First of all, a thank you to Seeker of Truth for responding with his own insights respectfully and effectively. I wish I could say the same of cmdjing, but I will simply assume he got carried away and he usually doesn't resort to name calling. I suppose this is a difficult issue to express my thoughts on, so I will try again making it clearer to avoid misinterpretation.
1. I am not excusing the US folks involved with the slave trade. It was wrong regardless of anything else. Period. I am just trying to say that I don't think they should be taking all the blame, or perhaps not even the majority of it. Often when talks of reparations/AA and the like, we focus only on the misdeeds of those on the US side. I feel we miss a large part of the equation if doing so.
2. The US/British etc. (hereafter just white guys for the sake of brevity) are partly responsible for furthering the slave trade. Obviously the market for slaves was driven by whites wanting them. If whites didn't want slaves, the amount of slavery would have dropped dramatically. If neglecting to mention this somehow gave you the wrong impression of my thoughts, I apologize.
3. Seeker, I agree 100% with you than a few years of internment is not hundreds of years of slavery. To try to argue as such is hopeless. I suppose what I was trying to get across is that the attitude of the Japanese people afterwards has caused them to be more succesful than the approach of trying to get reparations for the misdeeds done. If I gave off the impression that I thought the two were equivalent, please pardon my inability to express myself adequately. I would point out, however, that the internment is much more recent, yet I feel they hold much less resentment for it only a few years later, relatively, than many feel about African slavery so many years after the fact.
4. cmdjing, allow me to address the claim that I am essentially "blaming the person who gets raped" rather than the raper. I will avoid calling you a dumb such and such or to shut your such and such, because I feel it weakens any arguement. I think the main difficulty in expression is that we are talking about all Black people, all Africans here. When I say that Black people have to look to Black people first to place the blame, I am not saying that some poor 10 year old kid is to blame for being enslaved. What I am saying is that the slavers were originally Africans, and they enslaved Africans. It would be like if the US captured some minority, let's say Islamic people for no particular reason, and make them slaves. Then they sell them to Switzerland, where they work as slaves. I guess I'm saying that if the slaves ever get freed in Switzerland, they should be placing the majority of the blame on America, not Switzerland. Yes the Swiss have much to answer for, but the fact remains that none of it would have happened without the original US action. I'm not saying much other than that. I would point out though that seperating victims and those perpetuationg the crimes is hard, because many slaves came from tribes that were also capturing slaves and selling them off. So it is less Africans who were slavers sending non-slaving Africans out of Africa, as much as slaveing tribes enslaving other slaving tribes,and whoever gets captured has to face the cruel life of slavery.
Hopefully that clears up what I am trying to say. If you want to discuss the issue further, I am happy to oblige. I would ask, however, that we do so in an amiable manner. Ah, and Dai_Shan_NRS2; if you feel saying the above makes me a racist... well, I guess I'm a racist then.
Rtguard-
Always up for some friendly debate
-Rtguard
"You spoony bard!"
