• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Would we all be better off if we had never had slaves?

Would we as a country be better of if there had been no slavery here?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 88.9%
  • No

    Votes: 2 11.1%

  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .
Well, that pretty much wraps it up. 80% of the people responding think we would have been better off without slavery. I can agreed with that. Remove the crime and other problems rampant in the communities of the slave ancestors and things don't look so bad here. Maybe we could fire up a reparations program that will provide one way tickets back to wherever they came from. Assuming of course they know where that is. 200 years is plenty of time to become part of a society, if they can't or won't, send them on their way.
 
Well, that pretty much wraps it up. 80% of the people responding think we would have been better off without slavery. I can agreed with that. Remove the crime and other problems rampant in the communities of the slave ancestors and things don't look so bad here. Maybe we could fire up a reparations program that will provide one way tickets back to wherever they came from. Assuming of course they know where that is. 200 years is plenty of time to become part of a society, if they can't or won't, send them on their way.
Send the n(bleep!)s back to Africa? Is that really what you're suggesting?
 
Send the n(bleep!)s back to Africa? Is that really what you're suggesting?

I'm saying pay their way if they want to go. Lincoln's plan was to send them all back whether they wanted to go or not, and he is applauded as a hero to them.
 
I'm saying pay their way if they want to go. Lincoln's plan was to send them all back whether they wanted to go or not, and he is applauded as a hero to them.

I'm thinking you wouldn't get a lot of takers.
 
In general we would all be better off I think. So what's the point,
it's history.



Correct. We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

We have to play the hand that we were dealt.




Eventually the USA will get straightened out, but I doubt that I'll live to see that day.
 
Last edited:
Interesting thought. Consider that slaves had never been brought here. Considering that they were captured and sold by other tribal Africans, they likely would have been sold to somebody else, or just killed. But either way if they had not been brought here, there would be no descendants of slaves here either, probably no Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, maybe not even a Barack Obama. So would we have been better off?

Depends on the metrics and who "we" is.

Economically, especially in the early days of the nation slavery was a valuable financial institution, especially in the more agrarian south (but significant parts of the north). This at a critical time in a start up young nation.

It was in many ways antithetical to the founding ideals of this nation, but I do give some leniency in remembering the times. Slavery is one of the oldest institutions of man and remains in practice in parts of the world even today. The fact that it was ended in the US in less than 100 years and at enormous cost to Americans is admirable in my view.

Culturally, both blacks and whites have been both harmed and helped. Its notable that the US ended slavery and yet lived amongst these former slaves, historically most of the time when slavery was ended it was because slaves revolted and took over (think haiti) or slaves were expelled from the nation.
Here that did not happen-and it certainly contributed to racial tensions (though not all slaves were black). Certainly, more slaves were taken elsewhere besides the US (brazil, carribean, and much more so the Middle east, where most did not survive and were not highly valued)

But also, blacks benefitted from slavery in the US-conditions here have always been better than africa, and slaves that returned to Africa (sierra leone and liberia) did not tend to do much better than other africans (certainly not better than the US). When I was in school a nigerian classmate (former marine, US citizen) told how she always dreamed of coming here, and how much better it was here, my african american classmates were actually hostile towards her, as they didn't see any benefit to living in the US. That created some tension I made note of.

So in the end, its a mixed bag for everyone involved. Its water over the dam, and I think we are better served by working together to make things better. I do not see modern identity politics as helpful in this.
 
Last edited:
If we did not have slavery in this country then Will Smith would have never been born anywhere. His parents and everyone dating back to the first of his family who were the children of the first people brought here on slave ships would have never been born. I do not think anyone voting YES realizes that every single individual whose ancestors were slaves in this country would have never been born anywhere in this world due to the fact it was because of slavery that their ancestors met in the first place.

Why does it matter if certain people were born. Two people get together and have a baby. It doesn't matter who that baby is. Somebody would have been born somewhere in the world in place of the person that was born in the US.
 
And questions on such hypotheticals are an exercise in futility. If, somewhere in history, a different sperm won the race then maybe we'd have hoverboards or a cure for cancer. Maybe polio would never have been eradicated. Or maybe Star Wars would never have existed. History is chaos theory. A long sequence of butterfly effects with nigh unpredictable outcomes. Even the smallest variance could have made life better or worse for all of us, nevermind something as huge as slavery not existing.



And who's to say you'd have necessarily been born? Without slavery your family might have died out.

The last documentary I saw showed that kids will be playing with hoverboards in October of this year.
 
Why does it matter if certain people were born.
I am sure it matters to everyone in this country who is descended from someone brought here as a slave.Because if their ancestors were not brought here as slaves then they would have never been born.

Two people get together and have a baby. It doesn't matter who that baby is. Somebody would have been born somewhere in the world in place of the person that was born in the US.
If your parents never met then you would have never been born.If your grandparents never met then your parents would have never been born and so on.
 
Neither do I. For all the complaining, the government checks seem to be enough to make up for it.

And maybe, just maybe even the descendants of slaves enjoy being free and having opportunity. Moreover, most of them have never been to Africa and have no idea what part of that large continent their ancestors came from.

Most welfare recipients are not the descendants of slaves, BTW.
 
The country wouldn't be nearly as wealthy. Probably would have severely postponed our industrial revolution. Possibly even inhibited our ability to be effective help for WWI.
 
And maybe, just maybe even the descendants of slaves enjoy being free and having opportunity. Moreover, most of them have never been to Africa and have no idea what part of that large continent their ancestors came from.

Most welfare recipients are not the descendants of slaves, BTW.

No, of course not. We have our share of welfare takers here in a county that is less than 2% black. I would venture to say many are multi generational as well. But for as good as they have it, there sure does seem to be a lot of complaining of it not being enough, and that lack of perspective of what life would be like over there doesn't help.
 
Change any major event in history, such as the slave trade, the Civil War, or WWII and most of us posting on this board would not exist.
 
Change any major event in history, such as the slave trade, the Civil War, or WWII and most of us posting on this board would not exist.

Nothing personal, and it's hardly just you in this thread who's engaged in this, but this kind of pedantic thinking is frustrating in that it blocks all dialogue on whether we, as a nation (or hell, even as a global community), would be better off had some atrocity not taken place. So would I have existed had the Holocaust not happened? I would go so far as to guarantee that I would not. Should the Holocaust have happened? Absolutely ****ing not. I refuse to participate in first person exceptionalism by endorsing the Holocaust simply by virtue of that fact that it led to my existence.

And I believe that regardless of who would or would not have been born as a result of taking your DeLorean to the colonization of the Americas and stopping slavery dead in its tracks, the country as a whole would be objectively better off. The racial and cultural division in this country can be traced back to slavery, and it has paralyzed us and prevented us from moving forward in numerous ways.
 
The existence of slavery in the United States was immoral, and the country would be better off if slavery had not been practiced here just because of that. Slavery brought with it many societal ills however, such as the racism that continued to exist after abolition. The Civil War would probably not have happened, and the North-South cultural divide probably would be far less emphasized.

Morality is widely variable and should not be dictated by government. I believe abortion is immoral. I handle this by not getting one, but I am not willing to legislate it away. And the Civil War could very well have happened since slavery was not the only issue. It began over commerce issues between the north and south.
 
Well, no, unfortunately it's not the end of the story at all. That's part of why slavery was so horrible: its repercussions are felt to this day.

I suspect it may happen here again actually. Given that the fauxrage is leading us to erase a part of our history, it is entirely possible that a couple of hundred years of revisionism will leave future generations with no idea that we ever had it or how it was resolve. Hell, many people in this thread think the war started over slavery. So it has already begun.
 
Nothing personal, and it's hardly just you in this thread who's engaged in this, but this kind of pedantic thinking is frustrating in that it blocks all dialogue on whether we, as a nation (or hell, even as a global community), would be better off had some atrocity not taken place. So would I have existed had the Holocaust not happened? I would go so far as to guarantee that I would not. Should the Holocaust have happened? Absolutely ****ing not. I refuse to participate in first person exceptionalism by endorsing the Holocaust simply by virtue of that fact that it led to my existence.

And I believe that regardless of who would or would not have been born as a result of taking your DeLorean to the colonization of the Americas and stopping slavery dead in its tracks, the country as a whole would be objectively better off. The racial and cultural division in this country can be traced back to slavery, and it has paralyzed us and prevented us from moving forward in numerous ways.

You know what? You are right. It annoys me when people do that as well and I went and did the same thing. Apologies.
 
Some of Obamas relatives were slave owners according to an article I read.
 
Nothing personal, and it's hardly just you in this thread who's engaged in this, but this kind of pedantic thinking is frustrating in that it blocks all dialogue on whether we, as a nation (or hell, even as a global community), would be better off had some atrocity not taken place. So would I have existed had the Holocaust not happened? I would go so far as to guarantee that I would not. Should the Holocaust have happened? Absolutely ****ing not. I refuse to participate in first person exceptionalism by endorsing the Holocaust simply by virtue of that fact that it led to my existence.
Whether or not an event in history should have happened and whether or not we would be better off if that event never happened are two separate things. Everyone can agree that certain events in history should have never happened. But whether or not we as a whole would be better off had those events in history never happened is a completely different story. Because those negative events in history have shaped the world in general.

And I believe that regardless of who would or would not have been born as a result of taking your DeLorean to the colonization of the Americas and stopping slavery dead in its tracks, the country as a whole would be objectively better off. The racial and cultural division in this country can be traced back to slavery, and it has paralyzed us and prevented us from moving forward in numerous ways.
There is no way of knowing that.
 
Some of Obamas relatives were slave owners according to an article I read.

Historically speaking there's really no reason why that couldn't be true. Slave owners did have sex with their slaves, so the idea that Obama could be related to slave owners is hardly crazy.
 
Historically speaking there's really no reason why that couldn't be true. Slave owners did have sex with their slaves, so the idea that Obama could be related to slave owners is hardly crazy.

Why would they have to have relations with slaves for this to be true? None of Obama's ancestors were slaves.
 
Why would they have to have relations with slaves for this to be true?

If it a person's slave great great great grandmother had sex with her owner and she has his baby, then that slave owner would be an ancestor (relative) of the descendent. In fairness to you, I must have misunderstood your question if I thought you needed to have that whole procreation process explained to you.

None of Obama's ancestors were slaves.

It's possible that's not true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/obamas-mother-had-african-forebear-study-suggests.html?_r=0
 
If it a person's slave great great great grandmother had sex with her owner and she has his baby, then that slave owner would be an ancestor (relative) of the descendent. In fairness to you, I must have misunderstood your question if I thought you needed to have that whole procreation process explained to you.



It's possible that's not true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/obamas-mother-had-african-forebear-study-suggests.html?_r=0

Lets not get too into the weeds, white people dont get to say they are down with the stuggle because a great great great half uncle was part slave.

Obama's black side came from Kenya, so no slavery.

His white side, was ethnically white.

I dont think we need to get into red herrings here, do you think it helps your argument?
 
Lets not get too into the weeds, white people dont get to say they are down with the stuggle because a great great great half uncle was part slave.

Obama's black side came from Kenya, so no slavery.

His white side, was ethnically white.

I dont think we need to get into red herrings here, do you think it helps your argument?

Obama has caucasian in him, he has Kenyan in him, and if the genealogists are right then he has black slave ancestry in him. How you choose to spin that information (and we all know you will) is entirely up to you.
 
Back
Top Bottom