3 ms·

> I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free. The romans did if I recall history class correctly. So did

by zaarn 9y ago

> I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free. The romans did if I recall history class correctly. So did the french for a while and of course pre-WW germany in their colonies (we don't know how the Nazis would have handled it, their black population was so low that they didn't bother to do anything about it other than "if it's a problem, deal with it") I think you could also count the british since they definitely had skin-color based slaves at times. (Atleast history class told me)

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Having some race based slaves is not the same as using race to clearly demarcate slave from free across a nation. We live with the legacy that Black Americans are descended from slaves, slaves who were forbidden from learning to read, so they imposed the grammar of their native tongues on English, resulting in a distinct speaking style that still tends to persist, culturally, even if it is not so in every individual case. The implications are both broad and deep and they mostly aren't nice. It is a terrible legacy that still leaves its mark on the Black American population in ways that are very frequently used to suggest that Blacks are simply morally defective and their lives would work if they would just behave themselves.
- zaarn 9y ago
  So what? I live in a country that killed around 17 million people during WW2, particularly jewish. You think American legacy is bad? Other countries did much worse and still repent for that. We had a situation in which the birth certificate of your grandmother could decide whether you die under most terrible conditions or live. And please don't think that the whole "black skin = slave" is unique to america, the egyptians for example enslaved jewish people (as you might recall from some stories in some old, dusty book), some african countries warlords enslaved white people for their skin color, the british enslaved everyone who wasn't european. This is not unique to America.

by zaarn 9y ago

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Having some race based slaves is not the same as using race to clearly demarcate slave from free across a nation. We live with the legacy that Black Americans are descended from slaves, slaves who were forbidden from learning to read, so they imposed the grammar of their native tongues on English, resulting in a distinct speaking style that still tends to persist, culturally, even if it is not so in every individual case. The implications are both broad and deep and they mostly aren't nice. It is a terrible legacy that still leaves its mark on the Black American population in ways that are very frequently used to suggest that Blacks are simply morally defective and their lives would work if they would just behave themselves.

zaarn 9y ago
So what? I live in a country that killed around 17 million people during WW2, particularly jewish. You think American legacy is bad? Other countries did much worse and still repent for that. We had a situation in which the birth certificate of your grandmother could decide whether you die under most terrible conditions or live. And please don't think that the whole "black skin = slave" is unique to america, the egyptians for example enslaved jewish people (as you might recall from some stories in some old, dusty book), some african countries warlords enslaved white people for their skin color, the british enslaved everyone who wasn't european. This is not unique to America.