Like, the flag of Arkansas is literally a fucking logo...
Intentionally or unintentionally, Helz makes an excellent argument for why we should tear down the Union statues as well. This isn't about whether these people were "evil" because of their racism. This is about the fact that figures you dedicate larger than life statues to can and should reflect the ideals of the CURRENT society, rather than the ideals of some society 100s of years ago. I don't know why "should we put up statues of racist people that were contemporary heroes?" needs to be conflated with "are they bad because they were racist in a society where everyone was racist?". You can be a moral relativist and still oppose the existence of these statues.
But I think it's important to remember that we are always encouraged to spend endless amounts of time talking about the symbolism like the flags and the statues rather than the concrete things we can do to combat modern social issues like ending the drug war or ending for profit policing.
Why would you step back from context? Separating yourself from the context just makes your point of view disconnected from reality. I could entertain the thought of separating racism from slavery generally speaking, but when discussing slavery in the USA in regards to the civil war, the southern states explicitly said that due to the divine virtue of being white the black man is inferior and should be in permanent indentured servitude. The very core of their slavery belief is built on racism. It would be a completely different story if slaves were not predominantly black and if the southern states didn't outright say blacks are inferior, but they didn't and to separate the racist aspect from their slavery is disingenuous.
I think thats somewhat fair although I did not have the intention of misrepresenting your position. The confederacy as an agrarian society was built on slave labor and they were fighting to preserve their way of life. I very intentionally push to separate the ideas of human rights morality with this subject because I think its the disingenuous framework for any discussion on the civil war. You view this as a pseudo-defense while I feel like its a push to dispel the pretty moral justification that we place on the civil war. At the end of the day the North decided to use violence to maintain control over the south because it was necessary to preserve their power at the cost of over a half million American citizens; and people act like its ok because- 'slavery bad.' (America used the same framework of revisionism in WW2; look into the terror bombing campaigns.)
I suppose we are making two separate points. We are somehow able to agree with etchother while simultaneously continuing a debate. I do still feel that understanding the context and motivations of both sides is necessary to correctly view the morality of the individual or the states; but it may be better for me to lay that to rest given the direction this is going.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Its pretty simple. I made a statement about slavery as a concept. You can absolutely do both. I can maintain the function of slavery as a historical function between nations in wars while also acknowledging the racially charged aspect of slavery in the pre-industrialized southern american states. It has a place in this conversation because simply put- not all slaves were black. There were debtors, Native Americans, Mexicans, and all sorts of other races who had their freedom taken from them. Racism's connection to slavery in this context was that the moral justification for the inhumane treatment of people who's freedom was not taken from them as a consequence to their action because 'the black man was less than human and therefore- less deserving of human rights.'
But this does not in any way make slavery synonymous with racism and I believe separating the two concepts is important to having an intelligent conversation on the subject. As simply as I can say it this is why you need to step back from the context, separate the two concepts, and then step back in to the situation before talking about entangled morality of the subject.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
I can't engage with someone so condescending
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
Even given his status
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
Nope still disagree. You can't say slavery in the south is not synonymous with racism when official statements from the south in regards to the secession is heavily racially motivated. Feel free to read over the thread more thoroughly to find those statements.
It may be edgy and hip to separate morality from discussions, but when it IS the morality of the offending party we are discussing, separating morality from discussing their morality seems a bit retarded no?
I have never even considered this. Is the objective of a landmark to preserve the opinion held at its time of creation or is it more important to preserve current ideology? Is preserving ideology only ok when it corresponds with current ideology? Im not sure which way is best but maybe its some combination that gives value to old monuments in that they were important enough at the time of their creation to be erected while also moral enough to survive the years of changing views.
I think someone said it earlier but its probably worth noting neither qualifys for the preservation of most southern civil war statues as that the greater number of them were erected long after the civil war as a push against rights movements.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
But also too awake to sleep. Too tired to play something. Too broken of a phone screen to do anything longer than 5 minutes on it without switching the screen off for at least a minute to avoid the epileptic flashes
Whats a now 30 year old with an asshole of a brother that projects his issues onto everyone else, threatening to ruin their lives through their therapist to do
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
But also too awake to sleep. Too tired to play something. Too broken of a phone screen to do anything longer than 5 minutes on it without switching the screen off for at least a minute to avoid the epileptic flashes
Whats a now 30 year old with an asshole of a brother that projects his issues onto everyone else, threatening to ruin their lives through their therapist to do
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
“Back then it was okay so they’re fine morally”
Back “sometime” you could rape anybody you pleased
Murder if you were stronger
Blah blah blah. Hell Hitler thought he was a good guy! What kind of stupid argument is that?
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the wise?
Literally cancerous
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
Let’s keep statues of Hitler up because he thought he was good! Right?
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the wise?
We NEED to preserve nazi culture it would be cruel to destroy it!!!
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the wise?
Maybe I'll play some Dishonored. Sneaking around gives me pleasure
Originally Posted by BananaCucho
I understand your point but I am not sure why you refuse to separate the concepts. Yes Racism was a huge issue and was a morally reprehensible position taken by southern states. I have read the thread and I 100% understand that. I believe that the intention behind the action defines the morality of the action and its a very different discussion to look at the situation as economic or racially motivated. This difference has very direct bearing on the morality.
This made no sense to me. I am not advocating for separating morality from the discussion. I am pushing to separate the concepts of slavery and racism so a discussion can exist on morality. Without doing so I do not see how much reasoning can be put into the conversation on morality. Maybe we should agree to disagree? I am totally open to changing my view there if you can open my mind to a different way of looking at the issue but I am not sure we are heading in that direction.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
I should be allowed to proudly wave the nazi flag around because I’m a patriotic 1940s German and it has nothing at all to do with bigotry!!!
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the wise?
I mean yeah I can swallow this. The north wanted economic control and access to cheap labor/base products and the south wanted to keep slavery. The north and the south were racist but the south much more so. The north killed a lot of people for material reasons, the south lost and had to submit under the economic control of the then federal government.
Wars kill people and through this civil war the north kept in mind its economic interests, whilst the conclusion is that now a lot of black slaves became freedmen.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
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“It’s just economics guys”
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the wise?
I think I missed where someone made that argument but it is a tenable position.
For an extreme in the philosophical model of determinism you can not assign moral blame to any actions by virtue of free will being an illusion. This is the core of the argument that there can not be an all powerful, and all knowing creator if free will exists.
Kant had a great line of thought in this direction he dubbed 'tutelage.' If you scale back from the extreme of determinism its worth considering the impact of conditioning and lack of access to modes of thought that would enable a different thought process/action. Can you assign moral blame to an individual who was given the choice of door#1 or door#2 when the moral action would have been to pick door#3? The individual never had the free will or autonomy to do what you consider right so you are pushing consequences on them for a pre-existing circumstance they did not create.
I believe morality (good or bad) can not exist without choice. There has to be autonomy and that can not exist without information. Theres many different ethical structures that can carry this to the extremes you described. I am in no way going to say they are 'right' but the reasoning they present fascinates me.
A nihilist arguing through utilitarianism in a tribal society struggling to survive could argue that the murder of the individual for the betterment of a group as moral; and it would even be immoral for the individual of that group to not murder the person he was stronger than.
These kinds of arguments are only stupid on the surface but get pretty deep if you ever want to dive down that endless rabbit hole.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Absolutely. The idea of removing someones freedom is acceptable to a degree to me when its a consequence to a persons actions but the idea of removing someones freedom because of who they are is a really evil thing. I even take that to more of an extreme with issues today such as efforts to control mass perspective which removes autonomy.
Racism is probably one of the most ignorant positions someone can take and the overwhelming majority of racists I have met actually discriminate based on culture rather than race. They will say "This black guy is ok because he acts white" or "That while guy is not ok because he acts black." The idea that a human being as any less deserving of ethical treatment because of their race is just evil in my opinion.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Agreed. What about slavery? Your post already hints towards yes, but I just want to lay the foundation.
I can't really give a yes or no to that. In the context of racism absolutely yes its a moral issue but I do take the controversial position that slavery has its moral place. One such example would be how societys would make foreign invaders into slaves for a period of time. It feels acceptable to me in that if a group of people invades another country to murder them, destroy their infrastructure, and take their wealth it makes sense to have those people rebuild the damage they caused after the fact. This is in line with the idea of a loss of freedom resulting as a consequence to the individuals actions.
If you avoid thinking in absolutes slavery in one form or another exists everywhere. People sacrifice portions of their freedom for various benefits and freedom is removed from people as a consequence to committing crimes. You could argue that mandated 'chain gangs' or hard labor rehabilitation used in military prisons are in pretty much every respect slavery. The individual can not choose what they get to eat or if they want to work. Scale that extreme and it becomes a question of 'how much freedom' is forcefully taken or 'what kind of tasks' are mandated. With that view you could say that slavery absolutely exists today in America and that it is to some degree morally appropriate.
Some parents even pay for their children to be subjected to such conditions through boarding schools that remove the childs freedom and require hard labor to develop discipline and work ethic against their will. You can also essentially designate a military draft as a form of slavery forcing individuals into hard labor and hazardous conditions without their consent.
I have herd arguments that it is more moral than basic imprisonment under the reasoning if someone has their freedom taken for harming society it is immoral to require that society to then pay for that persons welfare. That obligating contributions in return works to offset the cost. (I don't think I agree with this in practice as American for-profit prisons are a sick and terrible thing but the base reasoning does make some sense to me)
Regardless I do not think anyone in their right mind could argue that the 'Uncle Toms Cabin' portrayal of 1800s American slavery was in any way moral.
I am curious where you are going with this : )
Do you believe that a moral application of slavery can exist or is appropriate in context to rehabilitation or mandated social service?
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
A moral application of "slavery" can definitely exist. A persons transgressions against a society can be repaid in part with forced labor however the ethics of how it is implemented and who specifically it applies to is where the true debate takes place on that matter. I think this is straying off-topic though.
To point it back I'll bounce this - what transgressions did the slaves during and before the civil war era commit to justify their shackles? We can both agree that an actual transgression has to occur for mandated service to come into effect however from the mouth of southern states themselves, the slaves (majority of them) transgression against society was simply their race, for existing to put it more tragically. This is where I cannot accept separating racism from slavery on the topic of the civil war. The very core foundation of the slavery was racism.
And we could argue a hypothetical point - what if they weren't black, or what if it was an equal representation of races enslaved. But I would again refer back to what I said earlier. We would be then disconnecting ourselves from the reality of the situation thus making the discussion irrelevant, even though it might be interesting.
It varied although the obvious answer is the greater majority of slaves came from the African slave trade. The majority of those slaves were sold by Africa. From my limited understanding in the beginning Africa was selling the people in their prisons but as things went on private groups basically started capturing large amounts of people in their villages and would then sell then to the slave trade companies.
The majority of Native American slaves were also sold by Native Americans. They practiced slavery before and while Europeans came to America against tribes they had wars with. A significant amount of Native American slaves were basically captured by Americans. Some with justification such as wars or crimes and others just captured for profit. (I will note that it was not an insignificant number of slaves. Some 50,000 were exported to the west indies and Native Americans were strongly sought after because they knew the land and were experts at cultivating crops.) There was also a significant pipeline of slaves from Mexico / the American Southwest That was consistently pumping Native American slaves into the southern colonies. If your interested in that sort of thing New Mexico in particular has quite a bit of study's on the subject projecting that a third of the states population was Native American slaves at one point in their lives.
The third largest pool was the Hispanic slaves. Some were captured soldiers from the Texas revolutionary war and others were appropriated criminals. Judges began selling criminals into slavery instead of hanging them in some areas.
There were also white slaves. Some were indentured servants that volunteered for a period of time in return for something while others were prisoners serving a sentence or debtors working off a debt.
Regardless of that first generations origin the second generation slaves were born into captivity and were totally innocent. That and I do believe that the greater majority of people brought into slavery did not come as debtors or prisoners and those that were very likely received too harsh of a punishment for whatever they did.
I really think that the core foundation of American slavery was economic. The racism was created out of necessity to justify that evil. The south didnt succeed saying "We just want to make black people suffer;" Their motivation was "The loss of slavery would destroy our way of life and its justified because blacks are less than human and undeserving of freedom." To suggest the former is true you would essentially have to argue the entire confederacy was built upon sadism and dedicated to it to the extreme of going against self interest.
That is to say- I believe that Racism was just the means to an end as opposed to the end itself.
I would point out that its not a hypothetical at all. There were massive amounts of other races but its just not talked about, but thats something interesting to read up on if you choose to scratch that itch. I agree its not worth diving into more than I already have because it does not really have any real bearing on the morality of succession. Even if we came to the absurd conclusion that races were equally represented in slavery it does not change anything other than the 'racist' title tagged onto the discussion.
The only reason I drew it out a good bit is I have a distaste for how history likes to cater to some injustices while it neglects others. Dig into Christopher Columbus' journal and you will find some horrific atrocities that make Uncle Toms Cabin sound like Disney World. He is credited with the genocide of up to a million Native Americans and committed such evil acts that upon his third return to Spain the Queen of Spain threw him in prison when she herd about it. This is not to say what African Americans endured in America was in any way ok but this is a big part of why I dislike that place black racism as synonymous with slavery. Yes they suffered but they were not the only ones who did, and saying so in no way detracts from the injustices they experienced.
But back on subject, slaves were predominantly African American and regardless of how the first generation of slaves were brought to market the second generation and all that followed did nothing to deserve their treatment making their enslavement an objective evil in my opinion.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Sometimes I reread what I wrote and figure theres something wrong with me. Immediately after agreeing something was not worth discussing I just couldn't help myself and had to ramble on about it some more. That Pedantic nature to be excessively concerned with minor details causes more problems for me in these situations than it resolves..
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
People still out here trying to deflect from the Cornerstone Speech lmao
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
"Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error."
"Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws."
Yes I agree slavery itself it economic, but this isn't the run of the mill slavery we are discussing. You can't read the the literature posted here and say "but it wasn't just about racism". You simply cannot lol. It's incredibly disingenuous and honestly a huge insult to do so. Leaders of the Confederates clearly made the stance of 'Blacks are inferior and should be enslaved' and anyone that supports the Confederacy, regardless of their opinion on the slavery/racism, is by proxy endorsing these racist beliefs. Racism is so embedded in the foundation of the Confederacy you cannot compartmentalize it and put it outside the scope of discussion or the identity of the Confederacy.
This is also what actual systematic racism looks like.
Your point of argument is more befitting say the Roman Empire. Slavery for everyone!
Im really not sure how else to say that I believe Racism was just the means to an end as opposed to the end itself. It was an absolute necessity for the south. If African Americans were accepted as equal then the south had to acknowledge what they were doing was evil. The fact their economy was built on slave labor made this unacceptable. I do not believe the motive for the war was a push for the intention of sadistically oppressing African Americans and I do not see how any reasonable person could take that position when considering the motivations of the people during that time.
Would you agree with me that they would have taken the exact same position if the greater majority of their slaves were Native American and those statements would read "The Native American is sub-human and their natural position in society is as a slave?"
If so then you understand exactly what my point is. The racism was the justification for slavery but not the objective and in context to the power struggle between the north and south while keeping in mind the north did not free slaves or declare equality until after the war its a reasonable conclusion that slavery was the economic tool leveraged for power with the moral pretense of human rights.
I feel like this is a very reasonable conclusion that is directly based on the information available but people just keep jumping back to 'racism because racist' without reasoning to motives. Would it be acceptable to establish the common ground that as racism was the justification to validate slavery and was at the heart of succession? If so both of our positions are valid and there is no contention.
Last edited by Helz; June 27th, 2020 at 05:07 AM.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Anyways I kind of have the same feeling about my posts after I read them. I just don’t think it’s fair to paint the Confederacy and especially the South in general as completely morally wrong. Sure what they did wrt slavery wasn’t okay, but a lot of these people died in defense of their homes and their culture. Many southerners felt a stronger loyalty to their state rather than the Union (unlike the north). It’s not like everyone in the South was a Nazi who wanted blacks enslaved lmao.
Slavery is bad, which, no shit it is, nobody’s arguing it wasn’t lmao. That’s literally not controversial. No decent person agrees with slavery.
The confederacy is a symbol. It’s VERY unfair to compare it to the nazis for a variety of reasons, the first is that while the South was a racist society indeed, you can’t just discount their entire culture on the basis of this sole fact.
Honestly this is just actually a part of a larger whole. This is essentially part of an attack on the moral foundations of Western civilization. The West didn’t create slavery, the West abolished it lol....
Last edited by ; June 27th, 2020 at 05:34 AM.
Also, where’s all the Confederate death camps for killing blacks?
I'd ask you to read about free blacks in the antebellum period and ask yourself - is it really only a justification for slavery? I can agree that racism entwined with slavery was at the heart of the secession (sorry lol).
I just do not agree with the post that Ganelon made earlier that it "wasn't just about slavery". I find it in very bad taste to frame the topic as he did.
This literally screams Lost Cause rhetoric