Why would it be the “only” one, when I said it was “one of the best”? You’ve got to read more closely, Mark.
But it is the only one, that I recall, where the writer describes something akin to a fight-or-flight response when engaging the work.
A friend of mine once said that the reason horror films can be so exciting to Black people is that a) they’re so visually hyperbolic, and b) it’s white people getting done in, on-screen.
I think, in a similar sense, the vision of white people being emotionally disquieted by White Fragility, to some Black people, provides momentary repose.
Not, usually, for me, because I’ve seen a lot of this, and I know it’s momentary. But your text was definitely attention-getting.
You can read the lyrics to Mobb Deep’s 1995 masterpiece, here.
I must say that those contrasts have bothered me, but not nearly (apparently) as they did you, to my shame. However, “evil” being portrayed almost always in “black” and “purity/goodness” in white, has profoundly troubled me for decades. Even the Bible (pre-racism as we know it) talks about our “sins as white as snow,” implying they were certainly anything but white before. Scriptural references to the “darkness of ignorance” and the “light of truth,” and so on–endless. Baked into our “beings” in ways we cannot consciously realize until we are “done” (to continue the baking analogy).
Having said that, I must tell you that at this point in US history and even in my life, I am drawn to the black church (not just SDA) to hear the unadulterated message of Jesus to our contemporary world. One year ago D and I visited the MLK Jr. memorial museum and church in Atlanta, the pulpit his father once occupied. We got there at 10 and were whisked by a young mother into the “breakfast” for visitors before the service begins. Welcomed warmly and people even “thrilled” we were there, smiles all around, thier spirit of fellowship and unity sends chills through me as I write this. The service? Oh my.
My wife noticed so many “pink” fashion statements on men and women and said: “Is this Breast Cancer Awareness” week? For at least 20 minutes between music you can hardly imagine, a video was shown. Two women and one man from the congregation who had battled breast cancer told their stories of how that fellowship had carried them through that storm in so many ways. Then, dramatically, they were asked to come forward to the front, at which point the pastor asked all the women and men who were also breast cancer survivors to stand. Then all the family members or friends connected to them and so on. Spine-tingling my friend. Then, he preached a remarkably coherent and joyful sermon and my breath finally returned. My guess is that this happens routinely, not rarely, in that congregation. At least six members approached us and urged us to join with them!! Spontaneous. We live 120 miles away, so . . . But, when my color is absolutely irrelevant to a group so different in color than I, how can I not wish that had the scenarios been reversed, my white congregation would have thrown their arms around them as they did us? If you have not had such experiences, you cannot understand this issue!
I’m not sure what percentage of the population is in a position to implement policy. For the rest of us, social interaction is less managed. It’s those folk that are at a loss for concrete action. I would suggest that racial equality is the government’s job, and the rest is personal mind-set. This can’t be mandated, except for extreme antisocial behaviour. I don’t think that is what the “racist” accusations are strictly about. The current drumbeat on racism is an emotional venting meant to evoke guilt and is a shaming. It’s gotten to the point where no white person is going initiate contact with a black person because we don’t know what to say without over-compensating. That makes for strained relationships. A list of prescribed behaviours are not going to take care of racism; and neither is changing US history.
Listen, again… I appreciate you trying to carry on a discussion after I already said that I’m not willing to discuss this issue with you. Before you jump on and accuse me of not presenting an argument, or merely making a statement… Below is my personal judgement from a great deal of time I spent in discussing these issues with you. I have concluded that your argumentative strategy largely relies on:
Throwing out exorbitant amount of claims that multiply with every response, and then triumphant declaration of victory when you find something you can twist and present as inconsistent.
Semantic shift when #1 doesn’t work, claiming exception… while at the same time…
Largely relying on arguments via analogies that are arguably not analogous … and
Resorting to argument from false generalization or concepts to make universal assumptions about entire category with deceptive statements like “racism is a part of white heritage”. It is true if it is applied in a limited scope of that statement. It is false when one claims is as a universal generalization.
I could keep on going, but it would be rather pointless, since you are not able to recognize these in your argumentative strategy and correct these. At which point any viable discussion with you on this subject becomes very unlikely.
And it’s a pity really. We seem to have much in common. I love philosophy-driven science fiction like Blade Runner and Dune. I also think that “The Boys” is brilliant. I have been a music producer in a genre which was heavily influenced and derived from hip-hop philosophy and techniques, before I transitioned to film and TV. I spent my HS years in a mostly black school in Opa Locka… and much of my experience and academics were constrained to sports, etc, etc.
So, we could have other meaningful and more productive conversations about viable aspect of American and global society, especially as it relates to race and your personal perspective.
I don’t think that your binary and rather fundamentalist approach to racism would allow for a nuanced discussion on this subject.
I would rather not, since our concepts and assumptions about it are very different. If we can’t agree on what fruit is, then our discussion about varieties of tomatoes may get very confusing .
I presume you said that after you wrote the response under review. Which means I’m responding to a text that precedes your edict, correct?
I find this response fascinating, as I do much of what you say.
In a way, your statements sound like the punchline in Liberty Mutual’s famed 2020 ad, “Caricature”:
When one says that “racism is a part of white heritage,” as I did, what is “a limited scope of that statement,” and what is “a universal generalization” of it?
I’d like you, or someone, to tell me what exactly these are.
In other words, everyone white is white because someone came up with the term white to classify people. The practice in which they were interested was 1) demarcating a purportedly superior group, in order for them to 2) mistreat those who were not part of that group; to demarcate people who were not white.
In other words, the term was originated, as it pertains to human classification, to perpetuate a notion of race. It is from this idea of race that we get racism.
This means that whiteness—the idea, not necessarily the eponymous skin color—is forever linked with race, because it was created for that reason. It never existed before this, and it has never existed at a time when such notions were not in force.
One might look at these two documents and say that they are nothing alike, and that comparing them is “a universal generalization.”
On the other hand, another person might look at them, knowing the history of the South, knowing what the confederacy was, knowing Alabama’s role, not only in the Confederacy, but in the history of racism, and, with massive understatement, say one word: “Obviously.”
You, apparently, like the caricatured, hero sandwich-chomping cameraman, would say, “I don’t see it.”
It is very unlikely. But it’s not necessarily for the reasons you give, or just for them. It’s also because I don’t agree with the reasons you give.
I see the coherence of my viewpoint as marked by its ability to describe what one sees in the actual world, as well as to make predictions about what one might see.
You classify it as you have done, but I’m barely able to see why you reject it, in part because your writing is often bad, but, also, perhaps, because I am not seeing past my assumptions.
That’s why I keep bringing up this “3rd party.”
What I mean is that, I completely understand that you think I’m doing everything that you say in your four-part list.
Meanwhile, I don’t know how to describe what you do, except as tortured prose. (To me, your analytical approach might be best summarized in your response to my comparison of racism and anti-semitism…or, better, your entire response to my dark matter / car wash / drift car analogies.)
However, I’m always aware that what we write is a historical record. I’m completely willing to wait until some future time, when someone knowledgeable and objective, perhaps, looks at what you’ve said, then at what I’ve said, or vice versa, and declares who was, in their opinion, correct.
In other words, I have no need to declare myself the winner. I think I’m clear, but perhaps I’m not clear to you because of assumptions I have that are not visible to me.
For example, you recently revealed you see racist acts as ones that are intentional:
Meanwhile, I said:
These are frameworks that would, arguably, widely vary how one analyzes and talks about racism. However, while we’ve been discussing this subject for over two years, here on Spectrum, it was only three days ago that I realized you hold this perspective.
There may be many such assumptions we both hold; one that makes breaching this topic difficult-to-impossible, without further investigating those topics we each consider properly basic.
As explained by James Smiley Bishop, “A properly basic belief is an unprovable belief that is held on the basis of human experience, and that is rational to hold to in the absence of a logical defeater.”
Of course. Perhaps we will!
I don’t think my views are more binary or fundamentalist than a system that has globally divided 7.5 billion human beings, and all future arrivals, into categories of white and non-white; in other words, that has made it feasible for most to tell to which category any one of them belongs. (At least, that is what the Maximum Maxim suggests.)
You may be correct, though, re: nuance. I’m not sure.
I mean, in an oppressive context, nuance is often a luxury of the power class. The subservient, meanwhile, would frequently rather just throw a grenade.
It’s more of an inquisitive response about an issue I’m curious about and find rather bizzarre I this conversation. I’ve added a reply about the flags, since you may find it interesting.
Generalization is precisely in one’s choise to proceed to perpetuate that demarcation. I’m not sure how you can reconcile to claim both…
That it’s not a viable criterion and it was invented to demarcate superior humanity by self-described “white people”.
And that such it’s still a viable demarcation for you to use in your arguments.
Confusing issue for me is the default equation of WHITE > BLACK that you may inadvertently have to reify to attempt to make the case of some total supremacy in all aspects of human being. It has some problematic implications of actually reifying “white people” as supreme.
Just for your personal trivia knowledge, that’s St. Andrew’s cross. You will find it on the flag of GB, Scotland, Jamaica, Florida and Alabama… Not only confederate flag.
Universal means applicable to every person or case… in your case, every white person, etc. It obviously wouldn’t be the case of similarities between two flags… out of all flags you would be considering.
Here’s were we got to a part I’m curious about, because I find certain implications exceptionally bizzarre.
In a personal you and I context… Do you categorize yourself as a subservient black person and I as a supreme and dominant white person?
I recently watched a series of 22 videos by a PhD Professor of Biology (Nathaniel T. Jeanson) who is a creationist, and conducting research into the ethnicity of various people groups. This has really turned my thinking around in regards to race relations and racism!
Dr. Jeanson shows that there is only one race–the human race, and that we are all shades of brown in the Black - White spectrum of skin color. He has taken the genetic information used by evolutionists, which is spread out over 100,000 to 200,000 years, and condensed it into the approximate time from Noah and the flood until today. Because the genetic changes are stretched over such a long time in the evolutionist paradigm, there are basically no historical events to corroborate the DNA changes. By using a shortened 4,500 year timeline, he is able to make predictions from the genetic changes between people groups, looking for historical events among the people groups indicated in the approximate time frame (plus or minus 200 years).
All of the presentations are great (~45 minutes each), but the first six, and specifically Parts 3 & 4, as well as 6 & 7, would give you a good idea of what he has found. Many Europeans, and by extension North Americans, actually have Mongolian and African genetic markers in their DNA. The DNA indicates the history of various people groups as they have migrated around the world. He compares changes in maternal mitochondrial RNA to trace female lineage, and changes to Y chromosomes to trace male lineage.
Here is his page that explains what he is doing. I am also providing a YouTube link to the first in his series. Enjoy!
I can do so because I’m talking about the generalization and how it functions.
Recently, many people have started to make the point that “race is not real,” because there is no biological fundament for it.
This is true: Genetically, there is no such thing as “race.”
The fact that there is no such thing as race genetically, however, does not mean that there is no such thing as race socially.
Said another way, there isn’t any such thing as “genetically superior people,” or “superior white culture.”
There is such a thing as white supremacy.
I think I’ve addressed this, above. However, I’m having a hard time reading your statement, so I’m not sure.
Please let me know if I’ve addressed the issue. If not, please pose it another way.
Florida was part of the Confederacy.
Great Britain and Jamaica were tied together through the bonds of British governance and culture.
Scotland was the homeland of St. Andrews, and is also a part of the United Kingdom, dominated by Great Britain.
Yes.
For example, like I said, “All white people are white, and function as white people.” This means that, in some sense and/or way, they are universally “related.”
I don’t know what this sentence means.
However, my point is this:
a) Half a millennium ago, Europeans came up with an idea of “racial unity and superiority,” branded by the word white.
b) Centuries later, people so classified as white dominate people who aren’t white in almost every metric.
These two facts are not unrelated. They are especially not unrelated when one considers that what links them is half a millennium of continuous mistreatment, of non-white people, by white people.
When I say white supremacy, I’m talking about the arc that links these two facts; everything that connects them.
When white people say, “anyone can be racist,” they are, first, underselling the gravity of my above statement. They are minimizing, deliberately or not, the brutality by which those 500 years were characterized.
Second, they are affixing a very late, faulty understanding of what racism is, and means, to the word racism.
Look up the contemporaneous documentation of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., or the African National Congress, in their fight to overthrow apartheid. You’re not likely to find the idea expressed that Black people were, or could be, “racist to white people.”
You’re not likely to find it in documents written during Reconstruction, as Black people began to hold U.S. governmental offices, and begin to achieve some limited parity with white people.
This is a very new, relatively speaking, addition to the description of raciality, and what it means: The notion that “anyone can be racist,” that “Black people can be racist to each other or to white people,” that “Indians and Pakistani people can be racist to each other,” etc.
This is colloquia run amuck, to the point that the original meaning of the word, why it was formed, and what it describes becomes smeared out and lost…though all are still operative.
Thanks for the question.
I categorize myself as a victim of racism (aka white supremacy).
As for you, or any white person, I would say you may be a racist, or you may not be.
In one of the episodes Dr. Jeanson states that the categories of race (Black, White, Caucasian, African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino) are all human constructions based on a false concept of humanity and in a sense creating a false priority of importance. We have Darwinian Evolution to thank for the concept “Survival of the Fittest”. Even the order in which the labels have been and are presented on government and job applications, has over time, created in the minds of many, a presumptive hierarchy.
Not quite. I will rephrase. In order to assume generalized racial supremacy, you have to be able to follow the full implication of your generalizations.
I understand that you are considering yourself as a victim, but victim concept alone doesn’t imply any kind of hierarchy relationships in context of supremacy. I’m sure that you understand that supremacy is a concept communicating hierarchy.
Do you consider your self as my subservient victim?
Do you consider me individually as your supreme in power, authority, and dominance?
If the answer is no, you would need some further explanation as to where the boundaries of interpersonal relationships apply in the way you define racism as it applies to individuals.
You have to keep in mind that “white people” are not reading what you structure as some monolith you generally describe as “white people”. They are reading this as individuals that they have to somehow relate to what you define very generally. If you don’t define it more specifically at the level of individuals, then it’s difficult for individuals to understand what you are talking about, and many would naturally be object to being smitten by those proverbial grenades that lack nuance.
If you’re saying that the terms victim and supremacist, when applied to the same field, imply a hierarchy, yes, I’d agree with that statement.
By definition, a victim would be “subservient.”
So, that word, in the context of your question, is a superfluity; like saying “hard rock,” “cold ice cream,” or “hot fire.”
If you’re asking me,
Do you consider your self as my victim?
I’d say, “I don’t know if I am, or not, because I do not know if you are a racist (white supremacist), or not.”
I might also add, "I suspect I am, because I might suspect any and all white people of racism as long as a) the minimum requirement is that one be white—low bar to entry—and, b) racists are deceitful, secretive, and violent.
“However, I do not know, because I do not know if you are a racist or not.”
I would answer this question in the same terms I did your first one.
My answer is, in so many words, “I don’t know.”
This corresponds to my earlier statement, pertaining to the most objective answer one can give when asked, “Are all white people racist?”
That answer is, also, “I don’t know.”
…i.e., people who are white; monolithic in, at least, that regard.
I would say such people should probably become familiar with the history of how white people have, collectively, interacted with non-white people over the last 1,000 years, but with special attention paid to the last 500 years.
At that point, there was a major disruptive moment via a) European world exploration and b) the consolidation of race as a notion.
They should look closely at contacts between white and non-white people over that time period. Not just, “We had a maid named Mary, and we loved her,” but, especially, what have white people done at their worst?
Once engaged with this process, they should ask themselves and others, “Given these behaviors, what effect did they have on future behavior, of non-white people, but especially the future behavior of white people?”
So, for example, consider what you call “white on black US slavery and segregation.” When it officially ended, what did white people do, collectively, at their worst?
One answer is sharecropping, poll taxes, jail, repression, lynching, etc. All of this is in books.
So, then the white people of whom I’m speaking should perform the analysis I’m suggesting, and repeat the process, again, iteratively: “Given these behaviors, what effect did they have on future behavior, of non-white people, but especially the future behavior of white people?”
Let me skip to the end: Do this enough, though multiple iterations, and what you end up with is a massive, four-dimensional point cloud in the shape of white supremacy; i.e., a depiction of racism where it is hard to tell whose specific input generated any specific spacial volume.
The vagueness of such an object is why it is impossible for me to answer your questions above, or even why it is often hard for many white persons to see themselves as racist.
Further, few white people, if any, are going to actually perform this suggested exercise. What they will likely do is believe what they see, and what their family and peers have told them to believe about what they see as it pertains to race.
For example, when you left the USSR, your father told you that you had to think of yourself as “of lower status than blacks in US.”
This suggestion lacks massive amounts of data, particularly about “Blacks in the U.S.” However, it is probably as detailed or complete as the information almost any white person was given about Black people — perhaps the less said, the better? — when going “into the world.”
I’ve found, however, in those instances where white people perform this exercise, or some version of it, they may become more attuned to the effects their actions, and those of others, including their ancestors, have had on what exists.
Without the same, it’s difficult for individuals to understand what I am talking about, and many would naturally object to being smitten by those proverbial grenades that lack nuance.
Seymour, I liked your previous post in which you described how your genetics professor had tracked the genetic changes of different human groups that are genetically related.
But now you post that “ the categories of race…are all…based on a false concept”.
Translation: THERE ARE NO RACES.
You lost me on that one.
How could Dr. Jeanson track an apparently nonexistent category based on a false concept?
Perhaps you could clarify what your professor was tracking if not races.?
What is his word for a group of genetically related people who are superficially described as “ Black, White, Caucasian, African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino”?
Although it appears from the comments on this website, that many of my Caucasian brethren here would be quite willing to give up their identity as a member of the White race, or at least degrade it; I am loath to give up my identity as White. I like it.
It’s OK to be White, and Black lives really do matter.
Would your professor mind if I self identify as White?
Is it OK for a Jew to self identity as a Jew?
(careful with that one.)
(I like that you appear to me to be working diligently toward peace and harmony between the different “races”, “nations”, families, ethnicities, or whatever word you present to us that your professor would use. In seeking to be a peacemaker, you are showing yourself to be a child of God.) https://biblehub.com/matthew/5-9.htm
Thank you for responding. Your appeal to agnosticism is something I wouldn’t object to, even though your overall premise may be re-projecting the American concept of race, which was actually spread much later, perhaps in the past 150 years with scientific racism.
Hence you seem to be agnostic about individuals. But you seem to be fairly certain in a view history and concept of global white Supremacy that such view establishes. It’s a very simar position some Adventists take on Jesuit infiltration conspiracy. Hence, there is Jesuit infiltration as a concept, but whether you one or not is unclear
Just to clarify my father’s comment again… for the third time, he was talking about the economic status, and not a social one. I was going to Opa Locka - a majority black and Hispanic (3% non-hispanic white) poor suburb of Miami. No matter how poor it was, in Ukraine we were more poor. If I was going to a poor Appalachian region, he’d likely provide a different statement. Keep in mind that I grew up in basketball environment, idolizing American black players. Neither I nor he would have some generic understanding of Black people in US as a “lower class” you are trying to imply.
Again, much of our disconnect seems to stem from your misconceptions about European history, when you approach it through narrative developed to describe American black history, which has a very selective focus you are referencing.
You seem to have a lack of understanding which European nations were involved in Colonialism, and which were not. If I gave you a test, I’m not sure you’d pass . Hence, it’s very difficult to even attempt to deconstruct your misconceptions about certain consolidated “white people” inflicting violence on the rest of the world. Especially considering Moors and Turkish Empires that waged expansionary wars of conquest into Europe, and syphoned off slaves, which was one of the major Exports from Eastern Europe to North Africa, Middle East and Arabic Peninsula.
As far as “house slave Maria”, there’s an interesting case of Abraham Hannibal, an African slave child captured by Turks and brouht to Russia. Peter the Great raised him as his godson. He became a prominent Russian nobleman, engineer and general. His son founded a city where I was born. His great grandson became the greatest Russian poet and novelist - Alexander Pushkin.
I’m not sure you would ever be able to understand European history as it relates to race issues through the narrow lens of American black history. And that’s where most of our disconnect resides.
In order to communicate his findings, by necessity Dr. Jeanson has to use labels that most everyone will understand such as Asian, Chinese, African, Mongol, European, etc. However, he is adamant that there is one human race with skin color of brown on the Black - White continuum of skin tones, and that the changes in skin color can happen very rapidly within three or four generations.
The research Dr. Jeanson is working on is cutting edge, it has never before been looked at with a relatively short timeline as a creationist would envision. The DNA data studies have been gathered by scientists who believe that humans have evolved over 100,000 to 200,000 years. Using this assumed evolutionary timeline stretches the DNA data to such a degree that the DNA changes between populations that can be seen, do not align with any known historical events.
By interpreting the DNA data into a 4,500 year timeline, he has been able to predict that historical events can be seen by the changes in DNA. Slavery, war, and massive movements of populations are reflected by comparing the DNA between people groups around the world.
If you remember the genetic Pea experiment from Biology class (AABB - aabb). a person with dark skin color, moving into a population of light skin color and intermarrying with them, will create children with various combinations of dark, medium skin tones, to very light skin color. If the children, over several generations, marry back into the predominant population of light color skin, within several generations the children will exhibit the characteristics of the predominant population, but still retain the DNA markers of the dark skin color ancestor. Of course the reverse scenario is also possible.
We know this is true because in American history there were some children born from African women that exhibited only so called Caucasian characteristics, children of a white slave master. And today, children of biracial couples, exhibit the characteristics of both parents, often with medium skin tones.
Humans truly are an interconnected “brotherhood and sisterhood”. The fact that there are so many different characteristics and skin colors only illustrates that the human genome exhibits a scale of variability similar to many classes (kinds) of animals, such as horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, and cats.
Without doubt, there will be someone who misunderstands what has been said.
Watch some of his videos, I cannot begin to do it justice.
When you say I “may be re-projecting the American concept of race,” I’d want you to explain precisely what you mean.
That is, I’d hold that the Europeans who traded in slaves held they could do so because they, the traders were white, and the slaves were not. Their imprimatur came from God, the King, the Queen, superior weapons, need for rum, a hard-on, etc., etc.
What you call “scientific racism” sought to establish a phylogenetic basis for the belittlement of non-white people by white people. (It also begins a lot earlier than 150 years ago, by the way.)
The underlying logic for what gave people in the 19th century the right to do this may have been at variance; modified over time. The conviction and the result, however, were the same. These weren’t two different projects. They were only separated by a date, not an ethos.
I also give a reason for this, as you may have noticed.
I can’t comment on these conceits.
I’m uninterested in them and, thus, do not have an opinion on them, either.
You said that when you left the USSR, your father told you that you had to think of yourself as “of lower status than blacks in US.”
I say that this suggestion—for whatever reason—lacks massive amounts of data about “Blacks in the U.S.”
I’m confident that we can agree on this.
I’m not clear why you say that, but
a) perhaps that is part of the ignorance with which you charge me, and
b) because of this, you can say what parts of my statement are falsified.
First, you’d have to tell me why you’re qualified to give such a test.
Right.
Q: A “British” ship is full of non-white slaves. The slaves don’t like the way the trip is going, so they start to attack the “British.”
Meanwhile, a “Spanish,” “French,” and “Portugese” ship, each also full of non-white slaves, come across the struggle going on.
Do the “Spanish,” “French,” and/or “Portugese” ships:
a) Ignore the “British,” and keep sailing?
b) Help the “British”?
c) Help the non-white slaves?
Great.
So, what point does this make about race, its history, and the development of the idea that it is normal and acceptable—not a thing by which to be outraged, and to immediately correct—when white people dominate non-white people?
…we get a Ibrahim Petrovich Gannibal, or a Pushkin, so it evens out, the only reason my response to you is not both deafening and unprintable is that we’re on Spectrum.
If your point is that, because Pushkin became the sine qua non of Russian literature, this means that he wasn’t a victim of white supremacy, I would ask you to prove such a thing, after you to consider the poetry of a contemporary, diplomat Alexander Griboedov, for a sampling of his era’s thought:
Oh Sophie, my friend, What a Negress I have for a servant, Woolly-haired! Hump-backed! Angry! Cat-like in all her ways! And how black! And how frightful! How could God have created such a race? She is a real devil …
That’s quoted from historian Allison Blakely’s 1979 text, Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought.
Still, when you speak of “European history as it relates to race issues through the narrow lens of American black history,” perhaps I’ve got it mixed up.
Are you saying that, in Europe, non-white people dominate white people, and have the last word on what white people do; that they can overrule white people in all nine areas of people activity?
Because, if not, any differences of which you speak are, to me, ornamental; filigree; seen through a narrow lens.
Ok. I think we both can learn from this exchange, so it’s worth a try.
The American history of racism is a unique context in a sense that it largely was black and white, and thus legal paradigms surrounding it followed that context. Such context was missing in Europe, because Europe was much more culturally and politically diverse. People spoke different languages. People had different heritage, and thus different views and preferences.
Such wasn’t the case in the US, because the diversity was minimal, and flowed along the predominant lines of “black / white” context.
Hence, when you trace the US history, you will basically find this binary view of “white people” and “black people”. And you seem to interpret racism as the cause of the African Slave trade, and not a subsequent result of it during its later stages.
Hence, there’s a tendency to take the attitudes and localized concepts developed much later, and re-project these as the driving attitudes behind the entire Colonization and slave trade enterprise of that era.
That’s demonstrably not the case.
As such, from a POV of such view, it would seem that whatever aggression and oppression against specific group of people in history we may look at, the American racism becomes the most egregious, and hence everything else becomes side-stepped in the “social justice” narrative in America.
The dominant narrative is that no matter who you are, and no matter what your setting is… as long as you are not mistreated on basis of your skin color, you are moving to the back of the buss of the human suffering and oppression history.
I see it as politically-driven argument, which is why I don’t find it legitimate, neither I take it very seriously.
That slave carrier may be the ugliest boat to make it into a picture. hideous, Satanic, EMBARRASSING.
WHO was responsible for that ship?
Good chance the people who owned it were White.
Members of 3 races were involved heavily in the transatlantic slave trade.
Caucasians, Jews, Blacks:
African Blacks dominated the supply side of this horror. The Black kingdom of Dahomey comes quickly to mind as a primary seller of Black African human flesh. They were very warlike, and captured many innocent Black citizens of neighboring kingdoms, whom they sold into slavery. (I hope you didn’t think White people ran through Africa capturing all those slaves.)
I’m willing to guess that the Captain of the ugly boat posted above by HarryAllen was Caucasian. I can’t be quite as confident about the ownership. But the manpower of the mid passage was probably almost totally Caucasian.
Jewish domination of the slave trade is a rather surprising fact. Jews didn’t totally own the slave trade, but they did dominate it. They were such common sellers and buyers in the New World that auction houses were often closed on Sabbath. The average Jew in colonial America was far more likely to own slaves than other races such as Caucasian, Indian, and Black.
At least that is the claim made in a video by a man that most people love to hate. See if you can spot his lies in this documentary. https://www.bitchute.com/video/QNlWGGlzzxtS/.
Watch it before the internet censors take it down. Tell your friends you’ve seen a forbidden, censored video. Already it is hard to see on the original website, and the WayBack Machine is behind a paywall. Bit Chute has it now.
Given that Jews dominated the Slave trade in the New World, and Caucasians provided the manpower, and Blacks totally dominated the African side of this disgusting trade; there is apparently plenty of guilt to go around to everyone. Modern blacks need to ease up on White people and admit that Black people are just as racist as white.
Black lives matter.
It’s OK to be White.
It wasn’t a statistical presentation. It was a general understanding conveyed by his friend who set this opportunity up through a school I would be going to as an exchange student. Likewise, I’m paraphrasing as I’m translating to use it as an example of socio-economic situation I had to climb out of, especially when it came to limited employment options which allowed to pay me below the minimum wage.
All you would have to do is to present a much broader scope of literature from 17-18th century Europe that shows the normalized consensus of supremacy of “white men” over all of the other races. I’ll be happy to change my mind.
You could jump to 19th and 20th, and if demonstrate some pervasive zeitgeist in European that would scope “white people” as a superior race… I would love to see this and learn more, largely because I’m unaware of such cultural zeitgeist in Europe.
You keep proving my point when you, even in this case, inject slave ships and treat the entire white race as a monolith… when we are discussing Russia, which has nothing to do with these ship
You are demonstrating that you are simply unable to see it through any other lens or context.
BTW… if you want to let it rip in the PM… I don’t mind. I promise I won’t tell anyone, especially if you find it therapeutic.
You’d actually need to read “Woe from Wit” to understand that are reading above. It’s a very well-known Russian theatrical comedy. Perhaps the most well-known, because it’s the most quoted one in colloquial speech.
And you are reading a part of 60 something woman arriving with her servant she likely got from Turks in order to copy the aristocratic fashion in France to have African servants in the palace.
During that time, France was “in” for Russian Aristocracy so they were copying much of that culture to peacock in from of their contemporaries.
So, what you are reading is not said in positive context of some generic attitude. It’s shown as this old woman waltzing in and saying “look what I’ve got!”, and bad-mouth her as she does to any of her servants. The translation attempts to find English equivalents.
There isn’t “Negress” in the original. And likewise there isn’t reference to a race, but to a tribe. The idioms at play with How could God created such a tribe, when she’s acting like a devil. Which would likely mean that the girl was giving the old-woman some grief.
The point being… the woman would treat her white servants with disdain too.
But, again… my point wasn’t that there wasn’t certain scope of racism in Russia. But it wasn’t a pervasive concept of people with white skin are superior to people with black. You’ll see a lot of misconception-driven cultural stereotypes. But you will really have to look in order to find “We are better race” type of ideas.
The point being… if you asked me to find blatant statements of White Supremacy in American history… there are boat loads. It’s very pervasive in US history. When I ask you to do the same in Russian context, you are giving me a brief phase from a play that makes fun of Russian Aristocracy copying French to look cool.
If you look at European history through that lens… you will not be able to see anything else. Because you are not seemingly interested in that history apart from bits and pieces that you use to construct your model.
You’ve got to read more closely, Mark. 
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