You bring me great hope and encouragement!



Thank you!

and it makes me very sad. There is no question that ethnic groups other than African Americans have been persecuted, sometimes unto death, sometimes with the goal of wiping them from the face of the earth, and every instance of such unspeakable bigotry deserves our attention and our resolve to never let this happen again to anyone. That resolve is a large part of what I think it means to be a democrat.

Without disparaging or minimizing the truly ghastly suffering of other groups, I think it's important to remember the unique aspects of slavery--and when discussing other forms of bigotry, to remember the unique aspects of their suffering--particularly that part of slavery which removed people from another land based solely on the fact of skin color. What I'm trying to say is that Africans were treated as such commodity that captives who did not speak the same languages, whose religion and cultural habits were different, were tossed together into the hold of a ship, destroying family unity and tradition from the get-go.

Other ethnic groups--and I'm not sure we should call the Africans kidnapped into slavery an ethnic group because of the diversity of people stolen--have managed, over time, to preserve their heritage, their unique family relationships, their cultural traditions. Mistreatment of the most disgusting kind sometimes even strengthened these ties, as brave people fought hard to preserve what they treasured. African slaves never had this chance.

Once here, slave families--if they were "lucky" enough to have been taken together--were further disrupted in unspeakable ways, and we all are aware of the hell they were thrust into. I think the shattering of cultural groups when Africans were taken, right from the start, may be the greatest impediment of all for African Americans sold into slavery. It probably was not an intentional act; I believe nothing mattered to their kidnappers more than simply taking as many people as possible, and the fact that they were all thrown together was simply a by-product of the profit motive.

There is an exceptionalism to slavery, and we all know comparisons are invidious. There is an exceptionalism to the experience of all abused groups, and when we discuss them I would hope we could focus on what is being discussed, rather than creating distractions that tend to run to feelings that no one cares about someone else's suffering.

I've read at DU in a long time.

Last edited Thu May 31, 2018, 01:15 PM - Edit history (1)

it's divisive because there are those in the ruling class of this country who are standing in the middle of the room with their fingers in their ears screaming....na na nan ananann!!!!!!!!!!! When responding to questions about their ability to get along with the rest of the population, minorities especially. They feel they are getting along well while filling the lower federal courts with anti-abortion judges and given trumps background and words, racist judges. Let's VOTE, JUST VOTE. Democrats in our Congress can stop this tide.

America has always been fertile ground for white supremacy groups and religions I think, since just say, arbitrally, the 1st Civil War, 1861-65. These groups and religions are part of america, not ameriKKKa. Just have to work it out wypipo and not with pogroms and DeBoer era apartheid/genocide tactics on minority populations.

And when the dust settles there will be classification by race, culture, by color and origin, with the lighter skinned brown people(s) benefiting to a more ideal degree, with the "kaffir" classification reserved for predominantly AA population.

The blind spot is exactly as you state and being weaponized in the court system by trump to impose draconian laws on the population with restriction specifically used toward urban populations but not limited to that location.

Always loved this song.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/30/donald-trump-judges-courts-justice-system.

my privilege affects you.

I dont have to know even, for that matter, that you WILL be arrested in situations where it is UNTHINKABLE that I would be.

Soon enough, with the racist fascist traitor in the WH, this WILL come to a head and shit will CHANGE.

You and other African American friends of mine here and elsewhere give me hope that someday this can all go away. They say in the future everything will be fluid, race, sex, etc. I wish I could go to sleep for a while and wake up then.

But we are supposed to pretend like we aren't. It's like a drug talking honestly about his addiction.