I guess I'm a pragmatist at heart, which makes me a bigot to many, but hear me out. First a couple of points to make. For this I will focus on the issues as relating to Black people, since it seems the most abundant, or at least the most commonly voiced.

1. Slavery has existed in just about every culture, period. That does not make it right, but Blacks arn't special. Everyone else in history has gotten over it, they should try to as well. Call me uncaring, but I don't think poor treatment of a long dead ancestor should entitle someone to freebies.

2. Try following the Japanese example. I've never once heard a Japanese person from back in the internment camp days cry for special treatment or hand-me-outs. They just got back to working. Overall I think it worked well for them. You should give it a try.

Now, let's say you still think someone should pay because somebody's great great great grandad was someone's great great great grandad's slave. Let's at least assign blame to the right people. There is only one group which you can assign the responsibility of reparations/whatever to.

-It's not me, I didn't enslave anyone. That goes for every other living person in America to. Just because I'm pale-skinned does not mean I owe you anything. My ancestors spilled their blood to free you and hold the union together. I think a price played in blood is more than sufficicent, especially since we owed nothing to begin with.

- You can't solely blame the white slave owners. While you can blame them for being rather cruel/ignorant what you will, the fact is that they didn't get slaves malicously. They didn't go storming villages for slaves, taking natives from their homes. The slave owners simply did trading for what they saw as a commodity. Do I support them doing so? No way! I'm as opposed to slavery as they come. I'm just saying let's assign blame to who started the whole mess.

- We have a winner! The only group we can legitamitely place full blame on is black people. Africans captured their own people and sold them off. There were no, at least to my knowledge, white slave traders who actually went inland searching. In fact I am pretty darn certain. The virulent diseases of Africa killed off 90%+ of White explorers, so no one wanted to go in there. The fact is Africans had been slaving Africans for who knows how long, and they just decided to sell off some of them to Europe for goods they wanted. Europeans are wrong for taking them, but I still say the majority of blame can be placed on the Africans themselves. The Europeans bought what was sold to them. They were already slaves, the only change was who the owner was. Do I support this? Absolutely not! Not in the least! But if you want to go partioning blame, place the majority where it belongs- on the Africans who enslaved their own people for gain. However, all the African people who did the slaving are dead too, and punishing their great great great grandchildren is hardly fair. So no one can take the fall without being a scapegoat.

Yes, I think people who didn't do anything shouldn't have to pay. Yes, I think most of the blame should be placed on the people who started the mess. Yes, I think it is long past time to get over it. These things make me a bigot to most the world. So yes, I am a bigot. But if being a bigot means seeing things clearly, then I'll wear the title with pride.

-Rtguard
Bigot


-Rtguard

"You spoony bard!"