- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
- Messages
- 8,834
- Reaction score
- 2,812
- Location
- Alabama
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
There were many blacks who lived free, but there were far more that did not here in the US at one point in time. Various races or groups of people have been viewed at one point in history as "not a human" or "less than human" and were "ruled" as slaves. It all started with the American Indians, then blacks, Chinese, Irish, Japanese, Hispanics and even women to an extent. The US has a long history of being intolerant and "racist" in their policies and actions - and no group has a better case for this than the American Indians. But those days are long gone and behind us. Slaves, predominantly black slaves for the purpose of this discussion, were exploited primarily for labor - because they were viewed as a "lesser race" and were thus ruled. It was wrong and most of us have seemed to move past that. But others, and some are in this very thread, want to see racism in everything because they don't understand what true racism is. The word "racist" and "racism" is thrown around so much that they wouldn't know what true racism is if it happened in their own living room.
The point is that individuals cannot continue to use the past to explain their failings in the present, otherwise the Chinese in the west would not have thrived...