Last week, the NAACP of GA announced that they were going to move to get the state to issue a formal apology for the slave trade and so forth. Now, the site that I read this on offers a way for readers to comment on the stories and, one would hope, have a discussion or offer fresh thought and ideas on the topic. You would think..but it does not happen.
No, instead the commentary was a barrage of retorts about how silly it is, stupid comments suggesting that there were more slaves in some Union states during the civil war and, of course, the attempt to try to dispell the validity of the topic by saying that another ethnic group was more screwed over than the slaves.
Okay, first off: is it that big a deal? I mean, yeah, it’s kind of silly to apologize to a group of people whom a majority of are probably NOT decendents of slaves…but at the same time, who’s going to be hurt by this? Is this a pride thing? You think you’re Fonzy? Can’t say “We were wr-wr-wr-wrrrr”?
Second: show me numbers about the slaves. Show me information from a valid source; something from the library of congress or a collegate library…not some indie website run by a confederate reinactment volunteer who has made a hobby out of the civil war. And quite trying to call it the “War of Northern Aggreesion”. The confederates attacked first…sounds like southern aggression to me. But I digress.
Third: and this is really key and this had me amazed at the stupidity. This guy suggested that BET, Miss Black USA and the United Negro College Fund were “given” to the black community….I’m assuming he meant “given” by the white community or “the MAN” and went to the level of comparing the suffering of one ethnic group to the suffering of another ethnic group…in this case, the native american’s…because they don’t have a TV network for them, they don’t have a pagent for them and they don’t have a college fund for them (which there actually is…called the Native American College Fund). So, I quickly dispelled his moronic thought process because all three organizations were founded by african american and like I said, there IS a college fund for native americans. Nothing was a handout. And even if it was, we should be proud to live in a country where that’s possible. There are countries and there were times where you couldn’t just start up a business or operation without having to hand most of the fruits of your labor to “the big guy” and if your business was a threat to “the big guy”, he could have you shut down.
America is the land of opportunity….how is the grant that a small business owner got for opening a textile factory in this GA county (example..I know nothing of something like this actually happening here so don’t quote me on it) any different from a grant for a black man to start up a radio station or an ethnic diversity cultural center for color-blind kids?
But people like to stir the shit up. They love to argue…they love to portray themselves on the interwebz as something they aren’t…be it bigger, tougher, smarter, richer or even more enlightened. It’s internet anonymity at it’s finest.