Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 9:49 am
Slavery is still a
social force in the USA.
No, it's not. Even as a metaphor, that idea isn't true. Have you ever been to the US?
African Americans who are over- represented in US prisons and inferior schooling and health care.
This is true, but you've got the cause wrong.
Slavery doesn't even exist anymore. In fact, the US has massive affirmative action programs and welfare systems, of which the African American population can partake but the others (like the Chinese, especially) are denied. The real reason for continued A-A poverty is the dissolution of the family in those communities. Single motherhood and child abandonment are the biggest problem that community has. And it produces a lot of the pathologies you mention: criminality and imprisonment, gangs, ghettos, community destruction, despair, drugs, a low status for education, and, of course, health care issues that go along with those lifestyles.
There's no "class system" in the US. It's not England. The most successful immigrant community is the East Indian community, and the Chinese and Koreans have been doing admirably, though they are mostly more recent immigrants. There's nothing stopping the success of a minority group, that's apparent, because many visible minorities are doing very well there; but they all tend to have intact family structures. The US is a bit of a meritocracy. You have to pull your weight, or you end up at the bottom. And family stability is the single highest factor correlated with success in school and career, as well as community health and a whole lot of other such things.
Economically, the Atlantic slave trade was a causal force for establishing the industrial revolution.
Heh.
Historically totally false. Did you ever study American history?
In the US, the North was the industrial area, and did not have slaves. The South was widely agrarian (remember the plantations?), and had slaves. When was the last time you saw a picture of an A-A labouring in a factory? But how many do we have of them picking cotton or digging ditches, or doing other types of manual labour?
Then the ships were used for slave cargoes.
...to the South, to the Democrats, actually. Not to the North or to the Republicans.
The Civil War was actually fought because of two factors: 1) slavery, for sure, and 2) a regional-cultural-economic difference. The North and the South were developing very differently lifestyles, and these came into conflict when it came to how new states were to be admitted to the Union. The hot issue was whether there would be more slave-states or more slave-free states (i.e. Industrial, Northern ones) in the political system. The Democrats championed state rights, and the Republicans championed a unified republic with no slavery.
the social consciousness of white people that black people are inferior.
You should know that's obviously false.
Now, there might be a few such yahoos stuck in the backwoods somewhere, but African Americans have wide open access to the top of the tree. Have you forgotten the Black president? Or how about the many millionaire athletes? How about actors and celebrities in music and the arts? Consider the recent 'woke' Oscars, for example. And where are the Affirmative Action plans for white people? They don't exist. Where are the preferential hiring criteria for non-minorities? If you find anybody who is being a racist, then let's you and I deal with them. But you've got to point to where they are.
There's nothing stopping an A-A from getting anywhere he/she wants; but A-A's start lower, because so many of their families are destroyed and so many start in such deplorable conditions, dependent on government aid for survival.
I would say it's much more the case now that sensible people don't CARE what the colour of somebody's skin is. The real question is, "Are you a decent person, and can you do the job?" The only people who seem desperate to keep the notion of "race" alive are the Leftists. They want it in order to assert privilege, social justice, and additional government control, and seem to have no interest in the actual welfare of A-A communities...as for example, the recent embezzlement of the millions donated to BLM.
The first thing we have to do, in order to change things in that situation, is to help restabilize the family in African American communities: not an easy task, because propaganda and government programs have done a lot to destroy it. Then we need to improve education, nutrition and health care, but all three will come if the family issue is fixed first, and none of them will stick if it's not.
