How can we even begin to comment on the new GOP nonsense? It’s mind-numbing. It’s more disturbing, however, that they get away with their rhetoric without sanctions any more. At one point not too long ago people like De Santis, Trump, and their lot would have had no forum to spew their racist comments because it was commonly accepted that doing so would have been considered a shameful act. But that’s out the window now, and shameless is the new “en vogue.” And now here we are, going backward, in the wrong direction. De Santis’ comment is like saying Native Americans benefitted from their near-complete genocide because they learned to run faster when soldiers were chasing them off their ancestral lands. But, as we’ve seen, tens of millions of Americans are so easily manipulated that they either vote for the abusers or ignore them enough to give them free rein.
Anyone in sports knows that you don’t want the other guy to put you on the defensive. Every time the GOP raises a pointless point they know full well that they are tying up the time and effort of those whom they intent to injure. It’s a big game to them. We can call them idiots, but this would be to ignore the intent behind each racist action and statement.
You wrote, “…some White people actually believe they were doing Black people a favor by enslaving them.” I would add that they used their Christianity as the excuse and the commandment to do so. And then they pointed to their religion to “prove” to slaves that slavery was God’s will and pleasure.
Re: Your comment on Columbus: “Columbus knew Indigenous people were intelligent (he said so in his journal), but he sought to subjugate them, not to teach them, but to control them.” The reason for this is pretty simple: The Europeans didn’t come to the Americas to befriend anyone; they came to conquer them and steal their resources. This is the way things have always been. It’s still going on to this very day. Russia’s war with Ukraine is all about this. The British, during their takeover of India, stole a trillion dollars in gold as well as countless antiquities; and they turned the populace into ersatz slaves and servants. This is what people in power have done throughout history. Is it wrong? Of course! But no invading nation has done otherwise.
Next, I would suggest that it doesn’t matter at all whether Africans were skilled or not. What matters is that they were human beings. Profitability is a very “civilized” idea based on a capitalist model stating that people are only valuable because they can produce goods and services that make someone at the top rich. That’s all there is to it. So it seems to me that the argument about skilled or unskilled Africans is a logical fallacy and is only a diversion rendered by a twisted sense of morality and ethics.
Clearly, we have a disease in this nation. It began with the conquering of the Natives and progressively grew like a cancer. I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why the issue of race is so important to people so that white supremacy has become “a thing” that is pursued with an undying passion. Slavery ended more than 150 years ago and yet there are segments of our population who are still in fear of Black Americans. The white supremacist racists suffer from a severe case of self-delusion and low self esteem, both culturally and individually. Their inability to compete without cheating prompts them to lie, steal, disenfranchise, defame, harass, arrest, imprison, and murder minorities. But as I have said before, if minorities wised up and realized that one of the goals of white supremacists is to divide them then they could end the conflict today. Minorities need to stick together. Period. Otherwise they fall prey to a divide-and-conquer strategy that is obviously in full stride.
