What if history were reversed and blacks had guns and ocean-going ships before whites did? Would blacks have wiped out the natives of North America and made whites into slaves to work the land? Would we now be talking about black racism and black privilege?
It is certainly possible, but improbable.
It is possible: If you are the first to have guns and ocean-going ships, you can take advantage of people who look very different from you. Race then becomes a cheap, after-the-fact excuse for doing so. That leads to racism – dividing mankind into races and seeing some races, like your own, as better than others. We know that is possible because that is the last 500 years in a nutshell.
But improbable: China could have done what Europe did but did not. In fact, Europe did not clearly pass China technologically till the late 1700s. The European Expansion was based on Chinese inventions: gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing. Even Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs and Steel” (1997) had a hard time accounting for why Europe took over the world, not China.
Technology advances and spreads unevenly. It is common for one region to have a technological edge over another – yet it is rare for it to lead to genocide, even when the edge is military.
- The Romans, as violent, destructive, powerful and unprincipled as they were, could have easily practised genocide on a mass scale but did not.
- The Ancient Egyptians, living in a stone age world, could have easily done the same but did not.
- The same with the Greeks under Alexander the Great.
- And the whites in South Africa and New Zealand.
- And so on.
Genocide does not require a technological edge over one’s neighbours: In Rwanda, for example, it was carried out with machetes.
There is no technological determinism to genocide. Because it is not based on that – it is based on dehumanizing others. Further, genocide is rare, especially on a continental scale.
So while blacks might have wiped out the natives of North America it is unlikely. And without that they would not have had so much land that they would need millions of slaves to work it. They probably would have had some white slaves, just as the Ancient Egyptians did, but not on a mass scale.
This is not complete guesswork on my part: When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean the people there already knew about blacks: they had traded with them. Africa is much closer to the Americas than Europe. And, armed with iron weapons, blacks could have made short work of the people there if they wanted to.
White Americans are at an extreme end of human history. Defeating your enemy and maybe taking over their country is common. Wiping them out wholesale and taking their land is not. For White Americans that does not come from their guns and their bombs but from how they think.
See also:
- the eight stages of genocide
- guns, germs and steel
- I have used this scenario to talk about white people and human nature:
- John Trudell: When Columbus got off the boat
- Columbus
Hard to say, what are you talking about? A set of warring states needing overseas derrived riches, to finance the war for their own survival? One black empire? A set of balancing, more or less peaceful regional superpowers?
Nations suffering from overpopulation caused in part by great advances in medicine?
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Nice Post abagond.
However, I do feel the white racists have got to you at least in this specific post…
The romans/greeks were as bad as the current day american system. They wiped out anyone who did not agree to join there territory and adopt roman/greek culture and the roman system of worldview… Yeah sure there’s wasn’t based on race, there’s was based on whether you were roman/greek or not.
That system just evolved to its modern day version of whether you are white or not.
Whites in South Africa couldn’t eliminate the blacks because the blacks were many and much tougher… This is why africa still has many black people, they just couldn’t kill us. Yeah sure, they can kill us with guns and whatever but that isn’t enough to wipe out the whole population.
In New Zealand and Australia the aboriginals and natives got truly wiped out that only a few thousand, in some cases less than 100 remained. That was genocide, they weren’t as tough as the africans and it has to be said the environment of africa helped us survive.
The natives in south/central/north america got wiped by sheer conquest but that wasn’t enough to decimate the population, what finally did the job was the diseases white people brought, like SMALL POX. In africa it appears our genes helped us survive. Small Pox in the Americas wiped out millions upon millions of native, doing the job guns couldn’t do.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2007_summer_fall/native-americans-smallpox.html
This Native American depopulation occurred during the contact period, causing the Native American population size to decline from 1-18 million before European contact (c. AD 1500) to an estimated 530,000 by 1900.
In south America and the surrounding Caribbean islands,
http://suite101.com/article/the-history-of-smallpox-in-latin-america-a152524
Columbus had founded the first European settlement here on Hispaniola, and it would not be long before the first major Old World diseases broke loose amongst the native population, decimating the islanders.
[…]
The Aztec Emperor Cuitláhuac died from smallpox, further throwing the Aztecs into disarray. The Aztec Empire collapsed and Cortés took control of Mexico. The population of Mexico, estimated at 15 to 30 million at the time, shrank to just 3 million by 1568 and approximately 1.6 million by 1620, according to Ian and Jenifer Glynn. Smallpox, they state, “was the principal culprit”.
You get the picture…
I can understand you trying not to be extreme in your views as this will label you as some form of “extremist” but the above acts were VERY extreme and no other people’s(non-white) even get close to that level of sheer destruction – historically speaking.
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That’s true, if you excuse the somewhat racist shorthand, in black vs white, the human diseases operated on the black side, in white vs. red they were with white, in black vs. red the diseases would still have been playing on the black team.
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I always thought that they not right in their head.
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Abagond:
This is easy. They are guided by a sinister hand.
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The best judge of how one group would treat another is to look at how they’ve treated themselves. And I can’t think of anything that one group has done to another that every group hasn’t done to itself already.
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@ duckduckgoofs :
I guess that europeans deep down really hate themselves huh.
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Too answer abagonds question, it would be no different and there would be white racism and white privilege.
as been stated many times before the white people had power, and that made all whites coherently evil. Absolute power corrupts the absolute.
however if it was reversed I could at least go to college.
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@main post
Maybe I’m being egocentric, but I feel this this post is at least partially a reply to my “alternative reality” comment. Anyway, thank you. This post does make your stance much clearer and at this point it’s something I can cosign.
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..”There is no technological determinism to genocide. Because it is not based on that – it is based on dehumanizing others. Further, genocide is rare, especially on a continental scale….”(Abagond).
So then ultimately, the, (or a) dominant element of the European psycho-social state of mind, lies in their obsession with dehumanizing their ‘enemy’/’others’, to conquer then completely annihilate and destroy them. hmmm…
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Pretty much when it comes to the native americans, it would be the same, 90 odd percent were killed by disease before any kind of genocidal attempts.
Working that factor in, black people would have killed off 9/10ths of the population of the natives as well. Just by being there.
Using the assumption that disease equals genocide, than yes black people in this scenario would have committed genocide on a continental scale as well.
So they would definately have had the same amounts of land and the need for slaves and since they had white slaves in the real world its safe to assume that in this alternative reality they would have had white slaves then as well.
Only at a much greater level than they did here.
Considering that slavery still exists in Africa, in all honesty is there any reason to assume in this alternate reality it wouldn’t still legally exist in “America”?
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What if history were reversed and blacks had guns and ocean-going ships before whites did, i think Abagond is asking weather blacks would of treated the natives of the countries they came into contact with the same way that whites did ( stolen lands, murder rape etc….) using their superior technology,
not if the natives would of died of some African disease.
Slavery does not exist throughout Africa ,i can’t see these African needing any slaves since they live on a continent that is rich with natural resources not mineral poor and could easily sail to the east via east Africa and the cape for trade.
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Abagond:
It’s hard to say if blacks would have done the same. Europeans wanted to get the hell out of europe more than anything, because, the continent is not rich in natural resources as is africa, southeast asia, south pacific, and the americas. Our ancestors would not have any incentive to enslave whites, except for power.
Tyrone
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V-4 and Jared, the early slavery and colonial history had more to do with sugarcane and many spices being tropical plants. If Captain “Rainborn” had discovered interesting plants on his trip in far away lands, he could have taken them home and grown them there, for the growing of sugar and spice Africa would not have needed colonies on other continents.
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eh idk i have a degree in Latin as well as English, Creative Writing, BA’s both, so I have done a bit of study with regards to the Roman Empire. Honestly, the modality of the US Calvary in the western US in the 19th c. compared to the provincial praetorship model of Roman conquest is fairly similar, please be advise the ‘founding fathers’ called the potomac the ‘little tiber’, excepting for the blankets with small pox on it and so forth, so idk what to say right now.
-tc
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This helps strengthen by faith in alternate dimensions.
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@brothawolf
wow would that it were as they say
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See Abagond, I’d actually disagree with you here, there is a well known reason that China did not take over the world when it would seem it should have been poised to: it was too united, and one man’s vendetta sunk much of the country’s progress and started off its period of insularity, as well as the fact that it didn’t have nearby states as advanced as itself to compete with and drive it to become more powerful than it was. Also, China didn’t have much of a way to separate people it conquered by phenotype, as most of them all looked more or less racially the same. Also, China had no need for cheap labour, as it’s large, agrarian population provided that just fine. As for slaves in the Americas, I don’t think whites would have been all that useful, for the same reason natives weren’t; they aren’t hot weather adapted like Africans, and would have dropped like flies from heat exhaustion and malaria, they couldn’t have been imported from Europe fast enough to replace the ones that died. Not to say I agree that African conquerors of the Americas wouldn’t have had slaves, it’s just more likely they would’ve been south or southeast Asians, or other Africans enslaved on non-racial lines. Power corrupts, and however I might feel about white people, I just don’t feel honest saying that another race wouldn’t have done the same things if given that same power.
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You’ve said before yourself, how White people are now comes from their power, and is not innate, and while you didn’t outright say this, it seems like you reversed your position. Also, if it was not their military and other advantages that have created their demons, than what was it, biology? I would hope you wouldn’t believe that nonsense.
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Smallpox blankets
Despite his fame, Jeffrey Amherst’s name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman’s Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac’s forces during the summer of 1763:
… Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort — an early example of biological warfare — which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]
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What if it were reversed and blacks had guns and ocean-going ships before whites did? Hmmm.. how do we know they did not?
What if history were reversed and blacks had guns and ocean-going ships before whites did? Would blacks have wiped out the natives of North America and made whites into slaves to work the land? Would we now be talking about black racism and black privilege? they still do kill eachother all over Africa for land and wipe out entire tribes. the aztecs did it to the mulmecs and they to the ultecs.
It is possible: If you are the first to have guns and ocean-going ships, you can take advantage of people who look very different from you. Race then becomes a cheap, after-the-fact excuse for doing so. That leads to racism – dividing mankind into races and seeing some races, like your own, as better than others. We know that is possible because that is the last 500 years in a nutshell.
this statment makes it seem like black africans were the only slaves or the longest running victims of slavery.
But improbable: China could have done what Europe did but did not. In fact, Europe did not clearly pass China technologically till the late 1700s. The European Expansion was based on Chinese inventions: gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing. Even Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs and Steel” (1997) had a hard time accounting for why Europe took over the world, not China.
china and japan were constantly conquering eachother and many other nations.
Technology advances and spreads unevenly. It is common for one region to have a technological edge over another – yet it is rare for it to lead to genocide, even when the edge is military.
The Romans, as violent, destructive, powerful and unprincipled as they were, could have easily practised genocide on a mass scale but did not.
The Ancient Egyptians, living in a stone age world, could have easily done the same but did not.
yes they did they enslaved the jews.
The same with the Greeks under Alexander the Great.
And the whites in South Africa and New Zealand.
And so on.
Genocide does not require a technological edge over one’s neighbours: In Rwanda, for example, it was carried out with machetes.
There is no technological determinism to genocide. Because it is not based on that – it is based on dehumanizing others. Further, genocide is rare, especially on a continental scale.
So while blacks might have wiped out the natives of North America it is unlikely. And without that they would not have had so much land that they would need millions of slaves to work it. They probably would have had some white slaves, just as the Ancient Egyptians did, but not on a mass scale.
no proof behind this.
This is not complete guesswork on my part: When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean the people there already knew about blacks: they had traded with them. Africa is much closer to the Americas than Europe. And, armed with iron weapons, blacks could have made short work of the people there if they wanted to.
White Americans are at an extreme end of human history. Defeating your enemy and maybe taking over their country is common. Wiping them out wholesale and taking their land is not. For White Americans that does not come from their guns and their bombs but from how they think.
yes wiping them out is not the precedent of the white man. almost all indigiounous peoples stole the land from the ones before this, it has been the precedent of all tribal life.
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@Jared
Well; they probably would have conquered, stolen lands etc….especially since most of the lands were now unoccupied post vast swaths of disease killing amounts of the population that make the black plague look tame.
Would they have engaged in the racism etc…..don’t know, can’t say as a whole that africa is really known for that but I can honestly say my knowledge of african cultures on almost any level is pretty minimal.
I “suspect” they probably would have been more intolerant and accepting of the natives post-conquest but that might just be wishful thinking on my part.
So I guess depending on how you look at it; thats either better or worse, racism + segregation means some semblence of the native people’s and cultures exist.
Acceptance means assimiliation and sublimination….so they would have been wiped out on a complete level.
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I have given this much thought and I have only one explanation: for some reason the european concept of war was/is different from any other.
Egyptians did rule over various nations and people and they did not wipe out them but demanded that those conquered recognise the pharao as their supreme ruler and pay tribute for them. Example are the so called philisteans and other people such as them. Even the habiru, the jews, were not wiped out, even when historical Dwd, David for us, lead his mercenary guerillas on his campaign in the uplands of the philistean area, despite the fact that the philistean rulers wrote to the pharaos and asked them to do so.
The Greeks saw themselves as greeks as one people only after the persian attacks and even then only as an alliance of independent city states and nations. For an athenean, a spartan was a foreigner, so trading with the people north of the Black Sea was the same as trading with the spartans etc.
The persians did not seek to destroy other nations and people, they wanted to subjacate them and make them recognise the overlordship of their own ruler. Ad pay up of course.
Alexander the Great adpoted different cultures and people into his realm and was even annoited as pharao. So he had no problems with multiculturality at all nor did his generals, many of whom became the rules of various lands of Alexanders realm once he died.
The Romans, the nazis of their day, had rules: first they conquered, then they crushed the first rebellion or two, and only after that they tried to wipe out those who rebelled more. Good examples are the jews and the dacians. BUT even the romans allowed people of other races and cultures to become citizens of Rome with full citizenship and practised foreign religions, adopted foreign cultures and arts etc.
The Huns, despite their reputation, did not wipe out everything. The Huns were actually a ruling monirity in a vast alliance of nations and peoples when Attila led them against Rome. There goths and others in the mix. So they actually embarced other nations and people and took them in.
Even mongols did not wipe out everyone IF those to be conquered accepted their rules as over lords and payed trubute and taxes and obeyed them.
The chinese and China is different for the simple reason that China has always been multicultural as it is even today. The people we see only as chinese are a hodge podge of various tribes and people from a vast area and always were. The chinese could have taken over the seas, they had all the means, skills and technical know how BUT one, 1, emperor canned the whole expedition idea and forbade the long ocean voyages.
Africa is a huge continent and unfortunately much of its history is not known widely particulary from times before european conquest. We do not know if there were genocides and/or cultural wipe outs but we do know that many african nations, or people, were more nomadic than others. There would have been conflicts and wars but one interesting thing about the african culture of war: I forgot the name of the west african tribe/nation which had an devastating throwing sword. It has several blades and could be used as a handheld weapon as well as throwing weapon. It could penetrate the shileds, curve over them etc. It was such a devastating weapon that this nation became widely feared for it. What happened? Their very own king banned it and with that the tribe lost its position.
European idea of war, among themselves or against outsiders, seems to have been from very early on that there are no rules. At all. No rules what so ever. The only thing is to win by any means. Of wining takes killing off everyone, then so be it. If it means destroying whole cultures, so be it. Wipe out languages, religions, even clothing fashions, it is ok if it leads to victory. The only thing that counts is the victory. Not an honorable peace, not co existence, but total victory over the enemy.
The germans tried to achieve this in WW2 ans even called it total war. It included the idea of the holocaust, and not only for jewish people but to all of those who were deemed to go. In 1945 germans wanted to make peace but the allies did not. They wanted to destroy Germany once and for all. And they did. Germany was bombed to the pieces and occupied, and still is, and for over 40 years it was also divided. And the logical end of this thinking were of course the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. By then Japan had lost the war. They had no chances at all. They were done. Allies could have told them to drop their weapons and quit, make some kind of a peace with them, but that was not the agenda. The aim was to give them a lesson they won’t forget, to make the emperor kneel and do some serious ass kissing.
The rationale given to the atom bombings was to save american lives (estimates for the casualities from the invasion of Japan were around few hunderd thousand up to a million) but the japanese could have been blocked and squeezed to submission by that time. They had no raw materials, no food, no gasline, nothing to continue the war. They were done with all practicality. BUT somebody wanted to give them a real lesson how this will end if they do not surrender without any conditions, if they do not throw themselves at the mercy of the enemy and pray for the best.
I think somewhere there is the answer for this question. If the blacks would have taken over the oceans ad with guns, would they have done the same? I have no answer for that but I doubt. They would have had no reason. Whites did in their mind.
As for the diseases, they were not always an accidental occurence as so many want to claim. Europeans had used diseases as biological weapons from the times of the greeks and romans at least. They knew that if they could not take a city or castle, all they needed was one dead who carried the plague and throw that body over the walls and thats it. The chinese, huns and mongols used this tactic too.
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Well… A huge part of what depopulated the Americas was unintentional. In all honesty, nobody PLANNED for smallpox, measles, and influenza to hit the Americas – and syphilis and tuberculosis were pretty big surprises to people in Europe and Asia as well. The only way Cortes took down the Triple Alliance was due to an influenza outbreak that laid Tenochtitlan low, to the point where it was less of an invasion and more of a slow march through piles of dead people. Similarly, Pizarro would have never taken down the inka if it hadn’t been for a smallpox outbreak twenty years prior leading to civil war (As detailed in Diamond’s book)
This also struck New Zealand and South Africa; the Khoi-San speakers of South Africa were very nearly wiped out by plagues, followed by invasion from both whites and Bantu-speaking peoples.
If Africans – say, the Songhai empire – had reached the Americas first, would the devastation have been similar? I think just from the disease angle, yes. Malaria, yellow fever, and smallpox were all present in the Sahel at that time, and would have hit the Americans just ash hard regardless of racial origins of the newcomers. HOWEVER… I do not think the Songhai would have invaded in the way the Europeans did.
The main driving forces behind the European invasion was massive state debt and extreme overpopulation; the governments of Europe were all up to their gills in debt to themselves, the Venitians, and even the ottomans, owing to all the wars they had been fighting. So they needed the treasure of the Americas to pay that off. All those wars of course led to all kinds of miseries in Europe, and a combination of famine and overpopulation especially in the British Isles, drove people overseas. Africa… didn’t have these problems. While it certainly wasn’t a utopia, the Songhai response to a new world would have likely been “cool, let’s trade” instead of “HOLY CRAP THEY HAVE GOLD AND LAND!!!!!”
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There is a book and documentary on this subject called “Guns, Germs and Steel”. I see that you have it listed in your ‘see also’. Everyone ought to read the book or see the documentary. Especially those that believe White Supremacy is about some sort of inherent difference between ethnic groups. Nope, Whites had success because of the luck of their geographic location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
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But that is part of the question, if African civiliation(s) would have canon and/or musketeers on oceangoing ships, i.e. a (proto)navy, they would have had a reason to have them, and the most logical reason for that is war with their neighbours.
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@commentarybyvalentina
The documentary is terrible. Just flat-out terrible. it skips all the meat of the book, and seems to mostly just serve to provide space for advertising. Plus when every five minutes the narrator intones “GUNS! GERMS! And STEEL!” it makes it even more unwatchable.
I guess what I’m saying is that the book really is better than the movie 🙂
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History is not my strong suit. But didn’t they find African looking artifacts in mexico that dates 4000 years old. Maybe there was African ships that made it to the new world before Europeans.
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@ dave,
they found african looking statues… Well n__roid in appearance… This is part of the suppressed history. Officially no african ever made it to the americas before Colombus.
http://www.crystalinks.com/olmec.html
Scroll down and you’ll see some that have african like features, i.e. Puffed up lips and flat noses.
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Is there any known instance of African disease contaminating Native Americans after european colonists started importing African slaves to the New World by millions?
If not, the claim that Natives would have died of imported diseases anyway can be considered a gratuitous affirmation.
(By the way, the actual population of pre-colombian America is still debated, so statements such as “90% of Native American were killed by disease” must be taken with a grain of salt.)
True. But before that, they sailed the seas for centuries. The same can be said of other South Asian and mid-eastern nations. Yet, unlike what happened with Europeans, it did not end up in worldwide carnage.
Take Admiral Zheng He for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
He was at the head of one the most formidable armada in human history (200 to 317 ships and up to 28 000 men according to Wikipedia). Yet, violent altercations with foreign civilizations he met were the exception.
On the other hand, each and every encounter of Europeans with foreign civilizations ended up in extermination or colonization (or attempt at it): North, Central & South America, Caribbean, Asia, Africa, Australia, you name it…
Anyone who refuses to see a consistent pattern here is in denial, if you ask me.
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How so, when the black plaque had almost wiped out human life in Europe? This shouldn’t be surprising, but well documented truths.
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“Is there any known instance of African disease contaminating Native Americans after european colonists started importing African slaves to the New World by millions?”
The old world included African, Aisa and the area known as Europe. Sall pox is an old world contagion shared amongst all three groups of people as well as a number of other deadly airborn diseases. Africans coming to America would have had a lot of the same diseases and thus did the same damage, disease wise.
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Natives have been in contact with Africans for centuries after the latter have been forcedly brought to the New World. It’s a fact, right? Are you aware of an instance (in North, Central & South America and the Caribbean Isles) where natives have been decimated by diseases contracted from Africans?
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I think that we should discuss the role Christianity played in shaping European thoughts around that time.
Like non christians/non whites are the sons and daughters of Ham,therefore cursed and not deserving of respect.
The lands of the new world they saw as the land of milk and honey,God’s promise fulfilled to his children, and just like the Canaanites and Ammonites of the Bible the natives had to make way for the Children of God.
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Good question , is their any proof of that ?
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@ Jared
If not, we’re confronting AGDoren’s rhetorical “could have been” scenario with the fact that Africans and Native Americans have been in contact for centuries without the former contaminating the latter with their germs (as opposed to what consistently occurred with Europeans from the initial contact to late in the 19th century).
If any extrapolation is to be made, basic common sense would tend to the conclusion that Africans did not import lethal diseases to the Americas.
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Dahoman X
Small pox originated in Africa. I’m just saying.
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I have to see this Germs, Guns, and Steel documentary!!! Sounds very interesting and historically correct.
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It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the white phenotype is genetically subordinate would it?
Also while definitely not all a large percentage of albinic/white people are astechically inferior as indicated by thier own behavior i.e. suntaning etc.
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Precisely: you’re just saying.
How about an actual argument establishing that the cases of small pox witnessed in the New World can be linked to the African population instead? Just a study stating that only areas with an attested African population experienced small pox will do. Or even a report attesting that such epidemic afflicting Natives was started by an African slave.
I’m sure even you can admit that just because a disease is assumed to originate from one specific place does not mean that only inhabitants from this place can transmit it, right?
And last time I checked, smallpox was prevalent in Europe at the time of the conquest of the Americas.
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People seem to be missing the point that biological warfare is just as effective as guns and Europeans begin to figure this out after the black plaque almost wiped out the entire population. This was unique, and according to some theorist, Europeans began to take precautions in medicine, diet and most importantly midwifery.
After the black plaque, there was a boom in studying natural medicines (i.e. herbs), apprentices for midwives. This meant, that if Europe could develop these practices, keeping those healthy who were already healthy, healing those who were unhealthy and making sure mothers carried their children to full term and that childbirth itself was not a death sentence (remember during the Middle Ages once a woman became pregnant she had to designate a priest in the event she died during the process as it was so common.) so that the population could recover–hence it did as even today midwifery is the preferred method of prenatal care in almost every European country.
And guess what? It-midwifery-was such a success in booming the population post the black death era, that Europeans became stronger, more aggressive and numerous which resulted in them being successful at colonizing the rest of the world.
By then, they understood that their immunity was much much more stronger to populations that had not been exposed to harsh illnesses such as they had.
And lo and behold–biological weaponry.
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Natives could hardly contract small pox from africa as they only interacted minimally. The natives mostly interacted with the white conquerors… Unless some commentators are saying white people got small pox from black people and then transmitted it to the natives?
Deep in south and central america where the spanish conquistadors went, they hardly took any african slaves with them.. They didn’t exactly make a pit stop in africa to collect slaves en route to fortune and fame in the south/central american jungles – like the cities of gold.
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@ Phoebe,
Biological warfare is more effective than guns.
Black plague didn’t only attack Europe.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_continent_was_affected_by_the_Black_Death
ASIA and EUROPE.
It may have attacked Africa as well, how would we know if it did or didn’t?
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@chulanowa
Agreed but the doc is a good place to jump in. After that hopefully people will be motivated to read the book.
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“Natives have been in contact with Africans for centuries after the latter have been forcibly brought to the New World. It’s a fact, right? Are you aware of an instance (in North, Central & South America and the Caribbean Isles) where natives have been decimated by diseases contracted from Africans?”
Under these circumstances the contact would have been with both Europeans,African and Natives at the same time it would be difficult to say who actually gave the disease to whom. Both are claimed to spread it depending on who is writing the paper.
Regarding the question of smallpox amongst the African population:
fact- Africans made valuable slaves to Europeans because they had immunity to diseases like smallpox this is documented
fact- in order for a population to develop an immunity to a disease there must be previous exposure
fact- it is unknown where in the old world smallpox originated but there is evidence of it being present throughout the old world by the time the Americas were being populated.If Africans had not had immunity to these diseases we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now because there would have been no African slaves to provide free labor in America
Therefore it is within the realm of possibility for our hypothetical African explorers to transmit smallpox to a Native American population.
There is evidence that many old world diseases originated in Europe due to the necessity of sharing living quarters with domesticated animals during harsh winters. If Europeans are completely removed from the equation than they could not have spread disease originating there to African populations.
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dahoman X
My point was that you want to scapegoat whites for introducing small pox to America while ignoring that Africans introduced it to the rest of the world. Of course, there’s no more evidence that whites were the ones who introduced small pox to America than Africans. In spite of Wilson’s claims, there were even African sailors with Columbus and Cortes.
Bear in mind, however, that I’m not trying to scapegoat anyone. You are. What’s next — are you going to blame your cold on some kid who coughed at the supermarket?
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“wilson
Deep in south and central america where the spanish conquistadors went, they hardly took any african slaves with them.. They didn’t exactly make a pit stop in africa to collect slaves en route to fortune and fame in the south/central american jungles – like the cities of gold”
Linda says,
Actually, the Spanish ‘invaders’ did have African soldiers and African conquistadors who explored under the Spanish flag.
Countries like Spain and Portugal had been trading with West Africa since before 1200’s, the traders even married into the ruling families to strenghten the relationships.
Juan Garrido sailed with Ponce De Leon (famous for claiming Florida for Spain). Some historians believed ‘Garrido’s father was a king who traded with the Portuguese. This theoretical African king may have set young Juan up as a commercial liaison, sending him for a Christian and Portuguese education’
http://www.augustine.com/history/black_history/juan_garrido/
‘Juan Garrido was not alone. Other black Africans found their way into Spanish society rather than slavery. Many joined the Conquest as soldiers, some in exchange for freedom, others for financial compensation. Sometimes they enjoyed rewards like the Spaniards got, including land, official jobs, and pensions. Often they had to plead their own case in written petitions. The Crown usually acknowledged their petitions, but didn’t always grant them. Regardless of Spain’s reward to them, they all received their share of the loot taken from the Native Americans’
Would the African conquistadors have been as Ruthless as the Europeans if the roles were reversed and they had been the majority, fighting under a west African flag…very hard question to answer.
Right now, the Tuaregs who fought in the Libyan army have now invaded Mali. I believe they are occupying Timbuktu. They claim they are retaking their ancestral lands.
http://www.theglobaldispatches.com/articles/malis-tuareg-rebellion
It would be interesting to know how different African tribes/nations treated each other in the past when a larger or more powerful nation invaded and expanded into another country.
The history of Africa would have to be examined and discussed.
How did they treat the people who they conquered?
Did they enslave the occupied population? Were they viewed as less then human by the conquering nation?
Did they wipe them out wholesale or systematically eliminated them?
(like how the Spanish in Argentina purposely sent their black men to fight in the wars against British and Indigineous Natives; and encouraged Spanish men to marry/have children with black women to help breed out the African population.)
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At last, we’re getting somewhere: you know of some paper incriminating Africans in the spread of the diseases.
Would you mind sharing?
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I don’t agree with your primary assertion. I think that had African people had phenomenal war capabilities back in the days of no accountability and powerful king/church death armies they would behave as badly as just about anyone else. People are wicked, wicked, wicked.
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“Dahoman X
duckduckgoofs
Small pox originated in Africa. I’m just saying.
Precisely: you’re just saying.
How about an actual argument establishing that the cases of small pox witnessed in the New World can be linked to the African population instead? Just a study stating that only areas with an attested African population experienced small pox will do”
Linda says,
Dahoman X and Duck, try to stay on course and don’t lose sight of the rationale of the biological ‘warfare’ aspect of the European invasion in the Americas.
It really doesn’t matter where small pox originated, Historians also believed small pox originated in Egypt or India but it was the Europeans (not Africans or Asians) who had a major problem with Small pox disease.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/05.20/waterhouse.html
Small pox was a major problem in Europe and the Europeans were the primary carriers of the disease once they set foot in the Americas. the Europeans were the majority group that interacted with the Natives in the Americas.
the Europeans knew the Natives had no immunity to small pox and this gave them a HUGE advantage in their war with the Natives.
http://suite101.com/article/the-history-of-smallpox-in-latin-america-a152524
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@ Linda
True. That was actually the essence of my reply to duck.
I agree with the point you make about biological warfare.
@ duckduckgoofs
Do I?
Uhm, you want to re-read my initial comment, duck. Read also AGDoren’s comment which I was responding to, his arguments then mine. If you still don’t understand, come back at me and I’ll try to explain you.
If I actually believe that brat contaminated me, you bet I will.
Wouldn’t you?
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@Dahoman
You asked if there was any instance of “African” diseases decimating Native Americans. There are in fact; malaria and yellow fever. Neither was as damaging as smallpox, influenza, or measles (Malaria being of moderate lethality, and Yellow Fever being far less lethal in childhood than in adulthood for some reason) but these diseases were transported in the bodies of slaves to the caribbean and East Coast of South America, and definitely took their toll. In fact the native and white population’s vulnerability to malaria in the American south is part of what led to the industrial scale of the African slave trade.
The fact that whites had just as hard a time with malaria and yellow fever as the Natives actually worked in favor for the natives in the southern hemisphere and central America; European invaders were unable to take advantage of the disease-stricken territory. In North America and much of mexico, the big killers were diseases that Europeans could “handle” thanks to their resistances, and so they were able to capitalize on the deaths of the natives. In the southern portions of the hemisphere, though, whites were largely unable to cope with hte diseases themselves; this gave those natives who had some resistance, or who had taken husbands and wives among the resistant Africans, to recover somewhat and hold their ground and eventually keep a fairly significant population (significant considering the apocalyptic diseases that had just stricken them, followed by intermittent attempts at snuffing them out by malarial colonists…)
The pair of books by Charles G. Mann, “1491” and “1493” are extremely informative; especially the latter, as it’s a 600-page tome detailing the Colombian exchange between Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
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I never said it was only Europe. It spread enroute from the silk road.
However, Europe did get the worst case of it–hence i stated that it almost wiped out the European population. This didn’t seem to be the case in Asia. Factor in at that time, there was no proper sewage system in Europe and people could not bathe as often due to longer and colder winters. You do the math.
Whether it reached Africa or not is important because? Africans–even if they did contract the black plaque still did not use this agaisnst the populations that they later came into contact with. Where are records that show this?
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If we look at the genocide of native americans, that is an historical fact. All european nations who conquered land in the “new” continent did it one way or the other. They used biological warfare, which has been documented pretty well, and other means. There is no way around it. it took place in Caribbean, in north and south America etc. It happened and it was no accident.
What we very often forget that one thig what set europeans apart from all the other cultures was their almost anarchistic, if not nihilistic view of the world. In around 1500 Europe was a mighty mess of competing kings, dukes, churches, royals, noble men, bandits, rebels, commercial companies, independent cities etc. Europeans were almost in constant state of war and had been for a long time.
Mighty king might have estates hundreds of miles apart, emperor had land holdings from the Baltic to Mediterannean, from Balkans to present day France, and church was mingling with power politics at every chance on local and international level. Catholic church was fighting its own wars againts christian kings and such etc.
The rise of the english fleet was not an concentrated national effort by the crown as such but very clever trick: English made the private pirates and mercenaries as contract admirals and fleet commanders. The crown gave out contracts which made these freebooters semi official officers and soldiers. They were acting like pirates but under the permission of the Englihs crown and thus not as pirates but soldiers of the crown. The most famous pirate captain Morgan was actually the governor of Jamaica at one time etc.
Rich city states hired their own mercenaries, powerful merchants did the same, sometimes the rules did so too and so did the noble men. War was business as well. So much so that by the 30 years war guys like Pappenheim and Wallenstein were basically big time mercenaries at the service of the emperor and catholic side of the conflict for tidy sums of money and for the loot. Destroying town and cities became a normal feat because this way the contract generals did not have to pay so much as the rank and file took what they wanted from those towns and cities. It was called Ratio Bello, idea being that war supports itself.
Any chivalric notions (if there evere were such in reality) were pretty much gone by the 1500’s. Spanish inquisition was rising and the church was very happy burning heretics and witches by the thousands. It was the age of Kepler and incredible superstition. While Galileo was looking at the stars, pope was forcing the edict that the earth was at the center of the universe and tried to kill his competitors. Macchiavelli was not an exception but a guy who wrote down the ideas and views around him. And at the same time we had Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci.
It is often assumed and sometimes claimed that church or some great powers were the unifying force in Europe. That is rubbish. Church was a collection of cometing bishops and cardinals, papal contenders who tried to kill each other etc. There were two popes, three popes, popes who had multiple lovers and used to rape and go in nghtly robbing raids on a horse back. There were different religious ideas from Jan Hus to Martin Luther etc.
The holy roman emperor was an emperor by name. He was having wars against kings and counts, dukes and magraves and turks pushing towards the north from the Balkans. That war lasted from 1400’s up to 1700’s. At the same time there was Thirty years war, the greatest man made disaster in Europe, even more destructive than WW1 or 2, and various other wars.
There was no unity, nobody controlled everybody. It was all about getting the loot and europeans believed that biggest loot was somewhere over the ocean, in the Eldorado, in New Jerusalem. When the first europeans arrived to the east coast of north America they could not believe how much fish there were in the rivers and lakes. In little more than two centuries those fishes were almost gone from those rivers. From the get go, from the first arrivals, the idea was to exploit everything, get the gold, get the fish, the buffalo hides, wood etc. and turn that into money. The mighty forests of north America were cut down and sold over seas to Europe were constant wars and fires made the rebuilding of cities and palaces a booming business.
It was the relentless business mind, the ferocious appetite for money and riches that drove europeans everywhere. They truly believed that they could and they should turn everything into money, people included. Cross Atlantic slavery began out of need. Natives died out and there were too few european slaves to dig the gold, to tend the plantations etc. They needed africans. Once that bottle was opened, the europeans turned slave trade into huge money making scheme too. “If we are selling thousands of slaves, why not sell tens of thousands ?”.
Racism as we know it was also born out of this mess. There had to be fig leaf for all this robbing and stealing. There had to be made up answer for all this greed and destruction. It was not ok anymore to say: “I wanted that piece of land so I killed those who used to live there. I made those guys as my slaves because I could.”
The excuse was racism. “I made those guys as my slaves because they are not humanbeings like we are. I killed those savages because they are not humans like we.” Sounded much better in common speak. And when racism was added to the mix, then it was really on. They had now a good reason for all of this robbing and stealing and destruction. Ad the church was backing them up too.
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To Dahoman X:
How about an actual argument establishing that the cases of small pox witnessed in the New World can be linked to the African population instead? Just a study stating that only areas with an attested African population experienced small pox will do. Or even a report attesting that such epidemic afflicting Natives was started by an African slave.
Germ theory wasn’t understood, at least in Europe, until the 19th century. I have read modern claims that supposed that Natives caught diseases from both Whites and Africans but epidemiology basically did not exist until hundreds of years after the native peoples of the Americas were devastated.
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To Sam:
They used biological warfare, which has been documented pretty well, and other means.
The vast majority of disease in the Americas was not spread through biological warfare since germ theory was not understood by Europeans until the 19th century.
The mighty forests of north America were cut down and sold over seas to Europe were constant wars and fires made the rebuilding of cities and palaces a booming business.
The vast majority of trees cut down in the North America remained in North America. Large scale exports of timber were not common until the latter 19th century and were basically dwarfed by other higher value exports.
By then Japan had lost the war. They had no chances at all. They were done. Allies could have told them to drop their weapons and quit, make some kind of a peace with them, but that was not the agenda.
No.. the Japanese Imperial Army had absolutely no interest in surrender and were basically preparing to defend the homeland to the last soldier. Even after the two atomic bombs had been dropped the vote in the Imperial council to surrender was 3 to2. As horrific as the atomic weapons were they killed fewer people than the firebombings on one city alone, Tokyo.
to make the emperor kneel
Emperor Hirohito?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Alls_Policy
“In a study published in 1996, historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta claims that the Three Alls Policy, sanctioned by Emperor Hirohito himself, was both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of “more than 2.7 million” Chinese civilians. His works and those of Akira Fujiwara about the details of the operation were commented by Herbert P. Bix in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, who claims that the Sankō Sakusen far surpassed the Rape of Nanking not only in terms of numbers, but in brutality as well. The effects of the Japanese strategy were further exacerbated by Chinese military tactics, which included the masking of military forces as civilians, or the use of civilians as deterrents against Japanese attacks. In some places, the Japanese use of chemical warfare against civilian populations in contravention of international agreements was also alleged.”
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If “If” was a 5th we’d all be drunk. I see we are here posting more of this examination of Whiteman’s evil. Let’s get over it Europeans committed evils against Black societies but much of that came from betrayal from within Africa as well.
But here’s why Africans could never have done what Europeans did in the same way because? Africans were in existence first and when Africans were circumventing the globe the civilizations they encountered were inferior to theirs. What qualities do savages have that would have interested the greed of Africans? Lol. Now the savages were all envious eyes looking at Indus Kush, Eygpt and China because these civilizations were flourishing with sophistication.
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Linda:
the Europeans knew the Natives had no immunity to small pox and this gave them a HUGE advantage in their war with the Natives.
http://suite101.com/article/the-history-of-smallpox-in-latin-america-a152524
Agree with much of your other commentary but disagree with the above…. Your average European in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries had very little understanding of disease transmission. The Spaniards and English were not genius, just lucky (for them…) The link you provided above states:
“However, Cortés had another ally, a biological weapon that even he was unaware of. It has been argued that without the smallpox epidemic in Mexico, Cortés may not have succeeded against the Aztecs. Historians Ian and Jenifer Glynn, in The Life and Death of Smallpox, claim that “Without the help of smallpox, even horses and guns could not have enabled Cortéz, with his army of fewer than 900 men, to defeat the Aztecs and conquer Mexico”.
For the most part Europeans.. even doctors were ignorant of how disease was spread until the 19th century.
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oops in an earlier post i menat childbirth itself was a death sentence.
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To Bulanik:
Didn’t the British Army, for instance, use smallpox when they gave contaminated blankets to the Delaware Indians during the Pontiac Rebellion (from 1762 or 1763, I believe)? That Army may not have ‘understood’ the science of their actions, but what difference does that make if they knew what they doing?
The Europeans, pre late 19th century, may not have understood germ theory until then (?), but that’s not the same thing, nor was that any kind of preventative, to its usage.
I think I’ve also read accounts – written in the medieval era – that show Turks and Mongols, for instance, using infected animal carcasses to contaminate enemy water supplies. Or,, instead, they hurled disease-infected corpses into cities they were attacking/besieging. They knew what they were doing to, and what effect it would have, even if they didn’t ‘understand’ it.
Another example I recall was of the Russians using plague corpses against the Swedes in the early 1700s.
Note I also stated: “Your average European in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries had very little understanding of disease transmission…” They started gaining a better understanding by 18th century.
There were episodes of people being executed for spreading “disease and pestilence” by “using sorcery” well into the 17th century in Europe.
But by the 18th century:
” 1718, Smallpox Variolation in England. In 1714, an article appeared in the (English) Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions that laid the foundation for a different view of the possibilities of biological warfare. The article contained a description of a technique used by a physician in Smyrna (now Izmir, present-day Turkey), Giacomo Pylarini, to confer some degree of protection from smallpox. The technique, variolation, involved taking some of the liquid from a person with a mild case of smallpox and rubbing it into a small scratch made on the person to be protected. The variolated individual would usually suffer a mild case of the disease and would then, be immune to further infection on recovery. The risk of death from variolation (estimated at 2 to 3%) was seen as acceptable when compared to mortality rates of the disease among unprotected populations.
Variolation became popular in England because of the actions of Lady Mary Wortley Montague , who, in her youth, survived a case of smallpox that killed her brother. Lady Mary was the wife of Lord Edward Wortley Montague, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. There, Lady Montague observed the practice of variolation as the Turks practiced it since 1670.
Determined not to allow her family suffer as she had, Lady Montague directed the Embassy’s surgeon, Dr. Charles Maitland, to learn the technique. In March 1718, Dr. Maitland variolated the Montague’s four-year-old daughter in the presence of several respected British physicians, including the king’s. With royal interest being aroused, Dr. Maitland was given permission to perform what came to be called the Royal Experiment . Six condemned prisoners were variolated and promised full pardons if they survived. When the prisoners did, indeed, survive (and received their pardons), further experiments were done on charity children. The safety of the procedure thus being deemed adequately established, two of the king’s grandchildren were treated on April 17, 1722. After this, the practice of variolation spread rapidly, reaching even rural areas of England by the 1740s.”
But yes there were attempts at biological warfare against fellow Europeans and at least discussion of it in Pontiac’s rebellion in the mid 18th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac%27s_Rebellion#Siege_of_Fort_Pitt
How effective these attempts were is debatable. Although there seems to be
reasonable evidence that the outbreak of Bubonic plague in Europe was indirectly related to a Mongol siege of a Russian city wherein the Mongols hurled the dead bodies of plague victims into the besieged city. After the siege, it it believed traders spread the illness to Vienna.
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@uncle milton:
The great plague known as Black Death was brought to Europe by the italian merchants from their trading post in the eastern coast of the Black Sea in 1300’s and according many researchers, that was the region where that plague began. Not trough Vienna but directly by boats by italian tradesmen. Ship rats carrying ticks who were contaminated spread the disease into the main land.
BUT there had been out breaks of plague before, most famously in 530’s when the plague almost devastated Constantinopol and the Byzanthine empire and lead into a change in history across the Europe. That same plague arrived into Britain in 530’s too and together with yet debated climate change caused the collapse of the british (southern celtic) kingdoms and launched the renewed drive of the anglosaxons towards the western part of Britain in 550’s. One reason for this was that the british states traded with the Mediterannean world and anglosaxons did not in the same scale. So plague was nithing new in Europe by 1300’s nor certainly by 1700’s.
As for the vaccinations against the small box, in India they knew about vaccinations againts the small box some 2000 years before europeans had any idea what was going on or how to treat it. Granted, they did not use it in a large scale but neither did the europeans use any vaccines untill 1900’s.
The use of disease or plague contaminated corpses or body parts in warfare was common during the Hudred years war between England and France running simultaniously with the Black Death. Perhaps they did not know about the germs but they certainly knew that slinging few plague ridden corpses over the castle or town ramparts would have pretty dramatic results. They also used plague corpses to poison wells etc. So they knew what they were doing by the conquest of Americas.
Plague and its use as a weapon was alaos familiar to the greeks. Athens was almost decimated by an epidemic of plague in ancient times and the whole hellenic world knew the basics of great epidemics: from city to city, island to island with men carrying the disease etc.
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@uncle milton:
“No.. the Japanese Imperial Army had absolutely no interest in surrender and were basically preparing to defend the homeland to the last soldier. Even after the two atomic bombs had been dropped the vote in the Imperial council to surrender was 3 to2. As horrific as the atomic weapons were they killed fewer people than the firebombings on one city alone, Tokyo.”
Yes, that is true. But it doesn’t matter. In 1945 Hitler was doing the same, he was still conducting the war from his bunker moving ghost divisions on his maps, talking about air force attacks etc. and everybody knew what was going on outside the HQ. Even during the Battle of Berlin the germans were still destroying soviet tanks on ratio almost 10 to 1 but that did not matter. War was already lost by then. German tanks were pretty much useless since they had no fuel left.
How much the japanese had fuel in 1945? How much metals? Yes, the imperial army leadership planned the heroic resistance of Japan, but what was the reality? They had no airforce left, they had no navy, they had no raw materials to carry on. Yes, they planned to attack americans with bamboo sticks and swords and such, but was that realistic? Would the japanese done it and for how long? I doubt it. They did not have enough food, not to mention some heroic ideas of grand standing on the trenches.
The atomic bombs were just two bombs. Every one knew, specially after those horrendous bombings of Tokyo and other cities, that if the americans would drop those bombs by the thousands, like they had dropped every kind of other bombs, that would be a total wipe out. The japanese did not have a clue how many A bombs the ebemy had but they knew that americans werre ready to use them after Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
But what ever reason it was to drop those bombs, the nuclear warfare is the logical end to the european idea of warfare: victory by any means possible.
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“Uncle Milton
For the most part Europeans.. even doctors were ignorant of how disease was spread until the 19th century.”
Linda says,
True. I don’t believe they purposely meant to infect the Natives but the Spaniards were aware that the Natives could not fight off the diseases that the Europeans were used to dealing with.
as Bulanik pointed out, they may not have understood the mechanism behind diseases but the Spanish (Europeans in general) understood the devastation that these diseases caused and that diseases went from person to person.. that’s why ships would run like h’ll from a city if they suspected any kind of outbreak.
The Spanish invaders kept great records back then (those priests loved to write) and recorded the depopulation of villages across the Caribbean and down the Central and South American coast.
The Spanish even noted how much better the Native Indian doctors were than European doctors, so yes, they were surprised that the Natives fell like hotrocks.
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Wait; maybe I’m wrong here but didn’t the various diseases picked up from white people reduce the Indians from around 100 million to just a few million in a few years?
If so that would a pretty reasonable estimate to say disease killed off 90+ percent of the native population.
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“At last, we’re getting somewhere: you know of some paper incriminating Africans in the spread of the diseases.
Would you mind sharing?”
I’m too busy to research this thoroughly and I don’t trust any of the sources that try to claim one group or the other spread it when it would have been present in both populations.
That said there is documentation of innoculation being used by Africans to protect themselves from smallpox. Now innoculation can also give you the disease but it provides greater protection then doing nothing at all.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=31296.0
The link above sites actual historic documents in which African and Asian peoples are using innoculation against smallpox.
So our hypothetical African explorers could have still carried the virus but also helped to treat Native population they encountered. The inverse of this though is that their knowledge of germs and disease would have been better and if their minds were bent on conquest and extermination they might have done a better job then their European counterparts.
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@ Sam
That African weapon you were referring to is called a “K’pinga”; and although it was created by the Azande, many other Central African tribes have adopted (and modified) it.
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I dont get that it was major colonising tactics to use diseased blankets or corpses to destroy the Indians . I think there were some sick individuals who did this in the process of the destruction of the Indian civilisations.
For sure the early conquistadores didnt come in using that tactic.As a matter of fact, the Spanish never would have conquered the Aztecs if they didnt have the help of the various disgruntled tribes the Aztecs had defeated, captured and executed by the thousands , to do the heavy fighting.
What the colonisers did was bad enough , I just think disease doesnt translate into purposeful anialation against the Indians except in isolated cases. For me, it would be like blaming the Chinese for when bird flu hits us all.
It seems that Europe was devastated by these diseases also.
Any one ignorant of germs using things diseased as a weapon , is only submitting themselves to the disease also, they sure wouldnt know what immunity is
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@franklin:
That might be it, thanks.
@BR:
Yes, they very often got the diseases themselves too and sometimes used that even as a weapon. I forgot the name of the town which was under a siege during the Hundred years war, but the army outside caught some horrible disease (all lethal and serious diseases were descibed as plagues) and used its own corpses as missiles againts the town by throwing naked corpses over the walls. The town surrendered almost at once but once it was taken, the disease made the occupation impossible. Both sides caught the disease and men died by hundreds.
As for the biological warfare against the native americans, it was done. It has been documented and recorded and written by those who did it and those who witnessed it. Above Bulanik shows one example of it against the natives of the North America. It was just a part of the problem solving. One has to remember that using smallbox or any other disease against the enemy was considered effective and that was all they were thinking.
Poisoning the wells by any means, using human and animal remains, feces, with anything, was part and parcel of the old warfare. same thing was done, if it was know that the enemy down river was using the river as drinking water. Throw all your filth into that river and pretty soon the enemy is hampered by an outbreak of diarreah and worse. Sometimes the armies who did this realised too late that they had to use the same water sources and got into trouble.
It was not science or accurate, there was nothing surgical or fancy in the old warfare. There were no guided missiles, no video feed from cruise missiles, no laser sights or such. It was pretty rude and rugged going. If one had to sacrifice few hundred own men, then so be it.
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@ Linda,
Thanks for letting me know about black conquistadors, that was NEWS to me.
@ Phoebe,
I saw your reply.
@ Bulanik,
Excellent Posts, very interesting to read them.
@ Everyone,
So far, we can establish that, disease decimated at least 90%+ of the native populations of the Americas and surrounding islands. This made conquest much easier.
So, if africans had taken the place of whites, one will have to ask the following question…
– Would they have taken the opportunity to conquer the remaining natives?
Even before that,
– Would black people sail to the americas with the sole aim of conquest? Rather than establishing trading relationships, building a cultural understanding between the 2 etc…
We assume that if you have Power, you’ll only use it to subjugate and conquer on a MASS SCALE like whites did.
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Sam , I have no doubt about what you are saying that some colonisers did this , espcialy in “warfare” , conquests at any costs etc
Its just that the example Bulanik gave is number two Ive heard about small pox as an actualy act of using it as a weapon. Im sure there are others, but, this is a far cry from being a general policy…
This isnt any kind of trying to make colonisers any less horrible for the genocide commited, Im just saying, the real disease was brought over unconciously from the solders and sailors coming over on the first ships. They werent keeping dead corpses on ice or diseased material ready to use it on the enemy. A lot of them died from malaria.
So , my position is, even though some extremly evil people used these ghastly methods, it wasnt coloniser policy to use disease to defeat the Indians…simple massacre and breaking of treaties was probably their prefered method of conquering and distroying
Disease has its own agenda
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So back to the subject matter….lol. The questioin..”What if it were reversed and blacks had guns and ocean-going ships before whites did?” …is quite ignorant and irrational question in my opinion. That kind of questioning is only to make a racist feel better about their history. If it was really a logical thought and had some truth behind it…then it would have already happened. The last time I checked…they have boats and guns. .it is an argument to derail and hide from the truth of what really happened. Too many times in my life I have heard the white men comment “take em out before they have a chance to take you out” now where do you think that thought process originated from?
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Um Aba, Africans may not have had guns first but they surely did have ships/boats FIRST before whites. Fact.
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They already knew the world was round BEFORE whites did. FACT!
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Wilson,
You’re welcome.
Bulanik, great info. You wrote,
“The survivors taught almost nothing about the old culture to their children. It was as if they were ashamed of it, and this shame they passed on to their children by their silence and by allowing cultural atrocities to be committed against their children.”
This thought pattern has been passed on even today, which I think is a crime. Look how the Natives in Central America are treated like dirt…people are stil ashamed, when they should be proud.
I had posed a question earlier.
What do you know concerning how the different African tribes/nations treated each other in the past when a larger or more powerful nation invaded and expanded into another country?
How did they treat the people who they conquered?
Did they enslave the occupied population? Were they viewed as less then human by the conquering nation?
To get back on topic, do you think the African conquistadors would have behaved similar to the Europeans if the had military and technology to support them?
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Denise, I don’t think that is a provable claim. Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere 8000 years ago, and probably people knew it even earlier than that. I have no idea when Sub Saharan Africans found out this fact-maybe earlier, maybe later, but that is your claim to provide proof for..
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Correction, almost 3000 years ago-NOT 8,000
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If the situation was reversed and they apply the “one drop rule”, African-Americans will be called Euro-Americans, and Luther King, Farrakhan, Cassius Clay, Obama, etç… will be considered Whites.
The American Blacks will look like Kenneth Kaunda, Jonas Savimbi or the father of Obama…
You know, the main difference between Whites and Blacks in America, is that the former are only part white…
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While there may have been isolated incidences of purposeful smallpox transmission to Indians, the fact is that the disease was to damn scary and to likely to blow back in your face to make the claim that this was a policy. To this date that is the biggest single factor that has prevented biological warfare from occurring in any real way – you are just as likely to destroy your own troops/population as the enemy. Biological weapons have the potential to make nuclear weapons look like pikers when it comes to WMDs.
I also see quite a few dubious claims here. It was no mystery that the earth was round in Europe among the educated for many thousands of years. The argument was over the size of the earth. Columbus was using a grossly undersized claim for the circumference of the earth, part of the reason he had so much trouble getting funded by those who knew better. Had the Americas not been where they were, his crew would have long since died before ever getting close to what his real goal was, the East Indies. In other words, he got lucky. The natives he encountered were not lucky.
The claim that Africans had boats before Europeans is one that would be impossible to ever settle and is silly to even make. People everywhere on the planet have used boats living next to large bodies of water from the first time they saw a log floating. One claim that can be made and I will is that Europeans used boats extensively because most Europeans lived relatively close to an ocean. Africans didn’t. Chinese didn’t. North American and South American natives didn’t. There were of course island cultures around each of these that did.
The whole question at the start of this article is somewhat silly. Africans had no need to do what the Europeans did, so it didn’t happen that Africa developed a sea-faring culture. The Chinese had one but their primary target, Japan, resisted being taken over in a number of well documented historical incidents. What other use they would have had for a large sea-faring economy is not clear to me when they too dealt with repeated Mongol invasions just as Europe did. Unlike in Europe China had the population to absorb and civilize the people from their north.
There is more than enough evidence to show that Africans are no different than any other peoples when it comes to warfare and the rules if any under which it occurred. Other conclusions are mostly wishful thinking.
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In most case the conquered nation had to pay annual tribute to the conquering one, as well as provide troops in times of war but retained some autonomy and its culture. Empires such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu and Kongo were built on this model. The use of the vehicular language of the imperial power did not mean the suppression of the local languages. There are cases of Christian and Muslim nations imposing their religion to vassal states but it was not systematic. Rulers following traditional African religions had a tendency to appropriate the divinities of the defeated nations (in addition to their own) instead.
Another common occurrence was a small foreigner group imposing its leadership on local communities. In this situation the newcomer’s culture either became the culture of the ruling class while the bulk of the population retained its culture, or the invader adopted the culture of the majority.
That’s what occurred in my country (Benin): the 3 main kingdoms of the southern part (Allada, Danhome & Porto-Novo) were founded by princes from Tado (in current day Togo); in the northern part of the country, the founders of the Bariba kingdoms are said to be immigrants from current day Nigeria.
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@Joshua
Whites got lucky, everything fell into place for them. They acquired gunpowder from the chinese, which allowed them to have superior weaponry, sea-worthy ships that could sail across rough seas, tribal conflict among blacks, native-american exposure to disease, which prevented them from forming an effective counteroffensive, etc. If native-americans had been able to withstand “the whiteman’s diseases” at the time, history would have turned out differently.
Tyrone
MindScape
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Yes, Tyrone, whites got lucky, in part because they were forced to do things like develop technology that people in more liveable areas weren’t.
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^ Yeah like gunpowder? LOL
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I agree with Tyrone on this one. I feel that luck played a great deal in their ability to slaughter, take over, and rule. I feel the natives could have had an upper hand because they knew the land and could use traps and ambush better the gun carriers. But they were decimated by the cowards… that were claiming peace and friendship and then performed sneak attacks on the unsuspecting natives…all while the natives were dying off from the diseases that they brought with them as well.
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Oh my. Another genius who did learn the theory of evolution in Marvel Comics books.
Dude, you guys need to quit with this nonsense. You should know by now that the HBD myth of tropical areas as Gardens of Eden is, well, a myth. Tropical areas are the most challenging areas for human life. They are either too dry or too wet. Africa for instance is 60% desert and most of the rest is covered with dense rainforests unfit to agriculture. In comparison, Europe and its mostly temperate climate is much easier to human settlement.
Here, some reading for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Africa
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@ Dahoman X
You worded that so much more eloquently that I could. His comment stunk of that “Snow makes you smarter” nonsense.
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The nomadic lifestyle of much of Africa, Asia, and the Americas wasn’t suited to Europe, so Europe had to develop alternatives. Europe had no large plains covered with game, was very heavily forested in large part, and there were significant water and mountain barriers to trade.
It has nothing to do with better, easier, smarter, or snow. It has only to do with different problems requiring different solutions.
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Climate doesn’t make one “smarter”. Civilization does. Genetic studies show that evolution has accelerated over the last 10,000 years. This evolution has occurred primarily in the brain. And it’s seen most strongly in areas that have had civilization the longest. That’s why populations that have had civilization for a long time are usually smarter than populations that haven’t.
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Abagond, I would be extremely grateful if you could find the time to comment on the following; in the past I have mentioned this idea to an extremely racist relative, the idea that the current world order may be the reuslt of a simple coincidence- the fact that whites simply happened to gain access to guns and ships before black people did. However, in her mind this just seemed to cement the fact that white people are naturally superior to black people in every way, except for some bad apples. Surely, if blacks were intelligent and competent, they would have gained access to guns and ships first? (Her words, not mine.) Abagond I would be extremely interested in hearing your thoughts on her perspective, because at that point in the conversation, I gave up on her.
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Everything moves in Cycles , different groups has had their time to shine, then made way for others, now it’s their time (whites), who knows who will come to the fore in the future.
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@pentagon:
“Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere 8000 years ago”.
Eeh, no, they did not. 8000 years ago there was no Greece, greek city states, greeks etc.
@duckduckgoofs:
“Climate doesn’t make one “smarter”. Civilization does. Genetic studies show that evolution has accelerated over the last 10,000 years. This evolution has occurred primarily in the brain. And it’s seen most strongly in areas that have had civilization the longest. That’s why populations that have had civilization for a long time are usually smarter than populations that haven’t.”
😀 Really? So according to you the egyptians are the smartest and most intelligent folks aorund, since their civilisation started 6000 years ago? Greeks are intelligent giants too, right? And irakis must be the smartest and most intelligent since their forefathers sumerians were the first civilization, right? 😀
And following your logic, northern europeans must be the dummest, since we did not have civilization such as those at all? Right? 😀
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Sam
Psychometrics does, in fact, show that Egyptians, Greeks and Iraqis are more intelligent than populations who’ve never had civilization. And 5,000 years ago I have no doubt they would have been among the brightest. However, none have been at the top for at least 2,000 years. So there is selective pressure until a balance is reached between the population and their environment, civilization, etc. At which point the selective pressure merely maintains equilibrium. They plateaued at a lower level because their environment, civilization, etc peaked at a lower level. In other words, they stagnated.
Also, you were dishonest to quote pentagon as having said 8000. He had already said it was a typo and stated the correct figure at 3000.
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Thanks Dahoman X and Bulanik, great information to know.
“In most case the conquered nation had to pay annual tribute to the conquering one, as well as provide troops in times of war but retained some autonomy and its culture”
From what you wrote, this practice seems similar to what the Spanish did with the Natives, who had to give tributes in gold to Spain or face retribution.
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@Linda
This sounds more similar to the Ottoman Empire to me.
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@duckduckgoofs:
“you were dishonest to quote pentagon as having said 8000. He had already said it was a typo and stated the correct figure at 3000.”
3000 years is still wrong.
“Psychometrics does, in fact, show that Egyptians, Greeks and Iraqis are more intelligent than populations who’ve never had civilization. And 5,000 years ago I have no doubt they would have been among the brightest. However, none have been at the top for at least 2,000 years. So there is selective pressure until a balance is reached between the population and their environment, civilization, etc. At which point the selective pressure merely maintains equilibrium. They plateaued at a lower level because their environment, civilization, etc peaked at a lower level. In other words, they stagnated.”
Poop. Check your history books and see what was in those areas 2000 ago. Pretty much more civilization than in any where in western or northern Europe. So your poop is just poop.
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Sam, maybe you missed the correction of the date, as it sits there directly below the original typo, and must be hard to find, but yes, the Greeks are about 3500 years old as a distinct culture.
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@pentagon: Ok, but you claimed that they knew by then, 3000 and now 3500 years ago, that the earth was round etc. That is poop.
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@ duckduckgoofs
Wait! There exist populations which have no civilization?? Do you have any example?
And how you define “civilization”?
@ Linda & Bulanik
Neither is it to me.
But more importantly, the main difference is that conquest/aggression was not the only mode of interaction whenever Africans (and Asians, as far as I know) encountered foreign civilizations.
On the other hand, every time European cultures were confronted to different cultures it systematically ended up in violence. Even when said cultures welcomed the Europeans as civilized peoples are supposed to do.
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@bulanik: Yes, Africa is certainly a vast huge continent. My take on this is this: anything humane can and could have happened in Africa. Wars, certainly. Conquests, certainly. Massacres, most likely. Genocides, yes, we know at least one. BUT the big difference is perhaps the more ritualistic aspect of conflict.
It seems that many african cultures and/or people have an cultural system which stops wars short of total wipe out. While a war may be brutal, savage and terrible, it many cases there are limits and tabus which you are not supposed to cross over. Even in the horrifying civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the seemingly insanity of the conflicts had some kind of mechanism which stopped them being absolute genocides, though they were horrible enough.
In european warfare there are none as long as the conflict is on. We like to think otherwise but comparing other cultures the european way of fighting wars is no rules-let the last man stand- type of culture. As long as there is a war, there are no limits. Also I believe that the material aspect of conflicts are more important to europeans than anything else. Even the insane ideology of the nazis was based on Lebensraum, Living space for the master race. So lesser races and non humans had to be wiped out so that germanic races would have the world as their own for economic gain
So I beliebe that the european culture of cinflict is more geared to winning at all costs than anything else and that separates it from say african ones. This does not mean that other cultures do not value winning as much. It is just that in european culture it is everything there is.
@dahoman x:
The europeans who confronted the foreign cultures have always been after a gain of some sorts. Even the so called ethnoresearchers and antropologists did not just want to get to know other cultures: very often they used both african and american native people and cultures just as means to advance their own academic careers.
Many europeans who went over the seas were after money. Someway, somehow they would get rich. Period. Many many of them were criminals, many of them outright robbers, murderers etc. These men, and to smaller extent women, set the tone from the beginning. It was a land grab, gold rush, diamond rush, ivory trade, what ever. Even the great cross Atlantic slavery got its wings because it was good business. Big business. Possibility to make money. Slaves meant money in the plantations, mines, cotton fields etc. and they meant money for slave traders for a long time.
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@ Sam & Bulanik
A long quotation of a paper I found on the net. It’s titled “Indigenous social mechanisms of conflicts resolution in Kenya”, but the author implies it applies to most African cultures:
http://payson.tulane.edu/conflict/Cs%20St/MKACON2.html
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[…] always said the quickest way to repeal Stand Your Ground laws is for the the situation to reverse, and Al Sharpton and Company tell black folks to arm themselves and start Standing Their […]
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According to Arab historians, Bakari II, the 9th Mansa of Mali, launched 2 expeditions towards the Americas in 1310 and 1311. Whether they were successful or not is debated, but it seems that the emperor’s motivation was intellectual curiosity and not will of conquest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_II
Such motivation would be coherent with the Kurugan Fuga Charter, the oral constitution of the Mali, which is built upon the same principles listed in my previous post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kouroukan_Fouga
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@bulanik:
When whites found gold in native lands in the american west, the local peiple could not figure out what made that yellow metal so important. For them it was pretty but useless, so they could not understand the basic theme of a gold rush. I have no idea how africans understud wealth but it seems that gold was tied to more ritualistic value than actual value as wealth.
It is estimated that during the european conquests there were some 200 independent cities competing against each others and against the nobles. Add to that the competing merchant unions and guilds, privateers and individual adventurers you get the picture. It was only after the rulers of european countries and estates gained upper hand and consolidated their power at home, these conquests became national endevours. But for the first 100 years or so, they were more or less private enterprises. And they were driven by greed. Greed for money, wealth and power.
As for the social cohesion, Europe was not nor it is even today, despite the EU propaganda, a single unit with single mind and culture. It is a patch work of various cultures and ethnic groups, intrest groups and powerful men and even at local level the history of competition is visible today. Just look at football. In Glasgow you support either Celtics or Rangers and never both. In LIverpool it is Everton or Liverpool. In Manchester it is either City or United etc.etc.
In southern Italy this competitiveness is apparent when we look at the society as a whole. So called mafias, organized crime or what ever you wish to call them, are more or less unions of men who try to gain upper hand in the economic competition trough any means. Trough violence and power come the economic benefits.
If we look at the cut troath world of Wall street, it is apparent. Bernie Madoff stole 50 000 000 000 dollars. Stole And all the experts say he was not the only one. Financial crisis of 2008 was a huge pyramid scheme according to the Noble prize winner of economics. So the whole sub prime mess was just a swindle in which someone had to loose.
The same thing is going on right now in EU with the euro. Private banking sector extorts the tax payers of Europe with hunderds of billions of dollars using a national debt as a leverage, after they pushed billions in cheap loans to those governments who were stupid enough to take them, or clever enough. Some estimate that the greek government, the actual polticians and officials, stole billions there too.
If we think of this whole culture of stealing, robbing, swindling, we get the to the bottom of the cultural differences between whites and others. In Europe as well as in USA it has always been Everybodys war against everybody. It is every man for himself. Common good is only good when it benefits myself. I don’t have to care what happens to my neighbour as long as I am ok. I don’t have to give a fk about other people as long as it doesn’t affect me.
It may be called Individualism or by any other name but that is what it is. Inside the family mother competes with father, kids with their parents and against each other. In the larger context a single family competes against other single families, whole families compete against others, clans against each other etc. Churches compete with each other. Who gets the most worshippers?
Even in chinese culture, even the most powerful are part of the whole. One man is nothing, but the whole is everything. There is a sense of history, continuum. You are just a one fish in a lake full of fishes. You may be the richest and the most powerful, but you still just part of the whole. If and when present day chinese businesman forgets this, the society takes him out or puts him in order. Many see this as part of communism but it is not. Chinese communism today has nothing to do with communism or socialism. In China the ecominical system is so rough that american businesses can only dream about those freedoms and conditions where workers have no rights and the goverment backs you up. But if you think you are alone, forget about it.
In the european and american culture, you are alone and on your own. You better get what you can. By any means possible.
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“@pentagon: Ok, but you claimed that they knew by then, 3000 and now 3500 years ago, that the earth was round etc. That is poop.
Sam, prove your claim, please.
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@pentagon: You made the claim, you provide the evidence.
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@ lil tejo
Blacks can be in the sun, Whites cannot be in the sun. This was a major factor that we forget as “Sun People.” Black folk would have no problem being in the sun, so, whites would not be needed…Simple Logic!
Tyrone
Black Eagles
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That, and black people could grow sugarcane and the like in their own backyard!
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Then what do you think has caused white Europeans & white Americans to think in such a deluded, falsely superior way? Something in the history & cultures of Europe, but what was so different? There was the whole lust for creating an empire with control over the whole world, but where did that come from? I have seen Gun, Germs & Steel and studied similar ideas, but the more possible answers I find, the more questions I have.
Perhaps the pursuit of power & dominance comes from individualism: I should do what’s best for me, not what’s best for everyone. There is also a difference in religions. Historically, Christianity has focused on converting as many people in as many places as possible. But religions like Buddhism & Taoism are more based on one finding his or her own truth, even when guided by others. In that case, it wouldn’t make much sense to travel to the opposite side of the Earth to tell a bunch of strangers what to do & how to think.
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If you really think agree with the premise of this article; I personally think you are hallucinating. My brief reading of history is the story of man’s inhumanity is the norm not the exception.
But go ahead
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[…] Abagond asks in a blog entry if blacks had guns an ocean-going ships before whites, would they have raided, pillaged and […]
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@Teddy
I’ve thought about this for some time, but, i don’t see us being evil like that. God gave black people the best of everything…warm climate, curly hair, melanin, sexual and athletic prowess, ageless beauty, artistic ability, and so forth. The incentive would have never been strong enuf to jump to the other side. Yes, whites brought us to the Americas for labor, but, that wasn’t the only factor in the equation. Whites wanted what they didn’t have…Blackness! This is the underlying truth that most whites shy away from. Whites have never been 100% happy being the lighter shade. If they were truly happy, i wouldn’t be a member of this blog right now, because i would have nothing to bitch about. Talking about this issue is uncomfortable for whites, specifically whitemen. Whiteness is a fragile thing, it can be here today and gone the next. This internal conflict creates the racial anxiety that we witness in white culture. The worship of all things african, yet, the desire to control and exploit remains intact. In a nutshell, whites aim to run away from who they are. In doing so, others get caught up in the crash at the same time. Honest whites will admit the truth, but most won’t. The “Why” of someone or something is what i aim to know about. There are reasons why humans do and think as they do.
Tyrone
Black Eagles
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@ Tyrone
“Vanity, definitely my favorite sin. Self-love, so basic…”
Thanks for the laugh!
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“The main driving forces behind the European invasion was massive state debt and extreme overpopulation;”
As I said, overpopulation causes wars.
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Also overlooked is that the booty of plundering the earth by Europeans is now used to buy oil. So now the Muslim world benefits from European colonialism.
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As I Said, Overpopulation Causes Wars.
I thought it was hemorrhoids and gas pains amongst other things! You learn something new everyday, my bad!
So Now The Muslim World Benefits From European Colonialism.
Well someone has to!
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By being filthy rich, and building a lot of mosques, the Wahhabis have succeeded in becoming the mainstream Islam.
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All over the world. It still stands that the loot of the West was and is used to buy Saudi oil, and Saudi-Arabia uses that money to build mosques all over the world, but Europe in particular.
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I am answering your question. Mosques are central to Islam. They don’t spring from the ground. If most Muslims are poor, it must be the oil sheiks who build them.
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If the oil wealth is used to build mosques instead of caring for the material well-being of the people, the fault is with the oil sheiks who misuse Islam as a kind of opiate. I am aware of the economic theories of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. They criticize capitalism better than the regular Left nowadays. My own system closely resembles their ideas more than it resembles the regular Left.
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I do not think that political Islam is ill-equipped for the complexities of modern government, and I do not think it is a spent force. In fact, I think it is the next best system after mine. My system can be found at my website.
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So much simple-minded ‘material determinism’ on this thread.
Eg – this group held this technology, therefore xxxxx….
It isn’t the tool – it is what one does with it…
—
Fundamentally:
Is group xxxxx organised, or not?
Is group xxxxx disciplined, or not?
What is group xxxxx interested in doing each day?
How aggressive is group xxxxx?
—
Those factors are why things play out as they do.
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@Jones
Do you honestly expect these one-sided argument spouters to understand this?
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This thread is so dumb. When Columbus arrived in central america he documented that the natives mentioned the presence of black people.Africans and the natives of the americas co-existed before the advent of the white man and there were no acts of genocide or upheaval in the native americans lives and resources . Actually the africans in the americas enhanced the natives lives. the relationship of Native Americans and Africans
goes back thousands of years! Africans were actively in business with
Native Americans long before Columbus wandered lost into the Caribbean
and thinking he found India, erroneously called the Natives “Indians,” a
name which has stuck. At one time the African and American continents
were joined, as proven by their similarity of tropical plants, animals
and geographic traits, plus their appearance of fitting together.Aztec murals clearly depict blacks with natives, I mean… Get real..Once again we are being asked to overlook that which is before our very eyes in a sad acquiescance to white supremacy..”shaking head”..
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Lol I just had to laugh at this thread. I think a better question to debate is, Where did WHITES come from? They are not from AFRICA, any part. They werent the early Europeans. And they are DEF, not what they call the Middle EAST today. So, Where do they come from? That should be debated and questioned.
LOL, sea fairing ships!!! They have documented evidence of TRADE with CHINA and SOUTH Africa. I highly doubt they were walking back and forth 1000’s of years ago. Africans were traveling back and forth to what is known as GREECE and the AMERICAs
Have you not heard of the VIKINGS and their CREW members? Some more research should be completed before making some dumb uneducated post such as this.
Its truly unfortunate that the education system in our country pumps out such ridiculous idiots….
FACT: EVERY ancient culture EVERY single one. HAD 1 NAME for WHITES
every single 1. ITs commonly translated to equal DEVIL/DEMON. PLEASE look it up. The only thing that whites have contributed to ancient civ is DEATH, DISEASE, and DESTRUCTION.
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Oh, so now the vikings were black? LOL! Holy crap there’s a lot of black supremacism and racism in here. Enjoy your sad lives 😀
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I do not believe that Inferno was saying that Vikings were black.
But since Vikings had the habit of blending in the society they’d conquered, my guess is that at least some of them ended up black.
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If blacks had guns 500 years ago, they’d have killed themselves off,
Africans with spears and clubs were doing a great job, killing, slaving, themselves off till Europeans ended it.
Look how they till this day still try to genocide the bushmen.
Look at any black nation, down to any black neighborhood, not hard to see.
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[…] Abagond asks in a blog entry whether blacks would have raided, pillaged and enslaved so many people if they had had guns and […]
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This post is a joke, and you clearly have a vendetta against white Americans. You mention the Romans and the Greeks, yet you have the audacity to say white Americans are clearly the END of the spectrum in militant and destructive behavior “wiping out their enemies” (native americans). Alexander the Great massacred populations across Asia for no reason other than to conquer. Greece had no hope to hold onto that land. Julius Caesar massacred untold numbers for the purposes of gaining political power in Rome. Romans absolutely practiced genocide against their enemies (just look at the samnites, and nearby nomadic tribes). Consider the 6000 roman slaves crucified by Crassus after the third Servile war just to prove a point. I forget, how many slaves did “White Americans” crucify? How many countries did “White America” conquer and enslave? O wait, they actually bought all their slaves from Africans who conquered other African tribes and sold them off. Sounds like Africans had more in common with Roman conquerers than “White America”.
The United States, although not truly innocent by any means, atteocities were certainly committed, pales in comparison to these peoples. The US practiced westward expansion through settlers, not armies, not even close. There was military responses, and on occasion military force was used against native Americans, but at no point did the Army of the notes States just go ahead and march west wiping out native American tribes. The Louisiana purchase was bought from the French. Northwest territory given to the us in the Treaty of Paris. Alaska purchased from Russia. Western US taken eventually from Spain and Mexico, not Native Americans.
My point is different European countries took “ownership” of the continent. “White Americans” simply took the land from Europe, they didn’t massacre natives, that had been done for them by Spanish conqusitadors, Portuguese, and Great Britain.
When it comes to race, drawing a line in the sand and saying “this race does this” and “that race does that”, just stop. All races are just human and no one should be implicated of any evil, social injustice, or absolute difference based on the color of their skin. Americans promoting racial segregation, slavery, etc, was wrong, absolutely. Anyone saying “whites” are evil imperial conquerors and blacks are somehow different because of their skin is just as racist, and that is wrong and promotes continued racism and simply serves to propogate racial tensions in the United States and that is evil.
We are all equal, we are all human. We are all capable of evil and prone to similar behaviors in different sitiations. There’s winners and there’s losers. Social behaviors are not determined by race but by culture and situation. Humans need to stop looking for someone to blame for a group to blame, and start looking for a way to truly end all this racist garbage happening in the United States.
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Columbus’ own accounts of how his pale self was treated by the people he met reveals a certain humanity that they possessed. It’s likely that other people would simply not be capable of doing the things that whites have done on the scale that they did it. Their culture would not have placed them on a path towards developing more and more destructive weapons. For example, those who have a very reverent view of the land would not be able to reconcile that with creating a bomb that would deform life and render a place uninhabitable. The unique amorality of European culture, in which anything goes in the pursuit of power, allows them to destroy the world in order to control it.
As some pointed out before, the horrors that Europeans later unleashed on the world were prefigured in their treatment of each other in Europe.
To quote Marimba Ani’s Yurugu (page 416)
”
Violence and physical and emotional brutality are part of the Western way of life – a fact well demonstrated in Alphonso Pinckney’s The American Way Of Violence (1972). This characteristic of the culture, along with several others (eg. the capitalistic ethic, aggressiveness, competitiveness, the isolating concept of self) is a potential threat to the survival and unity of the cultural whole. Clearly, it is not in the interests of European nationalism to allow such destructiveness to be unleashed upon the very people on whose survival the culture depends. This tendency is therefore curbed within the culture, and European ideology (the values that are presented to the individual) inhibits or limits the violence and brutality with which one European can treat another. The concept of the cultural other contributes to the survival of European culture, i.e., to its internal cohesion, acting to maintain the integrity of its asili [lit. seed].
The bombing of Japan was culturally supportable because the Japanese were considered to be cultural others. The massacres in Vietnam; the torture during the Algerian Revolution; the treatment of Africans in South Africa; Leopold’s mutilations in the Congo; the treatment first of the indigenous population and then of kidnapped Africans in America – all these phenomena involved the interaction of Europeans with the cultural other. The pattern presented by the histiory of European behavior towards majority peoples must be ethnologically interpreted as evidence of a concept of us as those who may be treated with any amount of violence and brutality. The pattern indicates that acts of violence committed against majority peoples are not ethically condemned in European culture – there is no ideological basis from which to do so. These cultural-historical facts must be taken as evidence of the existence of the European concept of the cultural other; a concept generated by the asili of European culture.
The European is capable of decimating whole populations of cultural others. Actions taken on behalf of the European imperialist enterprise attest to the fact that, according to the “logic” of European ideology, cultural others can be destroyed with impunity – without inhibitive emotional reaction among those who kill or from the culture as a whole. Cohen describes the situation in the Congo under Leopold:
Whole districts were depopulated. Of eight villages with a population of over 3000, only ten persons were left. Of another district the population dropped in fifteen tears from 50000 to 5000. The Bolangi tribe, formerly numbering 40000, sank to 8000. King Leopold, it is calculated, netted a profit of between three and five thousand million sterling, and could call to God to witness the purity to his motives and his desire to promote civilization.
On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m., Paul Tippin, acting for the American people dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb was known to be more devastating than any previously developed. Approximately one minute after dropping it, Tippin could feel the effects of tremors in his plane flying about 30000 feet above, and when he looked down a short while later all that he could see that was left of the city was a kind of “black debris”. He had been anxious during those first few seconds before the bomb exploded. “Maybe it won’t work,” he thought. But with stisfaction and relief he sent a message back to his superiors in the United States; “Results better than expected.” Back home, President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes were quite pleased. Tippin reported a “routine” flight back; he even let his subordinate take the controls and went to the back of the plane to “get some sleep.” On the ground 70000 people had been killed; 70000 more werae injured; radation sickness would kill approximately 1000 more in the years to come. The President of the United States called it “the greatest thing in history”
”
QUOTE ENDS
Basically they are a uniquely monstrous people and, on a certain level, they know it. While reading about the possibility of the Greek debt default in this global economy based on debt-slavery, I read an article which mentioned that the Euro was a political rather than economic strategy.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8859741/greek-financial-crisis-euro
“The drive for the Euro has been motivated by politics not economics. The aim has been to link Germany and France so closely as to make a future European war impossible, and to set the stage for a federal United States of Europe.”
That’s the European trying to navigate the consequences of the first paragraph of the excerpt from Marimba Ani’s 1994 book. Somehow a fundamentlly, violent, self-centered, isolating culture has to try to prevent its own implosion.
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Adam k
Whites did not buy all their slaves from Africans. There were a great sum of Africans aquired as a result of raiding.
As to you trying to seperate white Americans from the Europeans, that really make no sense seeing as those Europeans are the “white Americans” that started this all. They are not some magical seperate entity that killed off the natives a disappeared into the night. They are the very same people who murdered, raped, and destroyed lands and continued to carry out a system of white supremacy, while claiming themselves as white Americans. They are one in the same.
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Adam K said:
“The US practiced westward expansion through settlers, not armies, not even close. There was military responses, and on occasion military force was used against native Americans, but at no point did the Army of the notes States just go ahead and march west wiping out native American tribes.”
Here’s a list of wars the U.S. government involved itself with from 1776 to 1900. If you look closely you will notice a pattern of perpetual conflict the majority of which was aimed at native Americans. The westward expansion of settlers coincided with continuous military engagements that either pushed back or eliminated native Americans entirely. This is the time line for what 150 years of genocide and rape looks like.
Buying stolen or land occupied originally by other Europeans countries doesn’t give the U.S. moral equivalence or right of ownership.
Adam K said: “Anyone saying “whites” are evil imperial conquerors and blacks are somehow different because of their skin is just as racist, and that is wrong and promotes continued racism and simply serves to propagate racial tensions in the United States and that is evil.”
Well that sentence is a bundle of confusion. If anything ignoring “our” own history perpetuates the kind of denial that you show.
The Romans had their Empire and their narcissistic effigies of themselves accompanied with their privilege. But they no longer exist as a race because they became absorbed by the people they conquered. Similarly the West is white and that ruling tribe is the anthropocentric reflection of the Empire. Everything revolves around that.
History does show that empires play themselves out and the current one held together by petrol dollars, multi national corporations and low intensity perpetual war is ultimately unsustainable.
1776 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamagua Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War
1777 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War
1778 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1779 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1780 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1781 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1782 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1783 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1784 – Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War, Oconee War
1785 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1786 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1787 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1788 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1789 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1790 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1791 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1792 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1793 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1794 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1795 – Northwest Indian War
1796 – No major war
1797 – No major war
1798 – Quasi-War
1799 – Quasi-War
1800 – Quasi-War
1801 – First Barbary War
1802 – First Barbary War
1803 – First Barbary War
1804 – First Barbary War
1805 – First Barbary War
1806 – Sabine Expedition
1807 – No major war
1808 – No major war
1809 – No major war
1810 – U.S. occupies Spanish-held West Florida
1811 – Tecumseh’s War
1812 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Seminole Wars, U.S. occupies Spanish-held Amelia Island and other parts of East Florida
1813 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Peoria War, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in West Florida
1814 – War of 1812, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in Florida, Anti-piracy war
1815 – War of 1812, Second Barbary War, Anti-piracy war
1816 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1817 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1818 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1819 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1820 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1821 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)
1822 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)
1823 – Anti-piracy war, Arikara War
1824 – Anti-piracy war
1825 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1826 – No major war
1827 – Winnebago War
1828 – No major war
1829 – No major war
1830 – No major war
1831 – Sac and Fox Indian War
1832 – Black Hawk War
1833 – Cherokee Indian War
1834 – Cherokee Indian War, Pawnee Indian Territory Campaign
1835 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War
1836 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Missouri-Iowa Border War
1837 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Osage Indian War, Buckshot War
1838 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Buckshot War, Heatherly Indian War
1839 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars
1840 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade Fiji Islands
1841 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade McKean Island, Gilbert Islands, and Samoa
1842 – Seminole Wars
1843 – U.S. forces clash with Chinese, U.S. troops invade African coast
1844 – Texas-Indian Wars
1845 – Texas-Indian Wars
1846 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars
1847 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars
1848 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War
1849 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians
1850 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, California Indian Wars, Pitt River Expedition
1851 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars
1852 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars
1853 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, Walker War, California Indian Wars
1854 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians
1855 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Yakima War, Winnas Expedition, Klickitat War, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay
1856 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, Tintic War
1857 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Utah War, Conflict in Nicaragua
1858 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Mohave War, California Indian Wars, Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-Paloos War, Utah War, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay
1859 Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Pecos Expedition, Antelope Hills Expedition, Bear River Expedition, John Brown’s raid, U.S. forces launch attack against Paraguay, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1860 – Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Paiute War, Kiowa-Comanche War
1861 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign
1862 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Dakota War of 1862,
1863 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Goshute War
1864 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Snake War
1865 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Colorado War, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War
1866 – Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Franklin County War, U.S. invades Mexico, Conflict with China
1867 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua and attack Taiwan
1868 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Battle of Washita River, Franklin County War
1869 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War
1870 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War
1871 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, Kingsley Cave Massacre, U.S. forces invade Korea
1872 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Franklin County War
1873 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Apache Wars, Cypress Hills Massacre, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1874 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Red River War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1875 – Conflict in Mexico, Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Eastern Nevada, Mason County War, Colfax County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1876 – Texas-Indian Wars, Black Hills War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1877 – Texas-Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Black Hills War, Nez Perce War, Mason County War, Lincoln County War, San Elizario Salt War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1878 – Paiute Indian conflict, Bannock War, Cheyenne War, Lincoln County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1879 – Cheyenne War, Sheepeater Indian War, White River War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1880 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1881 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1882 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1883 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1884 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1885 – Apache Wars, Eastern Nevada Expedition, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1886 – Apache Wars, Pleasant Valley War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1887 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1888 – U.S. show of force against Haiti, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1889 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1890 – Sioux Indian War, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Ghost Dance War, Wounded Knee, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1891 – Sioux Indian War, Ghost Dance War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1892 – Johnson County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1893 – U.S. forces invade Mexico and Hawaii
1894 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1895 – U.S. forces invade Mexico, Bannock Indian Disturbances
1896 – U.S. forces invade Mexico
1897 – No major war
1898 – Spanish-American War, Battle of Leech Lake, Chippewa Indian Disturbances
1899 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars
1900 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars
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@ Origin
I think you are lumping a much too large span of time together. That the Europeans restricted the use of violence within Europe relative to the rest of the World is a phenomenon of only the 19th century with some predecessors in the 18th century. And it disbanded at the end of World War One.
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@L of M,
If you are going to use stuff like the Asian Atrocity argument to show that whites are not uniquely evil, please do it to your heart’s content here:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/asian-atrocity-argument/)
Of if you need to defend white people by showing they are not uniquely evil in general, there is plenty of space to do it here:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/whites-are-not-uniquely-evil/)
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@Kartofell
I think you miss the point. The point Marimba was making in Yurugu, with which I concur, is that the inate facets of the culture are antithetical to cohesiveness. This gives it an advantage in terms of the expression of brutality against those defined as being “other” but also leaves it susceptible to self-destruction when those attributes are expressed intraculturally. The restiction of use of violence within the culture, for its own preservation, is straining against its natural tendencies. So it’s not contradictory to what she’s saying if you observe that there have been many wars in Europe.
@Lord of Mirkwood
I don’t care what you think.
Back to Yurugu
pg 242
”
But according to European mythology, they are indeed in possession of an objectivity that places them, as it were, way ahead of the pack. For while others flounder in a sea of emotion (i.e., cultural commitment) that colors and clouds their vision, Europeans are able to rise above this attachment (identification). With rationality and objectivity comes “universality”. Europeans are closest to being “universal” because, by being rational, they are the best able to choose and design the proper social and intellectual forms for all people. They are what it is hoped others will become, however remote that possibility may be. By being objective their vision and interpretation can be international in scope and have universal significance, as opposed to being parochial and culturally bound. The myth continues.
“
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@L of M,
The vast majority of people on this blog do not do that.
But, my question, why do you feel the need to defend white people by pointing fingers at the atrocities of non-white people? By doing that, you are attracting a lot of pushback. It also has been pointed out that that is one of the most morally bankrupt arguments there is.
The evil and atrocities committed by non-Europeans in no way mitigates or cancels out evil done by Europeans. People are aware of those already, as evidenced by all those other threads. Why do YOU feel any need to deflect and derail by pointing at the evil deeds committed by others?
OK, there are plenty of atrocities going on right now, and many occurred in historical times. Many were performed by Europeans or European-descended people. Many were not. Humans around the world have performed all sorts of evil deeds.
OK, enough about that. If you need to argue that whites are not uniquely evil, you can go to those threads.
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@L of M,
You are missing my ENTIRE argument.
I never said that you claimed any of those phenomena were “objectively right”. I recognize that you acknowledge they were wrong.
REPEAT I recognize that you acknowledge they were wrong.
My point is, why do you feel compelled to deflect the attention towards those wrongs by pointing fingers at wrongs committed by non-Europeans? Why do you feel the need to offer a “defense”?
You can speak up by acknowledging those wrongs, not by pointing out that whites are not uniquely evil. That is deflecting the whole argument.
ESPECIALLY, since we are talking about atrocities in the USA.
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Public Service Announcement
From the standpoint of people who endured European/white brutality all Europeans are the same.
Does it really matter to Tainos in the Caribbean that the Spanish make paella? Does it matter to the Native Americans that the British make muffins. Does it matter to the Herero and Namaqua that the Germans make Bratwurst. Think they care that the Spanish have Flamenco music or that the Germans are known for Fugues?
Nope.
The behavior of Europeans towards them was consistent. They suffered genocide or attempted genocide. They were colonized and enslaved. Their cultures were destroyed. Their lands were stolen.
The window-dressing is irrelevant. The consistent behavior towards “others” is ethnographic data and evidence of a common cultural core and common cultural priorities/values. This notion forms the basis of the European Union experiment does it not?
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The white tears in this thread are tasty. CHOOSE to put one’s self into a place where people are talking about the very real effects of European greed and violence and can’t DEAL WITH IT.
More concerned about feelings being hurt. “You need to say things more nicely”. “You’re the real racist.”
lol.
If I generalize that’s because it’s generally true. The cases where native inhabitants did not suffer greatly from white people CHOOSING to come to their shores must be so few so as to be almost irrelevant.
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Our guest’s behavior is a microcosm of European cultural behavior. This space has to be controlled, CONQUERED, changed to agree with him in ideology and tone.
Not, “I don’t agree” but “you are despicable.” Having declared me unwelcome in a space intended more for me than for him what’s next? Wipe me out? This is precisely the reason they destroyed everywhere they went.
After all “They are despicable savages.”
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“I do not write this blog for white people.”
I’m much closer to the demographic that is expected to find the content relevant.
Anyway, I’m not debating with you.
You are trying to sell a lot of nonsense. The past several centuries of history have been longer than any single person’s lifespan yet European behavior, with respect to non-Europeans, has continued in its aggressive nature over that time-frame. We have a parade of historical atrocities on hand and recently we had a church massacre and several arsons at black churches as evidence. If it is not being transmitted by culture pray tell how it is being transmitted?
Yet when I say that the nature of European culture (isolating individualism, competitiveness, capitalism etc) produces people who will be capable of behaving in a particularly monstrous way towards “others” I’m racist?
Please.
I don’t think you even know what racism is.
I’m not wasting my time.
Bye.
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I do NOT write this blog for the random schlubs who come across it while surfing the Net.
I write it, first, for myself. Second, for Black people. Third, for people of colour. Mainly for those in the US, but also for those in other White-majority, English-speaking countries.
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Another interesting excerpt from Yurugu on how the culture supports the FACTUAL, HISTORICAL behavior we have seen.
*additions to the text in []
pg 413
”
The chimera of legaility that inevitably accompanies the most brutal and immoral acts of European imperialistic expansion is difficult for those from different cultural traditions to understand. Again it can be understood only as it related to the complex, atypical character of the European system of values. Dishonesty and hypocristy [Native Americans said that the white man speaks with a forked tongue] in dealing with the cultural other is the norm for European behavior. This behavior is not negatively sanctioned within the culture. Indeed, it is expressly for such interactions that the rhetorical ethic exists [rhetorical ethic: a statement of value or of “moral” behavior that has no meaning for the members of that culture. It is meant “for export”. Like Christianity’s “love your neighbour” when Christian nations were slaughtering everyone] This style of behavior is so strange from the point of view of other cultures that their participants find it difficult to believe that deceit and fraud are to be expected – that is represented the rule and not the exception – in the European’s behavior toward them.
As a prelude to his sadistically brutal behavior towards Africans in Central Africa, Leopold of Belgium formed the International African Association, avowedly to be concerned with the well-being of the indigenous African population. In a conference held in West Africa in 1884, the European powers “gave” to this organization lands in Central Africa. Chapman Cohen says,
<>
Having thus “legally” and in a “civilized” manner usurped land that did not belong to him, he then proceeded to brutalize the inhabitants. This behavior fits the pattern of European behavior toward the cultural other. Leopold “civilized” the Africans by chopping of their hands. The “enlightened” Europeans (the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Guggenheims) thought such behavior uncalled for; they simply entrenched themselves in the Congo vowing not to leave until the last drop of natural wealth was gone. They are still there.
”
When you compare this to some African cultures that mandated that visitors be given some land to use you can understand that it’s not just a matter of opportunity to be brutal. You have to have a culture which endorses it. In some cases that African tradition of hospitality led to the easy establishment of white settlers who’d later marginalize the original people. Heck, this factors in the church massacre since the solitary white guy was treated without suspicion in an intimate gathering of black church members. Yet simply existing while black in a public place can get police sicced on you. Diop advanced the two-cradle theory and Bradley proposed the “Iceman’s Inheritance” to try to account for the different cultural norms. The differences make it naive to think that others would behave just like Europeans/whites given the opportunity.
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Oops I lost the Chapman Cohen quote. This should have appeared between the angled brackets:
The Conference gave what didn’t belong to it to an Association that had no claim to what it received. In August, 1885, Leopold notified the signatories that his Association would henceforth be known as the “Congo Free State”, and that he himself was the monarch of the domain.
END
BTW, does this sound familiar to anyone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
Once again a “treaty” gave away other people’s land to Europeans. You know it’s all “legal” now. This happened centuries prior to Leopold during the time of Columbus. Patterns.
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@ Adam K
Where in the post did I push or assume racial determinism?
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Origin said “The restriction of use of violence within the culture, for its own preservation, is straining against its natural tendencies.”
I think that’s a pretty deep statement and I want to dig into it a bit.
The expansion of selective freedoms starting with the Magana Carta and leading into the Enlightenment, Natural rights, Habeas Corpus ect, these ideas were applied solely to white people and acted as a restriction of violence towards each other within their communities. It allowed the State to grant certain privileges to whites at the expense of all others.
The other unrestrained force that motivated Christopher Columbus to the founders of the U.S. was a geocentric view of the world through Christianity. Christians souls were chosen by God, the Earth was the center of the universe and the chosen had a mission. This dominion covenant extended over the entire planet and it was “gods will” that the white man were to come and Christianize a continent and therefore civilize it for the glory of god.
“Europeans are closest to being “universal” because, by being rational, they are the best able to choose and design the proper social and intellectual forms for all people.”
So what started out as fulfilling Christian theology eventually secularized but it retained its geocentric form within the empire.
Origin said:
“It’s likely that other people would simply not be capable of doing the things that whites have done on the scale that they did it.”
And this:
“The unique amorality of European culture, in which anything goes in the pursuit of power, allows them to destroy the world in order to control it.”
I don’t find those statements racist. They reinforce what can be observed in history.
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@ Adam K
You are missing the point. I know about Crassus. He is part of why I said this, point blank:
It is not about White Americans being uniquely evil. It is about genocide, how it is rare, how it is not technologically or even racially determined.
Romans and Greeks were violent and evil. Yes. But, unlike White Americans or Nazi Germany, they did not have this model of conquest where they wiped out people to take their land and resettle it with their own kind. Even those Atrocious Asians, like Mao, Genghis Khan and Imperial Japan, did not do that as a general practice.
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@ Adam K
A deal among thieves. It was not theirs to sell.
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@ Origin
I think your facts are right, but your conclusions are not. If I understand you correctly you think a supposed European “culture of violence and deceit” created both the European expansion and the wars withhin Europe. I think it’s the other way around: The extrem competiveness of the European power system made it necessary for every poltical enity to be extremly agreessive in pursuit of new resources. Everyone who didn’t do that or wasn’t successful was eventually subjugated by those who were. This necessity then created a culture among the political elite that emphisized aggressivness.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Where did I say or assume that all Whites or White cultures are the same? Did I not point out that the Whites in South Africa and New Zealand were different?
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@ Adam
Click on: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/bma-black-mental-age/
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@Michael Jon Barker
Yes. There were apparent expansions of freedoms within European civilization yet that coincided with extremely destructive behavior towards non-Europeans in the “New World”. I’ll quote Marimba Ani again because I think she makes the point well.
pg 405
*******************
While it has been pointed out that what Euroecentrists call the “civilization process” (we would call it “Europeanization”) is actually one of ever increasingly repressive structures within European culture, at the same time the concept of asili [cultural seed as determined by the collective nature of members] points to the simultaneous tendency to obliterate the severely brutal and exploitative relationships that become reserved for intercultural behavior. It is for this reason that a description of the European’s behavior towards the cultural other helps to explain his intracultural behavior. The nature of the culture is, indeed, instrinsically repressive, and yet its survival and successful functioning depend on contract agreement, cooperation, and cultural identification among its members. European ideology cannot condone the destruction of its own members; that is, in terms of its own definition of destruction. The conception of the cultural other, therefore, becomes that which can be destroyed or, more practicially speaking, that upon which culturally destructive behavior can be unleashed. The difference is that while the culture may be repressive, THEY do not think it repressive – it represents that which they value; while the cultural other is treated as they (Europeans) would not wish to be treated themselves and as they would not be comfortable in treating each other. This is why a class analysis is insufficient in the explanation of European socio-political behavior. As Saint-Simon indicated above, anything can be done to those outside the culture if it helps keep the European community “healthy”.
As the slogans of European “revolutions” became those of the “rights of man” and “liberte, egalite, fraternite”, European behavior towards majority peoples became more and more extreme in its exploitativeness and its brutality. Africans and other majority peoples became more and more excluded from the category of “man”. Here again it is possible to witness the “ingenious” creation of the asili of the culture. The “logic” of European (Euro-American) ideology leads to the continual intensification of the power drive or acquisitiveness and greed, and of the need to consume and destroy, to oppress and exploit: the nature of the utamaroho [collective personality]. While the eighteenth-century “humanists” were ensuring that these behavioral characteristics would not be used to disrupt the coherence of European culture, they accepted an image of those outisde the culture that made such people the logical, justifiable, and ethically acceptable objects of that behavior. […]
The ravages of European imperialism must not be viewed merely as evidence of the indiscrimately applied abuses of European behavior but of the patterned character of that behavior towards people who are not European. What allows Europeans to act as they do is the nature of their world-view, a crucial aspect of which is a definition of other peoples as essentially nonhuman.
W.E.B Dubois recignized the difference in behavior:
“There was no Nazi atrocity – concentration camps, wholesale maiming and murder, defilement of women, or ghastly blasphemy of childhood – which the Christian civilization of Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior Race born to rule the world.”
*************************
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I referred to Marimba Ani’s critique of European though and behavior (Yurugu) but there are other books that have suggested that the manner in which Europeans/Euro-Americans behave towars others is driven by factors at the core of the culture. In other words, it is the way they are and it’s what they are abouy culturally. Another one that I have read is
“The Cunning of History The Holocaust and American Future” by Richard L. Rubinstein.
pg 21
******************
My point in emphasizing British complicity in the extermination project [of the Jews] is not to indulge in any sort of moral denunciation of the British. The incident is significant a generation later because, like Germany, great Britian is one of the great centers of the civilization of the Western world. One of the least helpful ways of understanding the Holocaust is to regard the destruction process as the work of a small group of irresponsible criminals who were atypical of normal statesmen and who somehow gained control of the German people, forcing them by terror and the deliberate stimulation of religious and ethnic hatred to pursue a barbaric and retrograde policy that was thoroughly ad odds with the great traditions of Western civilization.
On the contrary [begin author’s italics], we are more likely to understand the Holocaust if we regard it as the expression of some of the PROFOUND TENDENCIES [caps mine] of Western civilization in the twentieth century. [end author’s italics]
********************
One of the other point of connection is Rubinstein’s reference to religious disenchantment of the world which Marimba Ani calls desacralization in Yurugu. The both acknoweldge its role in facilitating the European power drive.
Cunning of History pg 28
**************************
The earliest culture in which the world was “disenchanted” was the biblical world of the Israleites. When the author of Gensis wrote “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” (Gen 1:1), he was expressing that disenchantment. Creation was seen as devoid of independent divine or magical forces which men had to appease. The world was seen as created by a supra-mundane Creator. As long as men came to terms with the Creator, the world was theirs to do with as they pleased. No interference need be feared from powers immanent in the natural order. On the contrary, Adam is enjoined to “subude” the earth and to “have dominion” over it.
[…]
Protestantism violently rejected the Catholic attempt at reenchatment. Its insistence on the radical transcendence of the one sovereign Creator and his utter withdrawal from the created order was far more thoroughgoing that the earlier Jewish attempt at disenchantment.
[…]
When I suggest that the cultural ethos that permitted the perfection of bureaucratic mass murder was most likely to develop in the land of Luther, my intention is not to blame Protestantism for the death camps.
[…]
It is, however, crucial that we recognize that the process of secularization that led to the bureaucratic objectivity required for the death camps was an essential and perhaps inevitable outcome of the RELIGIOUS traditions of the Judeo-Christian west. One of the most paradoxical aspects of biblical religion is that the liberation of significant areas of human activity from religious domination, which we call secularization, was the cultural outcome of biblical religion itself rather than a negation of it.
This point is especially important in correcting the point of view that mistakenly regards Nazi extermination of the Jews as an antireligious explosion of pagan values in the heart of the Judeo-Christian world. […] Weber’s studies on bureaucracy and his related studies on Protestantism, capitalism, and disenchantment of the world are important in demonstrating how utterly mistaken is any view that would isolate Nazism and its supreme expression, bureaucratic mass murder and bureaucratically administered society of total domination, from the MAINSTREAM [caps mine] of Western culture.
*************************
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Ani’s Yurugu on desacralization/disenchantment:
pg 188
*******************
Judeo-Christian thought in the company of Platonic epistemology initiated the desacralization of nature that would allow for a dehumanized techno-social order and the materialist, mechanized conception of the universe on which European science depends. The desacralized cosmos was an early conception within the Hebrew tradition. Mircea Eliade says,
“Cosmic religiousity continued the most elementary dialectic of the sacred, especially the belief that the divine is incarnated, or manifests itself, in cosmic objects and rhythms. Such a belief was denounced by the adherents of Yahweh as the worst possible idolatry, and this ever since the Israelites’ entrance into Palestine… The prophets finally succeeded in emptying nature of any divine presence”
Ruether points out that in Genesis I, God commands Adam to “Fill the arth and subdue it and have dominion over it”. […] Two divergent world-views emerged: (1) the more ancient, in which nature was associated with meaningul experience; and (2) the Platonic, Judeo-Christian world-view, in which meaningful being was a human-controlled, “denatured” reality.
*******************
pg 558
*******************
The natural cultural function of religion is a vehicle through which one’s world and one’s people become special and life sacred. As European religion becomes more rationalistic, it loses the ability to sacralize the profane, while simultaneously intensifying the political wasteland of European experience. […] Secularization and desacralization are by-products of the process of rational ordering. There is no source of conflict with this process from “religious” quarters since formalized European religion has itself been secularized. If nothing is sacred then no act is sacrilegious. The result is a world-view that encourages attitudes of arrogance and disrespect; attitudes that are in the modality of imposed order, control and power.
********************
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/// As the slogans of European “revolutions” became those of the “rights of man” and “liberte, egalite, fraternite”, European behavior towards majority peoples became more and more extreme in its exploitativeness and its brutality.///
Actually, one of the things the French did after the French Revolution was abolishing slavery. But that fact wouldn’t fit in the narrative.
The problem with this text is that it takes Europe as a as a monolithic bloc, does not have values in common with other cultures, and sees Europe as violent, aggressive and threatening.
See also this fragment:
/// The “logic” of European (Euro-American) ideology leads to the continual intensification of the power drive or acquisitiveness and greed, and of the need to consume and destroy, to oppress and exploit: the nature of the utamaroho [collective personality].//
European values are seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
And using the word “logic” with brackets shows it sees Europe actually as irrational.
It reads very much like how Islamophobes appear to see Islam, I must say. See also http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/islamophobia.pdf
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///The natural cultural function of religion is a vehicle through which one’s world and one’s people become special and life sacred. As European religion becomes more rationalistic, it loses the ability to sacralize the profane, while simultaneously intensifying the political wasteland of European experience […] If nothing is sacred then no act is sacrilegious. The result is a world-view that encourages attitudes of arrogance and disrespect; attitudes that are in the modality of imposed order, control and power.///
O dear. As if we haven’t seen this “secularisation causes disrespect”-strawman before. Well, let’s compare, for example, present-day, secular Germany with non-secular Iran. It is true that Iran is harsher in punishing profane and sacrilegious acts. However, I cannot think of a way that qualifies Germany more as a “political wasteland” than Iran.
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Ani had mentioned that in the European world-view the “cultural other” is essentially non-human. In “The cunning of History” Rubinstein says,
pg 54
**********************
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to see the medical experiments as the outcome of some special viciousness of which only German doctors are capable. The Germans have no monopoly on the kind of mentality that would utilize powerless human beings as unwilling or unsuspecting subjects of such experiments. [Mentions Tuskeegee experiments] The organizers had cold-bloodedly condemned the prisoners who received the placebo to the mutilating effects of the disease and/or death in the name of scientific rationality. The experiment that did come to light was different from the Nazi experiments only in that the American prisoners were completely unaware of what was being done to them. Most of the Nazi victims had some idea of what was happening. […]
Nor is it accidental that the American doctors selected blacks as their subjects in the syphilis experiments. The blacks are the American equivalent of the Nazi Tiermenschen, subhumans, concerning whom no effective protest was anticipated. It is likely that racism is indispensable to a society of total domination. Certainly, racism facilitates the ascription of paranthropoid identity to human beings. Once the victim is categorized as belonging to a different species, the task of transforming him into a thing is immensely simplified. Undoubtedly, the harsh forms of slavery that characterized the ante-bellum south were facilitated by the fact that the blacks were different in both race and culture from their masters. Before the Nazis assaulted the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, and the Gypsies, they were categorized as members of subhuman races.
Another recent American parallel to the Nazi experiments was the decision of welfare authorities in Georgia to sterilize several mentally deficient black girls. Their iliterate parents were allegedly compelled by representatives of the welfare bureaucracy to sign papers permitting the sterilization. The syphilis experiments and the sterilization of the black girls are in all likelihood but the tip of the iceberg.
********************
Ani actually mentions the experiments in Yurugu while outlining the concept of the non-human “cultural other”.
pg 433
***********************
For forty years the United States Government via its Public Health Service (PHS) conducted a study of the effects of untreated syphilis on African men in macon country, Alabama. […] the experiment involved 399 African men with syphilis and 201 African men free of the disease, who were used as “controls”. […] The men with syphilis were chosen because they were in the last or “tertiary” stage of the disease. The scientists wanted to learn about the serious complications that occurred during the final phase. The study established that the men with syphilis died more quickly than those who did not have it. This conclusion hardly seems worth the effort. But since the objective was simply to observe the devastating effects of syphilis, coldy, “rationally” and “scientifically” – from the point of view of the Europeans – the study was deemed a “success”.
The pyscians involved, in the service of the Inuted States Government, can be charged with antihuman, genocidal behavior, behavior that makes hypocritical nonsense of the Hippocratic oath. James Jones comments: “The Tuskeegee Experiment had nothing to do with treatment.” No new druges were developed or tested! No old drugs were evaluated! “It was a non-therapeutic experiment”. In other words, diseased patients were diagnosed by physicians and then NOT TREATED so that their condition could deteriorate, leading, in most cases, to untimely death. [Talks about the extremely debiltating and gruesome effects of advanced syphilis]
The participants were denied treatment from the beginning of the project, and in 1940 when penicillin was in use, they were denied that drug as well. Care was taken to prevent them from getrting treatment elsewwere if they had been identified for the study. Unsuspecting physicians who coincidentally diagnosed their condition would be told, in effect, “hands off”.
After twenty-five years in the experiment the participants were given “certificates”. What images allowed such hypocritical, antihuman behavior? Europeans were saying to themselves: Let a group of black men die and suffer from syphilis without treatment so that we can observe its effects. Fortunately black people are available – the cultural other.
************************
Basically Rubinstein concurred with Ani that it is a characteristic of European/American culture to dehumanize “cultural others”. Any notion of love for “all men” or desire to “liberate or free them” is a rhetorical ethic. That is, according to Ani, an ostensible moral value that is not actually practiced but is intended “for export” in order to disarm the eventual targets of European aggression, brutality, or exploitation. In the above example, the Hippocractic oath didn’t come into play when cultural others were involved in those government endorsed experiments.
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“The problem with this text is that it takes Europe as a as a monolithic bloc, does not have values in common with other cultures, and sees Europe as violent, aggressive and threatening.”
Ive heard that one before. Whenever anyone shines the spotlight on Europe the whole concept of Europe becomes nebulous. Yet when Europeans say “Europe” or “Western culture” everyone knows what that is.
Please.
It’s treating itself as a bloc, The European Union. There are facets common to them all and that’s what any analysis will be looking at. They’re mostly all of Judeo-Christian heritage for example.
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“Ani had mentioned that in the European world-view the “cultural other” is essentially non-human.”..as do Muslems, in the islamophobic mindset.
It is tellting that you are talking about “THE” European world-view. As if all Europeans (communists, liberals, capitalists, nationalists, social-democrats, christians, etc) have the same worldview.
Dividing people in large groups makes it easy to judge them, but doesn’t do right to the fact that those people are all individuals.
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“O dear. As if we haven’t seen this “secularisation causes disrespect”-strawman before. Well, let’s compare, for example, present-day, secular Germany with non-secular Iran. It is true that Iran is harsher in punishing profane and sacrilegious acts. However, I cannot think of a way that qualifies Germany more as a “political wasteland” than Iran.
You don’t understand the argument but got caught on the buzzwords “religious” and “secular”.
What you should have taken away from the text is disenchantment and desacralization. Those processes started within the context of religion since European religious forms took the divine out of the experienced world. That’s why Rubinstein said:
***
It is, however, crucial that we recognize that the process of secularization that led to the bureaucratic objectivity required for the death camps was an essential and perhaps inevitable outcome of the RELIGIOUS traditions of the Judeo-Christian west. One of the most paradoxical aspects of biblical religion is that the liberation of significant areas of human activity from religious domination, which we call secularization, was the cultural outcome of biblical religion itself rather than a negation of it.
***
In other words, some religions are, paradoxically, secular. Therefore the dichotomy that you’re trying to divert to is not relevant to his argument.
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@Jeff Eberfield
Ah, the we’re all individuals argument. If you are personally upset by analysis of Europeans then I take it you identify as European? In that case I don’t think you truly believe you’re “individual” you just want me to stop saying things you don’t like.
Bye!
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Anyway just to sum up the point of my copious quotes: a tremendous amount of cultural machinery has to be in place to allow the single-minded imperialism (including bureaucratically supported genocide) that we have seen. You can’t just take any people and put them on other shores and expect results to be the same.
Besides, the world was not entirely disconnected before Europeans started traveling. Remember that when Marco Polo went to China he saw a giraffe there and, IIRC, thought it was a native animal. Trade was going on.
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@ Origin
“Ive heard that one before. Whenever anyone shines the spotlight on Europe the whole concept of Europe becomes nebulous. Yet when Europeans say “Europe” or “Western culture” everyone knows what that is. ”
You’re mixing up the analytical and the political meaning of the term “Europe”. When you try to understand European culture you need a clear concept of what Europe is or it will cloud your results. When a politician for exxample says: ” We need to show solidarity within Europe” it doesn’t matter that everybody understands something else.
I agree that the “they are individuals”/”you have to differentiate”-argument is invalid. Generalizations are necessary to get any insight. But you are falling into the trap of cultural essentialism, just as the Islam haters do.
The aggressivness and devaluation of perceived others you pointed out are certainly part of the European cultural history, but it is not “just what they are”. It is a specific phenomenon restricted to certain contexts. It is not the grand key to understand European history.
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///Ive heard that one before. Whenever anyone shines the spotlight on Europe the whole concept of Europe becomes nebulous. Yet when Europeans say “Europe” or “Western culture” everyone knows what that is.///
“Europe” indeed got some well-known values. Just like the USA has.
For example: America is “one nation under God,” lots of inhabitants are conservative christians, and Presidents are sworn in on the Bible. Yet America has the biggest porn-industry of the world, and the Presidents like to invade countries all over the globe, thus neglecting the “thou shalt not kill” -commandment. And speaking of commandments: Bill Clinton and the “Thou shalt not commit adultery”-commandment were no solid combination either.
So much for the rather schizophrenic American ideology.
I hope you can see how easy it is to nit-pick examples that can be attributed to different people, and, when put together, can make a slanderous parody of the “concept of America.”
///Please.
It’s treating itself as a bloc, The European Union. There are facets common to them all and that’s what any analysis will be looking at. They’re mostly all of Judeo-Christian heritage for example.///
The European Union as a bloc? You haven’t seen the news the last few years, have you?
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///Ah, the we’re all individuals argument. If you are personally upset by analysis of Europeans then I take it you identify as European? In that case I don’t think you truly believe you’re “individual” you just want me to stop saying things you don’t like.///
I see. So an individual doesn’t have any birthplace, passport, or residence? I must say your idea of an “individual” is rather flawed.
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Jeff Elberfeld and Lord of Mirkwood
To say European or American does not mean to say all. Throwing in the not all bs is a deflection at best. This does not take away from what Origin is saying. The French abolishing while still plotting ways to rid the word of Africans is interesting. So to you them abolishing slavery makes them good and okay, but what say you to modern day plans of ethnic cleansing? Does thatale them good too or do we shock awe and scream individuals to deflect from their racism, hatred, murderous tendancies?
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Lord of Mirkwood
If you started spewing that then it would be a moment of laugh you off for many. Why? Because you would only be showing to them what they think of you anyway, but also a matter of it is better for you to believe that and be blind to the real source of knowledge they have as to try to destroy it.
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http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/mason_dixon/
“A brief history of the Mason-Dixon Line
John Mackenzie
APEC/CANR, University of Delaware”
It just sounds like colonialism (duh), complete anarchy, various European religious, commercial, and political factions splitting and coalescing and consolidating, and fighting the indigenous people, ie how America was born. It sounds familiar…
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/// This does not take away from what Origin is saying. The French abolishing while still plotting ways to rid the word of Africans is interesting. So to you them abolishing slavery makes them good and okay, but what say you to modern day plans of ethnic cleansing?///
I do not know of any French plans to organize a Holocaust anywhere, but still, given the argument, these aren’t the ones who abolished slavery and deposed the king. Then you would be, as I said before, mean that you mix different acts of different people of different eras and then you make a parody of it.
/// Does thatale them good too or do we shock awe and scream individuals to deflect from their racism, hatred, murderous tendancies?///
Who is thatale?
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Jeff Elberfeld
Then if you don’t know then you should research. I posted a link of this on open thread some time ago. It was actually a conventional meeting on the matter. At any rate your whole argument against Origin is a joke an even bigger joke is your rebuttal to what I said.
You trumped out the french abolishing slavery as if that was some badge of honor for good, but when I mentioned the acts of planning an ethnic cleansing you fall back to the not all argument which again is invalid and a deflection. It does not matter what Era it is because considering the fact that the talk of ethnic cleaning was recent it should be shock and awe that people who were so racially fair minded would now consider such acts. Would you like me to further continue on the illogical stance of your argument?
“Who is thatale?”—Since you would rather focus on the typo than answer the question then so be it. It should have been “that make”. Perhaps your next response will be an answer to the question.
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@Elberfield
“I do not know of any French plans to organize a Holocaust anywhere
How can you talk about “The French”? They are “individuals”. Maybe SOME French were planning a holocaust. /sarcasm
By the way:
*******
Maurice Papon, a prominent French functionary convicted in 1998 of complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity during the German occupation in World War II, died yesterday at a private clinic near Paris. He was 96.
In the end, Mr. Papon served less than three years of his 10-year sentence for deporting hundreds of Jews to their deaths in German concentration camps from southwestern France, where he was an official of the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Germans. He always protested that he had done only what the Germans had made him do.
[…]
After the war, Mr. Papon ROSE [caps mine] through the bureaucracy. He became prefect of police in Paris, one of the country’s top security posts, in 1958, when divisions over how to deal with Algeria’s war for independence threatened to bring on civil war in France.
********
It’s interesting that they mentioned Papon in connection with Algeria’s attempt to escape colonial rule. Fast forward to 1961. How exactly did he, as prefect of police, DEAL WITH the issue of Algerians daring to desire independence from France. From Wikipedia:
#####
The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a forbidden demonstration of some 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians […] After 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of over 200 […]
The massacre appears to have been intentional, as has been demonstrated by historian Jean-Luc Einaudi, who won a trial against Maurice Papon in 1999 — the latter was convicted in 1998 on charges of crimes against humanity for his role under the Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II. Official documentation and eyewitnesses within the Paris police department indeed suggest that the massacre was directed by Papon. Police records show that Papon called for officers in one station to be “subversive” in quelling the demonstrations, and assured them protection from prosecution if they participated. Many demonstrators died when they were violently herded by police into the River Seine, with some thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious. Other demonstrators were killed within the courtyard of the Paris police headquarters after being arrested and delivered there in police buses.
#####
Why would a fellow like this have ‘risen through the ranks of the bureaucracy’ if he was doing things against the moral core of the culture? /rhetorical question
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@sharina
They are here deflecting and derailing in full force. European/Western media does not usually critique the behavior of its own culture and the cultural machinery that allows it. The freedom that we are affording ourselves here to do so is “resistance”. Whenever there is resistance – mental, phsyical, ideological, or otherwise – you can be sure there will be those who try to crush it. Essentially, we’re being presented with an alternate reality where there is no Europe and there are no Europeans in order to claim that there is no basis for ANY analysis.
Marimba Ani actually touched on this tendency in her book Yurugu:
(the caps are mine)
pg 3
********
Anthropology is not simply a “child of imperialism.” It is a manifestation of the European ethos. This is why very few anthropologists study themselves, i.e., their own cultural backgrounds. Their politically superior position allows them TO STUDY OTHERS, BUT NOT TO BE STUDIED. The few who do study Europe do so in solated bits and pieces (Nordic myth, peasant society, folk culture). Even “urban anthropology” does not approach European culture as a totality. A Eurocentric social science cannot be used to critically examine the European cultural tradition. Yet there is no reason the concept of culture should not be used to study the extraordinary character of European imperialistic behavior.
*********
Also pg 18
######
It would seem absurdly academic to ask the question, What is “European?” Much of what passes for information in the academies is simply one long panegyric [formal public speech giving high praise] of the European experience. In these instances THERE NEVER SEEMS TO BE A PROBLEM IDENTIFYING WHAT IS MEANT BY “EUROPEAN” or “Western”. Norman Cantor reveals his Eurocentric perspective as he introduces his three-volume work “Western Civilization: Its Genesis and Destiny”, while using the rhetoric of academic objectivity
“Most of us are products of Western heritage, and our traditioinal ways of thinking about historical events have been shaped by the forces that modeled much of Western culture. In all our modes of thought, we inevitably show the impress of the Western heritage. We imbibe our ethics, religions, philosophy, science, art, and literature from families, schools, and a social and intellectual environment which in turn have been formed by centuries of growth and development”
He feels comfortable talking about “the basic foundations of our civilization” and goes on to ask the following question:
“How and why did the West attain intellectual, economic, and military preeminence in the world by 1900? Why does the history of the West, in spite of many retrogressions and failures, appear to be a story of progress soward new forms of thought and art toward the achievement of greater and greater wealth and power?”
He continues:
“Some qualities of European thought and social life are unique. Other civilizations have merits that the West lacks, but certain ideas occurred only to Europeans, anda certain techniques were discovered and applied only by them.”
For Cantor the fundamental problem to be addressed by students and teachers of Western civilization is, “Why and how did the distinctive ideas and institutions of the West develop?” Toynbee answered that only the West responded to challenges, and that the West was marked by its creative vitality. According to Cantor, “Thus far no scholar has offered a full and thoroughly satisfactory explanation of the development of the unique qualities of Western civilization”. THAT IS PRECISELY THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PRESENT STUDY, though not from the same persepctive as Cantor’s. As to what he means by the “West”, Cantor says specifically, “the countries of Western Europe and the branches of Western civilization found in North and Latin America”. And he has made it clear that in his view Europeans are the people responsible for “Western civilization”.
THIS IS THE KIND OF DEFINITION THAT IS ASSUMED as we make our way through the plethora of undergraduate required courses, texts, television, and even movie spectaculars that deal with “Western civilization” Eurocentrically. But when an Afircan-centered critique of Europe is attempted, SUDDENLY IT BECOMES, IF NOT INVISIBLE, AN EVASIVE ENTITY OF UNCERTAIN DEFINITION AND DEMARCATION. Once when I made a comment about the “European world-view” a colleague asked me to which of the “many” world-views represented in the European tradition, I was referring. Though he had praised the tradition consistently, now he argued that it was not uniform, nor did it represent a single reality. But European nationalism, so strong and so pervasive, is not created by diversity but by the perception of unity. This is R.H Tawny’s perception:
“The societies composing Europe are in varying degrees the heirs of the first great age of Western civilization; nor was the partnership dissolved when that age was wound up. Greek philosophy and literature, Roman law; the long adventure of Christian missionaries; the medieval church; feudalism; the Rennaissance, the Reformation and Counter Reformation; the Revolution – all these and much else have reacted to them. Their religion, their literature and art, their science, their economic systems are a cosmopolitan creation, to which all have contributed and all are in debt. Such things, it is true, do not in themselves create unity, but create the conditions of it. They cause Europe, amid all its feverish jealousies and terrors, to be a single civilization, as a contentious family is still a family, and a bad state remains a state. They make its culture one, its crimes domestic tragedies, its wars civil wars.”
This is the cultural entity under examination in the present study.
########
This sentence is particularly on point:
“Their politically superior position allows them TO STUDY OTHERS, BUT NOT TO BE STUDIED”
That is what they are here trying to put an end to.
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Then if you don’t know then you should research. I posted a link of this on open thread some time ago. It was actually a conventional meeting on the matter. At any rate your whole argument against Origin is a joke an even bigger joke is your rebuttal to what I said.
Nice. Like the lawyer told the D.A.: “My client is not guilty. Please do your research again, and you’ll find out I’m right.”
You trumped out the french abolishing slavery as if that was some badge of honor for good, but when I mentioned the acts of planning an ethnic cleansing you fall back to the not all argument which again is invalid and a deflection. It does not matter what Era it is because considering the fact that the talk of ethnic cleaning was recent it should be shock and awe that people who were so racially fair minded would now consider such acts. Would you like me to further continue on the illogical stance of your argument?
Yes, please. I still don’t understand why blaming all French for the actions of some should make a valid argument. Moreover, like I said before, I was not giving the French a badge of honor, I just said that mixing up ideas and actions of different people in different eras would make a parody.
For example, I remember a Muslim quoting Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance praising the tolerance of the Ottoman Empire. Others rebutted that by stating that the Ottomans took away boys from Christian families (a practice that Mehmet IV abolished in 1683) and referring to the Armenian Genocide (that took place around 1900).
Now. How do these arguments negate that the Ottoman Empire was tolerant in the mid-eighteenth-century?
“Who is thatale?”—Since you would rather focus on the typo than answer the question then so be it. It should have been “that make”. Perhaps your next response will be an answer to the question.
Thanks for your correction. Now the comment makes some sense. So your question had to be: “Does that make them good too or do we shock awe and scream individuals to deflect from their racism, hatred, murderous tendancies?”
In this discussion, I never used the words “good” or “okay.” However, attributing “murderous tendancies” to persons based on their origin sounds pretty racist to me, I must say.
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Why would a fellow like this have ‘risen through the ranks of the bureaucracy’ if he was doing things against the moral core of the culture? /rhetorical question
I see. Like in “How could George W. Bush and Barack Obama get re-elected, if killing women and children in Iraq and Afganistan should have been against the moral core of their culture?”
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@Jeff Elberfeld
“Nice. Like the lawyer told the D.A.: “My client is not guilty. Please do your research again, and you’ll find out I’m right.””—You would expect for anyone what does not know something to do their research rather than spouting about how untrue it is simply because they never heard it. Your retort above was a lazy one and one that fits in line with deflection.
“Yes, please. I still don’t understand why blaming all French for the actions of some should make a valid argument. Moreover, like I said before, I was not giving the French a badge of honor, I just said that mixing up ideas and actions of different people in different eras would make a parody.”—–Please quote where anyone said all French. This is what makes your argument flop because you attribute him saying French to mean all and as such pull out the “not all” rebuttal to engage the argument. Abagond wrote a post on what makes this type argument invalid in itself (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/the-not-all-whites-argument/). I agree that it is only human nature to see ALL in such terms and automatically think ALL though in doing so you then end up putting words in the individuals mouth. Another thing here is that the individuals doing such act are they not French? Would fellow Frenchonians make the wording better? Will it change that they did it? Will it change the fact that they are French? No.
“Now. How do these arguments negate that the Ottoman Empire was tolerant in the mid-eighteenth-century?”—It doesn’t, but it does not also negate the fact that they did bad too. Their wrongs do not magically disappear. They still did wrong.
“In this discussion, I never used the words “good” or “okay.” However, attributing “murderous tendancies” to persons based on their origin sounds pretty racist to me, I must say.”—You are still avoiding answering the question. I don’t care whether you used “good” or “okay” and I don’t care if you think it is racist. What I asked was “Does that make them good too or do we shock awe and scream individuals to deflect from their racism, hatred, murderous tendencies?” You are either going to answer it or not. FYI any group can have murderous tendencies. You are the one attributing it only to french to attempt to make an argument that is not even there.
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@Origin
“European/Western media does not usually critique the behavior of its own culture and the cultural machinery that allows it.”—I will admit that I have not really taken notice of this, but you bring up a good point. We have several studies with focus on POC especially black people, yet the most studies we have on whites are how racist they are and these are based on poll results.
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@Origin
“Why would a fellow like this have ‘risen through the ranks of the bureaucracy’ if he was doing things against the moral core of the culture?”——This is what I think a lot of people are not getting, even in American society. A small sum are getting caught and maybe jail time, but that is the small sum. The bigger issue lies in the dark plotting and planning. Helping the minions get in positions to do the dirty work.
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You would expect for anyone what does not know something to do their research rather than spouting about how untrue it is simply because they never heard it. Your retort above was a lazy one and one that fits in line with deflection.
1) I never said it was untrue,
2) You are the one that made the argument, so it is in your interest to support the readers the evidence. If you cannot do that… well, I’m not going to do your homework.
Please quote where anyone said all French. This is what makes your argument flop because you attribute him saying French to mean all and as such pull out the “not all” rebuttal to engage the argument. Abagond wrote a post on what makes this type argument invalid in itself (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/the-not-all-whites-argument/). I agree that it is only human nature to see ALL in such terms and automatically think ALL though in doing so you then end up putting words in the individuals mouth. Another thing here is that the individuals doing such act are they not French? Would fellow Frenchonians make the wording better? Will it change that they did it? Will it change the fact that they are French? No.
It was you who began on the “not all”-argument. I am just responding to that. Furthermore, just replace “French” in “individuals doing such act are they not French?” and “Will it change the fact that they are French? ” with “Black” and see how it reads.
It doesn’t, but it does not also negate the fact that they did bad too. Their wrongs do not magically disappear. They still did wrong.
Now we are coming somewhere. Since you still believe that they did bad (and not all, off course; just they): how many generations and how many generations does it take before “they” can be off the hook?
You are still avoiding answering the question. I don’t care whether you used “good” or “okay” and I don’t care if you think it is racist. What I asked was “Does that make them good too or do we shock awe and scream individuals to deflect from their racism, hatred, murderous tendencies?” You are either going to answer it or not. FYI any group can have murderous tendencies. You are the one attributing it only to french to attempt to make an argument that is not even there.
There are good French people and there are bad French people. There are also French people with murderous tendencies. There is such a person as Papon. However, there are also French people who founded Médecins Sans Frontières. There are also French Noble Peace Prize winners.
Remember, I started about the French because someone above started about “liberte, egalite, fraternite”, and revolutions, not because of some extraordinary fondness of them.
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@Jeff Elberfeld
“1) I never said it was untrue”—It does not matter if you said it was untrue or not. You stated that you had never seen it as such you would think someone saying as much would do research to find out how true it is instead of writing it off as “I have never seen it” which by the way is as good as saying it is not true or using Argument from ignorance.
“2) You are the one that made the argument, so it is in your interest to support the readers the evidence. If you cannot do that… well, I’m not going to do your homework.”—If I am not mistaken the evidence is on open thread where I posted it (and stated it was above), so it is not a matter of me providing my evidence it is more a matter of you going on open thread to view it. Also If I am not completely mistaken I asked you your thoughts on the matter in which you have done nothing more than deflect. A response in regards to you tossing out French abolishing slavery as a means to say “see they do good” (not saying those are you exact words). My response was to show they do bad as well. I did not need to provide evidence.
“It was you who began on the “not all”-argument. I am just responding to that. Furthermore, just replace “French” in “individuals doing such act are they not French?” and “Will it change the fact that they are French? ” with “Black” and see how it reads.”—-That is because that is what type of argument you are using. That is what the argument is called or we could just call it a straw man. Either way it makes your argument invalid. You are not refuting anything he is saying you are more so whining about “not all”. Replacing those words do not view as ALL to me so what is your point? Are you trying to rationalize your use of the “not all” argument? It comes off as a descriptor of people who engage in an act.
“Now we are coming somewhere. Since you still believe that they did bad (and not all, off course; just they): how many generations and how many generations does it take before “they” can be off the hook?”—–When the wrong is remedied and I do not mean by superficial means that amount to nothing. This could take several generations because of a refusal to actually deal with said situations. Right now the big issue is taking down the confederate flag as an effort to remedy the wrongs on the racist past in the united states. To cleanse white Americans of their racist past and show them as unified with their black brothers and sisters. I call bs, because it does nothing to deal with the racism today. The racism of the past was just a foundation to build up what is racism today. Focusing on a flag is superficial as it does not acknowledge and tackle the real issue.
“Remember, I started about the French because someone above started about “liberte, egalite, fraternite”, and revolutions, not because of some extraordinary fondness of them.”—-I get your reasoning, but what I said still stands. Using the “not all” argument does not refute what he said.
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sharinalr:You would expect for anyone what does not know something to do their research rather than spouting about how untrue it is simply because they never heard it.
Jeff Elberfeld: I never said it was untrue.
sharinalr: It does not matter if you said it was untrue or not.
Well, if it doesn’t matter what I do or do not say, I’ll stop wasting my time here.
And for the rest of the readers: the best what I could find on “plans of ethnic cleansing” sharinalr was referring to was a Youtube-link of a clip of a conference that was about overpopulation in Africa.
The problems of overpopulation are well explained in this 40-year-old toon (in English): (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRsP3gfU2VA)
If worries on overpopulation equal “plans of ethnic cleansing”… well, that is too stupid to discuss any further.
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This topic is becoming all about Elberfield’s feelings and it’s kind of distracting. I’m not going to respond directly because I don’t want to encourage it.
I think we can all agree that the last several centuries has seen a certain characteristic of European group behavior.
THIS IS BEYOND DISPUTE.
Here are a few colonies of various European nations:
Britain:
Canada, Egypt, India, Autralia, Nigeria, South Afirca, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, Jamaica
France:
Haiti, French Guyana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Laos
Spanish:
Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Colombia, Spanish East Indies (includes Phillipines), Canary Islands, Spanish Sahara
Portguese:
Brazil, Portugese India, Angola, Mozambique, Macua (East Asia)
German:
German East Africa (includes modern Tanzania and Ruanda-Burundi),
German South-West Africa (Namibia, partially Botswana),
German West Africa, German New Guinea, German Samoa
Dutch
Curacao (caribbean), Suriname, South Africa, Indonesia
Italy
Italian North Africa, Italian East Africa
*******
This is an unprecedented level of imperialism that required a tremendous amount of mobilization and committment in order to maintain. It took place during roughly the same time period and was done by Christian nations that have geographic proximity and a long history of relations and shared cultural upheavals. How do you determine the etiology of that behavior without looking at the group which carried out that behavior?
Despite the unwarranted tears in here, you can’t.
The question is whether the normal cultural characteristics of Western Europe (e.g. rationalism, capitalism, Christianity) are conducive to the manifestations of brutality towards others and arrogance towards nature or do those actions represent a departure from their actual values. In other words, is the behavior anamolous or is it a natural consequence of the dominant cultural ideals?
Sure, they needed weapons and transport but they also needed “a will to power” and cultural context in which extremely ravenous imperialism accompanied by genocide and dispossession would be “normal”. That outlook is not “normal” for every culture as evidenced by European accounts of their initial interactions with many peoples they met on their voyages of conquest.
If Europeans had a genuine (instead of rhetorical) ethic demanding respect and brotherhood towards *all* people could they have bureaucratically exploited others on such a grand scale? If their dominant religious conceptions held that *all* reality was imbued with a divine force could they have contaminated the earth by exploding nuclear weapons?
Exploring questions like those has been my contribution to this thread and will continue to be my contribution. Accusations that I’m being “racist” are completely baseless. If someone shoots up movie viewers or a school people start to ask questions about his upbringing, ideologies, mental state, and background. Europeans, as a group, essentially shoot up the whole world yet it’s “racist” to explore the facets of their cultural personality that encouraged them to do so?
Ridiculous.
As a courtesy, I’m letting you know that I’m ignoring the lot of you whiners from this point on.
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@sharina
“This is what I think a lot of people are not getting, even in American society. A small sum are getting caught and maybe jail time, but that is the small sum. The bigger issue lies in the dark plotting and planning. Helping the minions get in positions to do the dirty work.”
Yup. The people who are needed to carry out the actual, true business of the nation will get where they need to be.
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Jeff Elberfeld
The moment you started with the “not all” argument you were wasting your time. It is beyond me what would possess anyone to use it or think of it as sound. As I said and I will repeat using argument from ignorance is as good as saying it was untrue.
Yes we can wrap it up in terms like over population, but those terms are key words to make certain acts more marketable to masses.
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http://www.naij.com/461600-mawuna-koutonin-on-the-myth-of-overpopulated-africa.html
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See, this is exactly what i mean when i say all European cultures are lesser; Mirkwood, Jefe, Abagond. Only THEY could’ve done the atrocities of colonialism without providing nearly enough back in return. ALL Europeans are accountable for their ancestor’s actions (since they benefit from privilege) not just by working with non-Europeans to end racism, but also by:
-accepting their status as the scum of the planet.
-accept that they must at least respect ALL non-Europeans.
-giving up their status as ‘possibly respectable’ to ‘defaultly/ permanently condemnable’.
-giving up any chance for options, wealth, expression, or safety.
-giving up their status of being worthy of self-determination.
-giving up their right to complain about other oppressions they might have (homophobia, misogyny, ableism, etc.).
-giving up any chance for mistake or fault forgiveness.
Even if only one of those is true, my point is made. You all view Europeans as a special sort of lesser human that deserves no leeway, compassion, or benefit of the doubt. Europeanism, not just whiteness, is a taint of the world. Anyone with both light skin and round eyes (for lack of a better term) should just give up this whole ‘humanity’ thing and stop breeding. We’re not ALL human, only poc are.
My main points against the idea (Europe is the failed region) are this:
-whiteness is not inherent to Europe, just ask the Rromani and the Lebanese. One European but not white, the other not European but white.
-conquest would totally have happened, (albeit not genocide necessarily) had any other superculture got our luck.
-Europe had other opportunities the conquer in smaller scales, but didn’t do it any worse than poc.
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Y’all are telling my whole way of life and being is pathetic and i should replace it, BUT YOU DON’T KNOW THE REPLACEMENT? Why am i supposed to be happy or content when:
-all the apparent good people hate me or at least are permitted to do so at any time.
-i will never be fully accepted by said good people.
-i am part of the villains of history.
-i am not worthy of self-worth.
-i am the least. The very least tied with nobody.
-i cannot change being white.
-i will never deserve self-determination, community, or empathy.
That last one is why cultural appropriation occurs (usually), because we know full and well how evil and irredeemable our cultures are, so we’d rather poc. We do want the burden, it makes us better people, y’know.
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Are they asking for me to do those things i mentioned or not?
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Actually, so much apologies for my tone. I am only afraid of having to give up my humanity (among other things) to be respected? Is this true or…
European-inferioritists like Origin and Peanut just drive my nerves up a wall. Why must they be taken seriously? Why has nobody called them out on their lack of empathy? Why must i be happy or content with their existence? Why must i respect THEM?
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@Uriel
No one asked or cares about what you listed above. Sorry to sound harsh, but it is what it is.
Regardless of your feelings much of what peanut and Origin has said rings true. I don’t give two fudge pops whether it bothers you that I or anyone takes them seriously, if their lack of empathy bothers your, or if you are happy or content with their existance. They don’t speak for your pleasure and you will find no one here does. Nor should they.
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You’re missing the point. I don’t care if they’re polite to me or even if people don’t hurt my feelings. I care that I have do the stuff i listed in my first post on this page. Imagine i made you do that for stuff you had no control over? Much of what they say can be summarized as follows:
-Europeans are the worst because only they could create whiteness, white supremacy, and other forms of bigotry. As if non-European cultures had a chance to create global whiteness, and conquest never showed up outside Europe. Europe had opportunities to do it before, but didn’t. Thus, they are not magically evil. All empires added a second dimension of difference besides ethnicity (Greeks had language, Jews had religion). Skin color being something that can’t be changed is a coincidence rather than a deliberate sticking to poc.
-Stop putting your cultures on low ponies and realize they are the worst things to come from a human mindset. Never mind each culture has its ups and downs.
There ideology isn’t sound or pure. It’s an inversion tactic being done because of what whites have been poc cultures and ideologies backed by the ignorance of the fact Europeans only took over the world thru historical accident rather than naivety of poc or underhandness of Europeans. You view as not human as you and i’m supposed to be sunshine and rainbows?
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*view me
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Cry me a river!
Two things come to mind here as I read and consider Uriel, Jeff and Mirkwood’s posts.
One – it’s ALWAYS ABOUT – SOME – WHITE people’s FEELINGS.
Two – some of the incessant whining I see here reminds me of white womens tears.
Bottom line – if WHITE people, aka “Europeans,” weren’t a distinctively special GROUP mired in extraordinary NEGATIVE behaviors there would be no such thing as racism.
In fact, if there weren’t any WHITE people, racism/white supremacy would have never happened and remain in existence to this day.
That people of color can now – somehow – be deemed racists, is insanity.
And delusional.
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@Uriel
The ideology of whiteness is not about skin colour. There is no requirement to give up a particular skin colour in order to give up the ideology of whiteness.
Are you saying that the ideology of whiteness is a historical accident?
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@uriel well its a bitter pill to swallow, but maybe youll learn something, you seem to be at the ‘feeling some type of way’ stage. Then comes understanding, and maybe, just maybe, change.
@sharinalr the confederate flag as an effort to remedy the wrongs on the racist past in the united states. To cleanse white Americans of their racist past and show them as unified with their black brothers and sisters. I call bs, because it does nothing to deal with the racism today. The racism of the past was just a foundation to build up what is racism today. Focusing on a flag is superficial as it does not acknowledge and tackle the real issue.”
My opinion is that bree newsome showed real guts, and flags are so laden with symbolism, they take on characteristics beyond the mere fabric, and its just a hop skip and a jump to the stars and stripes. A lot of us are tired of this whole thing, trust and believe!
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@ Uriel,
it’s probably hard to understand many of the things you first read on this site, because a lot of things are not immediately apparent.
To most if us “Whiteness” is not a skin color, it is an attitude and belief about a skin color, So ultimately, “Whiteness” is something that was created. If you go back in the history of Europe, there was a time when nobody thought of themselves all as some gigantic “White” race.
Secondly, people are often talking about a White-favoring *system* more than to specific individuals. Of course, individuals are culpable to the extent that they buy into, and support, the afore-mentioned system. A European individual can reject the concepts of White Supremacy and work against it. In that way they can become part of the solution.
Finally, people of color, in the U.S. have been under a lot of emotional stress, especially lately. Sites like this one often become a way for people to vent and to theorize. People may be angry or fed up as they post. Think of it like a kind of therapeutic catharsis. It doesn’t mean that these people, in their personal lives don’t get along with European individuals, or hate them. They are simply frustrated with a global White-favoring system of oppression. You cannot take it all personally.
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Uriel
Obviously you do care how they feel about you or treat you as you stated your feelings for several post now. Secondly no one cares if you follow the list or not.
People have more control than they like to think, but opt not to do things that are two hard or does not affect them.
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@V8
I think Bree Newsome is a hero as well, but what does the flag do to deal with racism once it is down? This is the real question for people to contemplate. Will this help in the direction of dismantling racism? My answer to this is no. It will be a show of southern politeness, but the racism is still there and striving.
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I say yes. Because it discourages racists.
When they have the perception that their racist symbols are sacrosanct and untouchable, then it encourages them to boldly propagate their view of the world. But when they are slowly stripped of their precious symbols, are shut down in discourse, and seen as an ‘abnormal fringe,’ then they begin to feel the world closing in on them. Does it change their hearts? No, But it does strike a blow against them both recruiting and acting out as boldly as they once did!
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Thanks you guys. King, Jefe, Sharinalr, you’ve all been really patient. No sarcasm, i’m serious.
@Jefe
I don’t think whiteness was an accident, but i think its success was. Racism isn’t natural, although a second dimension of othering besides ethnicity (colorism, i think, was the original case), is natural.
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King
You have a point, but what does it really discourage racist from? They won’t stop being racist so how will their racism appear?
Another thing here is white people will then seek to hold onto the idea that “they get what they want.” Further allowing them to dive into the thinking of Roof.
All in all it still does not allow for white people to address their racism, but rather using different means to pacify blacks and buy away their racism. Which I think eventually will blow up because they are asking what more do we want and not realizing what we want they can’t give without them giving up whiteness. An act many can’t separate from themselves.
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Well sharinalr, I see a connection between behavior and belief. Obviously we both agree that one’s beliefs motivate one’s behavior. But I also am of the opinion that, to a lesser extent, your behavior shapes your beliefs and perceptions.
For example. If you were part of a psychological experiment in which you were required to treat people badly or inferior… Within a very short time, it will not even bother you anymore. What’s more, after a while, it will become second nature to you. And finally, you will have to fight the idea that these people actually ARE inferior to you and deserving of bad treatment.
The same is true if you are forced to treat people as equals. Even if you believe you are superior, the very act of daily going through the motions of treating people as if they are equal to you will have an effect on your psychology. So that to some extent, you will begin to see them more as equals. That doesn’t mean that it will magically and completely transform anyone. But is does provide a behavioral lever with which to nudge beliefs in a new direction.
That is unavoidable in any case. The only alternative to that scenario is to keep on not getting what we want.
But we could have said the same things in 1964. “Why should we have these Whites change all these laws and pass all these bills? I mean, it will only be cosmetic! Why should we allow them to pacify us by doing the right thing”?
We don’t really have a choice do we? I mean people have to be pushed to DO the right things, regardless of what is going on in the deep recesses of their tortured souls. I don’t care if a person is sincere or not, just treat me with equality and give me the same opportunities as everybody else. I’ll take it from there.
They can believe whatever they want.
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@Uriel, Can you explain this?
Above we discussed several times that whiteness is not a description of skin colour, but one of an ideology that governs a social system.
If the success of whiteness was an accident, do you mean only in the beginning? Is its continued “success” and paradigm for society in the 21st century also an accident?
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Continued success of it, no. Ability to reach its apex, yes. I know whiteness doesn’t mean a skin color, but i’m pretty sure it grew from colorism.
Also, if by Europe, you all mean ‘whiteland’, then yeah, it’s inferior. My offense at hearing ‘Europeans are inferior.’ isn’t the fact of simply voicing an opinion i don’t like, it’s the fact i’m supposed to be stuck with one of said cultures with no way of getting out. You do realize poc words on race are gospel, right?
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“colorism” is also an ideology governing a social system paradigm. It is not a biological thing either. I am not sure what you mean by “Colorism is a natural thing”. You mean it is in the Human DNA? or just simply common to many human cultures? That does not make it natural.
So, saying “it grew from colorism” is not saying much. In fact, I am not sure we can say that “whiteness” as it is practised in North America is directly derivative from colourism. It is distinctively different from colourism. Whiteness is not simply a preference for lighter skin tone and differing treatment based on that skin tone.
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Colorism itself isn’t natural. A second dimension of othering beyond ethnicity is. The Greeks had language, the Jews had religion. I say it grew from colorism because before colorism “racial” lines were quite fluid and weren’t as fixed as they were today. Thus, racism was too chaotic to be a powerful institution, and when the justification came to throw blacks and actual (native) Americans under the bus- skin color was used because they saw the Irish, Jews, and Germans as a lesser evil.
Also, Jefe (and King and Kiwi), they do mean me. How do i know? Because no matter how hard i work to end racism, i’ll still benefit from privilege in my lifetime. And benefiting from privilege is a minus not a zero. Everyone thinks i want superiority, no, i want neutrality or equality. Everyone saying positive or neutral things about my life is irredeemable, just like me, apparently. I know poc are not shining beacons of justice, but apparently non-poc are flaming bastions that need to know their place as lesser beings. Cathartic my ass, you want revenge for shit i’ll never think of doing. I can’t speak for others, and yes, of course i’ll work to end racism, but why the must you view me as lesser for anything to work?
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And yes, i know poc have worse lives then i ever will. My beef is that i have to be in love with the ostracism and disempathy towards me and hate whatever praise i get regardless of the source. Sure, i won’t die or anything, but why can’t i be allowed by you all to see this as hatred rather than justice.
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Mirkwood, shut up. You do not speak for me. I thought you were anti-racist in some capacity, but you were just another snowflake who cares more about attention than justice. YOU view yourself as somebody special for being a basic human being. YOU see poc as whiny and that they do not deserve to mourn their anger. YOU believe in the fairytale that people who are white can actually redeem themselves to be equal to poc. YOU think everyone is trying to make white people hate themselves for the sake of it/ because they’re evil. YOU want peace not justice.
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Just to be clear, hurt feelings, if any, on the part of any reader is merely a side-effect of my posts. That is neither an intention nor a concern. I’m also uninterested in “not all” arguments. If there were struggles within Europe to decide the path the culture would take the winners have already determined what it means to be European.
History attests to the consequences of the particular configuration of ideals that were spontaneously chosen. Actions only follow mental committment whether the actions are individual or collective. So there must have been a certain cultural structuring of thought followed by the creation of the necessary institutions in order to motivate and execute European collective behavior. All I’m doing, with the help of a few texts, is looking at the historical facts of the behavior and examining how the culture enabled and supported it.
Why?
Well, the actions generated by European thought and institutions have been extremely detrimental to us. We continue to suffer from the effects on multiple levels. However, the very nature of European culture causes the manner in which it maintains its hegemony to be concealed or “hidden in plain sight”. It may be masked in the universalist language of religious “Salvation” or “The International Monetary Fund”, for example. Furthermore, we have been robbed of perspectives from which to view aspects of European culture as particular to it because the tendency of that culture to impose itself on others (cultural genocide) thereby eliminating other perspectives.
I think that understanding how the “machine” works is the first step to liberation. I question the motives of anyone who says that those who have been collectively oppressed by Europeans should not examine them critically. How could it possibly be beneficial to remain ignorant about what we’re up against?
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Black people circumnavigated the globe waaay before the european did, why do u circulate erroneous nnsense all the time?
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Incidentally, I was reading an article about Serena Willams’ *amazing* comeback win over Heather Watson at Wimbledon (in front of a hostile crowd no less) when an article in the sidebar caught my interest. It was about the Runit Dome in the Marshall islands – an area sequestering radioactively contaminated soil from US nuclear testing – and the danger that it is being eroded.
Of course, the article mentioned the arrogance of blowing up nuclear weapons at these people’s home, destroying their way of life, and leaving them with the mess. But it also mentioned that they call the radioactive soil “poison” because they don’t have a word for “contamination”. It may be an alien concept to them but it was brought to their doorsteps by the United States. The US also exploded nuclear weapons at Bikini which is now primarily associated with the swimsuit. The only people against which nuclear bombs were used (in war) are the Japanese who are also (conceptually subhuman) “cultural others” to use Marimba Ani’s term.
In her book she mentions some other cases of toxic waste being dumped on “cultural others”.
pg 446
*********************************
First World countries [this is the term she uses for what Europeans call the “Third World”] are considered garbage dumps by Europeans. We are, afterall, for them the cultural other (“garbage”).
*NIGERIA: Between august 1987 and May 1988, almost 4,000 tons of toxic wastes were dumped in Koko, NIgeria. As a result, the people of this small port town have seen a corresponding increase in the number of cholera patients and premature births.
*GUINEA (Conakry): In February 1988, a shipment of garbage and incinerator as from Philadelphia, which had been previously refected by Panama and Haiti, was dumped in Kassa Island, a short distance off-shore from the capital, Conakry. Reportedly, it “caused trees on the island to turn brown and die.”
*SOUTH AFRICA: The segregated townships and rural homelands in which Africans are forced to live under the system of apartheid are targets of both international and South African government dumping. American Cyanamid exports 100 tons of mercury wastes each year to Thor Chemicals in Cato Ridge, South Africa. The mercury has contaminated nearby marhes and Mngeweni River, which flows down the Valley of a Thousand Hills where the local population uses the water for drinking, cooking, and washing.
HAITI: In Octover 1987, the Haitian government issued an import permit for fertilizer to the Khian Sea. The ship’s cargo, however, consisted of 13,476 tons of toxic municipal incinerator ash from Philadephia.
There are many more examples of this pattern of behavior, including punitive measures by the European Economic Community and other such European nationalistic organizations when we refuse to be used as garbage pails for European Waste.
***************************************
There are more examples indeed including the Army spraying St Louis with toxic chemicals during the Cold War. The pattern is indicative of a cultural outlook which endorses such behavior.
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@sharinalr it was on cnn. It has become a discrete, generally recognizeable event around which to form dialogue.
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The “cultural other” is a concept unearthed by examination of European pattern of behavior towards others. The behavior shows that published statements concerning “the inalienable rights of man” are hypocritical (a “rhetorical ethic” according to Ani). The cultural other is by definition subhuman. People can simply be divested of humanity in order to enable any manner of inhumane action against them. Rubinstein touched on the Nazis’ subhuman Tiermenchen but also mentioned other ways in which people were made “lesser” (by definition) in his book “The Cunning of History”.
p 30
***********
In order to understand more fully the connection between bureaucracy and mass death, it will be necessary to return to the apatrides. They were the first modern Europeans who had become politically and legally superfluous and for whom the most “rational” way of dealing with them was ultimately murder. A majority of apatrides had lost thier political status by a process of bureaucratic definition, denationalizaion.
[…]
Men without political rights are superfluous men. They have lost all right to life and human dignity. Political rights are neither God-given, autonomous, nor self-validating. The Germans understood that no person has any rights unless they are guaranteed by an organized community with the power to defend such rights. They also understood that BY EXTERMINATING STATELESS MEN AND WOMEN, THEY VIOLATED NO LAW BECAUSE SUCH PEOPLE WERE COVERED BY NO LAW. [original italics converted to caps]
*********
So the so-called apatrides were divested of citizenhood before being deported or methodically destroyed just as “cultural others” are considered subhuman and thus fit to be brutalized, experimented on, have toxic waste dumped on, enslaved, and so forth. The Nazi activities were not fundamentally atypical. Decades earlier, before WWI, the Germans had carried out systematic destruction of the Herero and Nama in what is now Namibia. There were concentration camps such as the Shark Island Concentration Camp where people were worked to death. Africans were injected with toxins so that the effects could be observed by autopsy (medical experimentation). Just recently I read that the Germans returned 20 skulls of the massacred people to Namibia.
However, the Nazis screwed up. They were excessive in their behavior towards people who were considered European. The Nazis represented the threat to European cultural coherence that unleashing of the more destructive tendencies of the culture within itself can cause. This is why they are so thoroughly condemned. This is why they were tried for war crimes
According to Marimba Ani in her book Yurugu:
pg 418
##########
German reparations and Jewish statehood, after the atrocities of World War II, illustrate the difference between European intracultural ethic and European behavior towards others. German treatment of the Jews during Hitler’s rule was effectively condemned by the Western World as no other act of mass brutality committed by a Western European nation has ever been. Yet, it would appear from the record that it wasn’t because this brutality exceeded any other ever committed against a cultural group. Unfortunately the history of European imperialism has much worse tales to tell. It was effectively condemned by the West because of the identity of the victims in terms of the cultural definitions of the European. The victims in this case were ultimately considered to be Europeans and therefore not cultural others. The Germans had made a mistake. The Boers in South Africa; the Americans in North America, Japan, Vietnam, etc., the Spanish in South America, the British in China, India, Africa, the Caribbean Islands; the Christian Church during the Crusades – the list could go on and on – but none of these actions by Europeans could ever be forcefully or seriously condemned by the Western world, for in each instance the perpetrators had chosen the “ethnically proper” victims – non-European, nonwhite, nonwestern peoples. Ian Smith was responsible for the murder of 30,000 Africans in Rhodesia, but he was never charged with “war crimes”. Africans must do that themselves.
#############
The whole concept of the “cultural other” is spelled out quite directly in the judge’s opinion when Dredd Scott sued (unsuccessfully) for his freedom. However the pattern of behavior proves that the concept prevails as a working theory of the culture even when it is not so explicitly stated.
Judge Taney
[italics mine]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood [only hypocritically, mind you, given the judge’s ruling]. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration, for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted, [because they had slaves!]
[…]
They [the ‘African’ race] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit [!!!!].
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Doesn’t this corroborate Ani’s point? The constitution was a statement of the intracultural ethic (needed to prevent cultural self-destruction) and clearly did not apply to those considered “cultural others”. They had “no rights the white man was bound to respect”. Though stated above in the context of American law, this doctrine holds true in all aspects of European behavior towards others. This is why there were treaties signed between European countries that give away land owned by non-Europeans. They’re just like the flora and fauna and have no ownership rights the European is bound to respect.
Given the apparent need to dehumanize cultural others in order to exploit them does it also make sense that Europeans eventually adopted a religious idea that split the world between blessed christians and doomed heathen who needed to be “saved” (cultural destruction)? This is the point. Everything coheres into one cultural statement that supports the acquisition of more and more power. Capitalism also derives quite naturally from this value system. The cultural thought patterns divide reality, assign the parts relative value and thereby generate the necessary “lesser objects” for Europeans to control, manipulate, or destroy. We are among them.
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This is the world-view that allows peoples who are guilty of genocide to be celebrated as discovering and conquering heros (conquistadores). They were, in fact, doing their duty of purging reality of that which should not be here. The term Hitler used for his victims was “Lebensunwertes Leben” or “life unworthy of life”.
IIRC, I’ve seen Abagond mention that the Romans, for all their voracity, were not truly *genocidal*. At that point the cultural machinery that would lead to the later atrocities were not fully developed. Rubinstein touched on this in “The Cunning of History”.
pg 31
*********************
One mistake often made by those who appeal to the humanistic ideals of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the failure to distinguish between the manifest values and the ethos generated by that same tradition. The Judeo-Christian tradition is said to proclaim an ethic in which every man is possessed of an irreducible element of human dignity as a child of God [me: though “cultural others” were often denied even that]. Nevertheless, beyond all conscious intent, it has produced a secularization of consciousness involving an abstract, dehumanized, calculating rationality that can eradicate every vestige of that same human dignity in all areas of human interchange. Furthermore, of the two elements that together form the basis of Western culture, the classical humanism of Greco-Roman paganism [me: which owed much to black Kemet/Egypt] and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, it is the biblical tradition that has led to the secularization of consciousness, disenchantment of the world, methodical conduct (as in both Protestantism and capitalism), and finally, bureaucratic objectivity. Nor ought we to be surprised that the bureaucratic objectivity of the Germans was paralleled by the diplomatic objectivity of the British. They were both nourished by the same culture. The culture that made the [Nazi] death camps possible was not only indigenous to the West but was an outcome, albeit unforeseen and unintended, of the fundamental religious traditions.
***************************
Earlier he had said:
pg 29
##################
Martin Luther proclaimed that the world was so hopelessly corruped by sin and so totally devoid of the saving presence of God, that the Devil is in fact the Lord of this world. The protestant insistence that man is saved by faith alone (sola fidei), rather than works, separates man’s activities in the empirical world from the realm of divinity with a remorseless logic to which biblical Judaism had pointed but did not reach.
It was the land of the Reformation that became the land in which bureaucracy was first perfected in its most completely objective form. The land of the Reformation was also the land where bureaucracy was able to create its most thoroughly secularized, rationalized, and dehumanized “achievement”, the death camp. Before men could acquire the “dehumanized” attitude of bureaucracy in which “love, hared, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements” are eliminated in one’s dealings with one’s fellowmen, the disenchantment process had to become culturally predominant; God and the world had to be so radically disjoined that it became possible to treat both the political and the natural order with an uncompomisingly dispassionate objectivity.
When one contrasts the attitude of the savage who cannot leave the battlefield until he performs some kind of appeasement ritual to his slain enemy with the assembly-line manufacture of corpses by the millions at Auschwitz, we get an idea of the enormous religious and cultural distance Western man has traversed in order to create so unique a social and political institution as the death camp.
###################
He reveals his bias when he calls the people who *couldn’t* have created an assembly-line death camp the savages. Nonetheless, the point is that the disenchantment of physical reality left nothing within it sacred. The outlook generated by the Judeo-Christian tradition, which asserts that the abstract God is the only valid object of devotion and that he is NOT immanent in creation, is one in which there is a split between (sinful) lived reality and the (holy) divine. That, along with a choice to value man over nature (analagous to us/other and christian/heathen), supports a quest for absolute power over nature which would lead to ecological imbalance. In Rubinstein’s view the disenchantment due to the Judeo-Christian tradition also allowed bureaucratically administered genocide. The Greeks and Romans weren’t there yet.
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[I made a mistake with the italics above. The italics are original except the beginning of page 29.]
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Is anyone gonna answer m\y questions? Also, if Origin is right and my culture/ history is indeed evil- the fuck do i do for a new one? Why must i be associated with the worst of humanity for not suffering enough?
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@ Uriel
Recommended posts:
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@ Uriel
And this too:
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@King
You get no real argument from me on that, but I do feel that there is little change in the right direction. As much as we like to believe there is change, it seems to be smoke and mirrors.
“But we could have said the same things in 1964. “Why should we have these Whites change all these laws and pass all these bills? I mean, it will only be cosmetic! Why should we allow them to pacify us by doing the right thing”?”—-That is true, but even with that I feel there was much more to be done and it seemed to only stop with little. Of course we could say many of our leaders were killed before true efforts towards equality could be made, but even so that which was made was just enough to calm the masses. It did, but it allowed for most blacks to ignore even bigger issues in the community because we got the one thing we wanted. What we want is not always what we need. Not saying we did not need civil rights, but we needed much more. I know I am sounding a bit greedy here. lol.
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sharinalr, I think that WE stopped fighting. I mean, the Civil Rights Generation, they walked the walk. They went out and got bitten, beat up, bloodied, and bludgeoned. We’re not going to do that, let’s be honest. They were BETTER than we are… braver… tougher. That’s not us today. It’s just not.
We will not see their like again.
We squander their legacy.
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@King… I agree with you as well. However I can’t help but wonder if the spirit of the Civil Rights movement was diminished because top leaders and groups that believed in us having self-sustaining communities were wiped out. Every time we’ve tried to do for ourselves the progress was often times violently halted. People sort of went underground. How do we get that spirit back and live long enough to pay it forward for the next generation?
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bygodsloveandgrace, the measure of a great movement is this—that when the great ones fall, others fill in to take their place and become great in their turn! They are not measured by men but by ideas and dreams that live on beyond the lives of men. Even violent organizations, filled with true believers can manage to do this.
Ask yourself why Al-Qaeda survives the premature deaths of so many of it’s leaders???
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@King
I fully agree.
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@ King…. Fair and excellent points. I’d like to see more of a resurgence. More mobilization and more support for black empowerment. I know it exists in pockets and is rarely publicized in the media. I know many of us are and continue to do great things.
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@bygodsloveandgrace
This is something I would like to see as well. Something we need to see, but too many blacks are afraid of losing something for it to really bear fruit.
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There us nothing more apt to kill a movement than apparent success.
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The best way to stop a Revolution is to give 10% of the revolutionaries 10% of what they want.
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^5 sharinalr
@King..You’ve given me great food for thought…Thank you.
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The need for a defensively unified black community is definitely important. Part of my reason for talking about European culture and the power drive at its core is for us to appreciate that our only viable option is to engage in forms of resistance. Even if we were to become completely “integrated” – which will never happen – we would be integrated into a system would still endanger us. After all, what is the ultimate arrival point of a culture concerned only with the acquisition of more and more power?
Totalitarianism.
European rulership over “cultural others” takes on a totalitarian character but the culture is always straining to achieve the ultimate expression of its ideological thrust in its relationship to its own members. In fact, the US system of “checks and balances” arose because of the so-called founders’ understanding of this tendency given their knowledge of European history. However, even in America, citizens’ rights have been under attack since the September 11, 2001 event leading to expanded eavesdropping by the government, relaxation of laws preventing unlawful detention, and more.
It is indeed ironic that a report a year before, by people who’d eventually form the Bush regime, lamented that Americans would not accept such changes – and multiple wars – without a “catalyzing event” like Pearl Harbor. From that standpoint, September 11, 2001 was certainly convenient. Cui bono? Sure as hell not the oil-rich countries that were blown up and vassalized in “retaliation” even if they, like Iraq, had nothing to do with it.
The full title of Richard L. Rubinstein’s book is “The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future” and it was originally published in 1975. While he refers to the Holocaust frequently in the book, it is not about the Holocaust. His primary concern is what the Holocaust tells us about “Western Civilization” and what it implies about possibilities for the future. These sentences from Chaper I sum up his proposition.
pg 6
#############
“The Holocaust was an expression of some of the most significant political, moral, religious, and demographic tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century. The Holocaust cannot be divorced from the very same culture of modernity that produced the two world wars and Hitler”
pg 21
“One of the least helpful ways of understanding the Holocaust is to regard the destruction process as the work of a small group of irresponsible criminals who were atypical of normal statesmen and who somehow gained control of the German people, forcing them by terror and deliberate stimulation of religious and ethnic hatred to pursue a barbaric and retrograde policy that was thoroughly at odds with the great traditions of Western civilization.
On the contrary, we are more likely to understand the Holocaust if we regard it as the expression of some of the most profound tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century.”
END########END
The rest of the book presents evidence to support those claims and I’ve quoted some of that in previous posts. In the final chapter he expounds on the consequences of the cultural tendencies of Europe.
pg 88
@@@@@@@@
“The UNLIMITED CHARACTER OF THE STATE’S SOVEREIGNTY [caps mine] even in the extermination of its own citizens was recognized by Justice Robert Jackson, the presiding American judge at the Nuremberg war crime trials. Jackson expressed the opinion that the Nazis involved in the extermination of Jews could not be prosecuted for murdering Jews of German nationality. He argued that no state can sit in judgement of another’s treatment of its minorities [me: interesting that the AMERICAN judge would go there]. Jackson felt compelled to assert the ultimacy of national sovereignty over all conflicting claims, even the right to life itself. He did not, of course, approve of the Nazi actions. He sought to include the extermination project in the catalogue of war crimes, but only because the project was pursued as part of a war of unjustified aggression [me: against other European countries, mind you], not because the extermination was a crime in itself. The right of the state to define the conditions under which capital punishment will be inflicted has not been impaired by the Holocaust.”
pg 89
“The dreadful history of Europe’s Jews has demonstrated that rights do not belong to men by nature. To the extent that men have rights, they have them only as member of the polis, the political community, and there is no polis or Christian commonwealth of nations. All that men possess by nature is the necessity to participate in the incessant life and death struggle for existence of any animal. Furthermore, unlike other animals, men have no fixed instinctual structure that regulates their behavior and limits their aggression against members of the same species. Outside of the polis there are no inborn retraints on the human exercise of destructive power.”
END@@@@@@@@END
There are shades of Darwinism in that paragraph. Human nature has been reduced to animal nature. Indeed, even more base. This is a natural consequence of desacralization/disenchantment. IIRC, Darwin was influenced by Malthus’ social arguments in support of the ‘natural’ death of the poor and applied it to the natural world. The notion of “survival of the fittest” supports the power drive and finds expression in contexts as diverse as Western economics. Again, the pieces of the puzzle interlock to express the cultural core.
It is important to remember here that he is talking from a Euro-American pean perspective. This also explains his focus on the Holocaust as opposed to all the massacres and genocides of non-white, non-Europeans before that. “Man” is the white man and “civilization” refers to his social structures. He continues to expound on the inevitable march towards totalitarianism.
pg 91
%%%%%%%
Thus, the Holocaust bears witness to the advance of civilization, I repeat, to the advance of civilization, to the point at which large scale massaacre is no longer a crime and the state’s sovereign powers are such that millions can be stripped of their rights and condemned to the world of the living dead. […] In the end, the secular state has dethroned all mystifications of power and morality save its own. The state become the only true god on earth with the power to define realistically what is good and will be rewarded and what is evil and will be punished; this truly sovereign god also has the ultimate power of divinity, the power to decide who shall live and who shall die. This does not mean that the sovereign cannot be limited; he can but only by laws of men acting in concert, at best a tenuous guarantee of a humane society. […] Both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks under Stalin have demonstrated that a properly organized modern state can inflict TOTAL DOMINATION [caps mine] upon any segment of its population it chooses.
pg 96
Much of this book has dealt with the fate of those who were rendered politically or economically redundant in the earlier decades of this century [20th]. Their story is one of the most terrible in the annals of the race. In a time of diminishing affluence and increasing mass unemployment, their story may carry a warning concerning our own future. The history of the twentieth century has taught us that people who are rendered permanently superfluous are eventually condemned to segregated precincts of the living dead or are exterminated outright. […] Lacking alternative means of controlling and underclass devoid of hope, is it realistic to expect that even a greatly enlarged police establishment, the state’s instrument of violence against its own deviant citizens, will be able to contain the spreading social pathology such an underclass inevitably breeds? […] Is there not a measure of madness in a system of technological rationality that first produces masses of surplus people and then holds forth extermination as the most “rational” and practical solution of the social problems they pose?
END%%%%%%%END
There may be a “measure of madness” but according to Marimba Ani (in her book Yurugu) it is a natural consequence of the European asili or cultural “seed” which demands power. To obtain power one must produce the “objects” over which to exercise it. Therefore the necessary cultural thought patterns are developed along with “proper” molding of the personalities of the members to make them agents in the expression of the asili. I’ll follow up with a post about her recognition of totalitarianism as the natural destination of Euro-American society.
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I’ll just let her speak for herself because I think the following paragraphs are pretty clear. She’s talking about the kind of person that European culture is likely to produce given its fundamentals. She begins her discussion of the nature of the relationship between members of the culture with an exploration of the concept of the “self” in that context.
Yurugu: An Afrikan-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior
################
pg 340
The unquestioned acceptance and attempted assimilation of the European concept of “individuality” and the related concept of “individual freedom” has continually misguided and weakened First World struggles for self-determination. Their noncritical acceptance has delayed the victory. […]
The Euro-American idea of freedom is inextricably bound to the Western European conception of “self”.
pg 341
Havelock stresses the importance of the ability to separate self from other: The lack of identification with other was in Plato’s conception the primary rational act. The idea is reinforced throughout the culture and so it is that the idea of “identification with”, love of, and sympathy or empathetic understanding for others goes against the grain of the European tradition; it is the epistemological, ideological, political, and spiritual contradiction. A morality based on “altruism” is inconceivable in the European context. In the West the self is primary, and survival depends on the cultivation of self-centeredness. One must be “allowed” to be properly selfish; and THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “FREE”. [caps mine]
pg 344
This “freedom” is the existential PREREQUISITE TO INDIVIDUAL POWER [caps mine], and that is its significance for understanding the European mind and European cultural behavior. “Power”, as a European concept is the ability to control and to manipulate; control of the self – in order to control and manipulate objects external to the self. One must be a “free agent” – free in the interest of self. This also implies “freedom” from moral or ethical considerations. This concept of power is synonymous with the European utamaroho [a swahili-derived word representing “collective personality”]; it is the most basic motivating force in the culture, touching every aspect of belief and behavior. Within European peoples, the individual is the seat of this power, just as he is the seat of the “freedom” that makes it possible. He is free to “wheel and deal”; i.e, to maneuver, operate, procure, achieve (etc.) for self. Interculturally, the entire culture bands together expertly in group effort to ensure its power over other cultures.
pg 345
Dorothy Lee puts it this way: “The definition of self in our own cultures rests on our laws of contradiction. The self cannot be both self and not self, both self and other; the self excludes the other”. Norman Brown makes a similar observation when he says that Freud was “misled by his own metaphysical bias towards dualism” and that “one can see Freud’s though inhibited by a conception of self and other as mutually exclusive alternatives”. In this respect, Freud’s though is simply manifesting characteristics of the European utamawazo [a swahili-derived term that refers to how thought is structured within the culture], an utamawazo besiged by irreconcilable dichotomies such as “subject/object”, “self/other”, which become the terms of European value distinctions like “knowledge/opinion”, “reason/emotion”, etc. […]
The raison d’etre for these “splits” is to be found in the basic goal of European behavior. The idea of separation is necessary for the sensation of control, i.e., of European power. It must be experiences as “control of” and “control over”. One part controls the other; “I control you”. Where entities are merged or conceived as unity there can be no question of “control over” or of “power” in the European sense. […]
Vernon Dixon tells us that the African objective is “the use of forces in nature to restore a more harmonious relationship between man and the universe”. Human beings and the phenomenal world are interdependent. “The phenomenal world becomes personalized”. In Dixon’s comparison of the African and European world-views, he discusses the respective concepts of self that emerge from these two philosophies. In the European view, he says, the self is in a state of perpetual battle with “an external, impersonal system”. The self battles even with nature since “nature does not have his [the self’s] interest at heart”.
pg 350
Since the foundation or germinating seed of the culture puts in motion an insatiable power drive, conceptions and definitions must be created that facilitate the will-to-power. Power becomes defined/experienced as control over other. This, in turn necessitates the splitting of self from other, as we have seen. What results is the concept of the individual (“not divisible”); the smallest unit of the social group. This atom of the human universe is invented by the Euroopean as the seat of rational thought, the seat of moral action, the locus of power (since power must be an intensely narcissistic experience). Is it any wonder that cooperation between such entities is problematical? Clearly the concept of the “individual” is uniquely European, as is the resultant ideology of individualism and the economic system of capitalism that accompanies it. An “individual” can never truly experience the “we-ness” of things; and “individual” can never experience phenominal reality as an extension of self, only as a negation of self. What is socially problematical is a communal impossibility. There is no counterpart to the European “individual” in African civilization. It is simply impractical; it does not suit the asili of African culture and therefore does not exist (except as destructive/”evil”). The concept of “the person” in African thought extends to encompass the entire universe. But then the objective is not personal control or power. The social objective is the experience of “we”. The African limitation is the difficulty in defining the political “they”. The European political advantage is that every experience is defined politically, based on the identification of the threatening “other”.
pg 351
European culture creates a being who thrives on competition and therefore, on individual and distinct achievement. Because there is not a natural regard for personal worth born from and supported by the culture – because a person’s existence as a member of the group does not in itself mean much – the individual strives to be “better than”, to stand apart from others in his craving for recognition. This serves to reinforce his separate awareness and to further decrease his ability to identify with others. […] THE ONLY THING THAT BINDS MEMBERS OF THE CULTURE TOGETHER in the final analysis – that binds them into a unified cultural whole – is the common goal of the suppression, exploitation, and control of the rest of the world; the environment, the earth and its people; that which is other than the cultural self. It is a union of like-minded people, who have cooperated in the creation of a technological giant – or monster.
################
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Having explored the European concept of self she went on to examine the implications for their socities as a whole
pg 352
####################
It becomes ever more imperative that we understand the full implications of the existence of a minority culture in our midst; a culture that has no formal or institutional reflection of the universal order, especially since this culture is by nature expansionistic. This is a culture based on the belief that the only reality is that which human beings create through manipulation of matter. It is based on a series of destructive acts that disorder and deplete, but do not harmonize or replenish. It may have taken centuries to reach the point of obvious breakdown that the workings of European culture now exhibit, but the seeds of destruction were always there in the asili[…]
What happens in the contemporary West is that the individual feels overwhelmed by the institutions that surround her and powerless to affect the whole (the group, the social entity). As she grows older she begins to feel more and more that she is interchangeable and so loses a sense of her own worth [me: ironically, her ‘individuality’ in another sense]. This is the fate of the vast majority who do not achieve recognition beyond the crowdc by extreme competitiveness, aggression, and selfishness. Joel Kovel says:
”
What we have thought to be an increase in our individual power and freedom granted by modern progress, is in reality a much more ambiguous and complex process. To a large extent, people have been freed by handing over to culture their autonomy, for which they are repaid with material bounty and the freedom from manual toil. These are substantial boons, but for the mass of men, they are obtained at enormous cost. for, along with the dimunition of self-autonomy, occurs the complementary growth of culture and its magical machines. As the self becomes dedifferentiated, society takes over the process of history, becoming both more articulated and more controlled … We are talking, of course, of that unique modern phenomenon, which we have already seen in this century in particularly horrid, and perhaps premature, forms, but which seems to be given existence SIMPLY BY THE NATURAL UNFOLDING OF THE LOGOS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
”
This last phrase hints of the asili concept, which focuses on inherent ideological tendencies. Paradoxically, as Kovel accurately identifies the PATTERN OF EVER-INCREASING INSTITUTIONAL AND STATE CONTROL in European development, he does not seem to recognize the idea of “self-autonomy”, the loss of which he laments, as the culprit. He seems to have confused “self-autonomy” with “personal integrity”. They are not synonymous, for “self-autonomy” is the converse of community. In the oppressive and repressive state order that the European asili generates, the self does indeed become more spirtually separate, thereby resulting in a collection of alienated selves. It is spiritual joining that creates “community”, and it is community, not autonomy, that has the power to defeat the TOTALITARIAN order.
##################
So she ultimately comes to the same conclusion as Rubinstein in “The Cunning of History”: totalitarianism is the ultimate destination. Ultimately, we don’t want to be “integrated” into that.
We need a cultural awakening that energizes us to rebuild our own true community. I’m not sure what will start that process but hopefully talking, writing, sharing, and understanding the need for it will help.
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@origin thanks for the ani quotes. Very interesting. Can you posit why if ‘utamaroho’ or as the buddhists say ‘interconnected dependecy’ is endemic to african thought/philosophy why is there no large scale ie govermental support for this in african countries? We see totalitarianism, socialism, feudalism? Maybe i missed something….
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utamaroho isn’t ‘interconnected dependency’. It’s a word coined by Ani from swahili roots which she uses to mean the ‘spirit life’ or ‘collective personality’ of the culture. It’s the personality archetype that is imbued within members of the culture by the culture and affects their instinctive reaction to the world.
Anyway, the thing about African countries, Caribbean countries, etc. is that they are former European colonies. Their forms of government were usually inherited from colonial rule even as far as conducting most government business in a European language. This is part of the European process of colonization which results in cultural destruction.
Ani
Cultural Violence: Destroying the will
pg 427
##############
The West initially set out to conquer the world with the might of its Roman armies, but the lesson they soon learned was that building an empire was not a matter of military superiority alone; it was necessary to impose a culture as well – and so the Romans “civilized” (did cultural violence) as they went. And in the centuries to come Christianity became the tool that dealt the deathblow to the objects of European imperialism. How much easier it was to control a culture once the coherence of its ideology had been destroyed; and wasn’t this, after all, the way to really take it over, to possess it? Again, it was the cultural other who was the only fair game for cultural imperialism. Only her forms of social organization, her religion, her material culture, her art forms, were “inferior”. They could, there fore, be destroyed with impunity. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF AFRICANS AND OTHER MAJORITY PEOPLES WAS FAR MORE COSTLY TO THEM THAN EVEN INCARCERATION; for without these they had no rationale for defense; neither a reason for living, nor one for dying. […]
The attack was cultural, aimed at the spirit and self-esteem of the African, entities that had been held firmly in tact by a cohesive communal organization. […] Speaking African languages was discouraged, while imitating Europe was encouraged; including Europe’s material culture. [Ani quotes another writer, Awoonoor]
“…The situation led to the development of a sense of insecurity and inferiority among Africans, marked by a simple process of the loss of identity and of independence in the most traumatic manner … For this group [the Europeans], the bulk of the Africans represented a despicable lower level of creatures with obnoxious religions and social habits who must not be tolerated around the precincts of decent homes”
Soon “educated” Africans would be taught to think these things about their own people. THEY COULD THEN BE USED TO “LEAD”. […]
Clearly it has been the evil political genuis of the West, since the beginnings of European imperilasim, to concentrate its efforts on the cultural and therefore ideological destruction of the people it conquered. The instances of European military control in which its victims continued to deny European cultural superiority are not imperialist successes. Here the Europeans have not been able to truly inpose and “expand” themselves. It is for this reason that Vietnam is the most bitter failure of European imperialism to date. And yet a people who have been ideologically conquered rarely require the threat of arms to be kept in control. Carter G. Woodson tells us:
“If you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. When you determnine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man geel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He wil go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one”
#################################
This is key to understanding the comprehensive nature of colonization. It’s not just about physically occupying other people’s land but a forced imposition of an alien culture, even language. At the end of the process, the ability to conceive of anything different is lost. The Woodson quote reminds me of a section of a speech attributed to Henry Berry of Jefferson:
https://archive.org/stream/speechofhenryber1832berr/speechofhenryber1832berr_djvu.txt
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Pass as severe laws as you will, to keep these unfortunate crea-
tures in ignorance, it is in vain, unless thou can extinguish that spark
of intellect which God has given them. […] Sir, we have, as far as possible closed every avenue by which light might enter their minds; we have only to go one step further — to extinguish the capacity to see the light, and our work would be completed; they would then be reduced to the level of the beasts of the field, and we should be safe:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Really, if another language can be put on your tongue do you really think pre-colonial ideologies are going to remain strong? No.
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Richard L. Rubinstein wrote of a somewhat analogous process he termed “bureaucratic self destruction” which occurred during the Holocaust. German Jews were German so it is not quite the same as cultural destruction but it involved a cooptation of institutions that were meant to serve Jews.
“The Cunning of History”
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pg 68
We have to this point concentrated on the role of the Germans in creating the extermination project and the society of total domination [me: i.e totalitarian society]. However, the Germans could not have established such a society by themselves. There had to be compliance [italics mine] on the part of the victims.
pg72
Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Jews did not resist. They had been conditioned by their religious culture to submit and endure. There was no resort to even token violence when the Nazis forced Jews to dig mass graves, strip, climb into the graves, lie down over the layer of corpses already murdered and await the final coup de grace. Such submission was the last chapter in the history of a cultural and psychological transformation begun by the rabbis and Pharisees almost two thousand years before.
In addition to the cultural conditioning that affected even the most assimilated Jews, the organized Jewish community was a major factor in preventing effective resistance. Wherever the extermiantion process was put into effect, the Germans utilized the existing leadership and organizations of the Jewish community to do their work. […]
The process of taking over the Jewish communal bureaucracies and transforming them into components in the extermination process was one of the organizational triumphs of the Nazis. In the face of the German determination to murder all Jews, most Jews instinctively relied on their own communal organizations to defend their interests whenever possible. Unfortunately, these very organizations were transformed into subsidiaries of the German police and state bureaucracies.
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In the European colonies all institutions were replaced with ones meant to maintain and perpetuate European power. It didn’t matter if non-whites eventually attained positions of responsibility within them when their raison d’etre hadn’t changed.
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Everyone interested in this theme should read ‘Lion’s Blood.’ It’s a science fiction/alternative history in which Africans dominate Europe and the Americas, enslave white Europeans, and engage in wars with the Aztecs and others in the Americas. It’s an interesting read, with science fiction elements of advanced technology used by the African empires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion%27s_Blood
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@talibmensah: I am a huge fan of Steve Barnes wife Tannarive Due read all her books and some short stories they wrote together in an anthology. I have seen that title for as long as I have been reading Tannnarive. I guess I have to check that one out too.
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@Mary Burrell
I didn’t know they were married! Wow, I guess I need to check out her books finally.
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call it heresy if you must but isn’t it strictly reasonable to argue then if ‘out of africa with boats’ explains the world’s migration pattern that so called blacks did have ocean-going vessels if not guns but some type of weapons to ensure security during the construction and operation thereof as in before whites because that’s how you have to parse that title? i think? it’s a bit much even for me…
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I am way late to this conversation; however the native population of the Americas was destroyed by European disease.
The balance of Native Americans were placed under control by the Christian Churches and the Western tribes were subdued by the desire of the new people to own the land.
The Buffalo Soldiers were one of the main group of military personnel who fought the Native Americans.
Even until this day, the warriors of the Germanic tribes have been fierce and deadly. Read about the Romans and the Barbarians.
Who has studied the history of the African Tribal Wars?
Very simple. Mankind has a mean streak almost everywhere even in China. Reading the history of the Chinese will open your eyes.
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@Allen Shaw
“I am way late to this conversation; however the native population of the Americas was destroyed by European disease.”
It’s sad that you don’t even know your own country’s history. Your first President said to General George Sullivan of the Iroquois:
“The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more”
Thomas Jefferson said this:
““If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is EXTERMINATED, or driven beyond the Mississippi… in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them ALL.”
I could go on and on with examples of the clear genocide of American Indians and removal from their lands.
So your contention that they were all “destroyed by European disease” is a racist white lie invented to remove guilt from evil consciences.
“Mankind has a mean streak almost everywhere even in China”
Nobody’s “mean streak” comes close to that of Western European tribes. Not by a long shot.
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Hmm, this one has resurrected and I noticed I had the honor of being called racist by LoM. LOL. My views haven’t really changed. All people do not act the same and I do not expect all groups/cultures to act the same.
In America almost everyone has access to guns but not everyone becomes a mass shooter. Sure, everyone has the capacity for violence and could shoot someone as part of an escalated dispute but not everyone goes out and randomly shoots people with whom they had no prior dispute.
When Europeans landed on the shores of some of the people they later colonized, enslaved or exterminated, those people tried to exchange gifts with them to establish friendship. Does that sound like the kind of culture that would explore and find other people and decide to exterminate them and take what they have? In a few places Europeans were attacked when they showed up (those people were not colonized then). Again, different culture, different behavior.
Christian Europe came armed with a belief system which automatically designated all other people squatters because the Christian God owned everything (Islam operates analogously; Judaism is similar but is more insular and does not encourage endless expansionism by human agency). Some other cultures believe that life comes from our ancestors (sounds quite scientific to me) and therefore revere them as part of their worship. This outlook is not configured for imposition on other people. Logically, they should revere their ancestors not yours.
So yes, just as a person’s psychological temperament influences whether he’ll become a mass shooter or not, the cultural temperament must influence inter-cultural interaction. Therefore I have no basis for believing everyone would act like Europeans when not everyone had European culture. Of course, many people are European to some extent now (eg. genetically, religiously, linguistically, governmentally).
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oi its just would have been a different flag
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@ Origin
“…cultural temperament must influence inter-cultural interaction.”
Culture and cultural temperament seems to be a consensus of the people living in a particular society of the human traits they want to emphasize and the ones they want to push in the background.
Some societies emphasize cooperation, others competition. Some societies emphasize family over the individual, others valorize the individual. Some societies emphasize hospitality and giving, others stress distrust and taking.
That consensus does seem to be influenced by the natural environment. Forest dwellers, plains dwellers, hill folk, desert people and seaside/riverside groups all seem to develop a consensus that reflects the ease or difficulty of life in their particular foodshed. The natural environment also seems to determine whether a society develops a scarcity mindset or a worldview of abundance.
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Black people don’t have the heart and dedication to practice systematic racism against white people. That’s not in us on a mass scale like it is within white people.
If we had a black bank we would not redline white areas, the same way white banks redline black areas.
If we had a black hospital we would not use white people as guinea pigs, the same way white hospitals use black people as guinea pigs.
We would not fight harder to save a black black life, the way they fight harder to save a white life.
A white supremacist will study a rock at bottom of the ocean and put the rock under microscope and a non-white person will come along
Non white person = “What you doing there, bob ”
White supremacist = “I’m studying this rock”
Non white person = “Why you studying that for ”
White supremacist = “I’m studying it because it’s there and I’m going to find out why it’s there. How long it’s been there, what’s it’s purpose is, what’s inside it and how I can use it.”
Non white person “How long you gonna do that ?”
White supremacist “As long it takes”
Non white person “Really ?”
White supremacist “Yes and everything that I look at I’m gonna investigate. So I’m going to study this rock just to see if I can use it to dominate you. That’s my mission. That’s what I’m gonna do. What you doing today ?”
Non white person “I’m just going to chill with mates and listen to some music”
White supremacist “And that’s why I dominate all you people. Goodbye. I gotta back to my work”
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^^^
I’m studying this rock because God told me too
I have been giving dominion over the Earth because God favors my tribe.
God has told me to go forth and spread the good news.
Origin up thread points out cultural racism, which when combined with a powerful State, leads to genocide and totalitarianism.
“Civilization” advances at the expense and elimination of the other. That is what the last 500 years of whitr history shows.
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@Afrofem
harsh cold northern environment made whites rapacious. although, it didn’t seem to effect the eskimo that way. got to be something else going on.
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@ nomad
I think the Roman Empire had a huge negative influence on the European mind.
We are taught to glorify Roman contributions to law and engineering, etc., but they also contributed a lot of ugliness to the world that we inhabit now. For all of their technological and military achievements, the Romans had a brutish, dog eat dog domestic society that weakened itself with greed and violence.
From the history I’ve read, prior to the Romans, most of the European tribes lived in harmony with their environment and had a worldview of plenty, just like other human societies around the globe. While they fought each other like all other people, they were not genocidal maniacs.
The Romans deeply traumatized the Celtic, Germanic and Iberian tribes with their murdering, enslaving, stealing and raping. They did the same with the people in the east and south (West Asia and North Africa). However, those societies were former empires themselves and more resilient. They were able to overcome the trauma. In my opinion, the peoples of the north and west of the Empire did not recover as well and became as brutish as their former Roman overlords.
Just my opinion.
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@ Afrofem
“Just my opinion.”
I’ve thought this for a long time myself but could never have stated it as well as you did.
I also believe the introduction of Christianity to these European tribes (which began when the Roman Empire was still intact) in many ways continued the traumatization and loss of cultural identity that was begun by the Roman conquest. Which is not to knock Christianity per se, but more the forcible and even violent methods by which it was introduced in some areas of north and west Europe.
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interesting theory. I kinda think those european tribes brought barbarism with them.
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@ Solitaire
“I also believe the introduction of Christianity to these European tribes (which began when the Roman Empire was still intact) in many ways continued the traumatization and loss of cultural identity that was begun by the Roman conquest.”
Agreed.
A good number of the tribes were forced to convert under threat of violence. The conversion to Christianity also put pressure on herbalists and midwives. That pressure culminated in the campaign against those women who were labeled witches in the European Middle Ages.
More trauma.
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Christianity became Romanized and was no longer the religion of Jesus.
Rome became “Christian” almost 400 years after the death of Jesus. By the time the northern barbarians become Christianized the religion had become brutalist and had internalized the narcissism of the Roman culture. Midevil theology developed a geocentric view of “man” and his relationship to God and the universe. Christians were the new tribe of Isreal with a covenant God had given them to have dominion over the Earth and to bring all nations into the kingdom of God.
“By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” O.T.
It is reiterated again in the N.T.
“For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
So the northeren barbarians went forth with swords and destroyed any culture that was not Christian. God had become White.
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It’s possible that if the Roman Empire had went South instead of North, and conquered the whole of Africa and that was followed by the same Romanized Christianity the northern barbarians adapted, then God today would be Black instead of White.
Then it would have been Blacks with guns and boats going North, giving the northern barbarians an alphabet and books, and destroying their identity and culture.
It seems logical if it is Christianity that helped form racial identity rooted in a religion and its outward manifestation, white supremacy.
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“Defeating your enemy and maybe taking over their country is common. Wiping them out wholesale and taking their land is not. For White Americans that does not come from their guns and their bombs but from how they think.”
I’m convinced that it comes directly from Christianity. In the Old Testimate the Jews went to what is now modern day Isreal and wiped out the Cannenites.
Later King Saul was told by the prophet Samuel to kill all the men, women and children as well as the livestock of the Amalekits. King Saul doesn’t kill everybody nor all the live stock so the prophet Samuel tells Saul he will no longer be king.
I don’t know if these accounts are historically accurate but they don’t need to be. They show a blood thirsty culture that had no problem committing genocide in God’s name.
It is this culture that was behind colonization and was always justified “because of God’s will”.
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@ michaeljonbarker
To my knowledge, European conquests were first greenlighted by a series of papal bulls (policy edicts issued by the Pope) in the 1400s. The 1493 papal bull by Pope Alexander VI, titled The Legal Battle and Spiritual War against the Native People was the most influential.
The core of those edicts were that Christians had the right to claim and dominate any lands and people they discovered in their exploratory voyages. The Portuguese were the first to use the doctrine to legitimize their enslavement of Africans on the West and East coasts of Africa.
Abagond wrote about that doctrine in this post:
A copy of that edict can be found here:
http://www.doctrineofdiscovery.org/
Whiteness (and its offspring, White Supremacy) as an organizing principle did not appear until the late 1600’s. The colonial Virginia legislature enacted laws declaring a special status for pan-European White people in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. The rebellion featured Black and White working class men working together against the colonial government. Separating the two groups was seen as imperative.
That concept of “Whiteness” has been extremely successful——to the point that we are still grappling with it today.
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oh lord back to (tbt et al) cavemen eating their waist deep feces!
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reminds me of a conversation i had with a white guy friend about ‘sarcasm’ vs. ‘talking smart’ perhaps the sarcasm is something else? seems the two are merging sometimes it’s everything that’s been said before so…
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@ MJB
I agree with everything you said, but would add to it. The pre-Christian Romans were not exactly religiously tolerant. IIRC, they tried to wipe out Druidism. And of course they persecuted both the Jews and the early Christians for refusing to worship the emperor as a living god. Once the Roman Empire became officially Christian, their previous form of intolerance merged with that of monotheism. Again IIRC, a lot of the reasoning behind the death penalty for heresy during the Inquisition was based on Roman law concerning treason against the deified emperor.
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@ v8driver
Really?
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Solitare said
“The pre-Christian Romans were not exactly religiously tolerant. IIRC, they tried to wipe out Druidism.”
Exactly. Christianity absorbed that brutalist culture.
I read somewhere that it was the Roman’s who came up with the idea of imprisonment as a form of punishment. There were no prisons before the Roman’s. (That claim needs to be verified)
It’s curious that the modern State prides itself for being modeled after Rome. It is seen as the first Republic, the beginning of democracy. Like Rome our Senators and presidents are millionaires and billionares elected by the people.
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yeah, kinda hyperbolic prose goin around like i’m not used to it or something
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granted i’m a little cranky lately with this not drinking and smoking regimen but something here just got under my skin a bit, obviously
i guess objectively i perceive the ‘system’ to be completely outside normal human mores and relations, and i guess it was contemporaneous with it having it’s way with me (criminal conviciton etc) but how to ‘separate the whiteness’ from americans ie the government is sucking the soul out of everything it can grasp, but still remain in some non-anarchical status? idk a question for the ages,
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@ v8driver
Thanks for elaborating.
To me, the “system” is a part of human mores and relations——-when selfish, greedy, fearful people hijack society. I think this has happened enough in history to see how the system plays out and what the end could be for all of us, no matter our paint job. “Anarchical status” is more a possibility everyday.
I think you are right on some level that “Whiteness” will be less a protective shield in the years going forward. It was always just a way for those at the top to separate and control the masses.
Good luck with your not drinking and smoking regimen. It has to be hard to deal with going cold turkey with two addictions at once.
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basically it was like sarcasm would be more related to the object of the conversation: failings, weak points, etc. whereas ‘smart talk’ just has that ‘extra ish’ involved come on now it’s me you’re talking to here!
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“i perceive the ‘system’ to be completely outside normal human mores and relations, and i guess it was contemporaneous with it having it’s way with me (criminal conviciton etc) but how to ‘separate the whiteness’ from americans ie the government is sucking the soul out of everything it can grasp”
I’m on the reciving end of this statism too.
The system, white supremacy, has begun to cannibalize it’s own, from the bottom up. It’s a leviathan whose days are numbered and those at the top of the pyramid know this. It will get way worse before it implodes and something else fills it’s place.
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@ v8driver
“…failings, weak points, etc….come on now it’s me you’re talking to here!”
If you have something to say, say it.
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@ michaeljonbarker
“I’m on the reciving end of this statism too.”
I think all working class people are on the receiving end.
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@afrofem i wasn’t trying to make this all ‘that deep’ — someone just had gone a little too far with the ‘barbarism’ thing and i was feeling some type of way, the rest of it means … as in it’s still me and i haven’t really changed my opinion shrug sometimes it’s just what it seems!
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@ v8driver
Okay. Sometimes I’m not clear on your meaning—–you can be pretty cryptic at times.
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Yes afrofem I have written in a more cogent style…
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@ Afrofem
What’s funny (in an ironic sort of way) is there have been several times I had no clue what v8driver was talking about and then you’d come along and understand perfectly and catch some erudite references he was alluding to. I’ve kind of been thinking of you as my reliable v8driver translator!
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@ v8driver
Are you purposely cryptic or just stream of consciousness?
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The american natives would be equally decimated by contact with blacks or with chinese or with arabs or any other people the same way they were by whites. And, BTW, “decimate” means killing 10%, what happened was killing 99%
The problem is not that the natives had a bad immune system: whites were as susceptible to the american pathogens as americans to european pathogens. It was that the pathogens affected a whole tribe at once. So, everybody got sick, suffered for a few days and then recovered. Except that when everybody got sick, nobody would make food or bring water.
Imagine a small, isolated, town where everybody gets infected by covid-19 at the same time. 0,1% would die of flu, 99,9% would die of thirst or starvation.
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@ Alberto Monteiro
“whites were as susceptible to the american pathogens as americans to european pathogens.”
Actually, there were far fewer American pathogens. People from the Old World (white or otherwise) were susceptible to those pathogens, true, but they weren’t subjected to wave after wave after wave of new diseases.
The prevalent theory as to why there were markedly fewer American pathogens is the lack of domesticated animals in most of the Americas. The majority of the Old World pathogens hopped from animals to humans, just like AIDS, SARS, and covid-19 have done recently (and I say Old World because many of those “European” pathogens didn’t originate in Europe). Scientists have been able to trace the approximate age of many viruses like smallpox, and most of them didn’t cross over into the human population until hundreds or even thousands of years after domesticated animals became commonplace in the Old World.
“So, everybody got sick, suffered for a few days and then recovered.”
This really downplays the severity of the illnesses. They didn’t get sick just for a few days. Most Europeans had at least partial immunity to these pathogens, meaning they might catch something like chicken pox or measles because they weren’t totally immune, but they had some degree of inherited immunity which enabled their bodies to fight the illness off. Native Americans didn’t have that partial immunity, so these diseases hit them much harder. Something like measles which would only kill a small percentage of Europeans would have a much more devastating effect on Native Americans. Plus there were successive waves of novel illness following each other closely, so someone who managed to survive measles then might be stricken by mumps or typhoid fever or diptheria just weeks later.
There are also many extant accounts from what is now the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, of priests, nuns, Protestant missionaries, Western doctors, nurses, etc. taking care of villages of Native Americans during these plagues, making sure there was food and water and medicine. In those cases, the Natives still died in devastating numbers. They were definitely being killed by the diseases, not from starvation.
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@ Alberto Monteiro
Are you there?
I would like to know your opinion about the way President Bolsonaro is handling the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil.
Do you think he is doing well?
If you want to answer please go to “The coronavirus” topic at this forum.
Thanks in advance.
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