There has been a consistent outcry against racism in America for many years, especially since the 1960’s and the MLK days. The Republicans denounce it and the Democrats denounce it, and White people generally are burdened with guilt over the days of slavery that ended with the Civil War being fought over it, by White people.

The Southern portion of the U.S. in it’s early days, in the 1600s, developed an economy based on slave labor which the rest of the U.S. portion of the continent did not, and it continued until the Civil War ended in 1865. While it was first started by European slave traders, primarily the Portugese, by the 1700s both White and Black were in the thick of the slave economy, with both buying and selling slaves. At one point, the man who owned the most slaves in New Orleans was black.

This may shock people today, but the majority of slave owners in the years before the Civil War broke out were Black. The slave economy had changed that much since its beginning and Blacks have just as much an eye to a profit as anyone else. “In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves. The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the Black widowed C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978.”

Much is made of the very severe conditions in the holds of some of the slavers ships, as if this were the norm for all the ships over the very long time the slave trade lasted, and this isn’t so. Some slavers were brutal, uncaring people, while others were much more concerned about the safety and condition of their cargo. I know we’re talking about people here, but still, this is a lot like which mover you hire to move your household possessions. Some will take tender care and some will break half of it. Nothing has changed from that day to this.

The Civil War, in ending the slave economy of the South, also killed off an awful lot of people and laid waste to its homes, businesses, plantations and infrastructure. Not the least affected were all those Black slave owners as well as all their slaves, all of whom were now in the same unemployed boat. This made for a lot of hard feelings, especially among the White people there who found themselves at the bottom of the economic heap, and they put a lot of the blame on the Blacks for being the cause of all the devastation.

Blacks were mostly second or third class citizens anyway, simply because they were the ones with the slave onus, not the Whites. With the collapse of the South, racism against Blacks became the only way a Southern White person could feel better about his situation. It gave him a sense of superiority in the middle of his utter defeat. It was this racism that resulted in the marches for equality and the enforcement of Federal law, at last, in the 1960’s and since.

So today what do we have? Do we have a whole society, where the Blacks, now given full integration in schools, the workplace, the military and so on, are happily enjoying their acceptance into all aspects of American society? Are all those Blacks, who demanded an end to racism, themselves putting racism aside? Well, let’s take a look:

We have Black Entertainment Television now, BET. Does anyone think that WET, White Entertainment Television, would be accepted by the Federal licensing commission? We have a Black Democratic nominee for president because 91% of all Black Democratic voters voted for him. Does anyone see that as being racist?

A White person asking a Black person for the time might as well ask it of a lamp post or a wall. Blacks are very open in showing their hatred for White people, any White person, and openly preach hatred of Whites in their churches. This Democratic Black nominee attended a church with a Black pastor for 20 years while the pastor ranted on of his hatred for Whites and for America, and the Blacks all say, “Yes but that’s excusable because he’s Black”.

Racism may once have been mostly on the part of Whites but now that role is reversed with a vengeance. Giving Black people equality was the right thing to do. It’s just unfortunate that the Black people don’t know what to do with it now that they have it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 1:56 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.