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Go back a few generations for just about every wealthy family in the US, and it's nothing but slave (or highly exploitative) labor building on land and resource
by ramesh31 11mo ago
Go back a few generations for just about every wealthy family in the US, and it's nothing but slave (or highly exploitative) labor building on land and resources stolen from the indians. It's the uncomfortable answer behind the question of "Why do WASPs own everything?". The whole "self-made" myth is nothing but a byproduct of white guilt all the way down.
- rayiner 11mo agoNative Americans were here for tens of thousands of years. If it was so easy to use Indians’ resources to build a civilization, why didn’t the Indians do it? Your attitude is illogical cope. How could “WASPs” have gotten rich from stealing from a group of people they vastly outnumbered and who were primitive in comparison?
- rimbo789 11mo agoGiven all the raping, enslaving, pillaging, and general genociding europeans did upon arrival to North America I don’t think we can say it was the First Nations that were “primitive”
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mc32 11mo agoThe local tribes were mostly one of two types, the nomadic (ex. Comanche) and the agricultural (Apache). The former would often raid the latter, killing many of the men and taking the women and children --often, but not always, they'd end up being their slaves. So the behavior of the Europeans you describe of the time was not out of the ordinary for the locals.
- pdonis 11mo agoIf you think those things didn't happen before the Europeans arrived, you need to think again.
- J0n3s1n 11mo ago[dead]
- watwut 11mo agoThey had own civilization. They lost war and were genocided out. And for the record, they had wars against themselves too, just like Europeans had wars against other Europeans. Both slavery and territorial expansion by force were wealth builders. Both took quite a lot of time too. Both were quite barbaric from our point of view, but cruelty and violence can be wealth builder. After all, Putin is super wealthy too. Stalin ended up wealthy too. Hitler same deal. There is not much difference in there.
- rayiner 11mo ago> Both slavery and territorial expansion by force were wealth builders. It’s mathematically impossible for American settlers as a group to have become wealthy by expropriating wealth from Indians. Individual Indians had almost nothing—they were hunter gatherers with a small number of subsistence farmers. Nor did they have much wealth in the aggregate—their population was quite small even pre-contact. The America population in the first census was almost 4 million, which is higher than most estimates of even the pre-contact north america population. A more populous society can’t become rich by expropriating wealth from a poor, less populous society. That’s just math. What actually happened is that the American settlers built a civilization that utilized the resources of the continent vastly more productively than the Indians had. That’s entirely different.
- alex1138 11mo agoHowever, I think the Spanish can certainly be blamed Some incredibly harrowing stories in Wade Davis's One River There is also a chance some of the disease giving unto the native americans was by accident, not intentional
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoThey did build a civilization. Which was then ravaged by diseases brought from Europe by the early explorers. By the time Europeans started settling what became the United States the native population was living in what was essentially a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
- roarcher 11mo ago> It's the uncomfortable answer behind the question of "Why do WASPs own everything?" The correct answer to that question is "they don't".
- napierzaza 11mo ago[dead]
- ramesh31 11mo ago>The correct answer to that question is "they don't Read the list and try to find a single non-WASP family: https://www.forbes.com/families/list/ https://www.forbes.com/families/list/
- Isamu 11mo agoHang on, from a quick scan I see Koch is German in origin, Lauder is Hungarian Jewish, Pritzker is Ukranian. [edit] and DuPont is French … etc. I think you meant white, not WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).
- rayiner 11mo agoThe very first example on your list is the Walton family. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, grew up in nowhere Oklahoma as the child of farmers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton. Show me where it says his wealth was built on your “WASP slavery money?”
- cratermoon 11mo agoDo you know anything about how Oklahoma was colonized by white farmers?
- rayiner 11mo agoDo you know anything about it? Walton’s family wasn’t wealthy plantation owners. Whites who didn’t own slaves—which were the vast majority of them—were hurt by slavery.
- lazide 11mo agoWait, I thought it was the Jews that owned everything? Or was it the Freemasons? I can’t even keep track anymore. I can’t think of a single WASP billionaire though - maybe that’s the mind control at work?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- quesera 11mo ago> I can’t think of a single WASP billionaire though Gates, Buffett, Musk ... all spring to mind. White certainly. Anglo-Saxon doesn't mean much more than "of western/northern european ancestry" any more. Protestant as much as any other non-Catholic Christian sect. But WASP doesn't mean literally what it means any more, so maybe I'm missing the reason you overlooked the most famous modern American-citizen billionaires?
- lazide 11mo agoSo the only thing out of it they actually are is… white? Hahahaha
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- quesera 11mo agoI guess it depends on the original poster's intention. If your point is that people have colloquialized "WASP", and that I fell into your trap, then OK you got me. :)
- lazide 11mo agoMy point is that the only actual applicability I can see in its usage is just racism.
- 11mo ago
- mc32 11mo agoNot all land was stolen. Much of it was bartered and sold. Tribes also vied for the pelt trade and would drive competing tribes out. The land we took from Mexico was only Spanish and Mexican on paper. Either one had as much control over the Apache/Comanche territory as Russia had over Alaska. Also the Apaches were driven out and nearly exterminated by the Comanche who remembered that they were nearly exterminated by the Apache when they got some stray horses and learned to ride them a century or so prior. The Mexican govt, wanting a buffer against Comanches, invited colonists from eastern states to colonize Texas in order prevent the raiding the Comanches were doing. That is most of the territory was not under any tribe’s permanent control, nor was land in the west under control of Spain or Mexico before the Americans colonized it. Also lots of tribes were sworn enemies with each other and more than happy to collaborate with Europeans to drive out their enemy tribes with fewer losses to themselves.