Please don't forget Aryan supremacy, Chinese supremacy, Japanese supremacy, etc. It doesn't seem to end, the belief that one is superior because of an accident of birth. I'm not proud to be white; I had nothing to do with it.
I liked much of what you said… and especially how you said it! I’d add that, at least in America, it seems like it takes a couple decades for public opinion to catch up to reality. Currently, it’s socially acceptable to say disparaging things only about white people and Jews (as long as you say “Zionists,” even when talking about American Jews…) Even the most well-meaning comments about POC and trans people, for example, will get you fired and branded “phobic,” but you can say openly hateful things about white men with impunity. Being part of a historically oppressed group has some social advantages now, and vice versa for the “oppressors” group. There is a disconnect between the world and people’s attitudes towards it, or at least a time gap.
I’m not interested in trauma competition, nor am I saying “being white is so hard!” LOL. I just see so much racial obsession and division in a way that would have been totally bizarre even 15 years ago, and I think it’s actually harmful- for everyone. Whether you see yourself as a righteous victim, or see your group as embarrassing and inferior, or morally more pure through your suffering -thinking this way is never the truth.
This is an interesting take that can be expressed, as it is here, in no-nonsense, no bs language that actually means something, and can be understood without decoding. I like it.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow which mal-distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. It's proven to be a team sport. Forfeiting the game (reality)? Racism will be here until the end of time. Colorblindness is an ideal, not truth.
The problem with making statements about "massive generational wealth" is that it rarely exists beyond a few generatrions.
I've heard people claim that the descendants of U.S. slave owners are the beneficiaries of the ill-gotten wealth generated by their immoral practices, yet they are not actually aware of any such (the closest I've found is a descendant who runs an Airbnb out of his slaveowning ancestor's home).
Black slave owners were very rare. Whites owned 99% of the 4 million black slaves. The 5 civilized Indian Tribes, mostly Cherokees, owned about 5,000 black slaves.
The only slave owners in my family were the whites who raped my back female ancestors on the Hariston plantations in Virginia. Virginia was a slave-breeding state after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed by the British. Whites forced black males to copulate with their birth mothers.
The black group wealth of less than 2% hasn't changed since the eve of the American Civil War wherein there were 4 million black slaves and 400 thousand semi-freed blacks. But for the 260 years of black chattel slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow, blacks would have been further down the road economically.
You fail to mention the negative effects on blacks during semi-slavery under Jim Crow wherein blacks were not full participants in the free market system. Government handouts like Social Security, GI benefits, and FHA mortgages initially went to whites. Redlining prevented blacks from getting loans to purchase homes. Homeownership creates equity and wealth. Predatory loans targeting blacks have been a major problem.
Your anecdotal example doesn't explain anything, to say the least, historical white systemic racism.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got a head start with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow. Blacks were never part of the race initiated by the Portuguese and followed by the other European countries. For all practical purposes, blacks for the most part have been the boot and loot.
Racism has proven historically to be a team sport. Defaulting isn't a viable option for black people. It's time to get into the game as an effective competitive group through black economics-- redirecting most of the 98% of black spending from nonblack-owned businesses to black-owned businesses.
Asians bounce money around in their communities 12 times before it leaves. Blacks:zero! Why should Koreans own and control the one billion black hair products industry, locking black entrepreneurs out? Do blacks own Korean restaurants and other businesses in Korean communities? Are there black-owned businesses in Little Tokyo or Little Saigon (i.e., nail salons)? Hell no!
When blacks want to create their own space, increasing production over consumption, it's a major problem.
BTW, I didn't inherit my 8,000-square-foot main home and beach home from anyone. I worked very hard for it, carefully navigating through white supremacist and racist roadblocks.
Just a point of clarification -- "Black slave owners were very rare." I'm not sure Black slave owners were very rare in Africa. The Ashanti, for example, were not strangers to owning slaves. See also http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9510/ghana_slavery/ In the U.S., Black slave owners were very rare in most parts of the country but not some areas like Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. One-third of free blacks owned slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, as documented in the 1790 U.S. Census. See Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South 1790-1915, p. 23. I know of an American family descended from four generations of free black slave owners. See also Francis E. Dumas, "one of the state's largest slaveholders" in Louisiana. So, the "very rare" characterization may be a rough assessment but short on nuance and complexity. Vermont and Boston were not Charleston and New Orleans. Just fyi.
Blacks in African have nothing to do with Jim Crow (semi-slavery) in America-- segregation, lack of justice, KKK terror, and 5,000 men , women, and children being lynched with impunity.
Missed the point. Read your first sentence again. It helps to be concise and clear. Pretend the U.S. doesn't exist. How would one write the history of global slavery?
Do you also believe he could have been referring to White Africans that mostly enslaved 4 million Blacks or 5 civilized African Indian tribes that also included one known as Cherokees?
There weren't "Black" slave owners in Africa just like there weren't "Black" empires, "Black" kingdoms, "Black" societies, "Black" kinship groups, "Black" chieftains, "Black" emissaries, etc.
80% of black slave owners were mulattos (mixed race) who owned black African slaves. Africans were at the bottom of the color caste system. This is noted worldwide today. I'm a world traveler. Half breeds owning black Africans don't change the *horrors* of European behavior during institutional slavery in America.
How did these people identify themselves? They considered themselves black, or colored. Some might have used the term Negro. They would not have used the term "half breed" but you know that. Review the autobiography of Walter White, the autobiography of John Mercer Langston, the biography of Rev. Lemuel Haynes, the self-conception of Norris Wright Cuney, the self-identity of Howard University President Mordecai Johnson, etc. Just a suggestion to use the terms our ancestors used to describe themselves. My Grandma's Grandfather, Daniel Brown, founded the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal church. He had the racial consciousness to found a black church in 1871 which stands today. He would not have considered himself and his progeny "half-breeds.
The research underlying the Wikipedia entry is weak in some places. Thank you for the link. I am far from an expert in these matters but I noted several omissions. There is no documentation of black slave owning in Africa. That's where black slave owning began. Second, while there is mention of Anthony Johnson, there is no mention of Venture. Venture was a full-blooded, native African who purchased slaves upon buying his own freedom. This omission is significant as Venture's autobiography is one of the earliest known self-authored black life stories in the U.S. Third, there is a texture to the landscape. Most free blacks in the North never owned slaves. The same was true in the Upper South but there were exceptions like Charleston and New Orleans. These people considered themselves black Americans and were aware of themselves as such. James Mitchell is an excellent example in this regard. (I also saw no reference to the famous free black Barber of Natchez, Mississippi in the Wikipedia essay). Fourth, I gather most slave owners owned family members but this was not true in other cases. The Wikipedia essay is weak on capturing nuance and complexity. Finally, the Wikipedia entry lacks somber reflection in tone. Owning slaves was evil but it was a legal evil before 1865. Have you read The Known World by Edward Jones? Jones does a great job of showing the humanity of black Americans caught up in a bad system in the South.
I don't recall making any mention of black vs. white slave owners. Or are you talking about something unrelated to my comment?
I "fail[ed] to mention the negative effects on blacks during semi-slavery under Jim Crow wherein blacks were not full participants in the free market system" becuase that is a separate issue from generational wealth.
An anecdotal example is more illustrative than a broad claim made with no examples at all.
"I am somebody!" is what Jesse Jackson told me to believe when he came to my mixed race DC area school in the '70s and had us all chant after him. My little white girl self believed him, and I still do. Like Rob Henderson, I had a "troubled" childhood and envied my black friends who had families and identities that allowed them to belong as brothers and sisters. Black is beautiful, as we used to say, and so is white and brown and every shade of man and woman God created. Every race been slaves, as a wise black friend once reminded me when I got too apologetic about slavery. Fawning apologies often cover for a noblesse oblige sense of superiority. We all have good and evil in our ancestry, slaves and slaveholders, rapists and raped. The only reason we're here is that they were all survivors who bequeathed us their strength. What we do in our own lives is what matters. Thank you for this inspiration!
That's cool, what do the millions of still-colored people who live with the effects of racist policies and attitudes do? How does society appropriately address a problem if we cannot accurately describe what it is? Why can't still-colored Christians hold multiple complexities at the same time - identity in Christ, made in the image of God as a colored person, racism exists, God is good, sovereign, and loving?
"I look at race—the deification and demonization of skin and bones by social color-codes—as idolatry."
Beautifully stated!
I don't think most white people give a damn about being white. It would be nice to be rid of the embarrassment.
Please don't forget Aryan supremacy, Chinese supremacy, Japanese supremacy, etc. It doesn't seem to end, the belief that one is superior because of an accident of birth. I'm not proud to be white; I had nothing to do with it.
I liked much of what you said… and especially how you said it! I’d add that, at least in America, it seems like it takes a couple decades for public opinion to catch up to reality. Currently, it’s socially acceptable to say disparaging things only about white people and Jews (as long as you say “Zionists,” even when talking about American Jews…) Even the most well-meaning comments about POC and trans people, for example, will get you fired and branded “phobic,” but you can say openly hateful things about white men with impunity. Being part of a historically oppressed group has some social advantages now, and vice versa for the “oppressors” group. There is a disconnect between the world and people’s attitudes towards it, or at least a time gap.
I’m not interested in trauma competition, nor am I saying “being white is so hard!” LOL. I just see so much racial obsession and division in a way that would have been totally bizarre even 15 years ago, and I think it’s actually harmful- for everyone. Whether you see yourself as a righteous victim, or see your group as embarrassing and inferior, or morally more pure through your suffering -thinking this way is never the truth.
This is an interesting take that can be expressed, as it is here, in no-nonsense, no bs language that actually means something, and can be understood without decoding. I like it.
Amen!
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow which mal-distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. It's proven to be a team sport. Forfeiting the game (reality)? Racism will be here until the end of time. Colorblindness is an ideal, not truth.
The problem with making statements about "massive generational wealth" is that it rarely exists beyond a few generatrions.
I've heard people claim that the descendants of U.S. slave owners are the beneficiaries of the ill-gotten wealth generated by their immoral practices, yet they are not actually aware of any such (the closest I've found is a descendant who runs an Airbnb out of his slaveowning ancestor's home).
Black slave owners were very rare. Whites owned 99% of the 4 million black slaves. The 5 civilized Indian Tribes, mostly Cherokees, owned about 5,000 black slaves.
The only slave owners in my family were the whites who raped my back female ancestors on the Hariston plantations in Virginia. Virginia was a slave-breeding state after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed by the British. Whites forced black males to copulate with their birth mothers.
The black group wealth of less than 2% hasn't changed since the eve of the American Civil War wherein there were 4 million black slaves and 400 thousand semi-freed blacks. But for the 260 years of black chattel slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow, blacks would have been further down the road economically.
You fail to mention the negative effects on blacks during semi-slavery under Jim Crow wherein blacks were not full participants in the free market system. Government handouts like Social Security, GI benefits, and FHA mortgages initially went to whites. Redlining prevented blacks from getting loans to purchase homes. Homeownership creates equity and wealth. Predatory loans targeting blacks have been a major problem.
Your anecdotal example doesn't explain anything, to say the least, historical white systemic racism.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got a head start with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow. Blacks were never part of the race initiated by the Portuguese and followed by the other European countries. For all practical purposes, blacks for the most part have been the boot and loot.
Racism has proven historically to be a team sport. Defaulting isn't a viable option for black people. It's time to get into the game as an effective competitive group through black economics-- redirecting most of the 98% of black spending from nonblack-owned businesses to black-owned businesses.
Asians bounce money around in their communities 12 times before it leaves. Blacks:zero! Why should Koreans own and control the one billion black hair products industry, locking black entrepreneurs out? Do blacks own Korean restaurants and other businesses in Korean communities? Are there black-owned businesses in Little Tokyo or Little Saigon (i.e., nail salons)? Hell no!
When blacks want to create their own space, increasing production over consumption, it's a major problem.
BTW, I didn't inherit my 8,000-square-foot main home and beach home from anyone. I worked very hard for it, carefully navigating through white supremacist and racist roadblocks.
Just a point of clarification -- "Black slave owners were very rare." I'm not sure Black slave owners were very rare in Africa. The Ashanti, for example, were not strangers to owning slaves. See also http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9510/ghana_slavery/ In the U.S., Black slave owners were very rare in most parts of the country but not some areas like Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. One-third of free blacks owned slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, as documented in the 1790 U.S. Census. See Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South 1790-1915, p. 23. I know of an American family descended from four generations of free black slave owners. See also Francis E. Dumas, "one of the state's largest slaveholders" in Louisiana. So, the "very rare" characterization may be a rough assessment but short on nuance and complexity. Vermont and Boston were not Charleston and New Orleans. Just fyi.
I enjoyed the essay.
Blacks in African have nothing to do with Jim Crow (semi-slavery) in America-- segregation, lack of justice, KKK terror, and 5,000 men , women, and children being lynched with impunity.
Missed the point. Read your first sentence again. It helps to be concise and clear. Pretend the U.S. doesn't exist. How would one write the history of global slavery?
Do you also believe he could have been referring to White Africans that mostly enslaved 4 million Blacks or 5 civilized African Indian tribes that also included one known as Cherokees?
There weren't "Black" slave owners in Africa just like there weren't "Black" empires, "Black" kingdoms, "Black" societies, "Black" kinship groups, "Black" chieftains, "Black" emissaries, etc.
*doesn't
80% of black slave owners were mulattos (mixed race) who owned black African slaves. Africans were at the bottom of the color caste system. This is noted worldwide today. I'm a world traveler. Half breeds owning black Africans don't change the *horrors* of European behavior during institutional slavery in America.
How did these people identify themselves? They considered themselves black, or colored. Some might have used the term Negro. They would not have used the term "half breed" but you know that. Review the autobiography of Walter White, the autobiography of John Mercer Langston, the biography of Rev. Lemuel Haynes, the self-conception of Norris Wright Cuney, the self-identity of Howard University President Mordecai Johnson, etc. Just a suggestion to use the terms our ancestors used to describe themselves. My Grandma's Grandfather, Daniel Brown, founded the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal church. He had the racial consciousness to found a black church in 1871 which stands today. He would not have considered himself and his progeny "half-breeds.
Good evening.
*AMERICAN SLAVERY*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners
The research underlying the Wikipedia entry is weak in some places. Thank you for the link. I am far from an expert in these matters but I noted several omissions. There is no documentation of black slave owning in Africa. That's where black slave owning began. Second, while there is mention of Anthony Johnson, there is no mention of Venture. Venture was a full-blooded, native African who purchased slaves upon buying his own freedom. This omission is significant as Venture's autobiography is one of the earliest known self-authored black life stories in the U.S. Third, there is a texture to the landscape. Most free blacks in the North never owned slaves. The same was true in the Upper South but there were exceptions like Charleston and New Orleans. These people considered themselves black Americans and were aware of themselves as such. James Mitchell is an excellent example in this regard. (I also saw no reference to the famous free black Barber of Natchez, Mississippi in the Wikipedia essay). Fourth, I gather most slave owners owned family members but this was not true in other cases. The Wikipedia essay is weak on capturing nuance and complexity. Finally, the Wikipedia entry lacks somber reflection in tone. Owning slaves was evil but it was a legal evil before 1865. Have you read The Known World by Edward Jones? Jones does a great job of showing the humanity of black Americans caught up in a bad system in the South.
Best,
I don't recall making any mention of black vs. white slave owners. Or are you talking about something unrelated to my comment?
I "fail[ed] to mention the negative effects on blacks during semi-slavery under Jim Crow wherein blacks were not full participants in the free market system" becuase that is a separate issue from generational wealth.
An anecdotal example is more illustrative than a broad claim made with no examples at all.
Were you actually replying to my comment?
Sorry, my bad. Comments were meant for another subscriber. I need to trade up to another smartphone or start using my desktop PC more.
No worries.
"I am somebody!" is what Jesse Jackson told me to believe when he came to my mixed race DC area school in the '70s and had us all chant after him. My little white girl self believed him, and I still do. Like Rob Henderson, I had a "troubled" childhood and envied my black friends who had families and identities that allowed them to belong as brothers and sisters. Black is beautiful, as we used to say, and so is white and brown and every shade of man and woman God created. Every race been slaves, as a wise black friend once reminded me when I got too apologetic about slavery. Fawning apologies often cover for a noblesse oblige sense of superiority. We all have good and evil in our ancestry, slaves and slaveholders, rapists and raped. The only reason we're here is that they were all survivors who bequeathed us their strength. What we do in our own lives is what matters. Thank you for this inspiration!
Amen!
A more realistic aim would be for us citizens of predominantly African descent to assert our American identity forthrightly.
OMG
What is a trained theologian?
I decided that I was an agnostic in 7th grade. That was a while ago. Like before the Moon landing.
Trained = formally educated
Have European theologians caught God yet?
That's cool, what do the millions of still-colored people who live with the effects of racist policies and attitudes do? How does society appropriately address a problem if we cannot accurately describe what it is? Why can't still-colored Christians hold multiple complexities at the same time - identity in Christ, made in the image of God as a colored person, racism exists, God is good, sovereign, and loving?