Large Scale Central

Anybody up for a little excitement?

General Discussion
#1

Received this email today - don’t know if I should answer it. Deep inside I agree, but probably shouldn’t state that. I didn’t write that out loud, did I? Oh well, cold Saturday and need to create a little heat.

Proud to be White

Michael Richards makes his point…Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TVs Seinfeld does make a good point.

This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act… He makes some very interesting points…

Someone finally said it… How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, AsianAmericans, Arab Americans, etc.

And then there are just Americans. You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You call me ‘White boy,’ ‘Cracker,’ ‘Honkey,’ ‘Whitey,’ ‘Caveman’… and that’s OK.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink … You call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you… so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi.

You have the NAACP. You have BET… If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we’d be racists. If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.

If we had White History Month, we’d be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to ‘advance’ OUR, lives we’d be racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that??

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships …You know we’d be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if there were ‘White colleges’ That would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

I am proud… But you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists??

There is nothing improper about this e-mail. Let’s see which of you are proud enough to send it on. I sadly don’t think many will. That’s why we have lost most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won’t stand up for ourselves!

BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!
It’s not a crime yet … but getting very close!
It is estimated that 5% of those reaching this point in this e-mail will pass it on.

#2

Ric,
I receive trash like this from friends quite regularly. The first thing I do is delete the email, as it is nothing more than racial slander designed to incite white supremacist feelings by supposedly presenting the true facts. How many blacks were prevented from attending movie theatres and buses and swimming pools? How many blacks were murdered because they so much as glanced at a white woma? How many blacks were murdered simply because they were black? How many blacks were murdered because they stood up for their rights? After all this we expect them to forget the past and start with a clean slate. I was required to daily deal with people from most nations on earth, in the course of my work and found that in general most people behave amicably and politely with their other world inhabitants. Unfortunately, there are many races on this earth who simply refuse to exist as part of a world community.

 White supremacy only covers a small portion of the racial issue.  People are not born to be racist,  they are trained by their family, their environment and society to be dismissive of others,  thinking how much better they are.  Is this a hangover from having to constantly fight to survive?  In hindsight,  the most amicable people that I have met are elderly Arabs.
#3

Ric, no offense, but there’s a lot of self-pity in this. I mean, if you want to be proud to be white go ahead. But why bother? It’s not like white people are suffering any real discrimination that I can see–and I should know, I’ve been white all my life.

I’m not proud of being white any more than I’m proud of having blue eyes–I didn’t do anything to be white, I was just born that way. I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished, things that I wasn’t born with but earned. Those are things that took discipline and effort and will. But being proud of being white–it’s like being proud of having size thirteen feet.

Now if for hundreds of years the law had told me that blue eyed people were inferior, and had to sit in the back of the bus, I’d say I was proud of being blue eyed, and I’d say it to counter those people telling me I’m not good. If you feel that there are a lot of people making you sit on the back of the bus because you’re white, or denying your right to vote or something, then by all means, go ahead and organize a white pride rally.

Speaking for myself, I’m as white as a sheet, and I’ve never experienced the slightest bit of discrimination on account of it. If people start crying to me about how hard it is to be white I’m inclined to laugh.

Also I’m not sure what it means to claim “white” as my identity. My family was irish for generations–irish names marrying irish names, our family reunions are lousy with maggie’s and margie’s and mollies; pats, mikes, dennys and dannys. It’s not really that useful, or interesting, or accurate, to imagine some kind of bland, universal “white” identity. Should I pretend that I’m the same as, say, the children of german or polish immigrants because we all have light skin? The only thing our ancestors had in common in then U.S. was that they got to crap on the dark skinned guys. That’s not exactly something I want to celebrate. I’m neither guilty nor ashamed of being white, any more than I’m guilty or ashamed of being tall, but at the same time, I’m no more eager to celebrate whiteness than I am to celebrate, say, an irish tendency towards alcoholism.

Or by "white do you mean “english?” The Anglo Saxon race? My people got here because English people were killing them. If by “white” you mean heritage, then an English heritage is vastly different from an Irish heritage, and celebrating them as if they are the same is imaging an identity that historically didn’t exist. Which would be more accurate for someone like me, or, say, Brian–celebrating being white, or celebrating being Irish. Maybe a good answer would be “celebrate being American.” Ok. So why do you need “american” to be “white?”

There are people whom might be called “race pimps”–people who make a living inflaming racial sores. Why would you want to join them?

#4

Fuel for your fire…

COWARD NO MORE, HOMAGE TO HOLDER

by Alan Stang
February 27, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan189.htm
…
All Americans are familiar with the horrors of the slave auctions of blacks in New Orleans. Here is a contemporaneous (1758) description by a London weaver who observed a sale of white slaves in Williamsburg: “They all was set in row, near 100 men and women and the planter come down the country to buy . . . I never see such parcels of poor wretches in my life some almost naked and what had clothes was as black as chimney sweeps, and almost starved by the ill-usage of their passage by the captain, for they are used no better than many negro slaves and sold in the same manner as horses or cows in our market or fair.”
…
When black slaves arrived in the colonies, they were sold at auction. What happened to white slaves? Exactly the same thing: “. . . Posters and, later in the Chesapeake’s history, newspapers announced the arrival of the latest cargo of servants. Potential buyers could read of the ages, gender and skills of those arriving and of when to clamber on board to inspect the human goods for themselves.”

#5

White people were never enslaved. They were extensively used as indentured servants, not slaves. An indentured servant is owned for a limited term of years–usually five to seven–while a slave is owned for life. Conditions for indentured servants varied widely. In some instances it’s very hard, in the historical record, to tell indentured servants from slaves. In other instances, it’s clear that indentured servants got different very different treatment and had a different set of rights.

I have an exercise I do with freshmen that’s about exactly this question:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/colonial/firstexercise.html

I ask the students to search The Pennsylvania Gazette, franklin’s newspaper, for the term “runaway.” What they find is mostly “servants,” moslty either white or with the race not given. Over time though, the white servants stop appearing and are replaced entirely by black slaves. By 1800, indentured servitude was mostly gone, replaced by slavery, which was always confined to Africans.

#6
mike omalley said:
White people were never enslaved.
NEVER?
#7
mike omalley said:
White people were never enslaved. They were extensively used as indentured servants, not slaves. An indentured servant is owned for a limited term of years--usually five to seven--while a slave is owned for life. Conditions for indentured servants varied widely. In some instances it's very hard, in the historical record, to tell indentured servants from slaves. In other instances, it's clear that indentured servants got different very different treatment and had a different set of rights.

I have an exercise I do with freshmen that’s about exactly this question:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/colonial/firstexercise.html

I ask the students to search The Pennsylvania Gazette, franklin’s newspaper, for the term “runaway.” What they find is mostly “servants,” moslty either white or with the race not given. Over time though, the white servants stop appearing and are replaced entirely by black slaves. By 1800, indentured servitude was mostly gone, replaced by slavery, which was always confined to Africans.


Did you read the article and the referenced book? (Not challenging you, just asking.)

#8
Bruce Chandler said:
mike omalley said:
White people were never enslaved.
NEVER?
Bruce!

Never in the colonies of England. Indentured servitude was no picnic, don’t get me wrong.

#9

oh…THAT never.

#10

David,
more of your nazi party crap. I read the intro to your link and what do I find in the first paragraph -

Quote from link provided -

"In his first major speech, pretend Attorney General Eric Holder called Americans cowards for not talking about race enough. Eric the Red is of course not really Attorney General, because the Communist enemy alien who appointed him is not really President (hence “pretend”). "

Until you start quoting links to more mainstream articles, then your outlook on life is exactly as I have stated many times. You are little more than a white supremacist bigot, parading as a supposed patriot. Your country was formed on a basis of freedom for all men. Maybe the Bill of Rights left out the most important part in your beliefs, i.e., adding the prefix ‘white’, giving freedom for all ‘whitemen’. You constantly remind us that you have no racial bias and yet most of your posts lean towards white supremacy ‘patriotism’. I linked you to the American Nazi Party in a previous thread, but I believe that your beliefs are most likely more extreme than even their corrupted view on society.

#11
David Hill said:
mike omalley said:
White people were never enslaved. They were extensively used as indentured servants, not slaves. An indentured servant is owned for a limited term of years--usually five to seven--while a slave is owned for life. Conditions for indentured servants varied widely. In some instances it's very hard, in the historical record, to tell indentured servants from slaves. In other instances, it's clear that indentured servants got different very different treatment and had a different set of rights.

I have an exercise I do with freshmen that’s about exactly this question:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/colonial/firstexercise.html

I ask the students to search The Pennsylvania Gazette, franklin’s newspaper, for the term “runaway.” What they find is mostly “servants,” moslty either white or with the race not given. Over time though, the white servants stop appearing and are replaced entirely by black slaves. By 1800, indentured servitude was mostly gone, replaced by slavery, which was always confined to Africans.


Did you read the article and the referenced book? (Not challenging you, just asking.)

I read the article. David, I would not challenge your knowledge of guns or Ric’s knowledge of boats, but this is what I do for a living. I’ve actually done a lot of research on this.

As always, it’s a little more complicated. First, “servant” and “slave” were two different legal categories, in the same way that “servant” and “apprentice” were different. They were all forms of unfreedom, with a fuzzy line between them, but they were different. White people were never enslaved, though they were often unfree.

There’s no doubt that early on, before 1670, white indentured servants were a majority in Virginia, to take one example. There are relatively few Africans before around 1690. And the colonies, in the south especially, were pretty brutal places. Servants were treated extremely badly, they were sold in gangs; they were property and could be beaten with impunity. It’s a very interesting fact that in the historical record, it’s often hard to tell slaves from servants. Probate records will just say “a servant man” and you don’t know if that person is black or white. It’s a very different society from ours–it’s a class-drive society, and elites treat the lower classes like crap. A lot of historians–I’d include myself–look at this and say “look, the kind of racism we take for granted today was not present in 1650. They did not really care if the person was black or white, slave or servant, all the wanted was to get them into the tobacco fields.” It’s also true that in VA and the Carolinas and Georgia, “slave” did not have quite the hard legal meaning it had later. It wasn’t always hereditary, for example. And it sometimes seems to have been possible to bargain out of slavery and get yourself a term of servitude instead. There were a lot of similarities between servants and slaves early on, before 1700, and even later in some places. There are two instances in colonial VA where a mixed race, black white couple is arrested for fornication, and the punishment was the same as it was for anyone else–the law took no special notice of the mixed race.

But what happens is that in VA, by the 1680s, the law begins to make formal distinctions between a servant and a slave. For example, in 1670, VA forbade free Negroes and Indians from owning servants. In 1680, VA prescribed 30 lashes �if any negro or Indian shall presume to lift up his hand in opposition against any christian. The VA legislature also made it illegal to strip a white servant naked, in order to flog him, while it remained legal to do so to an african. In 1691, the VA legislature passed laws punishing intermarriage, �for the prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue.�

So what you begin to see very clearly, right around 1700, is that a sharp distinction is being drawn between a servant and a slave, white and black. Slavery becomes hereditary and inescapable. Servitude, by 1800, is vanishing. The usual argument is that this was a way for VA’s ruling elite to divide the poor and prevent them from rebelling

#12

It was common since medieval times in England, for children to be ‘indentured’ to landholders, craftsmen, etc., to work as slaves for their master. The indenture was a legally binding contract, much as the negro slave contracts and essentially the ‘master’ owned his ‘indentured apprentice/servant’ for the term of the contract and was legally able to administer punishment as he saw fit. The English word ‘serf’ conjures the image of ‘servitude’ to a master. In latter day English society, women/girls were indentured to households and were little more than slaves and were made very aware of the class structure in society.

The formation of most democratic societies began with a revolution in the reform of land ownership. The Spanish revolution and the relatively recent Cuban revolution had land ownership for the masses, as its driving aim. Many saw this as a form of socialist/communist revolution, but in essence, it was the beginning of the end of slavery to a master and land ownership was a means of ensuring survival. Even the Chinese realised that individual land ownership was essential to long term peace and prosperity.

#13

This wikipedia article is actually very good and quite accurate, without then inflammatory rhetoric of the Stang piece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

#14
Tim Brien said:
David, more of your nazi party crap. I read the intro to your link and what do I find in the first paragraph -

Quote from link provided -

"In his first major speech, pretend Attorney General Eric Holder called Americans cowards for not talking about race enough. Eric the Red is of course not really Attorney General, because the Communist enemy alien who appointed him is not really President (hence “pretend”). "

Until you start quoting links to more mainstream articles, then your outlook on life is exactly as I have stated many times. You are little more than a white supremacist bigot, parading as a supposed patriot. Your country was formed on a basis of freedom for all men. Maybe the Bill of Rights left out the most important part in your beliefs, i.e., adding the prefix ‘white’, giving freedom for all ‘whitemen’. You constantly remind us that you have no racial bias and yet most of your posts lean towards white supremacy ‘patriotism’. I linked you to the American Nazi Party in a previous thread, but I believe that your beliefs are most likely more extreme than even their corrupted view on society.


main stream media is in the tank for socialism, I refer you to the recent Newsweek cover not to mention MSNBC, New York Tomes, Washington Post. Because you do not agree with the premise does not make the author a Nazi.

#15

Quote from Wikpedia link above -

“The American H1-B nonimmigrant visa system is also a clear example of indentured worker.[citation needed] H1-B’s are required to work exclusively for their American visa holders for a period of 6 years, and abide by almost any arbitrary change in their hiring conditions during that period. After the 6-year period, the visa holders, at their pleasure, might continue the relationship for an additional 2 years, in exchange for vouching for the worker if he wants to apply for permanent residency.”

We also have a similar work policy. The worker is ‘employed’ for a period of approximately two years and is required to submit to his private enterprise employer. The employer pays for his passage to Australia and provides him with work. The system is regularly abused as the terms and conditions as first stated in the contract of employment are constantly violated by the employer and any resistance by the employee is seen as a breach of his contract/visa conditions and the employee is forced to payup the residual of the unworked portion of his contract and is summarily deported by the government. The employer is required to pay ‘standard’ wages, but usually overcharges the employee for accomodation, etc and in many cases it is a breach of the employment conditions to seek accomodation other than that provided by the employer. We are talking of Australia 2009, not a century ago. This system is totally fraught with corruption and is little more than the ‘indentures’ common in the past.

#16

mike, what was the situation with the Irish in the late 19th and early 20th century? I’ve also met children of Portuguese immigrants that told me stories about the conditions they lived with while working in a steel mil. Conditions that would have been hard to distinguish them from a “servant” worker.

My personal feelings on this OP is, I never owned slaves, I would have likely fought to abolish slavery in America had I lived during the 19th Century. Having a long lineage from New England back to the 17th century, I can only guess I had ancestors in the Union Army or one of the Union state militias during the war of 1861-85, but I am a “state rights” advocate. But slavery remains an affront to humanity.

#17

David,
if it looks like a nazi and walks like a nazi and talks like a nazi, then most likely it is a nazi. I am sure the brownshirts who eliminated mental patients and homosexuals and non-Aryans, regarded themselves as patriots to the fatherland.

#18
Tim Brien said:
David, if it looks like a nazi and walks like a nazi and talks like a nazi, then most likely it is a nazi. I am sure the brownshirts who eliminated mental patients and homosexuals and non-Aryans, regarded themselves as patriots to the fatherland.
With the anger you exhibit in this and the other posts, you appear to be the fascist. Make sure you suppress any opposing views, like a fascist.

I’m not calling you a fascist, but if it quacks…

#19

David,
I do enjoy a lively discussion with you. I am reminded of mafia mobsters who regularly attended their local Catholic church for Sunday service, to show how religous they were. I wonder if they absented from killing on Sundays in deference to their religion.

      I am not supressing any viewpoint.  I do not hold a gun to your head to make you change your point of view.  I encourage you to state your case.  In stating your case,  then your 'evidence' is open to public scrutiny.  There is no anger or attempt to control.  There is no gun to the head.  You speak your mind and I do likewise.  At the end of the day,  we both put forward our cause and leave it to society to judge who is right or wrong.  I cannot see how fascism comes into the discussion.  You believe what you believe and I likewise have my beliefs.  I point out inconsistencies in your beliefs,  as by making them public,  you open yourself to debate.  Surely this is how a democratic sytem works.  There are no guns or manipulation.  It is up to you to prove your beliefs.  It is not my responsibility to disprove your beliefs.  I simply point out the inconsistencies in logic thought and allow you the same privilege with mine.  This is what freedom means.
#20
David Hill said:
mike, what was the situation with the Irish in the late 19th and early 20th century? I've also met children of Portuguese immigrants that told me stories about the conditions they lived with while working in a steel mil. Conditions that would have been hard to distinguish them from a "servant" worker.

My personal feelings on this OP is, I never owned slaves, I would have likely fought to abolish slavery in America had I lived during the 19th Century. Having a long lineage from New England back to the 17th century, I can only guess I had ancestors in the Union Army or one of the Union state militias during the war of 1861-85, but I am a “state rights” advocate. But slavery remains an affront to humanity.


It may seem as if I’m splitting hairs. But the differences are meaningful. A prisoner is legally unfree, but a prisoner is not a slave. An apprentice was legally unfree, but was not a slave or a servant.

If you were irish or welsh and worked in the PA anthracite fields in the 1850s, I’d say you were effectively unfree. Bound to the company store, unable to move around at night because of company guards. But you were not a slave–you couldn’t be bought or sold. And your children were not slaves. Your children cold not be sold away from you.

Southerners who defended slavery often argued that it was a better system than industrial labor, where workers were just chewed up and spit out. Slaves were expensive property and for that reason alone you had to take good care of them. It’s a good argument logically but I’ve never seen a single instance of a northern white worker going south to be a slave, or even a free black worker going south to become a slave.

I’d never argue that any race or ethnic group had a monopoly on suffering. I would argue that different historical experiences matter in the present.

If you look at the Dred Scott case, it’s clear that it was the north that had the State’s rights argument, not the South. The Dred Scott case made it impossible for a northern state to ban slavery, because it allowed a slaveowner to move wherever he liked and keep his slaves. As Lincoln said, in his “house divided” speech, speaking of Dred Scott, “We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.” Illinois had banned slavery: Dred Scott invalidated that ban

There–now you have a yankee heritage AND state’s rights