Charleston shooting political thread 2: guns, God, and Confederate values

[Galactus]

I've been reading this Confederate debate from the sidelines, but this comment sparked my interest.

Why is race based slavery worse than any other type of slavery?

The transatlantic slave complex is complicated, since it intersects both with race-based slavery and with large-scale plantation-style slavery. (the degree to which one affects and predetermines the other is complex)

But basically, manumission was much harder in the americas (especially in the US South) one of the reason for the large demand for slaves in the ME (where most slaves were either traditional servants or employed in administration) for instance was that slavery tended to be one-generation: Slaves tended to be freed fairly regularly (which in turn meant you needed more to replace those you freed) this wasn't really the case in the US south. (for complex reasons)

Slaves also had fewer rights in the Americas than elsewhere, and there was less of a graduation in terms of status. Both transportation and working conditions also had gigantic death tolls. (although it should be noted this was somewhat dependant on crop, sugar had a huge death toll, tobacco not so much, with cotton somewhere in the middle)

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

The transatlantic slave complex is complicated, since it intersects both with race-based slavery and with large-scale plantation-style slavery. (the degree to which one affects and predetermines the other is complex)

But basically, manumission was much harder in the americas (especially in the US South) one of the reason for the large demand for slaves in the ME (where most slaves were either traditional servants or employed in administration) for instance was that slavery tended to be one-generation: Slaves tended to be freed fairly regularly (which in turn meant you needed more to replace those you freed) this wasn't really the case in the US south. (for complex reasons)

Slaves also had fewer rights in the Americas than elsewhere, and there was less of a graduation in terms of status. Both transportation and working conditions also had gigantic death tolls. (although it should be noted this was somewhat dependant on crop, sugar had a huge death toll, tobacco not so much, with cotton somewhere in the middle)

Lets also not forget that many male slaves in the Middle East were castrated, which would have limited the slave population's ability to reproduce.

There was also a certain race based aspect to this practice, since Europeans and other Middle Eastern slaves were usually only subject to normal castration, whereas Black Africans often had "everything" removed.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Charleston and the Age of Obama

Between 1882 and 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, three thousand four hundred and forty-six black men, women, and children were lynched in this country—a practice so vicious and frequent that Mark Twain was moved, in 1901, to write an essay called “The United States of Lyncherdom.” (Twain shelved the essay and plans for a full-length book on lynching because, he told his publisher, if he went forward, “I shouldn’t have even half a friend left down [south].”) These thousands of murders, as studied by the Tuskegee Institute and others, were a means of enforcing white supremacy in the political and economic marketplaces; they served to terrorize black men who might dare to sleep, or even talk, with white women, and to silence black children, like Emmett Till, who were deemed “insolent.”

That legacy of extreme cruelty and unpunished murder as a means of exerting political and physical control of African-Americans cannot be far from our minds right now. Nine people were shot dead in a church in Charleston. How is it possible, while reading about the alleged killer, Dylann Storm Roof, posing darkly in a picture on his Facebook page, the flags of racist Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa sewn to his jacket, not to think that we have witnessed a lynching? Roof, it is true, did not brandish a noose, nor was he backed by a howling mob of Klansmen, as was so often the case in the heyday of American lynching. Subsequent investigation may put at least some of the blame for his actions on one form of derangement or another. And yet the apparent sense of calculation and planning, what a witness reportedly said was the shooter’s statement of purpose in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church as he took up his gun—“You rape our women and you’re taking over our country”—echoed some of the very same racial anxieties, resentments, and hatreds that fuelled the lynchings of an earlier time.

But the words attributed to the shooter are both a throwback and thoroughly contemporary: one recognizes the rhetoric of extreme reaction and racism heard so often in the era of Barack Obama. His language echoed the barely veiled epithets hurled at Obama in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns (“We want our country back!”) and the raw sewage that spewed onto Obama’s Twitter feed (@POTUS) the moment he cheerfully signed on last month. “We still hang for treason don’t we?” one @jeffgully49, who also posted an image of the President in a noose, wrote.

South Carolina has undergone enormous changes in the decades since Jim Crow, but it is hard to ignore the setting of this rampage, the atmosphere. Seven years ago, as Obama was campaigning in South Carolina, the Times columnist Bob Herbert visited the state, encountering the Confederate flag flying on the grounds of the State Capitol building and, nearby, a statue of Benjamin (Pitchfork Ben) Tillman, a Reconstruction-era governor and senator, who defended white supremacy and the lynching of African-Americans, saying, “We disenfranchised as many as we could.”

And in this very thread we get the reactionary complaint of an attack on 'Southern culture' when slavery, the Confederacy, and the Confederate flag are criticized. It's deeply, deeply disturbing.

[Hayyoth]

Lets also not forget that many male slaves in the Middle East were castrated, which would have limited the slave population's ability to reproduce.

There was also a certain race based aspect to this practice, since Europeans and other Middle Eastern slaves were usually only subject to normal castration, whereas Black Africans often had "everything" removed.

There was also no issue with freeing descendants. Given the millions of black Africans imported into the Arab world we'd expect to see a large population of African descent as in the Americas, but not so much. The process of castration was also incredibly brutal with an enormous mortality rate.

That's not true. It went on for longer, but both in total numbers an in numbers-per-year-of-activity the trans-saharan route was smaller than the Trans-atlantic route. (the usual figure is about 5 million for transatlantic and 3 million for transsaharan, notably the trans-saharan route lasted for a bit more than a thousand years and the transatlantic one for a bit over 300)

You're saying 3 million black Africans. in total, were transported during the entire history of the Sub Saharan slave trade? And the Arab slavers used them to do their accounts and guard their Harems? They weren't used in mining or agriculture? They were treated better than in the Americas?

[Galactus]

There was also no issue with freeing descendants. Given the millions of black Africans imported into the Arab world we'd expect to see a large population of African descent as in the Americas, but not so much. The process of castration was also incredibly brutal with an enormous mortality rate.

Oh, there is. The difference is twofold: A) As a proportion of the total population the arab world had less african slaves than the americans B) The stigma for intermarrying was far less. (the same is true for Portugal and Spain, which had fairly decent-ish sized african populations (a couple %) before the transatlantic slave trade really got going (the plantation system was "test run" in Spain) Once the importation slowed down they simply intermarried with the local population, and are all but invisible except for a few genetic markers.

You're saying 3 million black Africans. in total, were transported during the entire history of the Sub Saharan slave trade? And the Arab slavers used them to do their accounts and guard their Harems? They weren't used in mining or agriculture? They were treated better than in the Americas?

"About" 3 million, difficult to name totally. There were periods were african slaves were used in agriculture (the most famous is during Abbasid times, that ended in a massive slave revolt known as the Zanj-revolts) there were also some plantations on the coast of East-Africa (Zanzibar, the Somali coast, etc.) But by and large african slaves brought via the trans-saharan route were simply to expensive to use for mining and agriculture. (remember, it's much more expensive to trek on foot across the Sahara than go via ship)

The vast majority of slaves in teh ME were either domestic servants (not just eunuchs, but doing the usual cleaning, cooking, etc.) or employed as soldiers or administrators. (the former group was much larger)

It's probably best to think fo slaves in terms of analogue goods: In the US slaves were capital goods, like a tractor, they were bought with the expectation that you'd earn a return on investment. In the ME, slaves were primarily (though not exclusively) luxury products: They were primarily there to make their owners' life easier (and secondarily to show off status and wealth) human vaccuum-cleaners, rather than tractors.

"Treatment" is going to depend a whole lot on who you're dealing with, but slaves in the ME had significantly greater legal rights, and better chance of manumission. (OTOH, american slaves, at least in the US south, were better fed) We have examples of slaves in the OE suing their masters and winning, something that is pretty much unheard of in the US.

In both societies you were likely to be forced to do demaning, drudging work, and likely to be the victim of sexual assault. But if I had topick between going north and going west? Yeah, I'd go north.

[Arakan]

Wow wow wow...what is going on?

How does the ME slave societies even matter in this discussion?

And is this REALLY the benchmark the American South should be measured against?

There is a reason why slavery in the US is a much much more controversial topic than slavery in the ME, or Latin America or serfdom in Imperial Russia.

If some of you dont have a clue why that's so, you better dont discuss this topic here anymore.

(and no, I am not speaking of the race issue...)

[Hayyoth]

best to constrain one's comments to one's own defects? the critique of official enemies is merely shilling. there's nothing that a person in the US can say to compel gulf oil monarchs to stop being dicks, and the US commentator is not exposed to any particular risk in adhering to a chauvinistic talking point. the liberal/left elements within the gulf monarchies can advance their own local critiques of chattel slavery, monarchism, &c.

Ones own defects? I'm not southern and as far as I'm aware none of my ancestors ever owned slaves, let alone black African ones. Unless you mean as a Caucasian I must take on the burden of collective guilt? I was discussing other examples of race based slavery and how this seems to attract little discussion compared to the south? We have comments stating that the Confederacy was an evil akin to the Nazi Holocaust, and to fly a banner to honor a dead ancestor is comparable to waving a swastika in the face of a Jew. That begs the question what exactly made the southern states of the US so incredibly evil in history compared to other slave owning societies.

[Hayyoth]

"About" 3 million, difficult to name totally. There were periods were african slaves were used in agriculture (the most famous is during Abbasid times, that ended in a massive slave revolt known as the Zanj-revolts) there were also some plantations on the coast of East-Africa (Zanzibar, the Somali coast, etc.) But by and large african slaves brought via the trans-saharan route were simply to expensive to use for mining and agriculture. (remember, it's much more expensive to trek on foot across the Sahara than go via ship)

Could you link to some citations for that I'd be very interested in reading further into it. Thanks.

[kuenjato]

Wow wow wow...what is going on?

How does the ME slave societies even matter in this discussion?

And is this REALLY the benchmark the American South should be measured against?

There is a reason why slavery in the US is a much much more controversial topic than slavery in the ME, or Latin America or serfdom in Imperial Russia.

If some of you dont have a clue why that's so, you better dont discuss this topic here anymore.

(and no, I am not speaking of the race issue...)

It's deflection and justification, of course. Hey, the Romans practiced slavery too! It's a time-honored tradition! *barf*

As a middle school history teacher living in New Mexico, I usually have one or two students a year that grew up in the south or in a Confederacy-sympathetic family. The above deflection/false comparison is often coupled with outrage over Lincoln's tyranny, assertion that the "north was racist too," and over and over again, that the war 'wasn't about slavery' but economic principles (in other words, the north treating the south unfairly; slavery had nuthin to do with it!).

But these kids, although exposed to the same philosophies and arguments, differ in their approach and their ability to incorporate new information that expands and challenges the Southern creed. Some are flat-out hostile and frankly rather annoying. Others evaluate the information I teach and then calculate it into their previous understanding.

I can't imagine what it must be like to teach US history in the Deep South, though.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Ones own defects? I'm not southern and as far as I'm aware none of my ancestors ever owned slaves, let alone black African ones. Unless you mean as a Caucasian I must take on the burden of collective guilt? I was discussing other examples of race based slavery and how this seems to attract little discussion compared to the south? We have comments stating that the Confederacy was an evil akin to the Nazi Holocaust, and to fly a banner to honor a dead ancestor is comparable to waving a swastika in the face of a Jew. That begs the question what exactly made the southern states of the US so incredibly evil in history compared to other slave owning societies.

Your the one trying to separate which slavery is worse. Everyone else seems to be of the opinion that all slavery sucks. And, a flag made for the creation of a "nation" that fought for and endorsed slavery, is certainly a slap in the face to those who's ancestors were the slaves.

All slavery is a form of oppression and no matter how you try and make one slightly better than the other, well, I don't even see what is being argued here. As for the comparisons between the swastika and confederate flag, they both are a symbol of the hatred, oppression, violence and murders a specific group of people went through. How can you not comprehend how they represent a horrific period of time, to those races affected by those regimes?

[DanteGabriel]

Your the one trying to separate which slavery is worse. Everyone else seems to be of the opinion that all slavery sucks. And, a flag made for the creation of a "nation" that fought for and endorsed slavery, is certainly a slap in the face to those who's ancestors were the slaves.

Not to mention that flag has been used for generations, up to the current day, by racists who terrorize and murder black people. But no, we must not consider the very live implications of that flag, because Arab slavery something something. What a vile and facile set of arguments.

[Hayyoth]

Your the one trying to separate which slavery is worse. Everyone else seems to be of the opinion that all slavery sucks. And, a flag made for the creation of a "nation" that fought for and endorsed slavery, is certainly a slap in the face to those who's ancestors were the slaves.

All slavery is a form of oppression and no matter how you try and make one slightly better than the other, well, I don't even see what is being argued here. As for the comparisons between the swastika and confederate flag, they both are a symbol of the hatred, oppression, violence and murders a specific group of people went through. How can you not comprehend how they represent a horrific period of time, to those races affected by those regimes?

No I was doing the opposite but I'm not really super interested in hacking at strawmen,

Not to mention that flag has been used for generations, up to the current day, by racists who terrorize and murder black people. But no, we must not consider the very live implications of that flag, because Arab slavery something something. What a vile and facile set of arguments.

The point raised is that the Confederacy = Hitler. I point out that if that's the case a millennium or more of Arab history must also = Hitler. I get answers that build strawmen for the most part (with Galactus being the exception).

[Zorral]

The differences of USian colonial and antebellum slavery from the rest of the world's slaveries are vast, beginning with the #1 difference: in the USian colonies and antebellum states we raised our own skin-colored based chattel slaves. Far more slave ships came from the upper south to the lower south than ever came to these shores from Africa.

Over 10 million Africans were brought to the New World, and quite likely another 1-2 million more than that. That number is those who survived capture in Africa, the brutal trek to the slave factories, and transfer from African shores to the New World. Many more million died during those stages to a short, brief life burned out in 10 years of 20 hour days of labor and starvation rations on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and South America and the South American mines.

Here, we received about 350,00 living captives at the most. In 1808, as by the Constitution, the African trade in captives was shut off, as protectionism for the home-grown product -- particularly for Virginian gentleman farmers -- creating a peculiar economic circuit of domestic trade, and aggregation of and units of wealth accounting in slaves that operated only in the cotton kingdom. Planters exchanged a prisoner for any good, to pay gambling debts, receive credit upon possessing prisoners, etc. in the south. But that form of money did not operate anywhere else. You couldn't pay off your loan to a NY bank with your slaves. You couldn't buy cloth, corn and carriages from the north with slaves -- even though much it was from the north much of the corn and the cloth with which you clothes your slaves -- IF you could scrape up the cash to do so -- in the years you couldn't your slaves went naked.and even more hungry than usual. You couldn't pay taxes with slaves -- another reason the south has always been against taxes. Which is why the entire South's economy crashed in 1863 -- their money was entirely gone.

All this and much more always needed to be propped up by the lies that these people so cruelly, tragically, sinfully exploited deserved this, were born to this. A slave mother meant every succeeding generation was a slave. Nowhere else was this regime so huge so cruel so perpetual.

This was a slave society. Everything from the legal system to the political system was organized to protect it, expand it and perpetuate it.

The Middle East was not a slave society in that way. Very very few cultures in history were, but what we had here in the United States was. And the south never wished to have that change.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The comparison of the CSA to Nazi Germany is quite appropriate, both were briefly lived bellicose regimes with enunciated ideologies of racial hierarchy pursued through horrific internal oppression, whose symbols can not but conjure thoughts of their ideologies, bellicosity, and oppression. In the case of the CSA, those symbols were adopted by successive generations of white supremacists who perpetuated a system of segregation and extralegal racial violence for decades and decades, continuing in the most recent instance in Charleston, all the while insisting that they were mere symbols of pride in a culture under assault. Those here endorsing that persecution complex and the display of CSA symbols while attempting to minimize the extent of the CSA's evil in the wake of the Charleston mass shooting are, charitably, tone deaf. Less charitably, disgusting and carrying water for white supremacists.

[The Marquis de Leech]

The point raised is that the Confederacy = Hitler.

Well, no. The Nazis actually had the odd redeeming feature if you look hard enough (the autobahns, the anti-smoking measures, the animal rights laws, and conservation efforts). The Confederacy? Good luck finding any redeeming features there.

What I don't think you seem to understand is that waving a Confederate flag in someone's face is to evoke a regime that existed for no reason than to enslave others (and to fight to defend its right to enslave others). Any alleged mistreatment on the part of the victorious North doesn't justify usage of that flag, or celebration of that regime, any more than East Germans would be justified in embracing the swastika or toasting Operation Barbarossa as part of German History Month or whatever. Really, it's not difficult to understand. Bringing up the Arabs or the Romans or whomever is just a giant red herring, not least because none of those regimes derived their very raison d'etre from enslaving other human beings. The Confederacy did.

[Alarich]

I'm going to say it: the Nazis were worse. Because the industrialized mass-extermination devalued the human life in a form that slavery never did.

The fact that humans could be bought and sold is horrific. Working them until they die and basically building your wealth on a racist system oft cruel exploitation is terrible. But slavery was never a purpose unto itself, it had a clear economic function and within this system, a slave had economic value like any other good.

Is this equal to saying that a human life is so worthless, indeed harmful merely by existing, that based on their race, an entire people must be exterminated? And then devoting huge ressources of your country to doing just that? I don't think so.

The extermination of the Jews didn't serve anything else but the racist ideology of the Nazis. There was no practical need for it, it had no economic value, it had no other benefits. In other words, the mass extermination of human beings itself was the purpose and would only stop if there were no more Jews. I'd say that's worse than Slavery from an ideological standpoint.

[Wise Fool]

No I was doing the opposite but I'm not really super interested in hacking at strawmen,

The point raised is that the Confederacy = Hitler. I point out that if that's the case a millennium or more of Arab history must also = Hitler. I get answers that build strawmen for the most part (with Galactus being the exception).

Funny you whinge about strawmen and then make one yourself. No, the point is not "Confederacy = Hitler," but clarifying this seems to have not worked so I'm not going to bother either. Instead I will merely point out that your extended discussion of other peoples in other places that have owned slaves is nothing but, basically, a tu quoque and an irrelevant digression.

Because nobody in the US is waving around the flag of a historical slave owning potentate and dismissing it as nothing but pride for one's geographic location in the US. Except for this phenomenon which is actually in discussion - celebration of the Confederacy in the South, which is inextricably connected with racism and all the ugliness of slavery as well.

And tied, you know, to the obviously race motivated murders in Charlestown.

The Arab Pan Saharan slave trade was race based, which is why I mentioned it. It was also larger and went on for vastly longer than the Atlantic trade. I get why the Confederacy is condemned for the disgusting practice, I don't get why the entirety of white southern culture, including remembering the dead by displaying the confederate war banner, is seen as automatically racist while a society which practiced a form of race based slavery vastly worse and more brutal barely raises a comment when discussing African slavery. If slavery = Nazism the entirety of the Arab world for most of it's history was Nazi.

You are honestly perplexed why Arab history "barely raises a comment" in this discussion? Gee, maybe because it's completely irrelevant. You seem to want to steer the thread towards a condemnation of Arabs because fuck yeah, we don't get enough of that shit.

Your hyperbolic nonsense is nonsense. Your [strawman] picture of the opposing arguments is quaint and silly. Nobody has "seen... the entirety of white southern culture... as automatically racist." Nobody. You're the one conflating waving the Confederate war banner with the entirety of a culture. It's not. It's a very specific part of it. And it's offensive and often done with racist intentions. Like, when the guy who just murdered a bunch of people did it.

But I'm sure he would applaud your efforts to defend him.

[ARYa_Nym]

Well, in Latin America they did believe that they needed to be gone but they would do things such as put the males on the front lines and breed out the females. So in South America as an example places that used to have a larger black population are now majority white. But of course in Latin America they don't have that one drop rule concept so they think the black can just be gotten rid of. They're not killing them all at once. Essentially quite a few of these slave holding societies segued into how do we get rid of black people, how do we keep or make this country white?

But with slavery they didn't want them to die but if they started dying off like with the Native Americans when they realized they couldn't do the work they would just move on to the next group. So groups of people were expendable. There were certain African tribes that had the tendency to commit suicide so after too many of them died they would move on to the next one.

[Roose Seal]

I'm going to say it: the Nazis were worse. Because the industrialized mass-extermination devalued the human life in a form that slavery never did.

The fact that humans could be bought and sold is horrific. Working them until they die and basically building your wealth on a racist system oft cruel exploitation is terrible. But slavery was never a purpose unto itself, it had a clear economic function and within this system, a slave had economic value like any other good.

Is this equal to saying that a human life is so worthless, indeed harmful merely by existing, that based on their race, an entire people must be exterminated? And then devoting huge ressources of your country to doing just that? I don't think so.

The extermination of the Jews didn't serve anything else but the racist ideology of the Nazis. There was no practical need for it, it had no economic value, it had no other benefits. In other words, the mass extermination of human beings itself was the purpose and would only stop if there were no more Jews. I'd say that's worse than Slavery from an ideological standpoint.

I'm not gonna start comparing slavery and the holocaust, because it's dumb and they are two very different things and in the end it serves no purpose at all, but saying slavery didn't devalue human life is at best misguided, but in truth utterly offensive.

[Paladin of Ice]

Because some people live and die on the idea that America is special and better than all other countries that have ever existed. Therefore, anyone criticizing something about the US, either past or present, must be shut down by pointing out that someone else, somewhere, is or was doing something as bad or worse. Like the meme that was going around Faux News awhile ago claiming that the US was either the first or one of the first to outlaw slavery, therefore making us better than everyone else, again.

Because if you can't always, always bring any topic back around to how someone else is doing the same or worse, then America doesn't seem so exceptional anymore. And the fact that America is exceptional and uniquely blessed by god himself and not just another mud hut being built and torn down and rebuilt again by a group of apes who've lost a little of their fur and gained some brain space and an extra digit, and are trying to figure this whole thing out a step at a time, and trying to rebuild things a little bit better each time.

Wow wow wow...what is going on?
How does the ME slave societies even matter in this discussion?