Sunday, October 07, 2012

Slavery WAS An Abomination

the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”         Jon Hubbard (R) Arkansas state rep

What is it with white male conservafools trying to justify slavery and their vanillacentric privileged bigotry of African Americans on a regular basis?   As a descendant of an ancestor who arrived in New Orleans in chains in 1810 I strenuously object to your vanilla scented assessment of America's original sin on multiple levels.

I sincerely doubt that my ancestor or others who has the misfortune of being captured and given that less than luxurious boat ride from the Mother Continent considered it a blessing in disguise.  

Lets see.  You get kidnapped away from your home, marched to a coastal slave castle, loaded onto a slave ship from there in chains, packed like a sardine for the horrific Middle Passage to these shores or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere (in which an estimated 2-6 million people died during that Atlantic crossing) being sold on the auction block and then forced to work without pay under brutal conditions.

Heaven help you if that ancestor was female.  In addition to dealing with all of the above, you also had the added trauma of being raped at every stage of the process in addition to watching the children you gave birth to being sold off.

So in your jacked up line of conservathinking Jon Hubbard, we African descended Americans should be bowing down to you almighty conservative whiteys for making us the original undocumented workers, forcibly separating us from and erasing knowledge of our African heritage and culture, destroying our families, and bringing us here to do the work of building this 'greatest nation on earth' you so called God fearing Christians were too lazy to do.

Yeah, right.

And about that American citizenship you spoke of.  It took a civil war the traitorous Confederate states started and thankfully lost and the passage and ratification of the 13th,14th and 15th Amendment for us African descended people to get that citizenship that the Dred Scott v. Sandford case initially denied us.

It also took us fighting off white pointed hooded terrorists, a lot of bloodshed, a long progression of court cases, passage of federal laws and 100 plus years of agitation organized by visionary community leaders just to be recognized as second class US citizens.
Much of what ails this country in terms of race relations and what ails Black America has its roots in slavery.  Slavery along with colonialism had deleterious effects on the African continent that are still in evidence today.

So from where I and every thoughtful African-American sits, slavery was, is and always will be an abomination.  Slavery was also a monstrous crime against humanity that we definitely need to be compensated for seeing that we are still suffering the post-traumatic effects from it 150 years later.   

It's also regular history challenged bigot eruptions like this that not only piss off African-Americans and turn us off from conservatism and the Republican Party, but ensure that we'll continue to vote for Democratic politicians at all levels of government in this country.


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