5 ms·

What present-day wrongs exist as a result of slavery and what actions would you suggest to fix them?

ssully 7y ago
It's hard to tell if this question comes from a place of genuine curiosity and an overwhelming amount of ignorance, or just trolling.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > and an overwhelming amount of ignorance I'm aware of god awful amounts of present-day adverse impact upon the black community, among others. What I'm not quite understanding is that slavery is the cause as opposed to myriad racist policies or otherwise dysfuntional systems between 1865 and now.
  - ssully 7y ago
    I suppose I just don't see the difference between the two. I guess I could see how one could say slavery existed because of the racist systems and policies, but I just don't think the article needs to make that distinction since they are so intertwined.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      > since they are so intertwined. They're simply different things, slavery doesn't imply racism though the US system was almost entirely on racial lines. Either way there's a broken situation that needs fixed.
40acres 7y ago
Here's how I look at it, slavery is not inherently racist, other cultures have captured slaves as POWs and have enslaved those of the same race and ethnic group. However, Western slavery required racism to justify it (they are less intelligent, they are genetically engineered for labor, they feel less pain, etc.) that racism has led to various laws that hold back people to this day and have been used to justify terrible policies, such as poll taxes, redlining, contract leasing, school segregation, medical discrimination, etc. Fundamentally the two biggest policies I'd like to see enacted to benefit ALL Americans is full enfranchisement and desegregation of schools. It's my belief, possibly naive, that these are root cause issues and would fix a lot of the artificial inequality we see today.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  First, thanks for leaving a great reply instead of questioning my motives! We need more of that on HN. I suppose my confusion or perhaps contention would be that it isn't slavery that is America's original sign but rather racism, or perhaps more generically "discrimination" as the definition of "white" is rather fluid over history itself. > full enfranchisement Would that be in the sense of removing barriers to voting (simply showing up) or re-enfranchisement of felony convicts? I wrestle with the former, security vs. incidental exclusion. The latter I'm fully in support of, though I don't know about voting while serving time but that is rather driven by a fear of some kind of "voting your way out." > desegregation of schools. In what sense? We do not have explicit segregation in schooling and haven't for decades, but people seem to group together along socio-economic lines which furthers the problem. I know that education is a severe problem, my home state has a "Corridor of Shame"[0] such that entire counties are just academic dumpster fires. I don't know that desegregation would help so much as simply adequately funding and reforming our dysfunctional schools. Unfortunately I don't know how to do that in am appropriate matter, when you run into children who don't care about academics from families that don't care about academics. [0] - http://www.corridorofshame.com/ http://www.corridorofshame.com/
  - 40acres 7y ago
    Generally I think you're correct, Jamestown was established prior to 1619 and those settlers had conflict with Native Americans, so I believe it's correct to say discrimination is a good catch all term to summarize my point. In terms of full enfranchisement I mean simply showing up, I live in Oregon which has vote by mail and it's wonderful. I first voted in 2012 (NYC) and had to wait outside online for hours to do so, I lived in a low income neighborhood at the time and many folks left the line to go to work because they could not deal with the cold. I believe voting in a right that should not be taken away for almost any reason (perhaps treason), it's difficult for me to promote removing voting rights for felons with the understanding that our criminal justice system has disproportionately affected others, so a blanket policy remains my default position. Desegregation is a tougher cookie, but fundamentally I believe it is up to us to understand the factors that cause it and work to remove them. Because desegregation is a multi variable issue it requires looking at housing policy, transportation, zoning, criminal justice and others.
NoodleIncident 7y ago
The Fine Article seems to be an extensive list of the former.

It's hard to tell if this question comes from a place of genuine curiosity and an overwhelming amount of ignorance, or just trolling.

mieseratte 7y ago
> and an overwhelming amount of ignorance I'm aware of god awful amounts of present-day adverse impact upon the black community, among others. What I'm not quite understanding is that slavery is the cause as opposed to myriad racist policies or otherwise dysfuntional systems between 1865 and now.
- ssully 7y ago
  I suppose I just don't see the difference between the two. I guess I could see how one could say slavery existed because of the racist systems and policies, but I just don't think the article needs to make that distinction since they are so intertwined.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    > since they are so intertwined. They're simply different things, slavery doesn't imply racism though the US system was almost entirely on racial lines. Either way there's a broken situation that needs fixed.

40acres 7y ago

Here's how I look at it, slavery is not inherently racist, other cultures have captured slaves as POWs and have enslaved those of the same race and ethnic group. However, Western slavery required racism to justify it (they are less intelligent, they are genetically engineered for labor, they feel less pain, etc.) that racism has led to various laws that hold back people to this day and have been used to justify terrible policies, such as poll taxes, redlining, contract leasing, school segregation, medical discrimination, etc. Fundamentally the two biggest policies I'd like to see enacted to benefit ALL Americans is full enfranchisement and desegregation of schools. It's my belief, possibly naive, that these are root cause issues and would fix a lot of the artificial inequality we see today.

mieseratte 7y ago
First, thanks for leaving a great reply instead of questioning my motives! We need more of that on HN. I suppose my confusion or perhaps contention would be that it isn't slavery that is America's original sign but rather racism, or perhaps more generically "discrimination" as the definition of "white" is rather fluid over history itself. > full enfranchisement Would that be in the sense of removing barriers to voting (simply showing up) or re-enfranchisement of felony convicts? I wrestle with the former, security vs. incidental exclusion. The latter I'm fully in support of, though I don't know about voting while serving time but that is rather driven by a fear of some kind of "voting your way out." > desegregation of schools. In what sense? We do not have explicit segregation in schooling and haven't for decades, but people seem to group together along socio-economic lines which furthers the problem. I know that education is a severe problem, my home state has a "Corridor of Shame"[0] such that entire counties are just academic dumpster fires. I don't know that desegregation would help so much as simply adequately funding and reforming our dysfunctional schools. Unfortunately I don't know how to do that in am appropriate matter, when you run into children who don't care about academics from families that don't care about academics. [0] - http://www.corridorofshame.com/ http://www.corridorofshame.com/
- 40acres 7y ago
  Generally I think you're correct, Jamestown was established prior to 1619 and those settlers had conflict with Native Americans, so I believe it's correct to say discrimination is a good catch all term to summarize my point. In terms of full enfranchisement I mean simply showing up, I live in Oregon which has vote by mail and it's wonderful. I first voted in 2012 (NYC) and had to wait outside online for hours to do so, I lived in a low income neighborhood at the time and many folks left the line to go to work because they could not deal with the cold. I believe voting in a right that should not be taken away for almost any reason (perhaps treason), it's difficult for me to promote removing voting rights for felons with the understanding that our criminal justice system has disproportionately affected others, so a blanket policy remains my default position. Desegregation is a tougher cookie, but fundamentally I believe it is up to us to understand the factors that cause it and work to remove them. Because desegregation is a multi variable issue it requires looking at housing policy, transportation, zoning, criminal justice and others.

NoodleIncident 7y ago

The Fine Article seems to be an extensive list of the former.