Originally posted by Torque
no doubt the day after slavery was abolished the vast majority of slaves flocked to the best schools and universities and were all welcomed with open arms.
Are you crazy, i mean seriously for you to say something like that means you are a guy that doesn't have a clue. Some slaves were aware enough to know to educate themselves but most didn't have a clue because of the beat down uneducated state this country had put them in. Which was a very evil thing to do. The ones that did educate themselves had to go to black schools that were just put in existence. Alot of white schools including ones in the north wouldn't take them. Did you know there was a whole rush by this country to find a way to educate slaves. But alot of these efforts were cut off, and slowed by the massive inaction of such a policy and the racism that some people held against it.
Here's basically what happened.
1. 300 basic years of slavery in which people against their will were put in a role of servitude for no pay, reduced human rights, being looked on unequally by society, death, injury. Basically the holacaust just spread out over a longer time, with less intense, but a more gradual effect.
2. Abraham Lincoln drafts the Emancipation proclamation. Here's the kicker...if you think slaves were free on the effect of the Emancipation proclamation you are delusional. Slaves technically were freed but were put into a state of lesser servitude. Because of racism, the fact that slaves were not allowed by law i believe to be educated, read etc, they basically couldn't hold a good job and were put back in the same role that they had come from, minus the not getting paid. They had some rights for themselves, but either America and it's people weren't even recognizing them, because of the previous situation. Thus you had the effect of sharecropping because of the fact that most blacks had no skills, and were givien 40 acres and a mule on their former slavemaster's land to farm for themselves, only to have the slave master take nearly all of it and leave them with approximately 20 to 10 % of their initial earnings, which wasn't much.
During the next hundred years you have racism and the South trying to keep slaves in a servitude role by inacting the "Jim Crow" laws not allowing blacks to vote, hold certain jobs, etc. These laws were in effect untill about 1955. In about the 1950's blacks began struggling to get their "real rights" instead of waiting and believing that America was going to do it on it's own. America had to pay the piper at that time for what it had done, and it did, and probably still is. This is approximately 37 years ago, America is still feeling the effects of this economically, socially, culturally, and so on, only in less effect. If you think the effects of all this is going to be erased in that ammount of time you are crazy, and that my friend is one of the reasons those folks i mentioned and the ones in New Orleans were in the situation they were in.
Along with the fact that some of them are blaming people and putting themselves in the victim role without getting up. If they educated themselves and stopped complaining they'd get alot farther.
It never ceases to amaze me the ability of ignorant people to play down a situation, as well as others to play up the situation. I stand in the middle ground and am sensible enough to notice both sides exist, and neither are both the total cause of the situation.
The
wide majority of most people are wonderful, as evidenced by this forum. But i see there are some that may be closet races and they don't even know it. For you to state what you just said shows it, and certainly some ignorance. And need i mention that countless people of other races were involved in the civil rights movement because they were, compassionate and loving and because they realized if this can happen to one group in our country in America, it can happen to
you next.
