Detroit and a short history of black civilization
Dec 14th, 2011 by Unamused
Via Stuff Black People Don’t Like.
Detroit is failing — no, Detroit has failed. This should not come as a surprise, because Detroit is full of black people. The city’s failure is entirely their fault. So we shouldn’t say Detroit has failed; we should say black people have failed. Again.
Detroit has the highest concentration of blacks among U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. It will exhaust its cash by April and may run up a deficit topping $200 million by June.
Four Michigan cities are controlled by emergency managers. All have populations that are mostly black. If Detroit joins them, 49.7 percent of the state’s black residents would live under city governments in which they have little say.
Councilman Kwame Kenyatta said an emergency manager would be “a master, as someone to control the plantation,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
Allow me to introduce Unamusement Park’s Short History of Black Civilization.
- Black people have had ample opportunity to create a civilization of their own, but have never managed to do so.
- This is probably due to their relatively low racial levels of intelligence and conscientiousness, and relatively high racial levels of violence and other anti-social behavior.
- Many civilizations — quite nice ones — have been built for blacks by whites (e.g., the British in Zimbabwe and Jamaica, the Dutch and British in South Africa, the French in Haiti, Belgians in the Congo, and let us not forget the USA).
- Such efforts by whites toward civilizing blacks have invariably and dramatically improved life for blacks; this includes colonization and slavery. Blacks should be profoundly grateful to whites. Of course, they never are.
- Left to their own devices, blacks invariably destroy civilization of any kind (along with whatever whites stayed behind).
I look forward to constructive criticism and lively debate.
Here is a silly kitten.
Facts is facts.
How can you leave out those great civilizations of the Hutus, Tutsis, Pygmies, Zulus, and (according to some sources) everything that was good about the old Egyptian empire (but none of the bad things). Also, don’t forget those races of space traveling blacks who have visited Earth on many occasions and who keep a mother ship nearby, just behind the moon.
There is no doubt that if it were not for institutional racism, Blacks all over Africa and the USA would have done just fine.
You are obviously just cherry-picking your facts.
/sarc
I can dispute each of your points as an absolute, but there is still general truth there.
1) Black Africans have built many “civilizations”. For example, the Ashanti Empire, the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Kingdom of Kongo (which was even somewhat civilized), the Rozwi Empire, Ethiopia, Nubia, etc. Of course many of these civilizations were not that civilized by our standards, or even the Western standards of their own time. I.e., they did human sacrifice, traded slaves, etc.
2) Even stupid, violent people can form empires; see (1). They just have to be allowed to be stupidly violent. (And selfish.) What doesn’t work is ruling committees of selfish, stupid, violent people: selfish, stupid, violent people don’t agree readily and are much more willing to resort to civil war to sort things out than more civilized people are.
3) Though this is true, at least Haiti was never nice. When the French were in charge it was at least nice for white people. But the slaves were probably worse treated by the French than any other colonial power. Or take the Congo — certainly it became nice enough for Africans eventually — I have pointed out that Time article more than once here. But! There really was a “heart of darkness” there during the Congo Free State, were white tyranny killed ~20% of the people and hands were used as currency.
4) Blacks have been grateful to whites when they have been taught to be. This was more or less true in the USA through WWII at least and even the 50s. They have been ingrates when they are taught to be that, as has been the case for the masses since the 60s at least, and probably back into the 30s for the black elites when the left finally captured the government and destroyed the Unionist state. This is not surprising: most people and most peoples simple learn whatever they are taught, and the capacity of blacks for independent intellectual invention is, as you note, not great.
5) It is not inevitable. It is the combination of selfish, stupid, violent people with democracy that is the ultimate cause of failure. (A more proximate cause is the teaching of ingratitude and thus dependence as in 4.) Selfish, stupid violent committees do not make good rulers — and that is what democracy is. So we should expect to see any black democracy fail, for the obvious reasons. This leaves open the possibility of black non-democracies succeeding. The oft noted exception in black Africa, Botswana, is democratic in form but dominated by De Beers, i.e. you can view it as a corporate state.
The Kingdom of Dahomey wasn’t that made on the black of the slave trade?
Unamused–
I think you should leave out the Belgians in the Congo. Not much uplift went on in that white colony. The Portuguese weren’t all that hot. The English and French did do a lot of uplift work in their colonies though, and the Spanish did way more than Anglos have historically wanted to give them credit for.
Leonard–
The first two were built almost entirely on trading slaves. The last I’ve never heard of under that name at least. It can’t have been that impressive or I would have.
What substantial inventions or other creations have Africans contributed to the world? White men have contributed one hella lot. See this comment rant of mine:
http://glpiggy.net/2011/12/11/reparations/#comment-29170
Doug, the Congo counts both as ruthless exploitation and destruction, and uplift. Two different periods. If you have not read it already, the Time piece I mentioned before is…. (checks)… crap, they seem to have placed it behind a paywall. Well, Moldbug quotes a good part of it here. (Read it all, but you can search for “belgian congo last week” to skip the foreplay.)
As for trading slaves: well yes. All civilizations trade, and they tend to trade what they have (or can make) in surplus, which is in demand. Trading slaves doesn’t make them somehow not civilizations. Just makes them rather uncivilized by our own lofty future standards. (Of course the West at the time had slavery too: it takes two to make a sale.) Same for human sacrifice: not Western, true, with one rather glaring exception. But then, at about the same time the Aztecs were also cutting out hearts en masse and nobody would argue that they are not a civilization.
Of course Africans have not invented much, although they did domesticate several important crops. But what’s your point? You don’t need to be inventive to have a civilization — you need only copy what works from more inventive people. It’s not rocket science to keep law and order, although one might think so in the modern West.
Step 1: Find some hard, heavy, ferocious pipe-hitting motherfucking whites and buy up some of the foreclosed property in Detroit.
Step 2: Start the cleanup, even if it’s just the floor of your crummy property.
Step 3: Tell the wannabe plantation owners to fuck off. Decline to pay city taxes.
Step 4: Step 4 is theirs.
Aztecs, the more I study them, the happier I am that their “culture” was erased.
Ditto for Carthage.
Leonard–
I read your link. Yeah I stand corrected. Leopold’s Belgian Congo did get very much reformed and turned around when it became the colony of Belgium itself after 1908, instead of his personal fife before then from what was it, about 1877 on. There was apparently a good lot of uplift by the Belgians after 1908.
Just about all black governed African nations deteriorated after colonialism ended. Well except for Botswana after awhile, but that’s largely because it’s largely run behind the scenes by DeBeers, and has one hell of a lot of diamonds per capita. It’s only got about 2 million citizens.
“black civilization”
The ultimate oxymoron.
Murray Rottencrotch,
I would bet serious money (let’s say $15) that, within the next decade, some rich person (or a cartel of rich people) will buy up huge swathes of Detroit, send in Blackwater or some similar force, and then rebuild the city for more affluent customers.
In 2009, you could buy a mansion on Boston street for about $2,500. To someone like Donald Trump, that’s not even pocket change. Even if clean-up and security is $100,000, you can still make a tremendous profit if you just change the population.
That doesn’t mean these rich bastards are our “friends,” but there’s too much money to be made.
Robert from Arabia–
Aztecs, the more I study them, the happier I am that their “culture” was erased.
Agreed.
A lot of the Mexicans their band ruled over felt the same way. In fact that’s part of how Cortez managed with a quite small band of conquistadors to conquer Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). He had load of Mexican Amerindian allies.
DAY-umm !
Why you so raciss en sheet?
Back in my high school days I learned that for a culture to be “civilized” it had to have developed certain characteristics. These included more advanced agriculture (beyond subsistence-level), some method of keeping records(writing, knotted rope, etc), monumental architecture, a division of labor into various classes (scholars, warriors, priests, scribes. slaves, etc).
In these cases it appears Africa is, in the vernacular of modern teenagers, an EPIC FAIL! I would grant them some division of labor, and possibly above subsistence agriculture in places like Dahomey and Ashanti, but clearly no record keeping or monumental architecture. Possibly “Great Zimbabwe” was built by Africans, but it is curious that the only other monumental architecture was built by Whites or Muslims. No written languages south of the Sahara desert except that introduced by the advance of Islam and the Europeans.
Contrary to popular Marxist history, Europe in 1000 AD was already more civilized than sub-Saharan Africa: wind and water-mills to grind grain, horse collars and shoes, Latin spread from Ireland to the Danube and beyond, large Romanesque churches and the beginning of castle building, increasing nautical technology, advanced (for the time) weapons and armor, a very complex division of labor that extended through all levels of society. Even the supposedly primitive military forces in 1000 were divided into various troop classifications — ‘knights’. mounted retainers, footmen, archers, crossbowmen, sappers…
Those are all good points, Leonard. I can accept your judgment — “still general truth there” — for a short (very short) history of black civilization. If I had spent, say, ten hours on it, instead of ten minutes, I like to think most of your points would have been incorporated.
Doug1, I agree with your and Leonard’s take on the Congo: The Congo Free State was the personal property of the King of Belgium, and there’s no question that he abused the natives for his own gain. (I would never claim that all white people are decent people.) When the extent of his abuses became known, Belgium annexed the territory and built a great country out of it. (I plan to write a lot more about the Belgian Congo in part 5 of “Welcome to the jungle.”)
I will write no apologia for the Congo Free State, but let me point out that we don’t really know how many people died under the king’s tyranny. We can start with Wikipedia. Estimates of the death toll include: 50% of the population, 15% of the population, at least 5 million people, at least 10 million people, a decrease from 30 million to 8 million, and a decrease from 30 million to 8.5 million. These appear to be… guesses. Just guesses. We don’t have any figures to work with: the first census was taken in 1924, well after annexation.
I wonder: was Haiti under French rule really worse than Haiti under black rule? Have we seen the worst of black-run Haiti?
Un, I have myself argued that in a sense the Congo Free State was necessary for what followed. (See here.) Following Olson I am viewing the state as a stationary bandit. In the Congo, there had been nothing like it for some time. So, the problem of how to get people to accept the bandit had to be solved using bandit methods: killing and bullwhips. After a point, the people had been so brutalized that they knuckled under; but this could not be done nicely. So in a sense the later success was dependent on the earlier tyranny. (Is killing a 10 million people now acceptable if it means 50m extra will be supportable in 50 years?)
BTW: Belgium never made a profit in the Congo. Leopold did. So that’s another distinction between them.
Dutchman last weekend recommended Spenser St John’s “Hayti: [or] the Black Republic” at this site. It is an engrossing read.
St John is a typical specimen of the Victorian traveler and agent abroad. He was disgusted with the Haitian people as a whole: black, coloured, and white. There are a few figures he likes, including the black liberator D’ouverture, but they are always getting betrayed by their own.
St John points out that in Haiti, the whites were there to make money. They did not even care about their colony for its own sake; much less the blacks they brought in to replace the blacks they worked to death. St. John contrasts with the Spaniards, who were content to live as lords in their own estates; also the Spaniards made at least an effort to Christianise their blacks.
The Haitian countryside was better off under French rule; and so were the Haitian poor whites and mixed-race “coloureds”. Whether the blacks were better off – St John hasn’t said that, as far as I read.
Some differences between then and now are that then there wasn’t cholera and then there wasn’t starvation.
Unamused: “Many civilizations — quite nice ones — have been built for blacks by whites”
We can say that Rhodesia was effectively built for blacks by whites, and (belatedly) the Congo and South Africa.
But I don’t think we can say this of Haiti. The Frogs just used ’em and buggered off – and even afterwards they did awful shit like imposing an indemnity upon one of the rare competent Haitian governments (Boyer’s). The French don’t deserve any credit for Haiti… well, okay, they deserve a LOT of credit for Haiti…
As for South Africa: there I will have to give initial credit to the English, and not to the Boers. Saying the Boers created a nice civilisation for blacks is like saying the whites created a nice civilisation for the American Indians. I mean, in some ways, yeah… but they were mostly about the land grab. Only when the English took over were the Boers interested in dealing with the black population instead of just pushing it north.
Why clean up Detroit? That’ll only disperse those blacks to other areas (maybe yours?).
Leonard–
Yeah, but lots of Belgian corps and individuals did.
What’s the difference between Dresden and Detroit?
Nagasaki and Detroit?
For Michigan Detroit is like an aunt, a super successful popular singer who, though not beautiful, broke through the ranks because she could SING. Broadway tours, cheesy movies with Elvis, and then Rodgers & Hammerstein and album after album. Too many in the family (state) grew dependent on that voice. They worked as her hairdressers and stage managers and vocal trainers and roadies. And then four or five decades ago, that gravy train aunt we were all so proud of started to flounder. She got sick. She started to drink. Her voice suffered, but she wouldn’t admit it and wouldn’t admit it until at last she was all but broke and doing dinner theatre in Podunkville for work. Her condition wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone in the family because many of the elders covered up for her and bailed her out and fixed her up, but finally she laid off everyone and we floundered to make up for money because she was “so reliable” and “those strong pipes would never fail.” Now, she is drunk and dissolute; she can’t come to dinner without hitting everyone up for money, throwing up and mooning the neighbors. And she is what everyone knows our family for. We wish she would just disappear, but there are many, many more ruined Thanksgivings ahead.
An emergency financial manager can’t save Detroit because the voice is gone. The only things left are emphysema, and syphilis, and a slow acting cancer of the liver. At this point, just to restore the basic city functions any normal person would expect, someone would have to impose martial law and run the place like a soft prison camp.
I lived in Detroit (the inner city) for a year and a half. I did some archival work for a parish there. This parish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUrDYyhlAk
There was some beautiful, beautiful art and architecture created by the vibrant communities who once lived there. And I am bitterly angry about what happened to it all.
I just don’t agree with #3 and #4.
I think european colonialism was a bad thing for all the native populations. I think religon is pretty much worthless so converting them didn’t help them at all and as for modern technology that they would be perfectly happy without it.
You can’t be unhappy with something you don’t know it exists. The Africans didn’t know about the technology other modern stuff they were missing out on so they were perfectly content without it.
But most importantly colonialism became like the word “slavery” is used in America, the one word answer to describe all the struggles of blacks. Some examples.
Q: Why are countries in Africa all poor?
A: Because Europeans countries took over their land and took all the resources.
Q: Why are there so many wars in Africa?
A: Because Europeans divided up the land during the colonial era and pitted one african ethnic group against the other to maintain power. So those hatreds burst after the europeans left.
If Europeans had left Africa alone and Africa was still like what it is now, there would be no built in excuse or comeback. The #1 on Unamusement’s list would be proven correct.
Leonard re: your post Dec 14th at 10:38a.m.,
I remember reading about those African kingdoms in history books, but from what I can tell from my “Harper Collins Atlas of World History” (first published in 1978 in Britain and pulls no punches regarding what it considers ‘civilization’) those kingdoms are ambiguous both Temporally and Spatially. There simply isn’t an accurate historical record from those time periods (due to the lack of [blacks] ever having developed an alphabet or writing) nor did the kingdoms have the defined borders which we would consider necessary for the modern notion of statehood. The map (on page 167 of the book I have) just depicts blobs seeming to say: “roughly here.”
To go along with the lack of any concrete evidence for the locations and historical time-frames of African “civilizations” they do not appear to have built any lasting structures. Sure you could point to the Egyptians (thousands of examples) and hundreds of other examples stretching toward the Moroccan coast, but they were most likely a Semitic peoples closely related to the Phoenicians. Their artwork depicts this as they have bronzed skin (whites at 30°N lat.). If the Egyptians were [black] they would have used a darker color in their paintings.
Or, you could point to Timbuktu, but that too is an oddity and hardly among the wonders of the world. The buildings look like shit for one; two the wealth created was largely due to being the crossroads for the gold and slave trade between the desert and the savannah; and three all that was largely due to the Arabs anyway.
You could additionally try to point out the ruins in Zimbabwe as “proof” of African “civilization” but they too are unimpressive. The Maya, Aztec, and Olmec built many more numerous, larger, more articulate, and lasting structures as did the Inca and even the Pueblo. The Khmer built Angkor Wat which is quite aesthetic and still stands today. Even the nomadic Mongols (really the generation that settled whatever was conquered) built more impressive and longer lasting bits of civilization.
OHBUTWAITWHATABOUT… Zanzibar? Again, Omani Arabs. You really can’t point out a single piece of African civilization no matter how desperate you try to grab onto any little detail, the historical record simply isn’t there. Even if LOCATED in Africa anything lasting, grand, aesthetically pleasing, etc. was built at the hands of outsiders. Africans simply lack the intelligence to organize a society cohesive enough to plan and create such wonders.
Grerp,
If things don’t turn around soon (and swiftly) once those older folks stop coming that church will have to shut its doors. Money won’t come in, not from the bottom, not from the Vatican.
Those huge doors will be flung open and the inside will forever be exposed to the elements. The pews will be bashed up and carted away for firewood. The art on the walls will be torn down and defaced. The carpets will be pissed on. The floors will be strewn with debris and discarded liquor bottles.
And those beautiful stained glass windows? They will be shattered, relics lost to memory and then forever to oblivion.
That folks, is the black undertow. That is what happens when Whites are no longer in the picture, that is what happens when blacks are allowed to roam free.
Very interesting, W74.
Good points, nyankitten. It is true that without white technology, Africans wouldn’t know what they were missing. However, we know what they would be missing, so we can still ask: was the introduction of that technology beneficial, from our (better informed) point of view?
Certainly the introduction of some white technology has been disastrous for Africa. When you provide weapons more advanced than spears (e.g., the AK-47) to a population that lacks the cognitive ability to develop weapons more advanced than spears, there is bound to be trouble. But when whites are in charge, and able to keep the guns out of the hands of the natives (e.g., in the Belgian Congo), then white technology is a tremendous blessing. Medicine, for instance — or digging wells, for crying out loud. I think this context (which essentially includes point #5) supports the spirit of points #3 and #4.
It is true that colonialism has become an all-purpose excuse for black failure. But the reason they need an excuse is that things were much better under colonial rule. Now that blacks are in charge again, they need to explain why life is so awful, and they have the white technology (e.g., computers, or books for that matter) to complain about it. But I agree that Europeans should have either left Africa alone, or committed to ruling it (and I lean very much toward leaving it alone) — but then how could they know that race denialism and multiculturalism and all that bullshit would rise in the twentieth century?
And good points as well from Zimriel. I now have a reason to research the colonial history of Haiti.
You actually believe this? African were poor (but resource rich), before Whites ever set foot there. Groups like the Zulus, for example, were not basking in piles of gold and diamonds. They were not drilling for oil. They had single-story architecture with thatched roofs and the major source of wealth was cattle.
Did Africans live in harmony prior to Europe’s tapping into the slave-trade in the 15th Century? Certainly not. The slave trade was already well established and was the result of continuous internecine warfare. Tribe fought tribe. That’s what tribes do. The same occurred in North America with the Amerinds. If the borders were so problematic and crossed tribal lines, why don’t the Africans adjust the borders on their own. I mean, according to Hollywood they are so have so much wisdom.
He doesn’t actually believe it:
“If Europeans had left Africa alone and Africa was still like what it is now, there would be no built in excuse or comeback. The #1 on Unamusement’s list [that black people have never managed to create a civilization of their own] would be proven correct.”
Unamused,
Here’s an excellent book about Haiti:
http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924021174564/cu31924021174564_djvu.txt
Oh, I know these churches are done for; it’s only a matter of time. The horrible and ironic thing about it is that very, very poor (Polish and other immigrant) people built them by having meatless Mondays week after week and year after year and by donating countless hours of their trade skills and other abilities. They created this wonder out of their own want because they valued the beautiful and worshiped the Divine. And the people who inherited the treasures of this city simply robbed, burned, or otherwise destroyed them. For fun or for drug money or to pay the rent. Whatever.
About Haiti:
It was a very prosperous colony but the black slaves were treated much, much worse than in the southern USA. They were quite cheap it seems and could easily be replaced. One consequence of this is that the vast majority of the black haitians at independence were african born and they had not been even remotely civilized. Given the way the blacks were treated and the horrors of the attempt to reconquer by Napoleon, the racial hatred was intense and it explains (at least in part) why the French were massacred.
Not all Whites were targeted though : regiments of Polish volunteers who had defected from Napoleon’s army were allowed to settle and they did. But I won’t defend haiti any further. it’s an abject failure though it started with none of the tremendous advantages that the Belgians had left to the Congolese, for example.
African civilization :
African culture hasn’t amounted to very much.
But seeing artwork like this from the Igbo makes me think that given a few more centuries, maybe something approaching iron age europe was coming. The forest kingdom peoples ( igbos, yorubas, benin) are, among the african blacks the ones who would have eventually developed into a civilization worthy of the name. Imho.
You’re very rough on blacks, Unamused, but we (yes i am one) deserve it. Blacks have an extremely high, extremely unjustified self esteem and they need to be mocked once in a while. You do it well!
I understand the anger and bitterness, grerp. That’s why we have all the kittens. I find they help.
Welcome, moisemetellus. Unfortunately, liberal whites have long felt that they know much better than you or I what needs to be said and done about race relations in this country. The results speak for themselves.
Q: Why are countries in Africa all poor?
A: Because Europeans countries took over their land and took all the resources.
Even the countries that were never colonies?
Q: Why are there so many wars in Africa?
A: Would it be because Africa is African?
***I think you should leave out the Belgians in the Congo. Not much uplift went on in that white colony.***
@ Doug1
I’d recommend Mencius Moldbug’s post which discusses this. Particularly, check out the linked 2008 Time Magazine article ‘Come Back, Colonialism, All Is Forgiven’ and the 1991 New York Times article which notes:
“While the Belgians were often consummately patronizing to their African subjects, they installed an efficient colonial administration. In time, they introduced health care, water projects, education, telephones and power lines, helping to turn this once isolated village into one of the most affluent and best-tended cities in the core of equatorial Africa.
Today, the legacy of Kikwit’s colonial past is swiftly disappearing.
“Civilization is coming to an end here,” said Rene Kinsweke, manager of Siefac, a chain of food stores, as he spoke of how Kikwit has become a dispiriting tableau of chaos and catastrophe. “We’re back where we started. We’re going back into the bush.”
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html
They created this wonder out of their own want because they valued the beautiful and worshiped the Divine. And the people who inherited the treasures of this city simply robbed, burned, or otherwise destroyed them. For fun or for drug money or to pay the rent. Whatever.
One thinks of the fate of many Roman cities after the Huns swept through the neighborhood…
Oh well, one reason I keep returning to Unamusement Park is…nice kittens!
Detroit closed this library branch Thursday:
http://detroit1701.org/Detroit%20Public%20Library,%20Montieth%20Branch.html
From the Detroit News comments on the closing:
“So what has the library system done to secure or sell these branches? The Monteith branch in particular is an amazing piece of architecture my father used tremendously in his youth in the early forties, having lived on Eastlawn right around the corner.
My assumption is that they will all be stripped and burned within the week. How come articles never mention what happens in reality to these beautiful pieces of architecture when branches close?”
and
“You can be sure that as soon as there is no one to guard these libraries they will be stripped of anything of worth, mainly any type of metal.Once the electricity is shut off to the building, all of the conduits and wiring will be gone.Nothing is sacred in the City of Detroit anymore……..”
Aaaaand…as of this morning, those Detroit News comments are gone. Shocking [cough, cough].
It’s sad, grerp. Western civilization is being flushed down the drain.
Speaking of Detroit:
Meanwhile:
Detroit is a lot worse than most Americans are capable of comprehending. When most people think of “the ghetto” they usually think of that one bad area in their otherwise pretty nice city, like the south side of Chicago. But Detroit is the ghetto to end all ghettos. It is sprawling slum so vast that it can literally fit San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan within it’s 140 square miles of desolation. If you don’t believe me check out this map:
http://bit.ly/r3W6XJ
And here is a nice little tour of some of the more “charming” areas of the city:
http://bit.ly/p08JEd
And in the center of the galaxy of dysfunction that is Detroit lies the black hole of Highland Park, a small city that is ground zero for the whole horror show. Highland Park had an emergency financial manager from 2001 to 2009. During this time, the police department was disbanded and the city had to be patrolled by the county sheriff. Now that the city is back in the hands of the local government, lo and behold, it seems they can’t pay their electricity bill. So DTE energy is literally pulling the street lights out of the ground.
http://bit.ly/u8c1av
No street lights in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. . . does that sound like America to you? It doesn’t to most people, but this is the reality, it seems, that befalls any municipality run completely by black people. Black people find a way to turn back the clock of civilization wherever they inhabit. It is sad, but our genes seem to tell us what they want, not so much the other way around. In itself, this is morally neutral. There is nothing inherently superior about one people’s expression of civilization vs. another’s. What is wrong is the sheltered, monied elite liberals who tell us otherwise and inflict untold damage upon us because of their decadent fantasies of what humans are and are not.
Thank you for the links and your perspective, Detroiter.
There is nothing inherently superior about one people’s expression of civilization vs. another’s.
You know better than that.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson joined a coalition of pastors, civil-rights leaders and elected officials today in Detroit to pledge strong opposition—including civil disobedience, if necessary—against the state’s new emergency manager law.
People in Detroit will refuse to help the Po-po and not obey the white mans’ laws.
How in hell will people know that there is civil disobedience in Detroit?
When they start acting civilized, Willowfield.
I strongly disagree that black people should be grateful for enslavement. Well, their descendents should be grateful they live in America and not Africa, and that was because their ancestors were enslaved, but most actual slaves suffered a great deal and I don’t know how you can say anything else. Millions died in despicable conditions just on the passage to America. Families were split up willy nilly. It was not a good scene.
It was shown in a study recently that black men in prison live longer than free black men, but do you think they should be grateful to be in prison? I myself would prefer to spend my life in Africa than in prison. Wouldn’t you?
Some black people in South Africa have started to realize they were better off in apartheid, and I think that’s absolutely true…but that’s different than slavery.
You are correct, Mr./Mrs. Dots, and it is clear that you’ve done more thinking on the matter than all the “anti-racists” put together.
I agree that slavery was generally bad for the slaves. It is clear to me that I should not have used the term “enslavement,” when I meant “slavery,” in the following passage:
As written, it does seem to assert that slavery was not generally bad for the slaves. That was not the intended meaning. I was referring to improved lives for contemporary blacks, and the gratitude of contemporary blacks (note the use of present tense in the second sentence).
On these contemporary matters, we substantially agree; as you say, “their descendents should be grateful they live in America and not Africa, and that was because their ancestors were enslaved…” On the other hand, declaring that black slaves should have been grateful at the time would be ludicrous.
They are also safer in the Armed Forces because there are less people shooting at them than in their normal habitat.
Many people have commented here about the cruelty of King Leopold’s Congo circa 1908. There was a reason why the Belgians had to be so harsh. They were dealing with the cruelest of the cruel black Africans in an area replete with astonishing resources which the Belgians wished to use, and which the Africans were unable to exploit gainfully in any way. It seemed a sorry waste to let these resources go unutilized. But to get at them, the Belgians had to contend with a violent people so dangerous extreme-by-European-standards methods had to be employed.
If Africa was nuked with around 50 nukes going to the top cities by population, the world intelligence average would shoot up by at least 5 points.
Blacks are a pox on modern society
[U: I suppose some of them could be considered so]
The blacks will argue they did this or that but where is the proof? It’s in their behavior ! They destroy everything. Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland,Atlanta they look and act like apes. That’s just straight facts! These white women that have sex with black men are disgusting . More Zionist Hollywood brainwashing.
Leave invective out of this – no hate speech belongs here. They are full voting members of society. Deal with it.
Thank you for confirming that I’m not the only one that feels this way and has for a long time. I just can’t believe the Afrocentrism foiling up all the media. Suddenly every great caucasian person, ie, Socrates and Pythagoras were black Africans. Give me a break. The facts are cruel but more evident and real than this made up great history of black African societies and civilizations. There never were and never will be any. Look at the communities across this great country of ours. All started by white people, civilized, productive, safe, harmonious… Then ethnic people move in, followed by blacks and it’s all down hill from there. I’m not racist and believe everyone should have a fair chance, as we all have. But the facts of here and today speak for themselves.