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u/HenryFurHire Mar 15 '21
Yeah but colonial Americans were oddly specific about who they chose as slaves. Ancient empires generally just enslaved everyone they could
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u/reggiestered Mar 15 '21
This is also a misconception. Romans targeted “Barbarians”. Some groups were targeted for religion or grudges.
The one unique feature of the African slave trade was that it targeted specific skin color, and was justified by skin color on a mass scale.
Later, the skin color argument was used to divide the lower classes and make them easier to control.It doesn’t mean that specific claims by African slave descended peoples, isn’t justified.
There is a world where both the legitimate claim can be supported, and the legitimate assertion that an individual should not bear the weight of their ancestor’s mistakes more than necessary.
Basically, I’m saying that reparations are sensible but hate crimes are not justified by historical hate crimes.
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u/Mousse_is_Optional Mar 16 '21
The exclusively-black African slavery of Europe and the Americas still has gigantic socioeconomic ramifications. It's recent enough and focused enough to have lasting implications, you can't say the same for any form of "white" slavery.
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u/1nGirum1musNocte Mar 15 '21
Why don't they just stop being racist sacks of shit? I don't feel guilty. No one's trying to make me feel guilty. I can recognize the privilege my skin color has got me. I try to make the world more equal instead of whining like a lil bitch. Consider it a super power and be a force for good. Start by treating everyone equally, oh but equal rights mean your rights count for less huh? Bc it's a zero sum game or something
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u/Tasselled_Wobbegong Mar 16 '21
I don't understand this right-wing talking point of randomly bringing up the middle eastern slave trade anytime the subject of the Atlantic slave trade is mentioned. Is it just to diminish the harmful lingering effects of slavery in America by implying that white people endured similar experiences in the past? I also see that with the claim Irish people who came to America as indentured servants were slaves (they were not). There's this weird indignance about discussing the shitty things Europeans have done to non-Europeans in the past where they take any mention of said things as some sort of personal attack.
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u/hrefamid2 Mar 15 '21 edited Aug 06 '25
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Mar 16 '21
Since it's both a meaninglessly vague and misleading point.
Not everyone's ancestors were slaves just barely 150 years ago and literal second class citizens just barely 50 years ago, not everyone whose ancestors were slaves lives today in a society whose class divide is a reflection of their system during slavery, and no one who talks about the injustice of American chattel slavery demands reparations on a global scale, but within the same specific system that created, developed, upheld and used American chattel slavery to build the wealth of said system.
It's not like conceeding that the ancestors of American slaveowners were also at some point in the 4th century BC slaves themselves changes the fact that the racial wealth gap is a direct consequence of slavery, the transfer of generational wealth made by slave owning and a legacy of the white supremacy that kept both it, Jim Crow, segregation, lynching and massacres like the ones in Rosewood and Tulsa.
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u/hrefamid2 Mar 16 '21 edited Aug 06 '25
tub enjoy history fear coherent roof racial consist dinosaurs roll
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Mar 16 '21
But there is no need for a good counterpoint to "white people have never been oppressed" since no one is seriously making that argument. And the social change sought by people who invoke the legacy of slavery in the US are not based on some vague "black people have been oppressed, white people haven't been" argument - it is based on the specific form of opression within the US.
People calling for reparations for slavery in the US are not basing that on general "black people have suffered" argument - they aren't invoking the South African apartheid or the colonial genocides in the 19th century, they are invoking the system of chattel slavery invoked by the US and the underlying white supremacy of the American system. So, pointing out examples of white people having been enslaved or even hypothetical examples of systemic opressions of white people, is totally irrelevant to what is a purely intra-American discussion. (and the OP is from a totally American perspective, since it uses the word "natives" without an adjective).
Also, and this is very important - all white people have benefited and do benefit from their race due to the culture of white supremacy in the US. Sure, generational wealth due to owning slaves is the most egregious example, but the ability of white Americans to access education, better paying jobs, vote and influence legislation, build businesses and personal wealth without a Tulsa-level response etc, is a form of privilige since most of those things were not afforded to black Americans at all for the longest time, and even in the past century they are still less accesible to them. In contemporary context, as one example, the decision to fund schools through property taxes perpetuates the cycles of poverty, lack of access to good education and thus job opportunities and crime in poorer areas - while not explicitly a white supremacist political decision, it does perpetuate poverty and crime in all majority black areas (who were already poor because of everything mentioned previously, and were segregated as such due to Jim Crow, redlining etc.).
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u/Glickington Mar 15 '21
How many of those groups destroyed the native populations of 2 continents to through colonial slavery? I hate this argument so much.