@Lausten Yet three posts down from your accusation that I made a strawman argument was immediate to be proven wrong.
My friend told me once that you can always see the makeup on a woman face in a magazine if you flip the photo upside down. It made a great deal of sense as when you take anything that you accuse white people of doing, and change the race in the title that it becomes immediately racist.
@Mrian I’m glad to see that you’ve posted the contributions of the African culture. Other than bad warlords throughout Africa I haven’t really been able to find anything throughout history or seen anyone post anything negative about Africans for a great deal of time now.
ExMachina; your last two posts are incoherent. Maybe time for a break.
In the spirit of inquiry, I’d like to see this conversation, but I’d like to see something substantive. Saying that white supremacists are ignorant is empirical, if you keep in mind that “ignorant” means lacking knowledge. It is very different from saying someone is prone to being a supremacist because they are white. Bringing more knowledge to the conversation, in my experience, always pushes it toward an understanding that feelings of superiority by white people are misguided. So, prove me wrong.
The classic statement in a forum is “read my post”, IOW, you missed what I said but I can’t tell if you are not comprehending or deliberately avoiding my cogent point. What I’ve noticed being missed; 1) evidence of how civilizations gain power and eventually lose it, a la Jared Diamond, 2) evidence throughout history of non-white people accomplishing ground breaking things, i.e. Sumerians created written language, the invention of zero by a few cultures, gun powder, translation of Greek philosophy into modern language, architecture, irrigation, modern farming techniques, transitioning an orbiting space ship back into the atmosphere, anything at CERN, 3) enslaving people, extracting their resources and destroying their ecosystem does not prove superior intellect.
I would like to see these addressed, instead of simply pointing to white men in high office and claiming that is evidence of superiority. If that’s true, you had better be prepared to bow down to whoever manages to dethrone them.
Only the very wealthy get to be eccentric. The rest of us must fall in line and take our respective places in the scheme of things. Being difficult won’t get you far if you have to deal with the folks at the Post Office or the Department of Agriculture.
ROFL! No, I can say I am human and refuse to pick a what people mistakenly call “race”. The post office and the Dept of Ag do not ask that stupid question, because they have no need for it. Seems to me you are again very uninformed. You do not have to claim anything but human and as I said, I do it on the census and no one has come to my door to find out what sort of complexion I have. So you’re just too funny.
@Write4UYou said:
“White racists are ignorant. That’s why they are racist.”This is the low hanging fruit of BS that I’m talking about. You could have said ANY RACE but you chose white people. When have you ever in your life ever considered in the slightest that other races can be equally if not more racist?
Exmachina, you really need to reread what Write4U said. While it can be said about any race, Write4U is staying on topic. However, I haven’t seen/heard of a group of black men, with black hoods, ride up to a white family’s home, burn an Anansi on their lawn, throw a molotov cocktail or brick into their window, and/or drag a grown man out of his house and make him “strange fruit”. That doesn’t happen on that level with other groups. I also haven’t heard of any other ethnic group form a military that gives out blankets with smallpox or go to where people live and start massacring them in mass, like the European-Americans’ military did did to the Native Americans. And BTW, Wounded Knee wasn’t the only place a massacre was done to the Native Americans. IMHO you really need to study U.S. history more in depth and maybe you’d find that European descendents have done more harm to other groups than any other ethnic group. Even the “Friends of the Indians”, a group in the late 1800s wasn’t great with relations concerning the Natives, BUT they weren’t as bad as Custard and his ilk.
@Mrian I’m glad to see that you’ve posted the contributions of the African culture. Other than bad warlords throughout Africa I haven’t really been able to find anything throughout history or seen anyone post anything negative about Africans for a great deal of time now.
You’re welcome, but I wouldn’t call it negative, unless you want to include the fact that African countries sold their own into slavery. That wasn’t so good.
@Lausten, sadly, there is a lot of evidence that Europeans invaded, conquered, and took over various countries, so it’s difficult to prove other countries did the same. Europeans were in South Africa, India, Spaniards and Europeans conquered South America. That’s not to mention European countries and the U.S. still have territories in the Pacific and Atlantic- Easter Island (U.S. and Britain, maybe France too), Guam (U.S.), Virgin Island (U.S. and Britain), Puerto Rico (U.S.), and that’s not mentioning the Caribbean, which the various islands are a territory of either the U.S., Britain, France… While India and Africa maybe free of European occupation, the damage from Anglo-Saxon occupation has been done. South Africa might not fully recover from British Apartheid. Europeans viewed as Conquistadores may never change either. BTW, the dotard is so uneducated that he didn’t know Puerto Rico was part of the U.S. and that he needed to have funds sent to them after the hurricane to take care of their needs after a natural disaster. The dotard is, IMO, the most vile creature, but that’s another topic.
I wish, despite the history of Anglo-Saxons, I could prove you wrong that white people are not ignorant, but sadly, history shows Europeans, more often than not, invading other countries and taking over. About the only thing I have to prove that whites aren’t the only ones who are racists (and it really doesn’t count, because it’s more related to “Black on Black” crime than racism) is various African countries and tribes feuding with each other, kidnapping people from other tribes or country and selling them as slaves to the Europeans and the U.S. Eventually, African countries weren’t so powerful anymore. Then, albeit part of Africa, Egyptians did well throughout history, fell from greatness, and now they are fighting for the Nile (which the dotard supports taking it from them). That’s all I have. I can’t even think of anything the Native Americans did that could be considered racism, because the Europeans perpetually invaded them, even attempted to enslave them (which didn’t work very well), and even attempted genocide. Europeans and descendents in other areas seem to love genocide. I don’t even have anything concerning the Jews. Even in Israel and Palestine, the U.S. is meddling in their affairs giving one advantage over the other.
HOwever, I can give evidence that contradicts the statement perpetuated by this thread’s title and is basically the motto of the Klan and other White supremacists groups. As I mentioned, the cotton gin or peanut butter were not invented by slave owners. Slaves invented things and slave owners took credit for it. As I pointed out, Africa once had a vast maritime trade happening. Native Americans even had some great achievements, but it’s the conquerors who write history, not those who lose, BUT Cherokees did try to “assimilate”, even owned slaves, but as the invaders (Europeans who created the U.S.) forced them onto the Trail of Tears and wiped out most of their history, except for creating a written language and their attempt to “assimilate”. Now there’s a fine example as to how “assimilating” doesn’t often work and is rejected.
Constantinople, under European (Rome) control, now called Istanbul, had a great library, which was burned down. Despite that, Muslims took over, renamed it, forced everyone to follow Islam or die, and renamed the city. So that maybe an example for you.
There’s my problem, Lausten. I can’t prove you wrong because Europeans and their descendents seem to invade and take over, displaying hatred of those they conquered, but I do not consider them superior to anyone, because history says otherwise. Conquering others, wiping out their history, attempted genocide, occupation, relocation, does NOT make white people great. It makes them very hateful destructive human beings, not caring to learn about other cultures- only destroying them. On the other hand, Africa destroyed their own on a vast continent that had a multitude of different cultures. So maybe it does contradict the idea that Europeans of all ilk are ignorant, frightful conquers. Who knows.
You make a good case Mriana. The difficulty is sorting out racism from conquering and war. There’s always a little bit of “we’re better than you” in war. The example you gave of Constantinople, the Muslims did not kill all the Christians when they took over Jerusalem, in fact they let them live in their city, albeit with restrictions. Christians did not afford Muslims the same when they took it back. In fact, that was the first Crusade, and you can find actual orders from the Vatican specifically addressing the superiority of their group. That’s a little harder to find with Muslims until you get to Wahhabism. Also, Turks enslaved Christians, at the same time America was enslaving Africans. It was used as an argument against slavery in general. But, I don’t know all that much about either of these or exactly how racism played a role. I just know that I’ve never seen anything that shows the type of brutal repression as that seen by the American south.
This is true. I sort of skirted even omitted those issues when I attempted to summarize the Muslim v Xian events. I’ve never been great at summarizing, but you are right about the American South. Slavery was brutal and when you got to the islands in the deep south (in the gulf near Louisiana and alike) it was even worse. I forget the name of the movie, but one of my African-American studies professors showed a movie about the slavery on the U.S. islands and for me, it was horrifying. Europeans, especially the descendents of Europeans in the deep South U.S.A. were brutal. IMHO, only Hitler and his regime can be the only equivalent or maybe even worse than that seen with slavery and the treatment of Native Americans in the U.S. I can’t think of anything worse than that, but Hitler was European and a dreadfully hateful one at that and to be fair, albeit begrudgingly, while Latinos have died in the ICE’s concentration camps under the dotard’s watch, they haven’t died quite in the same way 6 million Jews did under Hitler’s regime. That orange creature has been slightly better, although not by much, than the dreadful European man, who was just as white, called Hitler.
This article came through to my email box today. It’s by Chris Hedges, who I think is a good writer and reporter. This doesn’t speak well of the Jews and European governments and the U.S. government seem to either be standing back or assisting the Jews- at least from a Palestinian POV. From a Israeli POV, they need the European and U.S. governments’ help and it’s the Palestinians who are the bad guys. Oh yes, Russia and Turkey, as well as other countries have shares, so to speak, in the mess. It’s a Xian, Muslim, Jewish dream as far as religious texts go and yet at the same time, it’s part of Colonialism too. Suffice it to say, I don’t know who are the bad guys, but I can say no one is superior to the other. No one is better than the other and it’s a freaking mess of fighting humans who think God gave them rights to do all sorts of crap to other humans. Sadly, it’s white all over, despite being an international (mostly European and U.S.) mess. It doesn’t speak well for anyone.
The Zionist Colonization of Palestine
“This is a unique colonialism that we’ve been subjected to where they have no use for us,” Khalidi quotes Said as having written. “The best Palestinian for them,” Said wrote, “is either dead or gone. It’s not that they want to exploit us, or that they need to keep us there in the way of Algeria or South Africa as a subclass.”
Zionism was birthed from the evils of anti-Semitism. It was a response to the discrimination and violence inflicted on Jews, especially during the savage pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century that left thousands dead. The Zionist leader Theodor Herzl in 1896 published “Der Judenstaat,” or “The Jewish State,” in which he warned that Jews were not safe in Europe, a warning that within a few decades proved terrifyingly prescient with the rise of German fascism.Britain’s support of a Jewish homeland was always colored by anti-Semitism. The 1917 decision by the British Cabinet, as stated in the Balfour Declaration, to support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” was a principal part of a misguided endeavor based on anti-Semitic tropes. It was undertaken by the ruling British elites to unite “international Jewry” — including officials of Jewish descent in senior positions in the new Bolshevik state in Russia — behind Britain’s flagging military campaign in World War I. The British leaders were convinced that Jews secretly controlled the U.S. financial system. American Jews, once promised a homeland in Palestine, would, they thought, bring the United States into the war and help finance the war effort. To add to these bizarre anti-Semitic canards, the British believed that Jews and Dönmes — or “crypto-Jews” whose ancestors had converted to Christianity but who continued to practice the rituals of Judaism in secret — controlled the Turkish government.
I could quote more, but I’m afraid I’d be quoting almost the whole article, because Hedges is that good of a writer, IMO.
I will close with his last paragraph, because there is so much to unpack in his article, especially concerning European, Russia, and the descendents in the U.S. for that matter, hatred of others. Note: Russians are considered white too, but Thatoneguys’ view. “White people” had a lot to do with the mess and learned hatred by the Jews and Palestinians is not helping.
The Zionists could never have colonized the Palestinians without the backing of Western imperial powers whose motives were tainted by anti-Semitism. Many of the Jews who fled to Israel would not have done so but for the virulent European anti-Semitism that by the end of World War II saw 6 million Jews murdered. Israel was all that many impoverished and stateless survivors, robbed of their national rights, communities, homes and often most of their relatives, had left. It became the tragic fate of the Palestinians, who had no role in the European pogroms or the Holocaust, to be sacrificed on the altar of hate.
Israel/Palestine a hodge-podge mess of many ethnic groups, but has European and U.S. all over it. Sadly, none of them can figure out that none of them are any better than the other based on skin colour, religion, ethnicity, or origin.
Thanks for the link Mriana.
Something that occurred to me today, with all the bad arguments for why whites are superior being made. What I don’t hear in this thread, or any defense of American or Caucasian superiority, is the question of just why dominance is better, why conquering is better. It’s easy for a gun owner today to claim their right, because they can go to a gun show, get whatever they want, then wave it around and scare off whatever they think is bad. But that was a hard fought right, people died for it. Are the gun owners of today really willing to defend the country that supports those laws they hold so dear? Or how about just their neighborhood? They say they do, but I don’t think they have thought it through. If one were to shoot a criminal in the act, with witnesses, what would happen next, after the hero medal was given and they got their 15 minutes of fame? That criminal probably has family, family that doesn’t care about laws or morals. They’ll come after the hero in their sleep, or their children. An escalation of violence is the most likely path, leading to the very police state they claim they don’t want.
The same goes for violence against immigrants, or how we treated Native Americans. Imagine some other country attempting to eliminate their neighbors or indigenous population, or even just forcing them to abandon their culture. That is generally frowned upon. If we hadn’t made treaties when we did, the rest of the world would have viewed us as barbaric. Something like NATO probably would have never come to be. We would have been just another fascist regime in the early 20th century, dealing with a resistance movement.
If you’re going to defend superiority, you need to take it all the way, not these armchair analyses I’m reading here.
You’re welcome.
Are the gun owners of today really willing to defend the country that supports those laws they hold so dear? Or how about just their neighborhood? They say they do, but I don’t think they have thought it through.
I wondered that too. If they saw a bunch of white men beating on a black neighbour, would they stand up for their black neighbour or let him or her get the tar beat out of them by a bunch of white men? Or would they call the police or use their guns to get the white men to stop? Or do they not care about the black person being beat to death? If they don’t care and they are white, what makes them so superior? Or what if a white man was being beat to death by white vigilantes because he hired black men, like my great grandfather did, would they come to his aid? If one wouldn’t come to his aid because he “loved black people”, what makes such a view so superior? I still say, if it weren’t black men coming to my great grandfather’s rescue, at the risk of their own lives, maybe their families too, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m very grateful for the daring souls who stood up to violence that oppressed other human beings. I can’t and won’t give any reasons as to how racist views ae superior, especially when my life and ancestry is so intertwined with others of different skin colours that I only see human beings with varying degrees of very human complexions. I don’t see “white as superior”, because it’s not and I can give personal history as to how it is not better than any other human being.
ExMachina said; When have you ever in your life ever considered in the slightest that other races can be equally if not more racist?When I did my research on the matter of slavery, which oddly is condoned in the bible. The key word in that posit was not "white". The keyword was "ignorant".
It’s revealing that you would automatically assume that I am ignorant, whereas your mindset reveals an a priori resistance to learn from “equals”.
Don’t let anybody tell you that biblical slavery was somehow less brutal than slavery in the United States. Without exception, biblical societies were slaveholding societies. The Bible engages remarkably diverse cultures — Ethiopian, Egyptian, Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman — but in every one of them some people owned the rights to others. Slaveowners possessed not only the slaves’ labor but also their sexual and reproductive capacities. When the Bible refers to female slaves who do not “please” their masters, we’re talking about the sexual use of slaves. Likewise when the Bible spells out the conditions for marrying a slave (see Exodus 21:7-11).https://www.huffpost.com/entry/slavery-and-the-bible_b_880756
@Write4U, there were also rules for slave owners in the Bible that U.S. slave owners did not follow, even though they attempted to use the Bible to justify their ownership of other humans.
Beating slaves was perfectly allowable regulated under the following rules:Exodus 21:20-21 (NASB): 20 If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21 If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.
Exodus 21:26-27 (NASB): 26 If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. 27 And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth.
U.S. slave owners would cut off the foot of a perpetual runaway slave if found and returned or whip him within an inch of his life. They’d poke out an eye if they felt like it and NOT set him free. The slave would live his life as a slave without an eye.
Escaped slaves An escaped slave from a foreign country could not be handed over to his master, and would gain full citizenship among Israelites:Deuteronomy 23:15-16 (NASB): 15You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. 16He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.
However, as the BibleTrack commentary puts it regarding Deuteronomy 23:15:
“”Most students of the Old Testament agree that this regulation concerns a slave who has escaped from his master in some foreign land and sought refuge in Israel. We do know that, in addition to slaves captured in battle, debt slavery and voluntary slavery existed in Israel and was protected by law, so it seems unlikely that this law applies to those two categories of slaves. We simply aren’t given any detail beyond these two verses.
Ephesians 6:9 9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Exodus 21:32 32 If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.
What The Bible Really Says About Slavery
That article, which you shared, doesn’t actually say how it was less brutal when a slave owner has to set his slave free if he maims the slave. Slave owners in the U.S. would beat them and maim them until they murdered them. They’d rape a woman and not care if she, which they considered breeding stock, died in childbirth or miscarried working the fields.
Now here is an instance in which people can interpret the Bible any way they so choose, but IMHO, if a slave owner has to set their slave free because they maim them seems like it is less brutal than in the U.S. Not only that, if a U.S. slave owner could cut off the foot of a slave and force him to work in that condition until he died, only giving him a vet (vets are quite skilled in treating humans as well as other animals in an emergency) if the foot became infected. So, if you see that as less brutal than the verses sited in the O.T. then that’s really twisted thinking.
Yeah, whether willfully ignorant or just organically predisposed to ignorance.
Something that occurred to me today, with all the bad arguments for why whites are superior being made. What I don’t hear in this thread, or any defense of American or Caucasian superiority, is the question of just why dominance is better, why conquering is better.Dominance is a better position in nature. You have more options.
This touches on the old balance of nature theory. Some people say “Why can’t we just remain in a state were equality is always the name of the game?” Because that’s not how nature works. Dominance and submission come with the territory. I guess with human beings there are different degrees of dominance and different degrees of submission, but it’s not something that can be avoided altogether.
Also, it’s better to be dominated by the West than by anyone else because we are more enlightened. You might not think that means much but nobody else on earth is enlightened at all.
If they were enlightened, thatoneguy, no one in the West would dominate anyone.
OK if that’s not good enough for you, Africa has a long history of sailing and trading by ships: http://en.lisapoyakama.org/the-prestigious-history-of-the-african-sailing/Are you aware this is an Afrocentric pseudo history site? Look at this claim:
Oh so none of this happened (which I studied in African-American history, which started in Africa and ended with the history in the U.S.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnVsmzrIPGUIt says Africans built little fishing boats to use on African rivers, and some Africans sailed as free men with Arabs and Europeans when those groups began slaving in Africa. Still no sign of advanced civilization from SSA Africa.
