"American by birth southern by the grace of God"

[RainDog]

123. Here's what we agree on

which was the original point of my initial post about this anyway, but it's also been an interesting discussion for me. so, thanks. I had to step away from this for a while, tho.

We both agree that the swastika and the confederate flag are evil - they both represent evil political/economic/racist entities.

Now - to a few issues in your post (you're highlighted)

Slave trade with Muslim Nations had existed for approximately 800 years before the Christian Europeans came on the scene, it was a world wide trade including all the major continents.

But not on the scale of the transatlantic slave trade. Ten centuries AND the largest increase in the numbers of slaves in the Arab trade occurred after the U.S. had created a market that then ended. So the west African (mostly) kingdoms transferred their "human resources" capacity to Arab traders. Before the TransAtSlTrade, the scale was much, much, much smaller - in the low thousands over hundreds of years.

The U.S. outlawed the importation of slaves while Jefferson was President in 1808.

"The international slave trade was prohibited from 1808, but internal slave-trading continued apace..."

"By 1815, the internal slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s. Between 1830 and 1840 nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines. In the 1850s over 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total took part in the forced migration of this new Middle Passage. By 1860 the slave population in the United States had reached 4 million.

The slave trade was NOT ended by the prohibition on importation and the brutality, whipping with no recourse through law, etc., well, I guess that's not technically genocide, or the many other murders of slaves that occurred were technically not genocide because the point was that those humans lives were not valued in human terms...

The Confederacy only existed from 1861-1865, they practiced slavery, they didn't commit genocide.

"A total of about 600,000 slaves were imported into the Thirteen Colonies and the U.S, constituting 5% of the twelve million slaves brought from Africa to the Americas." From 1619 until the early 1800s, millions of slaves were brought here. Millions. Not just here, but to the Caribbean and S. America, as well... but Americans and Brits owned plantations in the Carib - so it's kind of hard to make a distinction - while the Spanish first imported slave to the SAm "new world" in the 1500s.

In the U.S., it only took 30 years to move from indentured servitude to slavery for Africans, in the mid 1600s. That's two hundred years of slavery in the U.S. So many slaves. So many deaths.

The U.S. history of slavery began long before the confederacy and, as I noted, before, approx. ten thousand, splitting the outside figures, are estimated to have been killed BEFORE they ever reached the U.S. So, it's not really honest, to me, to say the United States (not just the Confederate ones) did not engage in genocide through the mass deportation, murder and dehumanization of Africans. But I'll leave it there. We agree to disagree on definitions.

Maybe we can agree that slavery was the most barbaric and repulsive legacy of the U.S. that operated just up to the point of genocide because profit was more important than hate.

However, the mistreatment and "slavery by another name" did not end after slavery was officially abolished, or even after the 19th c. ended. Chain gangs, forced labor, trumped up false charges, collusion between law enforcement and white business owners, refusal to convict a white man for a crime against a black man, lynching parties... the history of the U.S. is simply repulsive in regard to treatment of African-Americans - and, for me, that treatment is symbolized by that vulgar confederate flag.

So, if you can walk right up to the edge of genocide but not murder thousands on your own soil... I guess that disqualifies a nation as a genocidal nation.

And it is this entire legacy that makes me wonder how anyone can be such a stupid dipshit that this person would fly a confederate flag, and that other people, that person's friends, would not kick his teeth in if he didn't remove it. Or simply shun him, in the non-violent way that I actually live, while my temper on the page does not.

In 1807 Congress outlawed the importation of slaves beginning on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution for such a ban.

"The Constitution of the United States was drafted in 1787, and included several provisions regarding slavery. Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government from banning the "importation" of persons that state law considered "proper to admit" until January 1st, 1808, though a tax of ten dollars each was allowed. Article V prohibited amending those portions of Section 9 before 1808. By prohibiting changes for two decades to regulation of the slave trade, Article V effectively protected the trade until 1808, giving the States 20 years to resolve this issue.

During that time, planters in states of the Lower South imported tens of thousands of slaves, more than during any previous two decades in colonial history.

As further protection for slavery, the delegates approved Section 2 of Article IV, which prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required the return of chattel property to owners.

In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section 2 of Article I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to the total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of Congressional representation and federal taxation. This increased the power of southern states in Congress for decades, affecting national policies and legislation. The planter elite dominated the southern Congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly 50 years.

And why did it take so long? Because southerners controlled the federal govt. for 50 years. This is the part of American political history that makes me want to vomit - because it gets replayed ELECTION AFTER ELECTION by reactionaries and I cannot understand how they can continue to hold power. I really cannot. I cannot understand why this nation has failed to learn from its past and, instead, chooses to reincarnate the devil every decade or so in a different disguise.

(And, fwiw, this is what the tea party reminds me of... not an exact, but a similar political power play - not just toward African-Americans, but toward all Americans who make up the majority in this nation in this time.)

And this is why the broad brush goes to the south. The reality is that all states were part of the slave trade, initially. But, after a hundred and fifty or so years, people realized they participated in an evil institution.

But the south was willing to defend this evil institution. And that's the source of the "wtf is wrong with the south" questions - which, if assholes were still not flying the confederate flag would be rhetorical or a regional jab - but, you know, that happened in front of the home of the President of the United States. And Republican political and media figures allowed it, didn't condemn it, blamed it on others - and that is why people conflate the south with Republicans, too.

This is also why so many people get disgusted with U.S. politics in general because the PUTRID CAPITALIST CLASS, for want of a better term, ALWAYS FUCKS OVER HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THEIR OWN PROFIT.

And people are sick of this. (I am not screaming at you... that is a primal scream directed at this nation.) I honestly think they are fortunate that so many people in this nation are so decent. Otherwise their heads would've been on pikes long ago.

The way slaves were treated in Africa was different in many respects from the American method, in Africa hundreds or thousands were executed in religious ceremonies but they were also sometimes treated as family.

Yes. Slavery in all parts of the European, African, Arabic and East Asian world was, most often, about the spoils of war or small scale trade that grew to its largest as an economic activity with the western slave trade. Yes, in history, over thousands of years, many have been killed, enslaved or taken as concubines, etc. in wars across Europe (Slavs=slaves), the Middle East, Africa and India... to mention the nations within geographic proximity to what we're discussing.

But the slave trade to the Americas was the worst. Based upon documentation of the treatment and lack of options they had, in addition to the numbers and the deaths before Africans arrived in the states.

The treatment of slaves in Africa was more variable than in the Americas. At one extreme, the kings of Dahomey routinely slaughtered slaves in hundreds or thousands in sacrificial rituals, and the use of slaves as human sacrifices was also known in Cameroon.

But this human sacrifice did not start until the 1700s, after Dahomey was already heavily invested in the slave trade with the west. Not to say it didn't happen otherwise, but one thing that's interesting about the western slave trade is that it made Benin (Dahomey) and other western Kingdoms very rich empires. The surfeit of "product" after the U.S. withdrew its standing order for slavery, rather than a comparison of the two systems, is the issue at hand.

The money that was made from the western slave trade created those empires and, once the U.S. no longer permitted slave importation, these kingdoms turned, again, to the Arab trade - which is when and why a big increase in Arab slave trading occurred - iow, the transatlantic slave trade created an economy in African kingdoms that became so abusive and pervasive that... wait, get this...

...The Europeans who had spurred the trade saw the need to colonize African nations to "save" those kingdoms from their inhumanity! really...which is how Leopold was able to kill half the population of the Congo. (If this sounds like standard U.S. foreign policy, interference, and blowback... yeah. sad.)

Maybe you need to walk back on that Dahomey claim as evidence and include the timeline of events to see economic cause and effect.

Not to say that mass murder was not part of some customs in different parts of Africa and other places at various times - customs such as suttee have also existed in history - but the widespread ritual sacrifice, as far as we know, came after the western kingdoms in Africa were made rich by the slave trade, in the 1700s.

But here's something else to consider. I take what the Scottish guy reported with a grain of salt. The Romans accused the Celts of engaging in human sacrifice - but this was propaganda or misunderstanding because now, no one believes this was a reality. It is, however, a standard practice to delegitimize others... at a time when colonialism was on the rise. So... not that convinced. Jesuits in the U.S. and Canada during the 1600s reported ritual cannibalism among Native Americans, too, and those claims are also considered wildly distorted.

The one factor through history that supports claims for human sacrifice is economic stress. Crop failure. Overpopulation. Taking too many captives to sell to Europeans that don't show up and, therefore, these slaves are eliminated as "overstock." Killing a king's family with him to avoid a power struggle.

We know Incas engaged in human sacrifice, so I'm not saying this never happened - but I think the scale, after the 1700s, in Benin had to do with the economics of trading in other humans.

At the same time, charges of "blood libel" were part of the Christian persecution of Jews, so, again, while I do not doubt that human sacrifice is part of our human cultural past, the claims should be checked against the bias of the claimant.

One person taken into slavery during the TAS trade, on the other hand, reported thinking the slavers planned to kill and eat him on the ship. This is what I mean about cultural misinterpretation - though someone or some group may well have intended harm.

peace.