black, but was known at the time as a Moor. Her family stretched from north Africa & Gibraltar to ALOT of the IBERIAN peninsula, mostly the Area of ANDALUSIA Spain).We have been able to trace that part of the my family tree back to the area at the base of the Atlas Mountains. I know the name of 3 of the villages, Ikkis, Imlil & Asni. I don't know what they were in the 17th century but that is what they are named now. You DO know that there were "importations" of black people to the US AFTER the 1808 ban, right? For a time, immediately following the 1808 ban, IMPORTATIONS of Black people actually INCREASED for a while.
So, I don't care what is written in books, this is MY HISTORY and I KNOW that I AM from this history.

[BainsBane]

37. It's awesome you can trace your family history that way

I never suggested you were lying. I was only speaking of the principal routes through which slaves came to the Americas. And Indeed, slaving continuing after abolition of the trade. There are reports of Africans being illegally sold into slavery in Brazil as late as the eve of WWI, although the transatlantic trade to Brazil was abolished in 1850 and slavery itself in 1888. Earlier in the 19th century, Cuba in particular benefited from a robust clandestine trade since the Spanish did not have their own colonies along the African coast.

[Ecumenist]

41. Got news for you...WASN'T JUST BRAZIL. There were AFRICANS who were brought into

these united states but were "WASHED" by Slavers who claimed they'd gotten them in the CARIBBEAN or SOUTH AMERICA. I am SO KNOWLEDGEABLE about my history, which is the HISTORY of the US. I am also GULLAH or GEECHEE on my paternal side and there are NUMEROUS stories of ancestors or the older ones who were able to recount the history of their grandparents and/or greatgrandparents who came from AFRICA and this was as late as the 1850's. Many outsiders poo-pooed their information until came about that found that there were WHOLE phrases that MATCHED the nations they claimed their ancestors told them they were from. Information also came about that there were INDEED slaves that were SMUGGLED into the RICE islands of the Carolinas & Georgia for MANY years after the 1808 ban. WASN'T fun to get caught by the authorities following interception of an illegal slave ship, (ESPECIALLY by the British), BUT trust me, IT HAPPENED AND IT WAS NOT JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED with Slave ships that was on the way to the Caribbean, Central & South America.

[BainsBane]

38. These maps shows the principal routes

but as you observe, it doesn't mean that no one came to the Americans from other areas of African or through different means. The Spanish brought some Moorish slaves and free people in their colonization of the Americas, and of course individual family histories vary greatly.

[gollygee]

35. There were lots of Islamic enslaved people in the Americas

I've been reading a book called The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Necessity in the Free World. It talks a lot about Islamic enslaved people and how common they were. Not a majority but common anyway.

http://islam.about.com/od/history/a/afammuslims.htm

[BainsBane]

36. Yes. There were Muslims in West Africa

as far south as Nigeria.




Hausa speakers from present-day Nigeria were common in 18th and 19th century Brazil. There is a book about a Muslim slave revolt in the city of Salvador da Bahia that may interest you: Joao Jose Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia.

[seabeyond]

9. i was on a jury for that. way beyond stupid.... or racist POS. i say way beyond stupid, cause

no one would say the racist shit on du, unless willingly asking to be banned.

oh. bundy said it? i was on a jury for a duer

[malaise]

11. I'm glad you used lower case

for that duer. Must have been a troll.

[BlueInID]

15. this is likely source

http://www.amazon.com/Southern-Slavery-As-It-Was/dp/188576717X

[Curmudgeoness]

16. Low class white dudes

have to feel that they are somehow better than someone, so they use the blacks as the ones beneath them, and tell themselves that slaves had it good. They just don't want to believe that they are the lowest forms of life.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. I'll tell you what I've heard from these guys....

I've heard one say, "Ni**ers would still be swinging from trees if white people hadn't trained em."

Seriously.

I heard that back in the 70s from a guy in his 70s.

I was hoping that type had died off but Bundy proves they're still around and YES, they are Conservative and Republican.

[MohRokTah]

19. You never hear anybody theorize that white people on welfare would be better off as slaves.

I wonder why that is since the vast majority of people on welfare are white?

[IDemo]

39. That will be next on their list, along with child labor n/t

[LittleBlue]

22. The slaves who worked in the Caribbean had it even worse than the slaves in the US

US slaves were forced to pick cotton, which was actually not such an unsafe crop. Unfortunately for the Caribbean slaves they had to grow and process sugarcane. This involved huge fires and giant vats of boiling sugar. Which is why they needed constant importation of slaves, as the domestic slaves couldn't even give birth fast enough to make up for the hellish fatality rate. Burns and disfigurement were a daily fact of life on sugarcane plantations.

Cliven Bundy is a complete fuckwit. He must think the slavery on a plantation was like working for pay at his ranch today. Just a good ol' time, right?

[Skinner]

25. People only need to know one thing about slavery:

Slaves were not free; they were someone else's property.

Back in middle school a teacher said something which pretty much cut through all the bullshit. For whatever reason, the topic in class that day was How bad was life for slaves? The discussion went pretty much how you would expect it to go, with people pointing out that some slave owners treated their slaves very badly, while other slave owners treated their slaves "well". And this of course had people commenting that if a slave was well fed and didn't get beaten and didn't get worked too hard and was able to have a family and children, etc, then maybe that wasn't such a bad situation. And then my teacher pointed out that while, yes, some slaves were treated better than others -- they were still slaves. They were not in charge of their own lives. They were someone else's property. That is the fundamental injustice of slavery. Slaves are not free.

It's a point that seems so obvious once someone says it. And yet so many people seem to miss it.

[Rex]

29. "They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Makes no fucking sense whatsoever!

Bundy represents racist, vile RWing culture. He can own every bit of it as far as I am concerned. The man is a true moron and an embarrassment to the human race.

[unblock]

32. you pretty much have to be a sociopath to miss that point.

of course, a lot of brainwashing helps; but, isn't complete indifference to other people's humanity pretty much the definition of sociopathy?

[Rex]

26. Until Bundy came along, I did not understand what 'dumber than a bag of hammers' meant.

That man is a true moron inside and out.

[RKP5637]

27. The guy is an asshole racist with currently a loud megaphone. Many people

go through life with their head up their asshole.

[Kablooie]

28. And Bundy thinks he's being kind and thoughtful when he says it.

If you listen to him he thinks he's being generous by suggesting this.
It's not only racism, it's a huge empty cavern of ignorance that he lives in.

[4Q2u2]

30. Just the Basic alone

Even if one were so simple minded or brain addled, just the Basic Tenant of Slavery should be enough to turn anyone's stomach.
Even if it was never taught in school or studied extensively, just our evolved collective thinking knows that it is an affront to man and God.

Shows you what kind of man Blundy is and how is thinking is corrupt to it's core. From that basis alone, nothing out of his mouth can be believed or even listened to.

[gollygee]

31. This is, sadly, not that uncommon a viewpoint

I've heard it from people before, and enough to think it's a pretty common view. I even heard it from a history teacher.

We don't have nearly enough reality-based education in this country (or likely anywhere) about the reality of racism and colonialism and slavery in the US and world.

[ballabosh]

40. Didn't Bundy's wife say

That what the government is doing to them is just another form of slavery? So maybe Bundy should accept that he might be happier under "government" slavery -- without the lashings or lynchings and he'll get to keep his family. He could even grow cotton on his ranch and pick it all he wants!

[Zorra]

42. "These people" are republicans. It's who they are.

[cherokeeprogressive]

43. I bet they don't know the United States wasn't the WORST Nation involved.

Not by any stretch of the imagination.

[RobertEarl]

44. Europeans were mostly a slave class

That's why they came to America, so they could be free.

Of course the oligarchy needed slaves here so they imported from Africa.

It wasn't until Africans were seen as humans, were they too made free. So to utter such a thing as they had it better as slaves shows the utterer to be anti-American and a complete ass.

[madokie]

45. You're right

F* that racist stupid ass ignorant prick

[mstinamotorcity2]

46. They are Both!!!!!

They have had a process of indoctrination that just must eventually die out.