Now THAT"S Sick!

       Today there were two separate letters in the local paper which, distilled of all the faux outrage and pseudo patriotism, essentially chastised persons of color as embodied in the personages of many NFL players. The gist of both was that Black Americans should just "get over it" because slavery wasn't "all that bad" and besides it was a long time ago.

       As a historian I am staggered by the ignorance represented in these statements and/or sentiments. Space limits how much one can say, but in (too) short:

       Other historic forms of slavery were almost universally situational, that is the social situation of the enslaved person made them inferior in the context of their society. In Africa, that could mean a conquered enemy or an orphan for example. These persons were frequently adopted into families or eventually freed. They were not born slaves, and not destined at birth to be or  to die as such.

       The same was true of Greek and Roman slaves. In fact the Romans called central European captives "Slavs" which is the root of the English word "slave."

       Black trans-Atlantic slavery was different in one critical aspect which is still with us today in the rants of the Trumps, Bannons, David Dukes and their associated scum. That was, the assumption on the part of the slave holder that those he held in bondage were not just inferior as their social situation dictated, but were inferior as human beings. This assumption was not unique to Black Africans. The English and their American castoffs turned allies, the Americans of New England, considered the Irish as inferior humans, actually classifying them at one time as "non-white." Native Americans were considered in much the same fashion.

       Relatively few Americans, even racists such as Bannon and Trump would have little trouble grasping why the Irish in Ireland still have "issues" with the English. From the slaughters of mid 17th century (see: "Drogheda massacre") until the violent events of mid-late 20th, The Irish were the bastard red haired stepchildren of the British Isles. Once in America, having been "encouraged" to leave by English landlords, they met much the same treatment in Boston and elsewhere in the Northeast, So what? So as Caucasians, the Irish were able to assimilate into society without the constant reminder to others that they had once been social outcasts. Without the constant reminder of dark skin, the stigma was impermanent. You can lose the brogue, educate yourself and blend.

       Knowing the history of Native American /US relations, one can easily grasp why many Indians still resent many white Americans. If you have difficulty understanding this, read Dee Brown's remarkable "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee." Skin color and "paganism" relegated Indians, in the minds of many, to the same "lower life form" status reserved for Black slaves by white Southerners. To the great disappointment of many whites, Indians were poor slave material, being susceptible to diseases to which most Whites has some acquired immunity. Andrew Jackson had little difficulty convincing many Southerners of their inferiority and of the necessity of simply moving many them to a land (Oklahoma) which bore little resemblance to the mountains of the Southeast and the Gulf Coast.

       The English, so quick to condemn slavery and the slave trade in the early 1800s, made a fortune in the human trafficking business for almost 200 years. Descriptions of Barbadian society are mind boggling in their inhumanity. This from a monograph by Barbadian Historian and Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles, April 2017:

       "The enslavement of Africans on the sugar plantations of São Tomé by the 1530s undoubtedly represented the first great stride towards the creation of the Barbados black slave society. The Spanish took the chattel enslavement of Africans to Cuba, in the northern Caribbean, in the 1540s. Inexorably, it spread to the eastern Caribbean and found its most fertile environment in the plantation complex of Barbados exactly a century later. Upon this small rock, England gained its first economic success by building the first complete large-scale black slave society. By 1650, it was universally recognized for its economic prosperity, physical brutality and social inhumanity towards Africans. English managers of the model were not to be deterred, however; they pressed on and redefined for the long term the primary character of Europe’s and the Americas’ relationship with Africans.
      It was the beginning of a new era in global economic development and race relations. With the black slave society, England’s entrepreneurship forged and refashioned the world economic order. Investors and imperial administrators seized the moment and abandoned traditional labour values and relations. The sugar plantations, stocked with thousands of easily replaceable enslaved Africans, spun super-profits. The entire island was quickly stripped of an internal frontier and transformed into endless fields of sugar plantation. Record levels of white-owned wealth and black deaths defined the slave plantation as a “best practice” in the new business culture."

     When White Americans as the letter writers did, simply say, "Well, it's over now, you're equal, so what's the fuss" they demonstrate zero sense of history. When the UK outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833, most British Caribbean islands were vast majority Black. One effect of this was that there was really not a white majority to impose and more significant to enforce "Jim Crow" practices on the former slave population. In the USA, however, Whites represented armed, educated and politically powerful majorities in all but the most Cotton-driven Southern states. So when a White American points to the 13th Amendment and says "So, what's the problem," they're looking past (or through) more than 90 years of Jim Crow politics, Black Codes, White Citizens councils, White supremacists openly threatening and in many cases killing innocents, and the general continued oppression of Black Americans, for whom the word "Citizen," stripped as it was of civil rights, had a hollow ring.

       Jump ahead to World War One when, as White soldiers mobilized, Blacks, formerly turned away from decent jobs, came North to work, encouraged to do so by those who had shunned them as social and human inferiors since Emancipation. Blacks went to work, thriving in heavy industry, once closed and now open. World War One ended and demobilized whites came home to find a willing labor pool of Blacks, some already employed in former "Whites only" positions. 

         In St Louis, this took the form of (all white) Labor Unions deciding to strike for higher wages and to keep the best jobs for whites. During the ensuing riots, Police and National Guard largely stood by as somewhere between 65 and 150 blacks were killed by striking white workers. Samuel Gompers, white former cigar maker and then Labor leader vainly attempted to minimize labor's role in the matter. In a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, Gompers, then president of the American Federation of Labor, attempted to diminish the role that trade unions played in the massacre by persisting that an investigation was needed in order to place blame, "Why don't you accuse after an investigation?" To which the former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, responded by saying, "Mr. Gompers, why don't I accuse afterwards? I'll answer now, when murder is to be answered."

       The list of continuing discriminatory practice based only on race in America continues today. Does violence beget violence? Sometimes it does, but by any reasonable standard, Americans should, if they be religious, thank their God for Martin Luther King Junior's non-violent influence in the 1960s.

       One of the more troublesome examples of this long lived,  race based bigotry could have been seen in many a Boston bar in the 60s where Irish Americans scorned Blacks, even as pro athletes, for some years after most other teams in the NBA and MLB had integrated. If asked, they might well have responded as the letter writers have with, "Get over it." These same Bostonians in the same bar might also have contributed to the "Tip Jar" on the bar which, with wink and a nudge, was understood to be a collection to help finance the terrorist efforts of the Irish Republican Army. Try telling those same yahoos to "Get over that."


       Racism destroys logic, demeans the human spirit and poisons children's minds. I honestly believe it to be a mental illness, since it embodies characteristics of illogic similar in some ways to other diseases. It causes spontaneous emotional outbursts, often with almost no stimulii, similar to  Bipolar disorder. It makes its victims react to imaginary threats as does paranoia. It causes otherwise sane persons to have total disregard and lack of empathy for an entire group of people personally unknown to them. We call that Sociopathic personality disorder. And finally, it imparts to the sufferer an unjustified feeling of superiority as a human being -Narcissism. Even worse than all these is the sad fact that many of the most vile, rabid and vocal sufferers of "Racism disorder" actually believe that their beliefs, actions and attitudes are in some mysterious way sanctioned by a magical spirit in the sky. Now THAT'S sick!