Another One Getting A Kicking For Stating The Obvious

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/david-starkey-widely-criticised-for-slavery-was-not-genocide-remarks/ar-BB16gnwq?li=BBoPWjQ&;ocid=mailsignout
It'd be a pretty poor slaver or owner that bumped off the assets wouldn't it?

[naomi24]

//Show me an example, as I said, where the sole and overriding factor was economic rather than racial and I'll listen.//

See my previous post.

[jim360]

How does that square with the quote above, though, Naomi? Taken from one of the founders of the Confederacy. Ditto the quote from Columbus, 370 years previously.

[tiggerblue10]

The reason why David Starkey is 'getting a kicking' is because of the manner in which he said what he said. My jaw dropped when I saw the clip.

I think most of us agree that slaves were used and seen as disposable workforce and that genocide is the act of knowingly/forcefully eradicating a whole group of people. Two different things.

[jim360]

https://archive.org/details/proslaveryargume00harp/page/14/mode/2up (William Harper and others)

Too long a read, perhaps, but here is a passionate defence of the institution of slavery. One relevant passage:

"who has contended that civilised man had no moral right to possess himself of the country? That he was bound to leave this wide and fertile continent ... to a few roving and ignorant barbarians? Yet if anything is certain, it is certain that there were no means by which he could possess the country, without exterminating or enslaving them."

My italics. But this strikes me as the point I am making.

"Savage and civilised man cannot live together, and the savage can only be tamed by being enslaved or by having slaves. By enslaving alone could he have preserved them."

Same thing. Here is an argument, from an advocate of slavery, unashamedly, that the "choice" faced in the US was between enslavement and genocide. In this case the question was enslavement of Native Americans, and the text goes on to explain why it is good for Africans that they were enslaved: "the slave trade has given, and will give, the boon of existence to millions and millions in our country, who would otherwise never have enjoyed [the New World]"

[naomi24]

Jim, I can’t see the quote from Columbus, but human nature is such that it often regards the unsophisticated, uneducated, and those perceived to be less civilised as inferior. Witness the number of indigenous peoples who have, throughout history, suffered at the hands of various invaders - and they’re weren't all black Africans by any means. The fact is Africa offered a never-ending supply of a very valuable commodity - and the slavers wouldn’t have cared which colour that commodity came in. Black, white, purple or green, Africa was a vast money-maker full of easy pickings.

[naomi24]

Jim, your post at 12:40 Fri supports the point I'm making.

[jim360]

If it supports the point you're making then we are in agreement, are we not? Let me reiterate that I'm not arguing that slavery *is* genocide, but that the two are intimately related to each other. The difference is in how you decide to deal with the "inferior" race. But they are morally equivalent, to the point where I can't see the distinction as anything other than technical.

[jim360]

// Witness the number of indigenous peoples who have, throughout history, suffered at the hands of various invaders - and they’re weren't all black Africans by any means. //

Indeed, but, again, I have never argued otherwise.

[naomi24]

//we are in agreement, are we not?//

No. I do not believe that race is the motivation, and neither do I believe that slavery and genocide have anything whatsoever in common. No businessman destroys valuable stock. Furthermore, the link you provided centres on culture - not race or colour - which was the point I made.

[jim360]

The link I provided keeps talking about race. I'm not sure how it therefore centres on culture, or, if it does, then it clearly serves as a proxy for race, given that the Africans and the Native Americans are the ones for whom slavery is justified. What else but race can be read from "When the last red man shall have vanished", etc.? And what else could be read of that link's own deliberate juxtaposition of "exterminating or enslaving", but that, in the author's mind, genocide (extermination) and slavery are two solutions to the same problem?

[naomi24]

jim, the key words are ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarians’. Those people were judged by their perceived level of sophistication - not their colour.

[ladybirder]

He's resigned from his university now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53279273

[jim360]

You cannot take skin colour out of the picture, when those judged for their degree of civilisation were also not the same skin colour as Europeans. Again, see Dredd Scott, which repeatedly compares the "White" race to the Indian (Native American) and African races, and repeatedly does so unfavourably. Even the very existence of the phrase "White Race" is revealing: European culture is so varied, yet all are lumped together in a single race, and likewise for the myriad tribes of Native Americans and Africans that are joined in a single category. If the text I linked to distinguished between, say, the Sioux and the Apache, between the Malian and Songhai, there would be a point to the cultural distinction. It does not. The key distinction was skin colour.

That doesn't mean that skin colour is essential for slavery either, but in the case of Slavery in the Americas it was inextricably linked.

[naomi24]

Jim, that Africans tend to be black was irrelevant to the slavers. In the quest to collect their spoils, other than Africa I can’t think of anywhere else easily accessible to the west that offered such an abundant supply of quarry and such ineffectual resistance …. can you?

[jim360]

Well, the Americas themselves, until that had run out. Although, again referencing Dred Scott, the passage comparing the Native Americans to the Africans is also relevant.

// The situation of [the African slaves] was altogether unlike that of the Indian race... although they were uncivilized, they were yet a free and independent people, associated together in nations or tribes, and governed by their own laws. Many of these political communities were situated in territories to which the white race claimed the ultimate right of dominion. But that claim was acknowledged to be subject to the right of the Indians to occupy it as long as they thought proper... These Indian Governments were regarded and treated as foreign Governments, as much so as if an ocean had separated the red man from the white ...

It is true that the course of events has brought the Indian tribes within the limits of the United States under subjection to the white race; and it has been found necessary, for their sake as well as our own, to regard them as in a state of pupilage, and to legislate to a certain extent over them and the territory they occupy. //

What is tragic about this is also how wrong it was, or how wrong it turned out to be, considering what was to come in the 19th Century.

Separate to this, there are the 1542 "New Laws", when the Spanish attempted (and failed) to abolish slavery of the plentiful resource of the indigenous peoples. Perhaps it's relevant to your point to note that these laws were often ignored in practice, but it's also notable that no such law was passed condemning slavery of Africans, which, again, seems to demonstrate the attitude that the "African race" was uniquely looked down upon as the lowest. As my link puts it:

"If it be true that the African is an inferior variety of the human race, of less elevated character, and of more limited intellect, is it not more desirable that the inferior labouring class should be made up of such, who will conform to their condition without painful aspirations and vain struggles?"

When the defenders of slavery have to talk about the "African race" in such insulting and derogatory terms -- in blatantly and unashamedly racist language -- what other conclusion is there to draw that race played a part?

The link does also expound the economic arguments for slavery, because of course it does, but once slavery as a state is legitimised then the hunt is on for some people to put in this state, and to feel good about condemning to that state. To many slavers, the African -- the "black" -- was the perfect choice. Because of their race. They tell us so, in no uncertain terms.

[naomi24]

Jim, you’ve gone from genocide to all around every other house you can think of in order to prove that black Africans were abducted into slavery simply because they were black and that really isn’t so. Whatever colour they might have been, the trade in human beings was lucrative business and Africa, for the traders was, for the reasons I’ve given, a place of plentiful quarry and easy pickings. In fact many of the traders were as black as the people they were enslaving so your argument really doesn’t stack up. Money was always the motive. When there are dirty deeds afoot you'll find that's usually the way.

[naomi24]

Very sad that David Starkey has resigned. What a stupidly destructive bandwagon this is.

Thanks for the link, LB.

[andy-hughes]

I don't think the resignation is remotely sad.
If Mr Starkey lacks the ability to keep his racist views to himself in public, then he fully deserves to deal with the consequences.
Maybe next time he will put some reins on his ego and think before he speaks.

[jno]

andy, he's got a lot of mileage over the years by being deliberately controversial, a bit like Katie Hopkins with a PhD; it's caught up with him as it has with her. People get to imagine they can say anything they like and there won't be consequences.

[tomus42]

He's a known 'plain speaker' that's said many stupid things in the past and hence hasn't been seen on telly for a while. It's finally caught up with him as regards his academic work too, that's all. No big deal.