Slavery
 

Mmm...slavery.....<3

It's a southern United States thing. Prewar South is just about as romantic as a fucking lynch mob. Oh yeah, they had those too. Gotta love racism.

not that i really feel like gettin into this right now,...slavery in the pre war south was more about tending your crop than it was about race,.....there were just as many poor whites workin those fields as there were blacks,....
also,..i'm astounded you wouldnt think a lynch mob is romantic,....after all, everyone looks better in bon fire light, and there was normally one of those around,......not that i would know

Slavery was always about exploitation. What sort of connection are you making between poor white people and black slaves? Where is the data that says there were just as many poor white people working the fields? Were the black slaves payed, or does the room and board count as payment? Is slavery just a different kind of social system?

you are right, slavery is always about exploitation,...HOWEVER i dont think its always about race, which is what people wanna jump to first

ok,...so y'all may lynch me for sayin this myself,....but yep, for the time period,.....i see slavery as a different kind fo social system, and one that was implimented for agricultural purposes,......yes, there were just as many poor whites workin fields as their were black,....do you think black people are the only folks out there who know how to pick cotton? if you read more about the king cotton south you'll learn that there were all different races doing this work, that information is compiled through old journals and the like of the time,......room and board counting as payment,.....yes, in my mind, in that time, i feel that it did,.....

sure is slavery is wrong, but it happened, and its not the end of the world like people wanna make it out to be

Someone get the tar and feather!:laughing:

Ok, first of all, slavery in the American south was always inextricably tied to racism. It was based on the notion that black people were inherently inferior to whites and therefore can become property. Those poor white people you talk about were never anyone's property and could always stop picking cotton if they wanted to.

Also, I'm sure you know that black people were actually brought to the United States for the specific purpose of being used for labor. They were forcibly removed from their homes in Africa where they were perfectly able to fend for themselves and brought to a strange new continent.

And lastly, slavery is considered one of the worst things you can do to a person for a good reason. And it's actually still present, only it's not government sanctioned. Trafficking.

ok,......first of all, you have to understand that the victor writes the text book, SO,.....historically the south is gonna come out lookin 'evil' due to the slavery issue,.....i honestly believe that slavery was more about field hands than black skin,.....it just happened to work out that way,....





i mean, if you wanna blame someone, lets blame the dutch who brought them here,...its not like southern colonial americans said to themselves 'self, lets take a long as boat ride all the way to this africa place we've never even seen before,...and while we are there lets wrangle us up some black folks because they are black and we are better than them,....and lets make them our slaves'........no i dont think thats quite what happened,......slave owners saw them as a cheep effective way to tend their crops,........they didnt just hope up and go get them,.......




sure, its horrible,......but i didnt do it,....and the fact that i have a respect, intrest, and affection for the culture of the precivil war south doesnt make me a racist anymore than the next fella, and the comment made due to my cultural answer is rediculous,.....to single one bad thing out of a whole way of life and condem it is absurd, as all cultures have their own atrocities

So how do you account for racism?

I blame both actually, the ones who created the demand and those who satisfied their need for free labor. The fact that they weren't the first to think of enslaving people doesn't exonerate them from anything.

I have to agree on the last bit, most cultures have known of slavery in one form or another. I could have said I would have liked to have lived in ancient Rome and no one would have jumped on me about the fact that their entire civilization was based on slavery.

There's a time and a place for everything, and this argument isn't. But don't labor about misguided delusions. Slavery was the worst thing that ever happened to America, next to the intentional liquidation and genocide of Native Americans. And the after-effects of both tragedies had devastating consequences that still plague their populations today. Please, don't try to pretend it wasn't about race, because it was. That's all it was ever about.

I'm sorry I don't share your romanticism about the South. I like bonfires, just not when they're at the expense of some poor soul's life. =/

I just want to poke in here and say that had another continent been found with another group of people that could have filled the role of African slaves, they would have been used just the same. It was not a matter of finding black people and saying "lets use these black people for slaves". It was a matter of finding a group that could be exploited and doing just that. Slavery was not about race, it was about the ability to effectively exploit a large group of people regardless of race. It could have been anyone, it just happened to be Africans.