US Slavery -> Racial Resentment over 150 years later

[Loren Pechtel]

Affirmative action does indeed cause resentment, Derec is living proof and is happy to provide reasons (as seen in his posts).

AA is merely an excuse. People have had no trouble finding excuses for their bigotry of blacks in America for centuries!

AA is partly an excuse, partly a reason. It does cause resentment when people see themselves being treated unfairly and not all such victims realize the fault lies with the people in power, not with those getting an unfair boost.

 

[Gospel]

Yeah, & the whole resisting having their land taken doesn't even answer the wrongdoing because the alleged wrongdoing doesn't happen until after they started taking people and land. This is why I still ask the question what did they do to elicit what was done to them?

The problem is that you guys are looking at it by modern standards, not the standards of the time.

We can look back and see that we were very wrong, but the people at the time didn't realize it.

Sorry but that's rubbish. They knew what a state looked like back then because they were in the act of establishing their own.. They knew they themselves wouldn't allow outside forces to intrude on their freedoms. They knew damn well what they were doing and didn't give a shit because our skin is brown and they deliberately thought of us as not humans to excuse their behaviour.

 

[Gospel]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

 

[Gospel]

On another note. I agree that on a north vs south levels of racism debate that New York is more racist than Florida from personal experience.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Bullshit, there were plenty of people of those generations who "realized how wrong" killing people was. They were murdered for the sake of greed and power, not some innocent accident.

Sure, there were some enlightened people who realized it was wrong. Society overall didn't see it as wrong, though.

Half of society is fine with separating children from parents and having them live in tight confined spaces, as long as they are from south of the border.

To paraphrase Amos, we don’t give a fuck what happens to the other tribe.

As far as I know they might be fine with it if the parents are Democrats, too. That’s the problem with authoritarianism

 

[ronburgundy]

If you look at the past 20 years or so, the evidence suggests that the North is more racist than the South. I personally have seen that for myself as someone who grew up in the Northeast but has lived in the South since the 70s. I really don't feel like arguing this with you, but I will post a link of a study that was done by a Black intellectual, who has lived almost all of his life in the South. To sum it up, incarceration rates for Black folks are statistically higher in the North, the schools in the North are more segregated, and Black people are hired at a higher rate in the South compared to the North, etc.

The difference is that Southern racist are more open about their racism compared to Northern racist, but the North is far more segregated than the South. Whenever I visit the New Jersey metro area, I am always shocked at how ghettoized its Black citizens tend to be, with only one or two areas that are fairly well integrated with middle and upper class Black citizens. I live in a middle class neighborhood and over the 22 years that I've been in my home, I've seen a large influx of new Black homeowners. You rarely find that in the North.

Regional differences in unenforced segregation have no relationship to differences in racist ideology, except when it's formal gov enforced segregation like existed in the south until the north forced them to stop within my lifetime. The Civil Right Act was opposed by almost every southern congressman of both parties and supported by almost every northern Congressman of both parties. There are numerous confounds that make comparisons of modern incidental segregation meaningless regarding regional racism. The biggest one being that blacks in the north are far more concentrated in urban areas whereas in the south there are many more rural blacks. This is b/c of the Great Migration (one of the largest internal rapid migrations in history) where the northern cities went from having very few blacks to several million, b/c about 45% of blacks living in the rural south migrated to major northern cities. And the vast majority of that happened just between 1940 and 1970 (5 million people). Not coincidentally, a major motive for this migration was the overtly white supremacists laws and widespread lynchings that ruled the south, not committed by long dead southern racists but those alive today and by the parents who raised them, and who only stopped b/c the northern states via Federal authority forced them to.

Extreme poverty and joblessness was another motive, meaning that the migrants to the north were a biased sample of the most desperate. In addition, they all had to cram into already fully developed and over-crowded cities where rural northern whites and post WW II Europeans were also trying to cram into. That's a situation that lead to ingroup clustering and segregation not simply by race but by cultural groups within race. That's why you have sections of those cities that are distinctly Italian, polish, irish, German.

After the the Northern states used the Civil Rights Act to force the southern states to end Jim Crow laws, some blacks wanted to move back to the south and to their families and place of their ancestral heritage going back centuries. But the one's most able to do so, especially to buy land in the rural areas and the newly developing "suburbs" were those with better education/jobs. Which yet again, means a highly biased sample resulting in the less educated and skilled blacks having to remain in the northern cities.

And all of that is enhanced by the fact that poverty rates among all races are higher in rural areas, the rural south has the most poverty among rural areas, and the south has more of it's population living in rural areas. There is a statistical floor effect in economic segregation where the average differences between any groups (racial or otherwise) cannot be as large if lots of people of all groups are near the bottom, thus limiting the possible between group variability.

Some of the claims in your link are related to what happened over 50 years ago. Don't you think that times have changed? Sure, we have our share of racists where I live, but they are becoming a much smaller part of the population.

Those events "50 years ago" where just the start of the shift of the GOP becoming the party of white supremacists. Besides, psychological research shows individuals undergo minimal ideological change within their adult lifespan and massive influence of ideology from one generation to the next. The fact that the GOP has only increased it's racist rhetoric in the last 50 years while increasing and maintaining dominance in the south shows that white supremacists remain a dominant majority in the south.The OP data along with analyes of the "southern strategy", the widescale party-switching defections in Congress surronding the civil rights movement, plus the events I described all show that the rather rapid change in the party dominance of the south was primarily driven by the change in which party courted white supremacist ideology and it's oppostion to Civil Rights and desegregation. The events I focussed upon show that even seeming exceptions to the rule (e.g., "independents" winning southern states between 1948-1968) were in fact glaring instances of the fact that racist policy and rhetoric, regardless of party, are what has consistently won the south for the last century and still does. And it is notable that many southern states that went from strongly Dem to GOP have very large black populations who vote against the majority, which proves just how much racist ideology dominates among the white majority.

We are making progress, while I don't see that up North.

I can buy that, which is why GA went blue, SC got close, and TX is getting closer, while multiple "union" states went Red in 2016 or 2020. But the reality is that most of the confederate states still go red nearly every time, and it got that way b/c of racist segregationist platforms and candidates that shapes the rhetoric of the modern GOP. Although Georgia only went blue due to massive get out the vote efforts by the black community, and the GA legislature is now passing laws to ensure that won't happen again.

I of course agree that there are white supremacists throughout America, and the evidence shows this is especially true in rural areas. But the data that most directly reflects racist ideology continues to show that it is the majority position among white southerners. That includes studies on people who hold racist views such as that blacks today are not in any way hindered by the historical effects of racism, that there is no active racism today, and that black would be just as well off as whites if they weren't so lazy. That data implicates the south but also rural America in general, and that is part of the issue.
The deep south states are all above the national average in the % of their population living in rural areas, with Alabama being double the national average. So, that alone would predict greater racism in the south.

https://www.theroot.com/is-the-south-more-racist-than-other-parts-of-the-us-1820893655I was born and raised in South Carolina, attended college in Alabama and—except for a few stints in Washington, D.C. (which is technically below the Mason-Dixon Line, but not considered “Southern”), and periods living outside the U.S.—have always lived in the South.
I often hear people who live in other states, especially in the Northeast, offhandedly demean the South as backward, less educated and—more important—racist, as if the rest of the country has an invisible deflector shield that eliminates white supremacy. But instead of reminding naysayers and detractors that it was places like Alabama and Mississippi that made it possible for blacks to vote, attend the college of their choice and sit wherever they wanted on the bus, I decided to examine the issue with data and statistics. I am not oblivious to the history of the South, but I wanted to find out whether or not it was true. Is the South really more racist?
To answer the question, I took an objective set of criteria and dissected the information. I looked at the available information on education, employment, economics, housing and politics to find out if the South is really more racist than anywhere else.

Yeah, that article is really poor scholarship by someone who appears to have no relevant training or analytic skills. Every single one of his variables are deeply impacted by the historical contingencies related to the great migration I described before, which makes north-south variations in racial differences on those metrics completely unrelated to any actual racist ideology. In fact, as I explained, that migration is generally viewed to have been caused by the overt gov supported segregation, racism, and lynching in the south by white southerners alive today and their parents, and only ended b/c the northern states forced them to stop, which then led some blacks who could afford it to move back to the south. Also, that journalist treats the idea that the south is "less educated" as a demeaning opinion, when in it is an undeniable objective fact. 4 of the 5 least educated states are in the southeast, and that holds for whites specifically, and not just a function of % of uneducated non-whites), and NV is only among them b/c it has 10 times the % of poor immigrants fromLatin America. This is highly relevant since racism and all forms of bigoted ideolgoy are negatively correlated with education level, and not coincidentally both factors predict GOP support among whites, which is why the south has far more GOP support. Exact same thing applies to poverty where 6 of 7 states with highest white poverty levels are in the southeast, and applies to % of whites in rural areas as already noted. So, basically, it would require some kind of odd miracle violating numerous reliable empirical trends for the southeast not to have a higher % of racists given it's lower education and higher poverty, rural living, and religiosity.

Let me end my lengthy reply by quoting something that a Black. coworker said to me many years ago.
"I will take a Southern racist over a Northern racist anyway. At least I know where I stand when it comes to the Southern racist"

She was implying that people in other parts of the country did as much or more damage, but they were much quieter about it. That is possibly why so many people mistakenly believe that the South is more racist than the North, when according to the study done in my link, the opposite is true.

Again, that "study" done by an unqualified journalist shows nothing of relevance to levels of actual racist ideology. As to the notion of racists in the south being more open about it, that is precisely a consequence of racist ideology being the mainstream majority among southern whites, thus racism can be overtly expressed by people (including politicians) without negative recourse. When whites are raised by and surrounded by racists, it makes open explicit racism more likely, and it also leads to more extreme forms of racism of the sort that allows people to do things like vote primarily on the basis of opposing racial equality. And the greater presence of overt racists in the south doesn't mean there are not also many covert racists. In fact, most social psychological evidence would predict the opposite. Just like having more fundamentalist Christians in an area predicts more moderate Christians and Christians overall, so does having more extreme overt racists predict that the entire distribution of the society is shifted towards racism. IOW, the distributions still have a normal shape to them with the extreme tails being similarly far from the median. Thus, the greater the % of people willing to openly display their racism, the greater the % of people who are racist in general and the fewer who fall on the other non-racist end of the spectrum.

I don't disagree with you that the modern Republican Party is a lot more racist compared to the modern Democratic Party.

So, then how would the modern GOP dominate the south while the Dems dominate the NE if the south didn't have a greater % of racists among it's white population? And why would the specific counties that had more slaves be one's that vote most for the modern GOP, unless the degree of GOP support was a reflection of the degree of white supremacist attitudes?

 

[ronburgundy]

On another note. I agree that on a north vs south levels of racism debate that New York is more racist than Florida from personal experience.

Florida is not culturally part of the "the south". Compared to the "deep south" states (AL, SC, GA, MS, LA: which had >40% of their 1860 populations as slaves), Florida has far far more foreign immigrants, far more white transplants from northern states, etc.. 64% of Floridians were not born there, and 25% were born in "Union" states, and another 21% were born outside the U.S., versus only 8% who were born in other southern US states. And note the non-coincidental fact that the migration from the North to Florida began in the 60's when the Civil Rights Act.

This is why Florida does not vote like the rest of the south. In the pat 60 years, Florida has voted for 5 different Dem presidential candidates and 5 different GOP candidates, with the result quite close even in the GOP years (note that this only counts voting from different people, not how many times the same incumbent candidate was re-elected. And note FL would go blue most of the time if not for the huge Cuban population that votes GOP for very different reasons than most white southerners do.

Contrast this with a culturally "southern" state like Alabama where only 30% of it's residents are non-native and the majority of those came from other southern states. Unsurprisingly, and highly supportive of the "racist south" hypothesis, AL has voted strongly GOP in every election since the Civil Rights Act with 2 exceptions: 1) they voted for independent George Wallace in 1968 b/c he ran on a more racist segregationist platform than Nixon, and the voted for Cater who while he wasn't an overt racist, was southern, Christian, and less outspoken in favor of Civil Rights than Gerald Ford who was not a popular with conservatives and only got the nomination b/c he fell into the incumbent seat after the VP then Nixon were both removed from office.

You'd have a tough time claiming that there is more politically relevant, election impacting white supremacy in Alabama than New York.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, & the whole resisting having their land taken doesn't even answer the wrongdoing because the alleged wrongdoing doesn't happen until after they started taking people and land. This is why I still ask the question what did they do to elicit what was done to them?

The problem is that you guys are looking at it by modern standards, not the standards of the time.

We can look back and see that we were very wrong, but the people at the time didn't realize it.

Sorry but that's rubbish. They knew what a state looked like back then because they were in the act of establishing their own.. They knew they themselves wouldn't allow outside forces to intrude on their freedoms. They knew damn well what they were doing and didn't give a shit because our skin is brown and they deliberately thought of us as not humans to excuse their behaviour.

As I said, might makes right. They felt that because they were technologically superior they were in the right.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

 

[Gospel]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

Yeah been there done that, still doesn't support your juxtaposing (I learned a new word today ) Hitler's killing of the Jews having no provocation with the Atlantic slave trade. Seems you're saying that Europeans where just doing the typical European stuff of that time and the African's provoked the Atlantic Slave Trade by just being there. Is that what you believe?

 

[rousseau]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

You're painting a very broad brush on what was an extremely complex reality in colonial Africa.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

Yeah been there done that, still doesn't support your juxtaposing (I learned a new word today ) Hitler's killing of the Jews having no provocation with the Atlantic slave trade. Seems you're saying that Europeans where just doing the typical European stuff of that time and the African's provoked the Atlantic Slave Trade by just being there. Is that what you believe?

I'm saying the people should be judged by the standards of their time, not by current standards.

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

You're painting a very broad brush on what was an extremely complex reality in colonial Africa.

I restricted it to the nations involved, not all African nations.

 

[Gospel]

People should be judged by the standards of their times. That time didn't only belong to the Europeans.

 

[Trausti]

People should be judged by the standards of their times. That time didn't only belong to the Europeans.

True. Many other peoples were much worse.

 

[Gospel]

People should be judged by the standards of their times. That time didn't only belong to the Europeans.

True. Many other peoples were much worse.

Agreed. It's also true that many Africans fought against the Atlantic slave trade and they had every right to and was entirely justified regardless of Lorens blurred view of history. America at that time was actively screwing over the Native Americans and in fact wrote their first set of "just laws" as a result claiming that it was illegal to injure or oppression them. But according to Loren they didn't know better and was just doing to black people what was normal around the time while recognizing what they were doing to the Native Americans was wrong. Yeah right.

 

[Gospel]

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

You're painting a very broad brush on what was an extremely complex reality in colonial Africa.

Broad brush indeed but complex, not by much. In a nutshell, Europeans were weak. They didn't like the monarchy but were too pussy to take them on so instead preyed on the "less civilized".

Edit: It's not until they grew in numbers, strength and had a massive ocean between them that they found the balls to fight back.

 

[rousseau]

Yeah been there done that, still doesn't support your juxtaposing (I learned a new word today ) Hitler's killing of the Jews having no provocation with the Atlantic slave trade. Seems you're saying that Europeans where just doing the typical European stuff of that time and the African's provoked the Atlantic Slave Trade by just being there. Is that what you believe?

I'm saying the people should be judged by the standards of their time, not by current standards.

If they didn't know what they were doing it doesn't explain the deals they made with African countries to exchange slaves for goods. They knew damn well they were dealing with established nations. Ignorant my ass.

Established nations, but technologically way behind.

Now, if you want knowing evil, look at those African nations that were exchanging the slaves.

You're painting a very broad brush on what was an extremely complex reality in colonial Africa.

I restricted it to the nations involved, not all African nations.

I'm not sure which nations you're referring to, but IIRC slave-trading wasn't always an immoral free-for-all on the African side, oftentimes those sold were cultural outcasts (criminals etc). And I'd guess that it was common for tribes to be forced into this type of trade economically for survival. Sans European domination the slave-trade just doesn't exist.

I haven't read extensively on the African slave trade within Africa, but I have read some, and I don't know that broad brushes are particularly helpful in understanding what happened on the ground, across centuries.

 

[Trausti]

People should be judged by the standards of their times. That time didn't only belong to the Europeans.

True. Many other peoples were much worse.

Agreed. It's also true that many Africans fought against the Atlantic slave trade and they had every right to and was entirely justified regardless of Lorens blurred view of history. America at that time was actively screwing over the Native Americans and in fact wrote their first set of "just laws" as a result claiming that it was illegal to injure or oppression them. But according to Loren they didn't know better and was just doing to black people what was normal around the time while recognizing what they were doing to the Native Americans was wrong. Yeah right.

I don’t know that any African tribes/nations fought against the Atlantic slave trade. Ashanti was made rich by it. King Alfonso’s protest only came when his own kinsmen were being traded. Antera Duke certainly promoted it. The British fought against Africans to stop it. I think it’s a modern misconception that black Africans of the past were some homogeneous group rather than rivals. The notion that slavery is wrong is uniquely Western and was imposed on the rest of the world through imperialism.

 

[Trausti]

It was the Italian fascists who ended slavery in Ethiopia. Slave markets returned to Libya after Gaddafi was deposed. The city of Seattle is named after a native-American slave holder.

 

[Politesse]

Slavery is normalized in all times in places, including our own, if you only accept the opinions and positions of slavers as valid and representative of "the times".