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The last time I participated in this community I was in November. When as part of some discussion about how DnD had gone woke or something, /u/RandomRanger posted a very long comment where, to paraphrase, he said that black people were an inferior stupid race who bring crime and dysfunction wherever we go and that in order to stop the west from being "overrun" with blacks, white racists would need to "block" us in a way the didn't account for "international law" and "human rights". I replied calling him a cracker bitch and was temp-banned by the mods.
Now I know my outburst was against the rules, it was uncivil, I was reacting with anger, and I knew at the time I'd get banned for it. But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights? "No sir, Please sir, I'm one of da good ones see!" I'm sorry but I don't have the patience for that
When made my first comment here where expressed profound distress over the possibly that HBD is real. I got a lot of responses along the lines of "well, what's it matter to you? you're an individual and population level statistics don't apply to you." I never thought that they applied to me. But when people in this community use HBD and crime statistics to argue that things Jim Crow and Apartheid were good and just and maybe should even be brought back THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M BLACK
I remember another person asked me if I sincerely related to black underclass criminals and no I obviously don't but I relate to people like Toussaint Louverture, Malcolm X, Steve Biko. The intelligent black men who dedicated their lives to fighting the people who wanted to keep us in eternal subjugation for all the same goddamn reasons. And when I read what RandomRanger says about how society ought to forcefully disempower black people for the sake of having a "civilized" country. I'm reminded of the poem written by Claude McKay during Red Summer when white supremacists were terrorizing black people across America:
So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!
Block them. Or, if you are stronger person than me, ignore them. Or, if you are a real life hero, a model to us all and an enviable example to many, calmly and artfully demolish their argument. But calling them slurs would probably only please them (and the inevitable ban that follows would delight them even more). If your enemy loses it, that means you are getting to them, and that's a kind of winning. To some, the only kind they could ever get.
But is it really what is happening? I mean, what are the chances for the reincarnation of slavery in the US, practically? I would say, zero. I mean, if the current civilization collapses - even less, even only the Western civilization collapses, and the US territory is captured by another civilization - then the slavery would return. In fact, the slavery exists right now, in our times, outside the West. But as long as the current United States exist, and are rooted in the Western civilization values, the return of the slavery is impossible.
Thus, these people are not a real threat to you, at least as far as return of slavery is concerned. They are a threat to you as far as making you appear weak, incoherent and unable to argue your side.
Actually, yes, if you choose to participate in a forum like this (a free choice), some kind of intellectual-ass rebuttal is what is expected. That's what this particular place is for. Nobody could ever force you to play this game, moreover, nobody would think less of you if you opted out, but if you're playing then those are the rules. You don't have to plead or beg - you can appear as strong and forceful and confident as you like - but just throwing abuse around is not going to do any good.
I would say the renewal of chattel slavery isn't impossible in US - but it would require dramatic changes in culture and/or government to be possible. It would at minimum take a constitutional amendment and broad social acceptance.
At that point, historians would be looking back and say, yeah, that's the end of 'classical' western civilization and the rise of 'neo-western' civilization.
I think changes in technology would have a greater impact; e. g. Alien Space Bats zapping away everything from the steam engine onward. (It's not a coincidence that the Industrial Revolution and the Abolitionist movement came from the same island, and contra Stuart McMillen, the fastest route to the reinstatement of chattel slavery of human beings would be the abolition of the so-called 'energy slaves' of Buckminster Fuller; baruch haShem, fossil hydrocarbons are not the ultima Thule of energy abundance.)
Even pre-industrialization Medieval/Early Modern Western Europe and Medieval China, while having forms of coerced labor, did not have Chattel Slavery. While I'm not 100% percent certain about a grand theory of 'where do societies have chattel slavery', industrialization seems to be a sufficient, but not necessary, ingredient of a society that doesn't have chattel slavery.
True; I only referred to chattel slavery because the previous posters were arguing whether or not its restoration was an absolute impossibility. A society deprived of machines might very well turn not to chattel slavery but to serfdom, casteism, enslavement of petty criminals combined with an extremely strict and micromanaging legal code, enslavement of prisoners of war combined with a bellicose foreign policy, or some form of unfree labour not currently attested in history. What wouldn't happen is everyone accepting a life of drudgery without complaint. People want to make their lives easier, and obtain greater creature comforts for less toil; if they can't shift their workload onto machines, they will seek to dump it on to people weaker than themselves.
That is very good insight. I think the clearest case today are hard manual laborer jobs in the first world; you either get coercion in the form of parolees and/or prisoners doing them, or third world immigrants often of dubious legal status doing them. I don't think there is a way around this except growth and automation to the point where robots do those jobs instead, which is another example of your point.
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