The White Guilt Thread

[elegantpearl01]

From the Department of Labor's site: http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/moynchapter3.htm

Slavery

The most perplexing question abut American slavery, which has never been altogether explained, and which indeed most Americans hardly know exists, has been stated by Nathan Glazer as follows: "Why was American slavery the most awful the world has ever known?"12 The only thing that can be said with certainty is that this is true: it was.

American slavery was profoundly different from, and in its lasting effects on individuals and their children, indescribably worse than, any recorded servitude, ancient or modern. The peculiar nature of American slavery was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville and others, but it was not until 1948 that Frank Tannenbaum, a South American specialist, pointed to the striking differences between Brazilian and American slavery. The feudal, Catholic society of Brazil had a legal and religious tradition which accorded the slave a place as a human being in the hierarchy of society -- a luckless, miserable place, to be sure, but a place withal. In contrast, there was nothing in the tradition of English law or Protestant theology which could accommodate to the fact of human bondage -- the slaves were therefore reduced to the status of chattels -- often, no doubt, well cared for, even privileged chattels, but chattels nevertheless.

Glazer, also focusing on the Brazil-United States comparison, continues.

"In Brazil, the slave had many more rights than in the United States: he could legally marry, he could, indeed had to, be baptized and become a member of the Catholic Church, his family could not be broken up for sale, and he had many days on which he could either rest or earn money to buy his freedom. The Government encouraged manumission, and the freedom of infants could often be purchased for a small sum at the baptismal font. In short: the Brazilian slave knew he was a man, and that he differed in degree, not in kind, from his master."13

"[In the United States,] the slave was totally removed from the protection of organized society (compare the elaborate provisions for the protection of slaves in the Bible), his existence as a human being was given no recognition by any religious or secular agency, he was totally ignorant of and completely cut off from his past, and he was offered absolutely no hope for the future. His children could be sold, his marriage was not recognized, his wife could be violated or sold (there was something comic about calling the woman with whom the master permitted him to live a 'wife'), and he could also be subject, without redress, to frightful barbarities -- there were presumably as many sadists among slaveowners, men and women, as there are in other groups. The slave could not, by law, be taught to read or write; he could not practice any religion without the permission of his master, and could never meet with his fellows, for religious or any other purposes, except in the presence of a white; and finally, if a master wished to free him, every legal obstacle was used to thwart such action. This was not what slavery meant in the ancient world, in medieval and early modern Europe, or in Brazil and the West Indies.

[elegantpearl01]

Part II

"More important, American slavery was also awful in its effects. If we compared the present situation of the American Negro with that of, let us say, Brazilian Negroes (who were slaves 20 years longer), we begin to suspect that the differences are the result of very different patterns of slavery. Today the Brazilian Negroes are Brazilians; though most are poor and do the hard and dirty work of the country, as Negroes do in the United States, they are not cut off from society. They reach into its highest strata, merging there -- in smaller and smaller numbers, it is true, but with complete acceptance -- with other Brazilians of all kinds. The relations between Negroes and whites in Brazil show nothing of the mass irrationality that prevails in this country."14

Stanley M. Elkins, drawing on the aberrant behavior of the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, drew an elaborate parallel between the two institutions. This thesis has been summarized as follows by Thomas Pettigrew:

"Both were closed systems, with little chance of manumission, emphasis on survival, and a single, omnipresent authority. The profound personality change created by Nazi internment, as independently reported by a number of psychologists and psychiatrists who survived, was toward childishness and total acceptance of the SS guards as father-figures -- a syndrome strikingly similar to the '#%@!' caricature of the Southern slave. Nineteenth-century racists readily believed that the '#%@!' personality was simply an inborn racial type. Yet no African anthropological data have ever shown any personality type resembling #%@!; and the concentration camps molded the equivalent personality pattern in a wide variety of Caucasian prisoners. Nor was #%@! merely a product of 'slavery' in the abstract, for the less devastating Latin American system never developed such a type.

"Extending this line of reasoning, psychologists point out that slavery in all its forms sharply lowered the need for achievement in slaves... Negroes in bondage, stripped of their African heritage, were placed in a completely dependent role. All of their rewards came, not from individual initiative and enterprise, but from absolute obedience -- a situation that severely depresses the need for achievement among all peoples. Most important of all, slavery vitiated family life... Since many slaveowners neither fostered Christian marriage among their slave couples nor hesitated to separate them on the auction block, the slave household often developed a fatherless matrifocal (mother-centered) pattern."15

[elegantpearl01]

Part III

The Reconstruction

With the emancipation of the slaves, the Negro American family began to form in the United States on a widespread scale. But it did so in an atmosphere markedly different from that which has produced the white American family.

The Negro was given liberty, but not equality. Life remained hazardous and marginal. Of the greatest importance, the Negro male, particularly in the South, became an object of intense hostility, an attitude unquestionably based in some measure of fear.

When Jim Crow made its appearance towards the end of the 19th century, it may be speculated that it was the Negro male who was most humiliated thereby; the male was more likely to use public facilities, which rapidly became segregated once the process began, and just as important, segregation, and the submissiveness it exacts, is surely more destructive to the male than to the female personality. Keeping the Negro "in his place" can be translated as keeping the Negro male in his place: the female was not a threat to anyone.

Unquestionably, these events worked against the emergence of a strong father figure. The very essence of the male animal, from the bantam rooster to the four-star general, is to strut. Indeed, in 19th century America, a particular type of exaggerated male boastfulness became almost a national style. Not for the Negro male. The "sassy n-word[sic]" was lynched.

In this situation, the Negro family made but little progress toward the middle-class pattern of the present time. Margaret Mead has pointed out that while "In every known human society, everywhere in the world, the young male learns that when he grows up one of the things which he must do in order to be a full member of society is to provide food for some female and her young."16 This pattern is not immutable, however: it can be broken, even though it has always eventually reasserted itself.

"Within the family, each new generation of young males learn the appropriate nurturing behavior and superimpose upon their biologically given maleness this learned parental role. When the family breaks down -- as it does under slavery, under certain forms of indentured labor and serfdom, in periods of extreme social unrest during wars, revolutions, famines, and epidemics, or in periods of abrupt transition from one type of economy to another -- this delicate line of transmission is broken. Men may founder badly in these periods, during which the primary unit may again become mother and child, the biologically given, and the special conditions under which man has held his social traditions in trust are violated and distorted."17

E. Franklin Frazier makes clear that at the time of emancipation Negro women were already "accustomed to playing the dominant role in family and marriage relations" and that this role persisted in the decades of rural life that followed.

[Omegaman]

Any other minority group can come to this country and be treated better than Black Americans. Whether they be Asian, Hispanic, etc.

How many groups came to this country, were sold as chattel, raped, worked from sun up to sun down, whipped and treated as less than animals? Our families were torn apart and the black community TODAY still suffers from the division of the family that occurred during slavery. 

I think you would get an argument from other minority groups that came and are coming to this country.  I think you'd especially get an argument from hispanics on that first point.

In general every group has had trials and tribulations to go through, and each group is going to think their own is just as important as the next.  The Asians who built the railroads, the Irish and Italian immigrants who turned America into an industrialized nation, and of course the blacks who fought in the Union army and in every war since I'm sure all feel they deserve something for their mistreatment. 

Difference is Africans were bought here against their will. Difference is no one sold those other groups like they were dogs. No one raped their women repeatedly. No group suffered from lynchings and Jim Crow.

You can choose to ignore the history, but read some of the accounts taken from slave narratives...quite chilling stuff.

Another key issue that many always quietly ignore. is the fact that slavery was specifically mentioned in the US constitiution  stating that Slavery COULD NOT be abolished as long as the US government was paid $10 per slave.

Article 1. Section 9.
The Migration or Importation ofsuch persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.
 
There is no other ethnic group impacted by the US constitution from this article like blacks were.

[swordfish]

Can we please get back on subject, which is me.  Appalachian white Irish, with a small penis.  Absolutely nobody has had it worse than me.  Not to mention I'm ugly as sin.  Come on now where's the sympathy?

[elegantpearl01]

Can we please get back on subject, which is me.  Appalachian white Irish, with a small penis.  Absolutely nobody has had it worse than me.  Not to mention I'm ugly as sin.  Come on now where's the sympathy?

Don't you know there's no love for men who aren't "gifted" below.....You'd have to look like Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, etc to compensate for that..even then....that still wouldn't make up for your, er, issue...

[swordfish]

Can we please get back on subject, which is me.  Appalachian white Irish, with a small penis.  Absolutely nobody has had it worse than me.  Not to mention I'm ugly as sin.  Come on now where's the sympathy?

Don't you know there's no love for men who aren't "gifted" below.....You'd have to look like Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, etc to compensate for that..even then....that still wouldn't make up for your, er, issue...

HA HA, that's my point.  Who's got it worse than me.  Man I tell you what, I'm tired of intimate nights by myself.  That's why I want to be a lawyer, not to help people, but to have enough money to get that puppy enlarged.

[elegantpearl01]

Can we please get back on subject, which is me.  Appalachian white Irish, with a small penis.  Absolutely nobody has had it worse than me.  Not to mention I'm ugly as sin.  Come on now where's the sympathy?

Don't you know there's no love for men who aren't "gifted" below.....You'd have to look like Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, etc to compensate for that..even then....that still wouldn't make up for your, er, issue...

If you have a lot of money, you can always find some woman willing to "deal" with your problem.

HA HA, that's my point.  Who's got it worse than me.  Man I tell you what, I'm tired of intimate nights by myself.  That's why I want to be a lawyer, not to help people, but to have enough money to get that puppy enlarged.

[swordfish]

Can we please get back on subject, which is me.  Appalachian white Irish, with a small penis.  Absolutely nobody has had it worse than me.  Not to mention I'm ugly as sin.  Come on now where's the sympathy?

Don't you know there's no love for men who aren't "gifted" below.....You'd have to look like Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, etc to compensate for that..even then....that still wouldn't make up for your, er, issue...

If you have a lot of money, you can always find some woman willing to "deal" with your problem.

HA HA, that's my point.  Who's got it worse than me.  Man I tell you what, I'm tired of intimate nights by myself.  That's why I want to be a lawyer, not to help people, but to have enough money to get that puppy enlarged.

I would be so lucky to find such a woman.

[swordfish]

Well elegantpearl, I've gone and got myself depressed.  Now I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.  Later