Men And Chains

The educational establishment of the US owes black Americans — and white too, but principally black — an apology, on their knees and with bent head.

Who in fucking hell thought it was a good idea to teach black people in the US that their people were the only ones enslaved, ever? That white people invented slavery because they hated other races so much or were somehow so racist (unlike the rest of humanity who kill each other batch lots for not being cousins.) And don’t fucking tell me that’s not taught in school. I’ve seen the books. I’ve also seen the results. More importantly I was told by an education major in the nineties — I SWEAR she survived the experience — that the idea of this was to “empower” black people. Because of course making them feel that people like them were uniquely oppressed and despised in the history of mankind is “empowering.”

Wait these are the same people who think having sex with a dozen men a night is empowering for a woman. They’re excused. Their definition of “empowered” is not accurate. It’s also not sane.

Two days ago on Twitter, some black guy posted a picture of a lynching and said that just apologizing wasn’t enough and that white people wouldn’t be forgiven for this, ever.

To which Colonel Kratman replied by pointing out that the people who did that are dead, and no person alive today bears any guilt for it.

He’s right, but more importantly: What in Mohammad’s left testicle does this person think he is? Someone descended from heaven, immaculate and with no human stain? Does he think his ancestors never did anything reprehensible, ever?

First, his being American and black, means he’s technically — unless his ancestors arrived from Africa last couple of generations — what’s known as Caucasian. No, really. Not only are there no pure-black ancestry black Americans, but the difference is obvious if you look at things like the picture of the mayor of Los Angeles junketing in Africa. Your first question is “Who is the white chick and why is she there?” He is descended from an awful lot of white people, and no you can’t designate half of your ancestry oppressors and the other oppressed. That’s not how this works. If there’s hereditary guilt he’s at least as guilty as the rest of us.

Second, slavery has existed, as far as we can tell, taking in account it’s really hard to tell from say cave remnants, but having observed chimpanzee bands and the like, well…. it seems like slavery or an equivalent thereof has existed since humans were humans, or perhaps even before.

Chattel slavery? Which is what the left tends to ask, to make the American slavery system uniquely horrible. Oh, please. That’s like saying communism and fascism are different, because one the state expropriates all the property while fascism lets owners nominally keep property while telling them how to use it. PFUI. Romans had to at some point establish laws that made it illegal to kill or maim your slave. This was always illegal in the US, because they were human and therefore it was murder. Yes, the law got complicated form there, but there it is. Both systems allowed the slave to be sold, separated from family, etc. Both took a human being and made him or her a convenience.

In certain parts of the world, like the Dahomey tribe in Africa — noted slave traders, through which most of the slaves to America were traded — it was perfectly legal, moral and accepted to have your slaves sacrificed in batch lots, one after the other over the tombs of your ancestors because that was what you wanted to do. The ones that made it to the US had won that particular lottery already.

And yes, the Dahomey were black. In fact most slave owners and slaves are what we’d consider the exact same race.

This is not what the slave owners and slaves would think, mind. Slavery goes back to a time when the people five minutes away were “foreigners” and “not human.”

In places where war went on for a long time, but cultures were very different, say the Moors and Christians in the Iberian peninsula, the hunting of and rescuing of slaves went on back and forth so much that eventually they looked exactly the same. And still it went on.

I don’t actually care what race humans are; what skin color; what set of features: Whosoever you are, you are descended from slavers and the enslaved; rapists and the raped; kings and peasants; barbarians and scholars. In the long, long, long history of mankind each one of us has enough in his ancestry to beggar the mind of the most jaded observer. Everyone of us has famous, infamous, admirable and despicable ancestors.

Holding people to blame for the crimes of their ancestors would mean putting the entire human race in chains.

Yes, horrible things were done to certain groups of people in the past. The groups changed, and yet horrible things went on happening. Horrible things are still happening today.

Western Civilization didn’t invent slavery. It did however abolish it, partly through the means of the industrial revolution, which rendered the whole thing counterproductive.

It still goes on most places in the world, and it’s legal in a lot of those vibrant, global South cultures the left loves so much. (And why should proponents of a system that enslaves mankind to the state not want to enslave people?)

If you are terribly against slavery and want to slake ancestral hatreds, by all means, make it your business to punish slave owners. Slave owners who own slaves now.

It is great and difficult work, and I will applaud you heartily.

But do not try to smear others with ancestral guilt. You only paint it on yourself.