Bad luck anywhere in there?
— creativesoul
Sure, and good luck, which I'd think would be as likely to befall one race as the next. — Hanover
Some bad decisions are the result of bad environment. Do you recognize that too?
— creativesoul
Sure, and some good decisions are made in bad environments.
Perfect freedom doesn't exist, but our choices matter. — Hanover
Again, you would have to sell me on "all slavery is equally bad" before I could accept this. — ZhouBoTong
Ok, just to measure where we are at; are you equally skeptical of the claim, "prior to the Civil War, most Americans were NOT racist"...? — ZhouBoTong
Social Darwinism and the White Man's Burden were popular at the time (both clearly and explicitly expressed "an inherent superiority of a particular race"). Doesn't a lack of backlash count as a type of tacit acceptance? — ZhouBoTong
Yes, but they are VERY petty. How serious is the rest of the world supposed to take his words in the Declaration of Independence if a minor personal financial concern is enough for him to abandon the principles entirely? — ZhouBoTong
"Why did the British (in our case) select Africans as the slave of choice? Could they have selected some other group: Aboriginals, South Asians, Arabs...?
I am guessing there are two, maybe three reasons: — Bitter Crank
Why did the Africans sell their own kind into slavery? Well, for one -- they didn't see much of what happened to slaves — Bitter Crank
Why did the Africans sell their own kind into slavery? — Bitter Crank
Yes. I'd be skeptical of any claim about what most of any group of millions of people thought over 100 years ago.(Or even today, since no one is polling enough people for claims like that in my opinion.) — Terrapin Station
I'm skeptical that most people even think about stuff like that. — Terrapin Station
You must think that people are far less motivated by monetary concerns than what seems to be the case to me. — Terrapin Station
"Why did the British (in our case) select Africans as the slave of choice? Could they have selected some other group: Aboriginals, South Asians, Arabs...? — Bitter Crank
convenient — Bitter Crank
triangular trade — Bitter Crank
Why did the Africans sell their own kind into slavery? — Bitter Crank
U.S. history always makes it seem like we are the last place on earth to free slaves...while I knew that was not true, I would not have expected such recent abolition (or attempted abolition in Mauritania) dates.[Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman in 1970; and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007.] — Bitter Crank
We are debating degrees of suffering here, not whether there was suffering. — Bitter Crank
Gladiators might have had the worst labor--fighting to the death. — Bitter Crank
Here's a clip from I Claudius, where Livia, Emperor Augustus's wife gives the gladiators a pep talk. — Bitter Crank
The ancient Greeks traded in foreign slaves as it was deemed immoral to enslave a fellow Greek.
The Spartans were equal opportunity slavers though... — VagabondSpectre
There was also a religious justification for enslaving Africans ( and not Arabs or Chinese or Indians) in their largely, but not entirely mythical nakedness and lack of sexual shame, which put them amongst the beasts rather than the descendants of Adam and Eve. — unenlightened
People are naturally tribal. We care for and protect "me and mine" and fear the "other". As people, then tribes, then cities, then civilizations grow, so to does the size of "me and mine". This suggests that the first groups to grow the size of their "me and mine" is going to have a big advantage over those who can only trust a smaller group. Europeans were the first to claim a whole race as "me and mine" and therefore had huge advantages over smaller societies (the Nazi's showed where the emphasis on "me and mine" gets taken too far). Before WW2, Japan tried this with its Asia for Asians policy. Too bad they treated the Chinese and Koreans horrifically. So, the Africans on the coast did not view it as selling their "own kind" into slavery. They were selling "others" to some even stranger "others". — ZhouBoTong
Europeans were the first to claim a whole race as "me and mine" and therefore had huge advantages over smaller societies (the Nazi's showed where the emphasis on "me and mine" gets taken too far) — ZhouBoTong
:chin: — 180 Proof
This really isn't true. — Hanover
The Nazis limited their tribe to Aryans, specifically excluding the neighboring Slavs (who were very much white). — Hanover
The idea of all whites being of the same tribe seems an American thing, — Hanover
In Ireland, the Catholics can hate the Protestants. In Scotland , they can hold hostilities toward the English. In the US, these groups can't be distinguished. — Hanover
I'm dubious of your move from "me and mine" anthropology to "Nazi" ideology which seems to suggest "whiteness" - racial essentialism - in your implicit critique of tribalist "white privilege" (supremacy). — 180 Proof
heat without much light - I find questionable. — 180 Proof
Just my 2 bits. — 180 Proof
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