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> but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born into the race, society and class that the slave system was designed to benefit. This is false. M

> but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born into the race, society and class that the slave system was designed to benefit. This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all. And even if it was true, I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from them. This is collectivism/racism at its finest, it bothers me tremendously and I'm not even white.

krapp 8y ago
>This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all. There are indirect benefits and direct benefits to an unjust system - implicit as well as explicit power that comes from membership in a privileged class. Having legal rights and protections that other classes don't enjoy is a benefit. Being allowed to read, having autonomy over your own children, being able to walk freely, being allowed to maintain a connection to one's ancestors, religion and emigrant homeland... these are all benefits granted to white people as a group during slavery. > I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from them. Well... I did concede that they shouldn't, and weren't. But if one group of people are considered property, and another group of people are legally capable of owning the first, then the latter group benefits from that system if only because they aren't the former. It just happens that, at that time and place, the necessary selector for privilege was "whiteness." In another time, it might have been religion, or ethnicity or culture or following the wrong King. There were plenty of societies that practiced slavery that discriminated along many lines.
- aaron-lebo 8y ago
  But these rights were not granted to entire groups of people during slavery. See how the Irish were treated both by the British and as immigrants to the US. They were seen as lesser. Irish Catholics and many other groups had no special place as immigrants, they didn't get positive points for not being African. That's the unfortunate truth with all forms of discrimination, it's hardly something limited by class, race or time.
  - vhudud 8y ago
    Irish american here. My ancestors came after slavery waa abolished in the us. They faced much discrimination when they arrived. Yet i still indirectly benefit from slavery and its repercussions. My family fled a decaying crime filled city to the suburbs. Their black neighbors could not, thanks to redlining and restrictive conevants. But by then, irish Americans were more likely to be seen as white. I grew up in a nice town with good schools as a result. Sure, slavery didnt literally benefit every white person. But youd be hard pressed to find a white person today who never experienced any form of white privellage
    - throw55 8y ago
      "My family fled a decaying crime filled city to the suburbs." Your family fled the huge crime wave committed by blacks in the cities in the 60s-70s. If blacks had not been brought over to the US in the first place, your family would not have to flee. That's why it was called 'white flight' - it was whites fleeing rampant black crime.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    They got massive points for not being African. They were included --- belatedly --- in the definition of "white" precisely so they could join other European Americans in solidarity against Africans. "No positive points for Irish for not being black" is a crazy, ahistorical thing to say. When I was born, in the 1970s, there wasn't a neighborhood in Chicago my Irish family couldn't have gotten a mortgage in. African Americans couldn't say that!
    - aaron-lebo 8y ago
      We may be talking about different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish... I find nothing ahistorical about what I said. If you go further back and see what Cromwell and others did to the Irish (the first British colonization was in Ireland), and then extend that to the US, where that kind of hatred was shared by Nativists, it is certainly not inaccurate, even if the discrimination is of a different from than what Africans faced. I dislike the notion that because people aren't African they weren't victims, too, which gets bandied around a lot. We all have tragedies and I see no reason to ignore the plight of one to make the point about another (which the parent post does, wrongly).
- said 8y ago
  Nearly every white person—past and present—excluding the tiny percentage of slaveholders and capitalists who benefited from the depressed price of labor brought about by slavery—would’ve been better off if the African slaves were left as slaves in Africa. It’s jaw-droppingly disingenuous to dance from “whites weren’t slaves [for the most part]” with “whites benefited from slavery”. It’s like saying I’m benefiting from you because you’re not murdering me.

krapp 8y ago

>This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all. There are indirect benefits and direct benefits to an unjust system - implicit as well as explicit power that comes from membership in a privileged class. Having legal rights and protections that other classes don't enjoy is a benefit. Being allowed to read, having autonomy over your own children, being able to walk freely, being allowed to maintain a connection to one's ancestors, religion and emigrant homeland... these are all benefits granted to white people as a group during slavery. > I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from them. Well... I did concede that they shouldn't, and weren't. But if one group of people are considered property, and another group of people are legally capable of owning the first, then the latter group benefits from that system if only because they aren't the former. It just happens that, at that time and place, the necessary selector for privilege was "whiteness." In another time, it might have been religion, or ethnicity or culture or following the wrong King. There were plenty of societies that practiced slavery that discriminated along many lines.

aaron-lebo 8y ago
But these rights were not granted to entire groups of people during slavery. See how the Irish were treated both by the British and as immigrants to the US. They were seen as lesser. Irish Catholics and many other groups had no special place as immigrants, they didn't get positive points for not being African. That's the unfortunate truth with all forms of discrimination, it's hardly something limited by class, race or time.
- vhudud 8y ago
  Irish american here. My ancestors came after slavery waa abolished in the us. They faced much discrimination when they arrived. Yet i still indirectly benefit from slavery and its repercussions. My family fled a decaying crime filled city to the suburbs. Their black neighbors could not, thanks to redlining and restrictive conevants. But by then, irish Americans were more likely to be seen as white. I grew up in a nice town with good schools as a result. Sure, slavery didnt literally benefit every white person. But youd be hard pressed to find a white person today who never experienced any form of white privellage
  - throw55 8y ago
    "My family fled a decaying crime filled city to the suburbs." Your family fled the huge crime wave committed by blacks in the cities in the 60s-70s. If blacks had not been brought over to the US in the first place, your family would not have to flee. That's why it was called 'white flight' - it was whites fleeing rampant black crime.
- tptacek 8y ago
  They got massive points for not being African. They were included --- belatedly --- in the definition of "white" precisely so they could join other European Americans in solidarity against Africans. "No positive points for Irish for not being black" is a crazy, ahistorical thing to say. When I was born, in the 1970s, there wasn't a neighborhood in Chicago my Irish family couldn't have gotten a mortgage in. African Americans couldn't say that!
  - aaron-lebo 8y ago
    We may be talking about different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish... I find nothing ahistorical about what I said. If you go further back and see what Cromwell and others did to the Irish (the first British colonization was in Ireland), and then extend that to the US, where that kind of hatred was shared by Nativists, it is certainly not inaccurate, even if the discrimination is of a different from than what Africans faced. I dislike the notion that because people aren't African they weren't victims, too, which gets bandied around a lot. We all have tragedies and I see no reason to ignore the plight of one to make the point about another (which the parent post does, wrongly).
said 8y ago
Nearly every white person—past and present—excluding the tiny percentage of slaveholders and capitalists who benefited from the depressed price of labor brought about by slavery—would’ve been better off if the African slaves were left as slaves in Africa. It’s jaw-droppingly disingenuous to dance from “whites weren’t slaves [for the most part]” with “whites benefited from slavery”. It’s like saying I’m benefiting from you because you’re not murdering me.