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Interesting Article Re Byu Student Fighting Racism


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On 7/21/2020 at 10:06 AM, smac97 said:

Here's a perspective on this:

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The ‘anti-racism’ sweeping institutions still ends up rendering black people as somehow different, other, unable to meet even basic standards,” notes Thomas Chatterton Williams, a black writer for the New York Times magazine and Harpers. He points to a recent set of “anti-racist” directives from the English Department at Rutgers University, which deemphasize grammar rules that conflict with black slang.

A few more tweets from Mr. Williams:

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This is the opposite of empowering. Black Americans are Americans. The slang is colorful and beautiful but we don’t speak English as a second language. And if the children of immigrants can excel in the classroom using standard English, why do people think we cannot?

There is growing pressure now to do away with SATs, GPAs and now even any shared conception of Standard English. What kind of world are we creating? In what way could this utter condescension possibly render a historically oppressed people suddenly equal?

Final point. I’m fluent in Ebonics and have been my whole life. That *never* prevented me from mastering the wider society’s linguistic customs. A teacher thinking I couldn’t write at the level of my white classmates would have constituted the worst racism I’ve ever encountered.

More from the first link above:

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Being an “anti-racist” means advocating discrimination to transform society. The bible of “anti-racism” is “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. The “key concept” from How to Be an Antiracist is that to remedy the underrepresentation of minority groups, you need to engage in discrimination in the opposite direction — i.e., discriminate against whites. As the book explains,

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“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Kendi’s tenets are now an article of faith on America’s college campuses. For example, Cornell’s president told her university to read “‘How to Be an Antiracist,’ by National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi.”

Dr. Kendi’s views are celebrated by the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Times touts Kendi’s axiom that “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.”

Kendi’s claim ignores the fact that many racial disparities are not caused by racism. For example, Latinos live three years longer than whites, on average, even though doctors don’t discriminate in their favor. Asians make more money than whites, on average. And while blacks make less money than whites, on average, immigrants from African countries like Nigeria actually make more money than whites do.

Racial disparities exist everywhere in society and the world, often for reasons unrelated to racism, as the black economist Thomas Sowell chronicles in his book Discrimination and Disparities. To abolish racial disparities would require a totalitarian government, says black economist Glenn Loury.

In the past, studies often found that racial and gender disparities were caused by factors other than racism or sexism. But now, researchers are now being pressured not to publish such studies, as university officials “mobilize” their “research capacity” to fight “racial disparities,” and professors call for the punishment of colleagues whose research does not comply with “anti-racism” litmus tests.

Hmm.

Thanks,

-Smac

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4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

It’s definitely effected how i view and experience the world and for the better, IMO. 

:good:

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

I’ve noticed that you use race and “skin color” interchangeably in several of your posts. It took me a minute to figure out why this was bothering me a little. For me those are not interchangeable. Skin color is a simple gene expression mixed with physiological responses to the environment. In no way do i think it alone has any effect on generational poverty. But skin color is not race. Race is by definition a social identifier and construction. It is how we interpret and place meaning on phisiological features. And it’s that meaning that can be detrimental and enforce historical inequalities. 

I think you are perfectly expressing my concern with "white privilege" because it focuses so heavily on skin color.

Here are a few quick examples of how this white privilege mentality is hyper-focused on skin color and neglecting the broader issues that may contribute to disparities:

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Who uses white privilege? 
The phrase check your privilege is often used to remind white people of the unearned advantages—of which they are so often unaware—they have in society by virtue of their skin color
https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/white-privilege/

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But white privilege doesn’t imply that white people haven’t struggled, just that our challenges aren't related to the color of our skin.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a32948548/what-is-white-privilege/

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We're talking about the nature of someone's white skin being an advantage over brown skin or Black skin because society currently values the former over the latter. https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/newsfeature/we-must-all-talk-about-white-privilege/ar-BB14LHK

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I can’t say I know what poverty feels like. I do however recognize the fact that my pigmentation carries weight.

https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/understanding-relationship-poverty-white-privilege-wcz/

As you can see, it is all about pigmentation and less about the broader aspects that may contribute to disparities and does not really address "race" at all.  I am not the one confusing skin color for race, I am addressing the problem in the white privilege movement. 

All of this completely ignores the role of our own culture and its role in life-outcomes.

I think the movement is entirely focused on "how the world views me" and completely ignores the potential influence of poverty culture etc. which shapes "how I view the world".   That is its weakness. .

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

What methods do you see as most effective from your POV? 

I would like to see a more balanced and more self-empowering approach that is not so heavily dependent upon other people changing.  I have mentioned this before but it feels so co-dependent because of that, and co-dependence doesn't work.  Terms like "white privilege" and "white fragility" will simply inflame the problem in my view.  It simply wont work.  It wont change the minds of those who need changing.   I would like to see more access to more empowering programs that address self-image and poverty culture issues and teach basic money management/life skills, etc.  Kids don't get this in school, and if it is not taught or exemplified in the home, the generational cycle continues (regardless of skin color).  We need methods of counteracting the harmful poverty culture that kids experience in their homes.  We need less focus on skin-color, but this just exacerbate the focus and divisiveness of pigmentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by pogi
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1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I saw a link to article titled something to the effect of "Rutgers English Department Declares Grammar to be Racist." 

I clicked on it thinking it would take me to a humorous article over at The Onion. 

It took me to an actual article instead... 

 

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5 hours ago, pogi said:

:good:

I think you are perfectly expressing my concern with "white privilege" because it focuses so heavily on skin color.

Here are a few quick examples of how this white privilege mentality is hyper-focused on skin color and neglecting the broader issues that may contribute to disparities:

As you can see, it is all about pigmentation and less about the broader aspects that may contribute to disparities and does not really address "race" at all.  I am not the one confusing skin color for race, I am addressing the problem in the white privilege movement. 

Yeah, somehow we’re still disconnecting. When i say “white privilege” i am talking in large part about what had deceloped culturally abd institutionally over centuries in favor of those deemed white. I understand what’s being described. I’ve read Macintosh’s text book and largely agree with it. So something isn’t connecting. 

Maybe it’s the focus on solely white privilege. When talking about privilege that’s not the only form talked about. Class is talked about as well. I think the reason that white privilege is given such focus is that it’s one that often has to be proven as existing. And then after existing, that it does have a significant effect. But i could be wrong and i am sure there are people who ignore other forms of privilege and social disparities and focus solely on the one. That’s just not my experience when talking about privilege.

 

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All of this completely ignores the role of our own culture and its role in life-outcomes.

I think the movement is entirely focused on "how the world views me" and completely ignores the potential influence of poverty culture etc. which shapes "how I view the world".   That is its weakness. .

I would like to see a more balanced and more self-empowering approach that is not so heavily dependent upon other people changing.  I have mentioned this before but it feels so co-dependent because of that, and co-dependence doesn't work.  Terms like "white privilege" and "white fragility" will simply inflame the problem in my view.  It simply wont work.  It wont change the minds of those who need changing.   I would like to see more access to more empowering programs that address self-image and poverty culture issues and teach basic money management/life skills, etc.  Kids don't get this in school, and if it is not taught or exemplified in the home, the generational cycle continues (regardless of skin color).  We need methods of counteracting the harmful poverty culture that kids experience in their homes.  We need less focus on skin-color, but this just exacerbate the focus and divisiveness of pigmentation.

I can agree in wanting programs that help people succeed. I’m still highly skeptical of “poverty culture” and how it differs from simply experiences of poverty and resource scarcity. I had an experience of that once in my life for less than a year and it Dropped my grades and left me rageful for far longer as a young teen. 

But kI read the article and listened to the broadcast and found the original research article it was based on to read some of that. I won’t say it has absolutely no merit. But it’s still hard for me to separate that from systems and structural problems that led to whole communities effectively cut off from better resources. At one point they talked about an experiment of flooding an area with resources you’d expect in a middle class school and the passing grades shot up to 87%. To me that screams resource deprivation not cultural apathy towards education. Another article i ended up reading also noted that several of the attitudes that are assumed to differ are actually fairly similar from the rest of the public. 

 

Still, I do not have living memories of poverty, though my family was pretty poor until my mom married. Her family was small town and relatively poor as well. If anything they’ve bred generations of hyper focus on independence and building yourself up in their children. Ironically those that believe it the most are the onesbwho were financially strapped the longest. I’m also thinking that I don’t have access to anyone who fits this category of generational poverty, so i feel extremely hesitant to describe an experience I’ve never had and never will have. 
 

 

with luv, 

BD

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6 hours ago, smac97 said:

I'm fairly skeptical that there are widespread efforts to "justify" racism exhibited by past leaders of the Church.

All you have to do in my opinion is read this board to see how harsh feelings about past racism are being pushed aside as inappropriate, instead they are pointed to the good that has been done, etc.

Edited by Calm
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1 hour ago, Calm said:

All you have to do in my opinion is read this board to see how harsh feelings about past racism are being pushed aside as inappropriate, instead they are pointed to the good that has been done, etc.

 I don't see that is justifying racism.

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20 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

From the article:

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The library at Brigham Young University is named after a man who said if his granddaughter got “engaged to a colored boy” while she was at the school, he would hold administrators accountable. The law school there got its name from a different man who strongly advocated for blood banks to segregate donations from Black and white people so they wouldn’t be “mixed.”

The BYU chemistry building is named for Ezra Taft Benson, who suggested that civil rights for Blacks were a “communist deception.” George A. Smith, whose name is on the campus fieldhouse, said in 1949 that “Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel” within the LDS Church, which owns the university, and that interracial marriages were “most repugnant.” And Abraham O. Smoot, for whom the administration building is named, had at least one slave while arguing against emancipation in the Utah territory.

Those are just a few of the spaces that Black students at the Provo school say are hard to enter today without thinking about that history, and feeling not only unwelcome but also hurt that those people continue to be revered.

The individuals displayed on the $1, $2, $20, $50, and $100 bills all owned slaves as well.

If there are any Black students at BYU who find it hard to be around those figures I totally understand and I would be willing to take those off your hands. 

It will be tough, no doubt, but I will try to find some way to sleep at night. 

 

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8 hours ago, Rivers said:

The best way to fight racism, in my opinion, is to promote the opposite ideology: Individualism.

In terms of America history, racism is wrapped up in its capitalism. The ownership and exploitation of Black bodies to build wealth came first. Racism was the rationale used to continue it.

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50 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

In terms of America history, racism is wrapped up in its capitalism. The ownership and exploitation of Black bodies to build wealth came first. Racism was the rationale used to continue it.

I think this is far from self-evident.  See, e.g., here:

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Many people believe capitalism caused slavery and that government ended it. This is untrue.

Capitalism could not possibly be the cause of slavery because slavery preceded capitalism as the dominant social order in virtually all parts of the world. Slavery was characteristic of the classical civilizations of Athens and Rome and is discussed and defended in much of their great literature. Slavery was practiced without regard to race in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and by Native Americans in North and South America.

Slavery in the United States arose from belief in the myth of African-American racial inferiority, which was reinforced in the South by religious beliefs. In its day-to-day operation, it more closely resembled a government program than a capitalist institution. “Slavery was quintessentially about one person assuming, through brute force and the legalized violence of his government absolute power and authority over another,” wrote Orlando Patterson. “The slave was reduced in law and civic life to a nonperson.”
...
Slavery in the United States was losing its place to the institutions of capitalism around the time of the Civil War. Historians debate whether slavery would have been extinguished by competitive pressures from the capitalist North without a single shot being fired, as it had ended in other nations. Was the Civil War fought, as Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, to defend “the proposition that all men are created equal,” or strictly to preserve the union, as Lincoln repeatedly said when campaigning for the Presidency?

Republicans, Robert William Fogel writes, “urged the Northern electorate to vote for them not because it was their Christian duty to free the slaves but in order to prevent slaveholders from seizing land in the territories that rightly belonged to Northern whites, to prevent slaveholders from reducing the wages of Northern workers by inundating Northern labor markets with slaves, and to prevent the ‘slave power’ . . . from seizing control of the American government.” In other words, northerners recognized slavery to be a threat to their businesses because it operated according to principles that were fundamentally incompatible with those of capitalism.

(Emphasis added.)

And here:

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{T}he most far-fetched myth that I’ve encountered recently is that the wealth of the modern Western world, especially that of the United States, is the product of slavery.

I first encountered this notion during a talk I gave in Toronto. I explained to the college-age audience how extraordinarily wealthy all of us are today compared to our preindustrial ancestors. I wanted them to understand the great benefits of capitalism. During the Q-&-A session, a young woman informed me that the wealth we enjoy today is the product of slavery.

At first I thought she was speaking figuratively, as in “workers under capitalism really are slaves.” Having heard such an argument before, I was half-expecting it. But no. What she meant is that the modern world’s prosperity is the product of the pre-20th-century enslavement of Africans in the Americas.

“But slavery ended in the United States in 1863!” I responded. “Look at all the wealth produced since then — telephones, automobiles, antibiotics, computers. None was built with slave labor.”

She anticipated my response. “Not directly. But the capital that made these innovations possible was extracted from slave labor. The wealth accumulated by slaveholders is what financed the industrialization that makes today’s wealth possible.”
...
Collecting my thoughts, I pointed out that slavery had been an ever-present institution throughout human history until just about 200 years ago. Why didn’t slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours? Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers? Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil — in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished.

And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War?

I don’t recall my young challenger’s response. I recall only that I was as little convinced by it as she was by my answers.

The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.

To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.

But even on purely economic grounds, capitalism rejects slavery because slaves are productive only when doing very simple tasks that can easily be monitored. It’s easy to tell if a slave is moving too slowly when picking cotton. And it’s easy to speed him up. Also, there’s very little damage he can do if he chooses to sabotage the cotton-picking operation.

Compare a cotton field with a modern factory — say, the shipyard that my father worked in as a welder until he retired. My dad spent much of his time welding alone inside of narrow pipes. If you owned the shipyard, would you trust a slave to do such welding• While not physically impossible to monitor and check his work, the cost to the shipyard owner of hiring trustworthy slave-masters to shadow each slave each moment of the day would be prohibitively costly. Much better to have contented employees who want their jobs — who are paid to work and who want to work — than to operate your expensive, complicated, easily sabotaged factory with slaves.

Finally, the enormous investment unleashed by capitalism dramatically increases the demand for workers. (All those factories and supermarkets must be manned.) Even if each individual factory owner wants to enslave his workers, he doesn’t want workers elsewhere to be enslaved, for that makes it more difficult for him to expand his operations. As a group, then, capitalists have little use for slavery.

History supports this truth: Capitalism exterminated slavery.

(Emphases added.)

And here:

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In his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln declared that "if God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk…as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

It is a noble sentiment. Yet the economic idea implied—that exploitation made us rich—is mistaken. Slavery made a few Southerners rich; a few Northerners, too. But it was ingenuity and innovation that enriched Americans generally, including at last the descendants of the slaves.

It's hard to dispel the idea embedded in Lincoln's poetry. TeachUSHistory.org assumes "that northern finance made the Cotton Kingdom possible" because "northern factories required that cotton." The idea underlies recent books of a new King Cotton school of history: Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams (Harvard University Press), Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf), and Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books).

The rise of capitalism depended, the King Cottoners claim, on the making of cotton cloth in Manchester, England, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The raw cotton, they say, could come only from the South. The growing of cotton, in turn, is said to have depended on slavery. The conclusion—just as our good friends on the left have been saying all these years—is that capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery.

Yet each step in the logic of the King Cotton historians is mistaken. The enrichment of the modern world did not depend on cotton textiles. Cotton mills, true, were pioneers of some industrial techniques, techniques applied to wool and linen as well. And many other techniques, in iron making and engineering and mining and farming, had nothing to do with cotton. Britain in 1790 and the U.S. in 1860 were not nation-sized cotton mills.

Nor is it true that if a supply chain is interrupted there are no possible substitutes. Such is the theory behind strategic bombing, as of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Yet only in the short run is it "necessary" for a good to come from a particular region by a particular route. A missing link can be replaced, as in fact it was during the blockade of raw cotton from the South during the war. British and other European manufacturers turned to Egypt to provide some of what the South could not.

Growing cotton, further, unlike sugar or rice, never required slavery. By 1870, freedmen and whites produced as much cotton as the South produced in the slave time of 1860. Cotton was not a slave crop in India or in southwest China, where it was grown in bulk anciently. And many whites in the South grew it, too, before the war and after. That slaves produced cotton does not imply that they were essential or causal in the production.

Economists have been thinking about such issues for half a century. You wouldn't know it from the King Cottoners. They assert, for example, that a slave was "cheap labor." Mistaken again. After all, slaves ate, and they didn't produce until they grew up. Stanley Engerman and the late Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel confirmed in 1974 what economic common sense would suggest: that productivity was incorporated into the market price of a slave. It's how any capital market works. If you bought a slave, you faced the cost of alternative uses of the capital. No supernormal profits accrued from the purchase. Slave labor was not a free lunch. The wealth was not piled up.

The King Cotton school has been devastated recently in detail by two economic historians, Alan Olmstead of the University of California at Davis and Paul Rhode of the University of Michigan. They point out, for example, that the influential and leftish economist Thomas Piketty grossly exaggerated the share of slaves in U.S. wealth, yet Edward Baptist uses Piketty's estimates to put slavery at the center of the country's economic history. Olmstead and Rhode note, too, from their research on the cotton economy that the price of slaves increased from 1820 to 1860 not because of institutional change (more whippings) or the demand for cotton, but because of an astonishing rise in the productivity of the cotton plant, achieved by selective breeding. Ingenuity, not capital accumulation or exploitation, made cotton a little king.

Slavery was of course appalling, a plain theft of labor. The war to end it was righteous altogether—though had the South been coldly rational, the ending could have been achieved as in the British Empire in 1833 or Brazil in 1888 without 600,000 deaths. But prosperity did not depend on slavery. The United States and the United Kingdom and the rest would have become just as rich without the 250 years of unrequited toil. They have remained rich, observe, even after the peculiar institution was abolished, because their riches did not depend on its sinfulness.
...
To cast enslavement of some as requisite for the wealth of others is bad economics, then, and bad history. But it is also a toxic ideology. The left has long regarded any employment as slavish exploitation. The phrase wage slave is defined coolly by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English as "a person who is wholly dependent on income from employment," with the notation "informal"—but not "ironic" or "jocular" or, better, "economically illiterate." By such a definition, you and I are slaves, even though we are paid the traded value of goods and services we produce at the margin for others.

The other Marx, Groucho, at the height of his success in movies during the hungry 1930s, was approached by an old friend, whom Groucho knew to be a communist. As the perhaps apocryphal story goes, the friend said, "I desperately need a job. You have contacts." Groucho, whose sense of humor was often cruel, replied, "Harry, I can't. You're my dear, dear communist friend. I don't want to exploit you." Ha, ha. But no employee in a capitalist economy owes coerced or unpaid service to any boss.

Well, except for our boss the state, through taxation by payment or draft or eminent domain. Taxation is a slavery admired by most of the left and much of the right. Its defenses echo Southern rhetoric in 1860. "Citizens are children who need to be protected, yet forced to work." "Liberty is dangerous." "The defense of property depends on a big government." "God ordained it."

We need to stop using the history of slavery to bolster anti-capitalist ideology. Ingenuity, not exploitation by slavery or imperialism or finance, is the story of the modern world.

Thanks,

-Smac

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21 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

 I’m also thinking that I don’t have access to anyone who fits this category of generational poverty, so i feel extremely hesitant to describe an experience I’ve never had and never will have.

I can understand the hesitation, but I don't think you need to describe the experience to understand how culture (especially familial) powerfully influences life-outcomes in almost predictive ways.  When you think of the power of culture, self-identity, beliefs, and values in how it affects life-outlook and outcomes, I think it is a rather simple and instinctive concept to understand.  Scarcity vs abundance mentality alone is hugely powerful.  Toxic shame is also a familial culture that can powerfully influence life outcome and influence people to live 'less-then'.  Children simply are not immune to generations of poverty, scarcity, and defeatist/apathetic mentality/culture (I am not saying that all people in poverty have all of these mentalities, I am just giving some potential examples of harmful family cultures).  I am sure that family therapists understand more than anyone how positive family dynamics, healthy familial paradigms, and properly modeled behavior influences life outcomes of children.  We are products of our upbringing.  If you think about it, it is not that different from how racism is passed from one generation to another.  Those familial cultural beliefs/attitudes/meanings we apply to skin color, are highly influential on children in how they perceive people of other races.  Those perceptions affect their actions in relation to people of color.  If our perceptions of pigment can be that powerful in affecting life behaviors, why not our perceptions of money and success, etc.?

21 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Yeah, somehow we’re still disconnecting. When i say “white privilege” i am talking in large part about what had deceloped culturally abd institutionally over centuries in favor of those deemed white. I understand what’s being described. I’ve read Macintosh’s text book and largely agree with it. So something isn’t connecting. 

Maybe it’s the focus on solely white privilege. When talking about privilege that’s not the only form talked about. Class is talked about as well. I think the reason that white privilege is given such focus is that it’s one that often has to be proven as existing. And then after existing, that it does have a significant effect. But i could be wrong and i am sure there are people who ignore other forms of privilege and social disparities and focus solely on the one. That’s just not my experience when talking about privilege.

I think the disconnect is that I am not denying that white people have historically been privileged, which has a role in the disparity we see today.   My problem is that I don't think that "white skin privilege' is an effective mentality or strategy to end racism.  I think it will only exacerbate it.  But yes, the hyper-focus on "white skin" privilege is what I see as potentially aggravating the issue.  I see it as a potentially exacerbative wedge to healing and unity.   If it leads to resentment towards people with low skin pigment on the one hand, and public shame and guilt on the other hand ("check your privilege"), I don't see any chance for healing there.  Resentment towards people who happen to be born with white skin can easily turn to anger or ridicule when they are met with any resistance, and anger towards people of a specific skin color can easily turn into more damaging forms of racism/division.  

I largely agree with this article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/values-matter/201908/the-problem-check-your-privilege

Positive rather than negative moral persuasion is the best way through all of this.  I think "white privilege" and "check your privilege" and "white fragility", etc. are loaded terms (not always used that way) directed at people of low skin pigment which can exacerbate skin related issues.

Edited by pogi
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Hmm:

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Who's Next on the Cancel Culture Docket -- Martin Luther King Jr.?!
By Larry Elder
July 16, 2020 

John Wayne's 1971 Playboy magazine interview has placed the legendary actor in the crosshairs of today's cancel culture social justice warriors. Activists demand that his name be removed from an Orange County, California, airport.

What did Wayne say 49 years ago? He said: "I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people." He added, "I don't feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago, these people were slaves."

Wayne's son Ethan does not defend his father's words, but asks for perspective: "There's no excuse for the words he said. It was 1971; we used different words back then. It was a different time."

I think this is a fair point.  If we narrow our focus on a historical figure to his or her flaws, decontextualize them, and ignore any and all other considerations regarding and contributions made by the figure, we'll end up "cancelling" just about everyone.

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Does this new standard apply, for example, to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? King wrote an advice column carried by the popular Black monthly magazine, Ebony. A closeted gay teenager wrote him:

Question: "My problem is different from the ones most people have. I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don't want my parents to know about me. What can I do? Is there any place where I can go for help?"

Answer: "Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognise the problem and have a desire to solve it."

I wonder if someone is going to come along and call for Dr. King to be "cancelled."  I hope not.

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Downtown Atlanta prominently displays a statue of Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and the first Black ambassador to the United Nations. A friend and colleague of MLK, Young was with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was assassinated. Young later became a spokesperson for a Walmart advocacy group. In a 2006 interview with a Black newspaper, Young addressed the complaint that Walmart displaces mom and pop stores, many of which are owned by Arabs:

"Well, I think they should; they ran the mom and pop stores out of my neighborhood. But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs. Very few Black people own these stores." Young later apologized, but Walmart dropped him as a spokesperson. Should his statue be torn down?

And this one:

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Harry Truman often referred to Jews as "k—-s" and New York City as "k—-town." In a 1911 letter to his future wife, the future president wrote: "Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n——- from mud, then he threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America." But, as president, Truman supported the creation of the modern state of Israel, and his support was crucial.
...
How far does this cancel culture purge go, and who's next?

Thanks,

-Smac

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On 7/23/2020 at 6:41 PM, smac97 said:

I think this is far from self-evident.  See, e.g., here:

(Emphasis added.)

And here:

(Emphases added.)

And here:

Thanks,

-Smac

What exactly is far from self-evident? Do you think that American slavery was not intertwined with capitalism? Are you saying that slavery was not used to build wealth in the United States?

America's first bond market was backed by slaves as collateral. And, by "...1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined."

It sounds to me like you are worried about capitalism itself being besmirched by its relationship with slavery, that you feel the need to defend capitalism as inherently good, or at least not being capable of bad. If that's the case, I think it is wiser to recognise that while it can be a tool of great good, capitalism can be used for evil purposes.

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2 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

What exactly is far from self-evident?

This: "In terms of America history, racism is wrapped up in its capitalism."

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Do you think that American slavery was not intertwined with capitalism?

Not particularly.  From the first link I provided previously:

Quote

Capitalism could not possibly be the cause of slavery because slavery preceded capitalism as the dominant social order in virtually all parts of the world. Slavery was characteristic of the classical civilizations of Athens and Rome and is discussed and defended in much of their great literature. Slavery was practiced without regard to race in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and by Native Americans in North and South America.

And this (same link) :

Quote

Slavery in the United States arose from belief in the myth of African-American racial inferiority, which was reinforced in the South by religious beliefs. In its day-to-day operation, it more closely resembled a government program than a capitalist institution.

And this (same link) :

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Slavery in the United States was losing its place to the institutions of capitalism around the time of the Civil War. Historians debate whether slavery would have been extinguished by competitive pressures from the capitalist North without a single shot being fired, as it had ended in other nations. 

And this (same link) (emphasis added) :

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Republicans, Robert William Fogel writes, “urged the Northern electorate to vote for them not because it was their Christian duty to free the slaves but in order to prevent slaveholders from seizing land in the territories that rightly belonged to Northern whites, to prevent slaveholders from reducing the wages of Northern workers by inundating Northern labor markets with slaves, and to prevent the ‘slave power’ . . . from seizing control of the American government.” In other words, northerners recognized slavery to be a threat to their businesses because it operated according to principles that were fundamentally incompatible with those of capitalism.

And this (from the second link I provided earlier) :

Quote

Why didn’t slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours? Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers? Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil — in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished.

And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War?

Slavery is anathema to capitalism.  

Quote

Are you saying that slavery was not used to build wealth in the United States?

Pretty much.  From the second link I provided previously:

Quote

The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.

To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.

But even on purely economic grounds, capitalism rejects slavery because slaves are productive only when doing very simple tasks that can easily be monitored. It’s easy to tell if a slave is moving too slowly when picking cotton. And it’s easy to speed him up. Also, there’s very little damage he can do if he chooses to sabotage the cotton-picking operation.

Compare a cotton field with a modern factory — say, the shipyard that my father worked in as a welder until he retired. My dad spent much of his time welding alone inside of narrow pipes. If you owned the shipyard, would you trust a slave to do such welding• While not physically impossible to monitor and check his work, the cost to the shipyard owner of hiring trustworthy slave-masters to shadow each slave each moment of the day would be prohibitively costly. Much better to have contented employees who want their jobs — who are paid to work and who want to work — than to operate your expensive, complicated, easily sabotaged factory with slaves.

And this (from the third link I provided previously) :

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It is a noble sentiment. Yet the economic idea implied—that exploitation made us rich—is mistaken. Slavery made a few Southerners rich; a few Northerners, too. But it was ingenuity and innovation that enriched Americans generally, including at last the descendants of the slaves.
...
The conclusion—just as our good friends on the left have been saying all these years—is that capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery.

Yet each step in the logic of the King Cotton historians is mistaken. The enrichment of the modern world did not depend on cotton textiles. Cotton mills, true, were pioneers of some industrial techniques, techniques applied to wool and linen as well. And many other techniques, in iron making and engineering and mining and farming, had nothing to do with cotton. Britain in 1790 and the U.S. in 1860 were not nation-sized cotton mills.
...
Growing cotton, further, unlike sugar or rice, never required slavery. By 1870, freedmen and whites produced as much cotton as the South produced in the slave time of 1860. Cotton was not a slave crop in India or in southwest China, where it was grown in bulk anciently. And many whites in the South grew it, too, before the war and after. That slaves produced cotton does not imply that they were essential or causal in the production.

And this (same link) (emphases added) :

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To cast enslavement of some as requisite for the wealth of others is bad economics, then, and bad history. But it is also a toxic ideology. The left has long regarded any employment as slavish exploitation. The phrase wage slave is defined coolly by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English as "a person who is wholly dependent on income from employment," with the notation "informal"—but not "ironic" or "jocular" or, better, "economically illiterate." By such a definition, you and I are slaves, even though we are paid the traded value of goods and services we produce at the margin for others.

The other Marx, Groucho, at the height of his success in movies during the hungry 1930s, was approached by an old friend, whom Groucho knew to be a communist. As the perhaps apocryphal story goes, the friend said, "I desperately need a job. You have contacts." Groucho, whose sense of humor was often cruel, replied, "Harry, I can't. You're my dear, dear communist friend. I don't want to exploit you." Ha, ha. But no employee in a capitalist economy owes coerced or unpaid service to any boss.

Well, except for our boss the state, through taxation by payment or draft or eminent domain. Taxation is a slavery admired by most of the left and much of the right. Its defenses echo Southern rhetoric in 1860. "Citizens are children who need to be protected, yet forced to work." "Liberty is dangerous." "The defense of property depends on a big government." "God ordained it."

We need to stop using the history of slavery to bolster anti-capitalist ideology. Ingenuity, not exploitation by slavery or imperialism or finance, is the story of the modern world.

Blaming slavery on capitalism is an ideological argument.

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America's first bond market was backed by slaves as collateral. And, by "...1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined."

I think you should re-consider this.  I think "economic value" here references the amount paid for the purchase, housing/feeding, etc. of slaves relative to their economic output.  And yet for all the money the South poured into slavery, it was - as your link so aptly notes - "lag{ging} in industrial development did not result from any inherent economic disadvantages" because the "great wealth" of the South "was primarily tied up in the slave economy."  The North, meanwhile, had invested its wealth in industrial development, and succeeded far more than the South did in terms of economic output. 

The South's "slave labor"-based economy is regularly juxtaposed with the North's "free market [capitalism]" economy.  Again, from your link: 

Quote

As both the North and the South mobilized for war, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the "free market" and the "slave labor" economic systems became increasingly clear - particularly in their ability to support and sustain a war economy. The Union's industrial and economic capacity soared during the war as the North continued its rapid industrialization to suppress the rebellion. In the South, a smaller industrial base, fewer rail lines, and an agricultural economy based upon slave labor made mobilization of resources more difficult. As the war dragged on, the Union's advantages in factories, railroads, and manpower put the Confederacy at a great disadvantage.

The South used slave labor to make money, which is antithetical to "free market" capitalism.  And it didn't work nearly as well as "free market" capitalism.

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It sounds to me like you are worried about capitalism itself being besmirched by its relationship with slavery,

Not really.  Anti-capitalist rhetoric like this is facially unsound.

"Slavery" is much more a part of other economic systems.  Indeed, the theft of labor is at the heart of socialism/communism.  These are systems of state-run slavery.

Quote

that you feel the need to defend capitalism as inherently good, or at least not being capable of bad.

Yes, I feel the need to defend capitalism.  While not ideal, it is the most successful economic system in the history of the world, and is under constant attack from advocates of some of the worst economic systems in the history of the world.  In terms of confiscation of labor and wealth, in terms of being the cause of untold measures of death and human misery, socialism/communism are the blue ribbon winners.

As far as it being "inherently good," I think the answer is largely "yes."  From the second link I provided previously:

Quote

Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.

To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.

As far as capitalism "not being capable of bad," I reject that.  Certainly capitalism, as a system, can be exploited, misused, misapplied, etc.

Quote

If that's the case, I think it is wiser to recognise that while it can be a tool of great good, capitalism can be used for evil purposes.

Sure.  But then, so can all sorts of inherently "good" things.  Food.  Sleep.  Clothing.  Housing.  Medicine.  Marriage.  Sex.  Religion.  The list goes on and on.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited by smac97
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On 7/24/2020 at 5:38 PM, BlueDreams said:

More specifically, I do remember a moment of being uncomfortable with one of the buildings’ names, though I don’t think i could have verbalized as well as these two did as to why at the time. At around the same time of my sense of discomfort, i was arguing with people on this very board about several of these leaders problematic statements and why they’re wrong. I remember numbly watching a number of people defend certain comments and teachings and it took me back to my own mother parroting antiquated racialized beliefs as simple gospel truth. We as a church tend to not just honor past leaders, but ignore or worse justify past leaders errors and untruths. It means we spend year after year talking about their great programs, decisions, contributions, spiritual leadership, etc...and whisper at best, that they were human. We’re doing better at this, but up until a few years ago did i feel comfortable saying what i always knew somewhere in my heart: several of our leaders were racist and/or believed and perpetuated racist ideology. Because any ounce of negative attributions to them is often led with pushback and defensiveness and  justifications/minimizing said racism. Often it’s done with the best of intentions and to try to help the person who’s stumbled on these problems. It doesn’t actually help, it can shut down communication, and can leave POC feeling isolated in our church.

This raises, in my mind, an interesting point that seems left out of the conversation quite often.  The reason for defensiveness in this are perhaps many.  But one main reason seems to be the notion of God's interaction with man.  It's not so much that these men in history were racist, it's that their God was racist.  We might say today, "well it wasn't really God, it was just their prejudices" but that's not how they saw it nor how they presented it.  How is a believing member to take seriously the criticism of their leaders when it is expected that they do nothing but revere their revelations as if from God himself?  

As it is, for most of this Church's existence, the teaching was God wanted racism....we pretend it used to be, but by and large many still maintain that the racist policies were God's will.  How are members supposed to see it differently?  

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5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

This raises, in my mind, an interesting point that seems left out of the conversation quite often.  The reason for defensiveness in this are perhaps many.  But one main reason seems to be the notion of God's interaction with man.  It's not so much that these men in history were racist, it's that their God was racist. 

Piffle.

5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

We might say today, "well it wasn't really God, it was just their prejudices" but that's not how they saw it nor how they presented it. 

We are often unable to see our prejudices for what they are.

5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

How is a believing member to take seriously the criticism of their leaders when it is expected that they do nothing but revere their revelations as if from God himself?  

This is not an accurate statement of Latter-day Saint doctrines, or "expect{ations}" derived therefrom.

5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

As it is, for most of this Church's existence, the teaching was God wanted racism....we pretend it used to be, but by and large many still maintain that the racist policies were God's will.

Marvelously facile.

5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

How are members supposed to see it differently?  

Through study, reasoning, discussion, pondering, prayer, fasting, and so on.

Thanks,

-Smac

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1 hour ago, smac97 said:

This: "In terms of America history, racism is wrapped up in its capitalism."

Not particularly.  From the first link I provided previously:

And this (same link) :

And this (same link) :

And this (same link) (emphasis added) :

And this (from the second link I provided earlier) :

Slavery is anathema to capitalism.  

Pretty much.  From the second link I provided previously:

And this (from the third link I provided previously) :

And this (same link) (emphases added) :

Blaming slavery on capitalism is an ideological argument.

I think you should re-consider this.  I think "economic value" here references the amount paid for the purchase, housing/feeding, etc. of slaves relative to their economic output.  And yet for all the money the South poured into slavery, it was - as your link so aptly notes - "lag{ging} in industrial development did not result from any inherent economic disadvantages" because the "great wealth" of the South "was primarily tied up in the slave economy."  The North, meanwhile, had invested its wealth in industrial development, and succeeded far more than the South did in terms of economic output. 

The South's "slave labor"-based economy is regularly juxtaposed with the North's "free market [capitalism]" economy.  Again, from your link: 

The South used slave labor to make money, which is antithetical to "free market" capitalism.  And it didn't work nearly as well as "free market" capitalism.

Not really.  Anti-capitalist rhetoric like this is facially unsound.

"Slavery" is much more a part of other economic systems.  Indeed, the theft of labor is at the heart of socialism/communism.  These are systems of state-run slavery.

Yes, I feel the need to defend capitalism.  While not ideal, it is the most successful economic system in the history of the world, and is under constant attack from advocates of some of the worst economic systems in the history of the world.  In terms of confiscation of labor and wealth, in terms of being the cause of untold measures of death and human misery, socialism/communism are the blue ribbon winners.

As far as it being "inherently good," I think the answer is largely "yes."  From the second link I provided previously:

As far as capitalism "not being capable of bad," I reject that.  Certainly capitalism, as a system, can be exploited, misused, misapplied, etc.

Sure.  But then, so can all sorts of inherently "good" things.  Food.  Sleep.  Clothing.  Housing.  Medicine.  Marriage.  Sex.  Religion.  The list goes on and on.

Thanks,

-Smac

It's not uncommon for capitalists to be tied up inconveniently in poor product models. Slavery was not a good economic model, but that does not mean it was not capitalist. Slavery and bonds and cotton produced a bubble very similar to the economic bubbles we've seen throughout history with anything from tulips to housing.

Slavery was enabled by capitalism. Bonds using enslaved people as collateral were used so people could buy even more slaves.

Making claims that slavery was only part of the US economy or that this wasn't "true" capitalism simply avoids the point and does not contradict it. 

If you want to redeem capitalism and oppose racism, don't deny what they enabled. Find out for yourself how their growth in America was shaped by their relationship to slavery. Find out the impact.

Edited by Meadowchik
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14 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Piffle.

We are often unable to see our prejudices for what they are.

This is not an accurate statement of Latter-day Saint doctrines, or "expect{ations}" derived therefrom.

Marvelously facile.

Through study, reasoning, discussion, pondering, prayer, fasting, and so on.

Thanks,

-Smac

Well apply that study, reasoning, discussion, pondering, prayer, fasting and so on to everything else and the Church becomes a useless entity.  

I'm not sure what to make of your dismissals.  Are you saying the Church never presented a racist policy?  Or never claimed it was from God?  Are you saying that past leaders did not think they were inspired when they promoted racist ideas?  What exactly are you trying to dismiss?  

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7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

It's not uncommon for capitalists to be tied up inconveniently in poor product models.

It's not that.  Free market capitalism is incompatible with slavery.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Slavery was not a good economic model, but that does not mean it was not capitalist.

It's not an inherent part of capitalism.  To the extent it was used in a capitalistic environment, it failed.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Slavery and bonds and cotton produced a bubble very similar to the economic bubbles we've seen throughout history with anything from tulips to housing.

Actually, I think the cotton gin produced the bubble.  See here:

Quote

In 1793, Whitney invented and submitted a patent for the cotton gin—a machine that used rotating brushes and teeth to remove seeds from cotton fiber. His invention revolutionized cotton production, although Whitney faced challenges enforcing his patent and saw little profit from it. While an enslaved person needed about ten hours to separate the seeds from one pound of cotton fiber by hand, two people using the cotton gin could produce about fifty pounds of cotton in the same timeframe.

The invention of the cotton gin forever altered the economy, geography, and politics of the United States. The cotton gin made cotton tremendously profitable, which encouraged westward migration to new areas of the US South to grow more cotton. The number of enslaved people rose with the increase in cotton production, from 700,000 in 1790 to over three million by 1850. By mid-century, the southern states were responsible for seventy-five percent of the world's cotton, most of which was shipped to New England or England, where it was made into cloth. Whitney’s cotton gin and its descendants helped the southern states become a major agricultural force in the world economy on the backs of a growing enslaved population.

Slavery unfortunately pre-dated the cotton gin, and so was ramped up when the cotton gin entered the market and increased the productivity of the South, which at that point was based on slave labor.  But it did not need to be this way.  And here:

Quote

Growing cotton, further, unlike sugar or rice, never required slavery. By 1870, freedmen and whites produced as much cotton as the South produced in the slave time of 1860. Cotton was not a slave crop in India or in southwest China, where it was grown in bulk anciently. And many whites in the South grew it, too, before the war and after. That slaves produced cotton does not imply that they were essential or causal in the production.

It is a great tragedy that the South was already steeped in slavery before the cotton gin came along.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Slavery was enabled by capitalism.

First, you said: "In terms of America history, racism is wrapped up in its capitalism. The ownership and exploitation of Black bodies to build wealth came first. Racism was the rationale used to continue it."

You then said: "Do you think that American slavery was not intertwined with capitalism? Are you saying that slavery was not used to build wealth in the United States?"

Now you are saying: "Slavery was enabled by capitalism."

So were speaking of a few things: "racism," slavery, capitalism and creation of wealth (all antebellum).  

You seem to be trying to say "Capitalism made 'em do it."  I dispute that.  Correlation is not causation, you see.  

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Bonds using enslaved people as collateral were used so people could buy even more slaves.

Okay.  I'm not sure how that is relevant.  Nobody is disputing that slave labor generated wealth for others.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Making claims that slavery was only part of the US economy or that this wasn't "true" capitalism simply avoids the point and does not contradict it. 

I think the point is that slavery is not an integral part of capitalism.  Capitalism just fine without slavery.  Capitalism is at odds with slavery.  An economic system based on the theft of labor and the concentration of power in the hands of a very few is not free market capitalism.  It's quite something else.

Trying to tie slavery to capitalism is a well-worn argument presented by socialists and communists.  The irony of that is pretty staggering given how those economic systems are well and truly based on the theft of labor and the oligarchical concentration of power.  It's nigh unto Orwellian.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

If you want to redeem capitalism

Capitalism doesn't need redemption.  It's doing just fine.

Meanwhile, if you want to try to justify socialism/communism . . . good luck with that.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

and oppose racism, don't deny what it enabled.

I oppose racism.

I don't understand the "what it enabled" bit.  I am a big advocate of marriage.  I believe it's a wonderful institution.  Now, it so happens that I have a dear friend who was in a horrible marriage.  Her husband abused her a lot, so much so that the marriage failed.  The husband was able to do what he did because he lived with his wife, shared resources with her, had sexual access to her, and so on.  But I would not say that "marriage" as an institution "enabled" his abuse.  To the contrary, the husband misused and exploited the institution.

Somewhat similarly, antebellum slaveholders misused and abused aspects of capitalism to "enable" slavery.  I find that appalling and immoral.  But I'm not going to blame "capitalism" for that, any more than I would blame "marriage" for the abuse suffered by my friend.

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Find out for yourself how their growth in America was shaped by their relationship to slavery. Find out the impact.

Free market capitalism is an amazing thing.  It has generated more wealth, and brought more people out of poverty, than any other economic system in the history of the world.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to find out for yourself the problems inherent with socialism and communism.

Thanks,

-Smac

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