Slavery

[servodude]

Blame? I see where you are coming from but that would suggest a direct causality that I can can't really agree with.

I believe we have a responsibility to acknowledge and understand what happened - and what resulted from it
- to accept that the position and power achieved by some nations during the time was down to two hundred years of the unpaid labour of millions of people... and that we have benefitted from that, from the legacy it left and the transfer of wealth that it caused
- and that there exists still a huge disparity of outcomes and existances because of how some people's ancestors treated others
- but we are not to blame for what happened

we will be to blame for what happens with how we deal with it though

Blame. It wasn't my word -- but as you defend the concept of not accepting blame do you agree with @MuddyBoots's implication that if there were universal suffrage at that time then blame would be appropriate? It seemed to me just the latest of a long list of excuses not to accept any responsibility at all (whereas the many proofs of white supremacy deriving from similar periods seem to be accepted).
GS

OK I missed the original reference.

I just see "blame" as being sufficiently easy to refute that it serves as a misdirection... "Sins of the fathers" and all that.. that the proper discussion gets ignored

Some folk are mental enough to blame current day Germans for the holocaust, or Jews for killing Jesus
- blaming us for the slavery trade is equally nuts

We can only be blamed for what we do (or don't) and should be judged on our own actions

Slavery was always morally wrong, eventually judged legally wrong and wrought a shitty legacy for a great deal of people... AND some other folk and places did really well out if it.

I'd like to be confident that it has stopped and won't come back - but I'm not.

I think we have a responsibility to deal with the outcomes it left - which isn't the same as being responsible for it

[Lootman]

Indeed. But the way it was presented round the time by the treasury leant a bit heavier in to it (in a strangely jocular and oblivious way)

From a cache at: https://news.cgtn.com/news/77457a4d35677a6333566d54/img/115a85ea-3b9a-47eb-ad68-ce3c6a103e2c.jpg . . .

I must have missed that at the time. A very strange way of looking at it! I wonder which spin doctor came up with that idea.

Is it strange? There always also going to be a high cost to changing such a significant long-term economic practice and so borrowing to achieve that made sense, once the nation had decided that slavery was no longer viable and reasonable. The alternative was to do nothing and that merely would have added to the eventual cost.

There are ongoing costs to most major events, changes and reforms. Did we ever pay off those undated war loans? I think we did but you get the point.

Slavery was always morally wrong, eventually judged legally wrong and

It was always morally wrong from a modern perspective, certainly. But it was deemed quite normal and moral, as well as legal of course, at the time.

Had you been born 300 or 400 years ago I suspect you would have felt quite sanguine and comfortable about slavery, at least if you weren't African. Making overly-broad retrospective ethical judgements about events that happened centuries ago probably does not add a lot of real value, meaning or comprehension, although it might make you feel good.

[GoSeigen]

I just see "blame" as being sufficiently easy to refute that it serves as a misdirection... "Sins of the fathers" and all that.. that the proper discussion gets ignored

Exactly, that's what I was getting at, far more clumsily than you.

I think we have a responsibility to deal with the outcomes it left - which isn't the same as being responsible for it

Yes, and I still make the point that if we claim the ongoing credit or benefit of those actions it is intellectually dishonest to hide from the ongoing responsibility for their outcomes.

GS

[Lootman]

I think we have a responsibility to deal with the outcomes it left - which isn't the same as being responsible for it

But what does it mean to "deal with the outcomes"? Exactly what is being asked for here?

if we claim the ongoing credit or benefit of those actions it is intellectually dishonest to hide from the ongoing responsibility for their outcomes.

And what "credit or benefit" is that, and for whom? Describe that "ongoing responsibility".

The problem with all of these "isn't it terrible" word salads is that it is just vacuous virtue signalling without well thought out and specific policy ideas, along with costings and a plan to convince the voters.

Frankly I think the effort and emotional capital is better deployed seeking to address present day abuses and injustices such as human trafficking and the denial of basic human rights, rather than wallowing in an ancient history that cannot in any event be retrospectively unravelled.

[MuddyBoots]

Blame. It wasn't my word -- but as you defend the concept of not accepting blame do you agree with @MuddyBoots's implication that if there were universal suffrage at that time then blame would be appropriate? It seemed to me just the latest of a long list of excuses not to accept any responsibility at all (whereas the many proofs of white supremacy deriving from similar periods seem to be accepted).
GS

That's not my implication, I said:
"We didn't have universal suffrage in those days unfortunately: another reason not to pass the blame down through the generations."
Meaning that the non-involvement of my ancestors was only one reason not to pass blame, there are others, perhaps better ones. Maybe blame isn't a good word for it, but then neither are 'responsibility' or 'supremacy' imo (and my family tree has been researched back into the 17th C).

This whole topic is a linguistic minefield. If you think that "responsibility" can be transferred to someone else apart from the perpetrator of an action, then the whole basis of our legal code and justice system will be transformed, the principle can't be confined to just the one issue of slavery. There must be lots of crimes which go unpunished in the lifetime of the criminals so how should responsibility be attributed?

The reparations argument seems to be that there is some kind of 'legacy' from historical slavery to do with racial status of whites vs blacks today; and some economic infrastructure which still exists from the times of slavery. That needs a longer post to unpick so I'll leave it there for now.

[MuddyBoots]

I’ve been listening to a podcast about the Ottomans. Interesting. We simply do not learn about this through history in school. They (Ottomans) ran slaving parties into Cornwall and even London in 13/14th century. Estimated that something like 25% of population of North African countries were european slaves at that time.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WabOv6uxGMBr3dyrhJaKr

An interesting facet of this is that north Africa and the middle East don't now have a significant population of ethnic slave descendants: there aren't a lot of whites or sub-saharan Africans in those regions (as far as I know) as in the Americas so what happened to them all?

[ursaminortaur]

I’ve been listening to a podcast about the Ottomans. Interesting. We simply do not learn about this through history in school. They (Ottomans) ran slaving parties into Cornwall and even London in 13/14th century. Estimated that something like 25% of population of North African countries were european slaves at that time.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WabOv6uxGMBr3dyrhJaKr

An interesting facet of this is that north Africa and the middle East don't now have a significant population of ethnic slave descendants: there aren't a lot of whites or sub-saharan Africans in those regions (as far as I know) as in the Americas so what happened to them all?

The Arabs who took slaves from Africa to the Middle East castrated the male slaves.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

One of the oldest slave trades in history was the Arab trade of Zanj (Bantu) slaves in Southeast Africa. This trade began 700 years before the European Atlantic slave trade.[2] Men taken as slaves were often used as servants, soldiers, or workers. Women and children were mainly used as servants and concubines.

Most male slaves were castrated.[3] It is estimated that as many as 6 out of every 10 boys bled to death during this process.[3] Even so, castrating slaves was worthwhile because eunuchs sold for high prices.

[MuddyBoots]

The reparations argument seems to be that there is some kind of 'legacy' from historical slavery to do with racial status of whites vs blacks today; and some economic infrastructure which still exists from the times of slavery. That needs a longer post to unpick so I'll leave it there for now.

Some more thoughts about this; work in progress rather than a polished argument, as a caveat.

On one level, the morality of this is pretty simple. Nobody volunteers to be enslaved because we all know it's horrible. So anyone trading or owning slaves is breaking the golden rule: of course it's a case of prioritising economic selfishness above basic moral values.

But in order to justify themselves and the legal system which allows it, the perpetrators bend the morality and argue for some kind of inequality and 'othering'. Superiority/inferiority which is perhaps what is meant by supremacy nowadays.

So there's an argument that belief in inequality comes before practices like slavery, and isn't caused by slavery, because it's needed to justify the practice without the whole moral and legal order breaking down. And when I think about it, so-called supremacy was used in many other situations to justify privileges. The aristocracy and the class system, the divine right of kings, religious hegemony, gender roles etc. Every society is awash with supremacies.

I've tried to research the origins of racial identities of black and white because it appears there was a change around the time that the transatlantic slave trade emerged and expanded. However I'm never sure how reliable my sources are because this whole subject is so politicised.

"The modern concept of race emerged as a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification.[50] According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(hum ... gorization)#Historical_origins_of_racial_classification

In any case, the idea that the racial terms most westerners use as part of their identity are just made-up constructs for the benefit of the rich and powerful is worth pondering. Also that our society very much still encourages us to believe in these made up identities, despite race being so problematic. If black and white race was created for such spurious reasons, why not just get rid of it?

[Lootman]

Blame. It wasn't my word -- but as you defend the concept of not accepting blame do you agree with @MuddyBoots's implication that if there were universal suffrage at that time then blame would be appropriate? It seemed to me just the latest of a long list of excuses not to accept any responsibility at all (whereas the many proofs of white supremacy deriving from similar periods seem to be accepted).

That's not my implication, I said:

"We didn't have universal suffrage in those days unfortunately: another reason not to pass the blame down through the generations."
Meaning that the non-involvement of my ancestors was only one reason not to pass blame, there are others, perhaps better ones. Maybe blame isn't a good word for it, but then neither are 'responsibility' or 'supremacy' imo (and my family tree has been researched back into the 17th C).

This whole topic is a linguistic minefield. If you think that "responsibility" can be transferred to someone else apart from the perpetrator of an action, then the whole basis of our legal code and justice system will be transformed, the principle can't be confined to just the one issue of slavery. There must be lots of crimes which go unpunished in the lifetime of the criminals so how should responsibility be attributed?

The reparations argument seems to be that there is some kind of 'legacy' from historical slavery to do with racial status of whites vs blacks today; and some economic infrastructure which still exists from the times of slavery. That needs a longer post to unpick so I'll leave it there for now.

Yes, other than all these bland and generic statements about blame, responsibility and remedial actions, I think those here arguing that "something should be done about it" need to do some work. For starters:

1) Define the problem, identify who has been harmed and quantify the damage.

2) Then determine the causal chain of events, and identify who can reasonable be held accountable for the loss or harm.

3) Compute the amount of remediation for each soul in (1) and divide it between the folks in (2).

The good news is that we already have a system for doing that. It is called the civil justice system. And in fact an investment trust that I hold was sued for the profits it made from American plantations 150 years earlier. So as a share holder I have actually paid reparations, even though of course I am 100% blameless.

[MuddyBoots]

Yes, other than all these bland and generic statements about blame, responsibility and remedial actions, I think those here arguing for "something should be done about it" need to do some work. For starters:

1) Define the problem, identify who has been harmed and quantify the damage.

2) Then determine the causal chain of events, and identify who can reasonable be held accountable for the loss or harm.

3) Compute the amount of remediation for each soul in (1) and divide it between the folks in (2).

The good news is that we already have a system for doing that. It is called the civil justice system. And in fact an investment trust that I hold was sued for the profits it made from American plantations 150 years earlier. So as a share holder I have actually paid reparations, even though of course I am 100% blameless.

I might add another point: explain why transatlantic slavery gets treated as an exception compared with all the other injustices throughout history. Do we really want to go down the road of saying that morality and law no longer applies equally to everyone? That's quite a slippery slope.

[Lootman]

Yes, other than all these bland and generic statements about blame, responsibility and remedial actions, I think those here arguing for "something should be done about it" need to do some work. For starters:

1) Define the problem, identify who has been harmed and quantify the damage.

2) Then determine the causal chain of events, and identify who can reasonably be held accountable for the loss or harm.

3) Compute the amount of remediation for each soul in (1) and divide it between the folks in (2).

The good news is that we already have a system for doing that. It is called the civil justice system. And in fact an investment trust that I hold was sued for the profits it made from American plantations 150 years earlier. So as a share holder I have actually paid reparations, even though of course I am 100% blameless.

I might add another point: explain why transatlantic slavery gets treated as an exception compared with all the other injustices throughout history. Do we really want to go down the road of saying that morality and law no longer applies equally to everyone? That's quite a slippery slope.

Probably because those affected are more educated, articulate and powerful than the victims of other global injustices.

15 years ago the most powerful man on the planet (Obama) and the richest woman on the planet (Oprah) were both African-Americans.

OK, Obama is only half black and is not descended from slaves, but I will claim poetic license here. The point is that AAs are a powerful lobby group.

[Alaric]

I’ve been listening to a podcast about the Ottomans. Interesting. We simply do not learn about this through history in school. They (Ottomans) ran slaving parties into Cornwall and even London in 13/14th century.

Even later the defence cuts under James 1 meant that the Royal Navy didn't have the resources to defend Devon and Cornwall against raids by the Barbary Coast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

[servodude]

Yes, other than all these bland and generic statements about blame, responsibility and remedial actions, I think those here arguing for "something should be done about it" need to do some work. For starters:

1) Define the problem, identify who has been harmed and quantify the damage.

2) Then determine the causal chain of events, and identify who can reasonable be held accountable for the loss or harm.

3) Compute the amount of remediation for each soul in (1) and divide it between the folks in (2).

The good news is that we already have a system for doing that. It is called the civil justice system. And in fact an investment trust that I hold was sued for the profits it made from American plantations 150 years earlier. So as a share holder I have actually paid reparations, even though of course I am 100% blameless.

I might add another point: explain why transatlantic slavery gets treated as an exception compared with all the other injustices throughout history. Do we really want to go down the road of saying that morality and law no longer applies equally to everyone? That's quite a slippery slope.

It gets treated differently because of its legacy - because the USA became what it is today because they DID apply morality and law differently (if it's a slippery slope it's one we are trying to climb up!).

Consider examples like the Virginian Slave Laws such as “Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother”
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/negro-womens-children-to-serve-according-to-the-condition-of-the-mother-1662/

These explicitly differentiate how people are treated based on their percieved race, serving to instill and entrench a legal and cultural hierarchy
They were designed to commoditise a set of people, initially because they were cheaper than indentured servants, and then because the idea of superiority becamce ingrained

It was an economic policy that led to huge forced migration, structural racism and a disaprity of wealth accumulation that we are still seeing the repurcussions of

There isn't really any other example quite like it on the globe at the moment

[MuddyBoots]

It gets treated differently because of its legacy - because the USA became what it is today because they DID apply morality and law differently (if it's a slippery slope it's one we are trying to climb up!).

Consider examples like the Virginian Slave Laws such as “Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother”
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/negro-womens-children-to-serve-according-to-the-condition-of-the-mother-1662/

These explicitly differentiate how people are treated based on their percieved race, serving to instill and entrench a legal and cultural hierarchy
They were designed to commoditise a set of people, initially because they were cheaper than indentured servants, and then because the idea of superiority becamce ingrained

It was an economic policy that led to huge forced migration, structural racism and a disaprity of wealth accumulation that we are still seeing the repurcussions of

There isn't really any other example quite like it on the globe at the moment

It sounds like you're American? In which case as I'm English my comments aren't directed at telling other countries what to do or not do. Just some observations though:

The Virginia law was from 1662 and nobody's trying to defend it or the whole system of that time. But it was changed a long time ago, everyone from that age is now dead and we can't either prosecute or compensate dead people. What we can do is create a better society now; prosecute living people for their own transgressions, and compensate living people for their own suffering and loss. That already happens with all sorts of laws against discrimination on race, religion, gender etc. Whether it's caused by a legacy or not should make no difference to the merits of the case. It might just mean there's more of some types of cases than others.

Other continents also had slavery with huge migrations, racism and financial inequality too, eg in the Muslim world or earlier in the ancient world.

"recent research has revealed racist attitudes in Islamic history—especially anti-Black racism and a link between Blackness and slavery—dating back to at least the ninth century CE."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... slim_world

"disaprity of wealth accumulation" sounds like a big subject to research. How to show that today's wealth was linked to slavery rather than other variables. Maybe we can see this process in a very few rich family bloodlines but for the vast majority of families I just don't see an accumulation of inherited wealth going back that far. The increase in wealth imo has more to do with improvements in things like education, public health, rule of law, industrialisation, business deregulation and entrepreneurship. Perhaps political changes like democracy too. Slavery on the other hand is more associated with pre-industrial, agricultural society which becomes obsolete with mechanisation.

[gryffron]

Slavery on the other hand is more associated with pre-industrial, agricultural society which becomes obsolete with mechanisation.

I don't agree slaves become obsolete with mechanisation. Slaves on the factory production line would have been quite useful. Nazi Germany used them for example.

I think that for cause and effect the opposite is true. Mechanisation became necessary because of the abolition of slavery. After all, "No job is too hard for the man who doesn't have to do it himself". There was no incentive to increase productivity while slaves were available.

Slavery didn't become obsolete, but removing slavery drove the need for productivity improvements. i.e. the development of mechanisation.

Gryff

[ursaminortaur]

Slavery on the other hand is more associated with pre-industrial, agricultural society which becomes obsolete with mechanisation.

I don't agree slaves become obsolete with mechanisation. Slaves on the factory production line would have been quite useful. Nazi Germany used them for example.

I think that for cause and effect the opposite is true. Mechanisation became necessary because of the abolition of slavery. After all, "No job is too hard for the man who doesn't have to do it himself". There was no incentive to increase productivity while slaves were available.

Slavery didn't become obsolete, but removing slavery drove the need for productivity improvements. i.e. the development of mechanisation.

Gryff

Hero of Alexandria invented a primitive steam engine in the first century AD but with plentiful slaves around to do the work it remained pretty much a toy.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ancient-invention-steam-engine-hero-alexandria-001467