I admit some remorse after reading this column in the Torstar;
“I’m not certain the truth about history will do much to enhance the cultural esteem of white students, though perhaps ultimately, that’s what we need is for black people feel [sic] a little better about themselves and for white people to feel a little worse.”
Mostly for the 45 seconds I’ll never get back, but as badly as it’s penned, it does ask a question that I’ve struggled with most of my adult life. Why can’t I feel worse?
I live in a modern western society, blessed with wealth I’m told was extracted at a cost of centuries of pain and exploitation. But try as I might, I cannot bring myself to share this essential white burden.
While my melanin content is a product of my birth, “guilt” does not come easily to me. Call it a flaw in character, but my guilt has always been partnered with “consequence” – consequence for my transgressions – not my mother’s, nor my grandfather’s three times removed.
I cannot feel their pangs of conscience. Their remorse eludes me.
And even in those rare moments during quiet reflection, when I push back the force of reason and allow quivers of 18th century slave-trading shame to wash over my 21st century privilege… I have no place to put it.
Scotland was never known for its cotton.
While I’m sure many Scots grew fat trading in human bondage, I can’t count my rooming house ancestors among them.
And there withers the root of my spiritual failure. Like the African hyphenated people of today, my cultural history is lacking completeness. Their ancestors were robbed of their liberty – my ancestors were deprived of their slaves.
History has never fully reconciled my people, haunted as we are by a record of slavelessness.
Our society, our governments, must reach out to support our search for worse feelings, recognize and answer for our diminished angst.
I know there’s no turning back the clock. No government can compensate my ancestors – men and women who toiled their own soil, tended their own flocks, washed their own laundry. No program of today could provide the restitution that might fulfill my ancestral guilt – a slave of my own.
But they could pay for a maid.
If I chose to be a bleeding heart I’d have to imagine looking at my fellow man with ” I’m developmentally challenged because of historical events” printed on a large sign hung around their neck.
Instead I chose to believe everyone is capable of making something of themselves and carrying their burdens.
So if people like Jeff have a point to make please by all means get those you sulk over to start wearing a sign, so I’ll know who’s actually retarded enough, to not make it in life, then maybe I’ll give a s—.
Actually, I do feel anger and resentment…
At Kate here for stealing my Biggest Racist Blogger in Canada 2008 Award!
I’m a victim. You owe me. 🙂
As for natives: we gave them alcohol, but they gave us cigarettes. I call it even.
The biggest slave owners in Canada were the Indians.
… It was a reality amongst the Greeks and Romans …
At Ephesus there’s a communal WC consisting of a long smooth granite slab with holes in it. Our guide told us that a man would have his slave sit on it first to warm it up.
Jeff, Those Scottish Mills were death traps for the workers who were forced to work long long hours for next to nothing.The life of an 8 or 9 year old child was often cut short from having to climb into moving machinery to clean out excess cotton.
It was a handful of Mill owners and poorly paid “slave” workers.
During the clearances the land owners found that sheep on the land was more profitable than having “people” working and living on the land.This resulted in an exodus to the new land.In many cases they came with just the clothes on their backs, many died en route.In all of this it was the rich land owners and gentry who dictated what kind of life those people had.Many nationalities have come to North American in similar circumstances why should the descendants of those former “slaves/serfs” be responsible for the actions of a small group of rich folk?
gussie, yea, conflicted, moi too. i still want my share of scotland back anyway. pete in midland. i’m not guilty nor do i feel any guilt.
All of you should feel guilty, because you stole all your stuff from us…
Give me back my mathematics, my philosophy, and my homosexuality (granted, we probably didn’t invent the last one, just refined it)
More racist historical revisionism to placate the perpetual victim claim.
How is this relevant to blacks in Canada? Even America was only responsible for an estimated 5% of the Atlantic black slave trade. Even these slaves were entirely captured and sold by their black and Muslim masters.
As well, slavery is colour blind.
The Irish were enslaved as well, sent to work the fields in the Carribean and elsewhere.
As has already been noted, it is well understood, factually accepted and historically established that the Barbary Muslims enslaved 1.25 million white Europeans between the 17th and early 19th centuries. They raided coastal villages, wiping out many. They raided as far north as Iceland.
The Ottoman’s enslaved millions of white Christians throughout the Slavic (slave) nations. While the females were kept as sex slaves in harems, etc., most of the males became the Janissaries. The Ottoman slave army.
“ABOUT four years ago CNNs Larry King, on Larry King Live, interviewed Louis Farrakhan, head of The Nation of Islam. King asked Farrakhan why he advises Christian Afro-Americans to turn from Christianity to Islam.
Fharrakan replied that Christianity is the religion of those who enslaved
Africans. Islam, he said, has always championed the black race, and thus
deserves the loyalty of Afro-Americans.”
A typical Islamic lie.
The Muslim liar (a bit redundant) notes that it was because of Christianity.
Although the Hebrew Bible provided for slavery for criminals and insolvent debtors, kidnapping and enslaving law-abiding people incurred the death penalty.
Exodus 21:16 “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.”
The New Testament expressly forbids both the slave trade and slavery itself.
1 Timothy 1:9-10 “….the Law is made not for the righteous but for Law breakers….for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers.”
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States, as noted).
During the same period, however, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from
1400 years of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.
Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalised slavery from their statute books. And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organisations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.
Ronald Segal in “Islam’s Black Slaves” documents: “Female slaves were required in considerable numbers as musicians, singers and dancers….many more were bought for domestic workers….and many were in demand as concubines (RAPE). The harems of rulers could be enormous. The harem of Abdal Rahman III (912 – 961) in Cordoba contained over 6000 concubines. The one in the Fatimid Palace in Cairo had twice as many.”
The birth of Islam and its conquests, brought about the birth of institutionalized, sytematized, and the religiously sanctioned slave trade on a massive and global scale. The Islamic trilogy is chaulk full of verses proving and sanctioning slavery, too numerous to list here.
This trade is still being conducted in Sudan, and elsewhere. And may be the financial basis for the underground sex slavery rampant throughout the world today.
A Muslim couple living in Colorado, was arrested, charged and convicted on slavery charges last year.
The Arabic word for ‘black’ and ‘slave’ is the same – ‘abd’ (plural, abeed) – still used to this day.
Uninformed, irrational idiots like leftard Jeff, contribute to these attrocities by spreading ignorance and lies. This is unforgiveable.
Don’t get me started about Gnunk from Cave 23 and what he did to my ancestor Ungh! It still brings a tear to my eye today.
Jeffie Davidson, um, have you never heard of …wool? That’s what Scots textile mills wove, not cotton. So much for your “connection”.
Leaving aside the fact that one cannot be held to account for something done before your grandfather was even thought of.
Leaving aside the fact that by your logic, anyone who participated even faintly in commerce since the 1600’s was a “slaver”.
This kind of thinking assumes a collection of humans to be a thing in and of itself, with rights and responsibilities of its own, which reach back before anyone in the group was born and continue on long after they die. Typical of the Logic Of Convenience Jeffie comes up with all the time to support whatever idiot notion he’s banging on about that day.
Jeffie, some of my ancestors no doubt rode with Bonny Prince Charlie, or had relatives who did. Where’s my reparations for Culoden, eh? Where’s my right of return? Surely there’s ten square feet of heather out there with my name on it!
Eeyore… good one. 😀
Careful….guilt is one of the most powerful tools the progressives use to beat us with. If the majority of us average Canadians ever stop believing that we are responsible for the sins of our ancestors then anything could happen. Insisting on job promotion by merit, no more rights without responsibility, rebelling against political correctness, refusing to pay for Kyoto money transfers….the horrors. It could lead to an anarchy of liberation from government and special interest groups.
Yeah how about some more “truth”, such as the massive slave trade to the Muslim world. It’s something that just isn’t taught or discussed anywhere in the public education system, despite the fact it coexisted or even pre-dated the importation of black Africans to the New World, and was at least as large in scale.
Another point: you never saw jazz, cajun & creole culture, blues or any other remnant/offspring of black culture develop in the Middle East, did we? The Arabs were such savage masters, no trace of the Africans in their midst remains to this day.
And oh yeah…. how I lament my lost pre-Roman, northern European pagan heritage and territories! Oh, how my forefathers suffered (and they undoubtedly did)! Now give me money, a get-out-of-jail-free pass and a couple white ho’s and nobody gets hurt!!!
When my uncivilized European ancestors were roaming the dark forest of Europe wearing animal skins for clothing, the Nubians and the Nubians who conquered Egypt were big into human slavery. I wonder if this will be thought in their Afro centric schools.
Though treated poorly, I am not feeling guilt for the Komagata Maru (it was 1914 for pete’s sake)incident, either. Nor the head tax on Chinese immigrants.
Re: replacing black references with white – Posted by: Dennis at February 5, 2008 11:44 AM
eg: “I am very grateful that white students in Little Rock may soon have the option of attending Eurocentric schools….” That sure does put the truth to the matter.
Treating everyone equally, without regard to race, is, once again, trumped by clearly racist policies and ideas, in the name of fighting racism.
my gypsy ancestors were treated as bad , or worst then any “slave”!!!!
I will now set up a paypal account
start paying you sinners!!!!!!!!!
Well, if my ancestors had been captured and brought over as slaves, maybe the Nazis wouldn’t have sent most of them to the gas chambers? It’s pretty hard to feel much guilt for something that a bunch of poor German and Polish Jews had nothing to do with. Likewise the Greek Peasants on my mom’s side. As for FNG (First Nations Guilt) – I had my fill of that in Law School, from the enforced seminars on white guilt taugh by the barely literate (rascist bastards, assuming that all white people are the same) to the admission to law school of “students” who were not qualified to enter English 101 at a commnity college.
“ABOUT four years ago CNNs Larry King, on Larry King Live, interviewed Louis Farrakhan, head of The Nation of Islam. King asked Farrakhan why he advises Christian Afro-Americans to turn from Christianity to Islam.
Fharrakan replied that Christianity is the religion of those who enslaved Africans. Islam, he said, has always championed the black race, and thus
deserves the loyalty of Afro-Americans.”
North Americans and Europeans didn’t send raiding parties to Africa to raid and capture local African tribesmen, that was done by Arab muslim slave traders, who then sold them to Europeans and North Americans. It was Christianity that freed the slaves, Arab muslims enslaved them.
McGuinty is sweating. He’s calling on citizens to write their MP’s.
Heh. He won against Tory’s religious school funding platform, which may take place anyhow under his government.
Another lie. Just like the ‘won’t raise taxes’ lie from the previous election.
Here we go again with more revised and dishonest history. No group, colour or “race” can claim never to have done anything harmful to others just as none can claim the opposite. Slavery was not invented by Europeans and it was the Whites of European ancestry who first declared it wrong and put a stop to it within their own countries. The Arab Muslims continued keeping slaves and they still do. Funny how the Muslims practised slavery prior to the Europeans and yet no claim is for restitution is made against them. Christianity is blamed while Islam is absolved.
Restitution only makes sense when it is made to the actual victims of whatever. Otherwise it is just one more financial shake-down in the name of leftist ideology.
If Africa had more Afro centric studies, the machete killing hack fests might never have happened in countries like Rwanda or Kenya.
It’s been implied several times but let me say this plainly;
I am not guilty of the sins of my ancestors.
Neither is anyone else.
Send in the grief councillors quickly to the hog town star, it’s the liberal way, makes everyone from Dion right down to Dave{i hate Alberta} Taylor feel much better. Some grief counciling and soothing guitar strains of Michael rowed the boat ashore after dumping PMSH overboard should have them all back to self loathing instead of loathing someone who is paying their salarys indirectly. Pathetic losers these liberals are .
Why aren’t Jews proposing “slavery reparations” from today’s Egyptians? Too busy winning Nobel Prizes I guess…
Wouldn’t it be great if people could speak this frankly around water coolers instead of just on internet forums like this one?
We could write volumes here about the “white man’s guilt” but we don’t need to as most of us understand that Westen Society as a whole is the preferred lifestyle of the whole world. (I don’t need to provide examples for all the trolls that will request them.) What we need to write volumes about is, how is it that in this society we are constantly put upon by the left leaning liberals to feel guilt for giving the world the standard of living that we have today? If we had adopted a “white supremist ideology” and refused to share our culture many years ago then most of the world today would still be living in tents or caves and cooking over dung fires. So any leftoids looking for a collective “mea culpa” from the commenters on this site can give their heads a shake.
There were many white slaves in Europe but they called it indentured servitude. These included the Scots working the mines and fields. They were a caste below serfs and were treated like the slaves they were.
And didn’t the underground railway lead to Windsor?
We have f*** all to apologise for. This is an excuse by black people (and stupid white leftards) to blame others for their poor behaviour and failure. If your people haven’t been slaves for 7-10 generations and you’re still whining, you’re not a victim – you’re a loser.
This is above and beyond the FACT that most black citizens of Canada immigrated here by choice and have NEVER been slaves. There are millions of immigrants (and their descendants) who came here directly from Africa. Many more from the Caribbean who, although descended from slaves, were not slaves by Canadians and chose to come here instead of either staying put or returning to Africa. If Canadian society is so bad they wouldn’t be here. They CHOSE here. So whining is empty and blaming the people who welcomed you into the country for your failure and your poor choices and behaviour is pathetic.
And as usual Jeff, your logic is a slim. How about this: Today (not 200 years ago but today) most cocoa is made in the Ivory Coast. That crop is farmed by slave labour. That slave labour is Arab Muslims of the Sudan selling Black Sudanese (both Christian and Muslims) to the Cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast.
So the last time you ate a chocolate bar, you engaged in slavery. Yes, Jeff, you are a slave-trade supporter. Not your ancestor – YOU. Feel guilty? Think it’s your fault? Well go on over and do something about it.
The barberry coast pirates took many a white European as slaves (estimates are between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Europeans.) It happened for centuries.
We seem to have gotten over it. There are not too many Europeans or their descendants who are crying that they wouldn’t be useless failures if great-great-great-great-granddad hadn’t been snatched of a dock in Genoa.
Natives and Black competing for Canadian sympathy, recognition and…money. Ughh!!!
I have no guilt from the treatment of either – it’s past history. I come from a german background where my immigrant ancestors broke the prairie ground with their bare hands to make themselves a life (albeit a tough one, one rock at a time). If these self proclaimed perpetual victims want as individuals want a better life then the first step is to give up victimhood and the second is to use the hands and mind that god gave them.
If they can’t stop reaching the hand out for special treatment then they can shoulder a large part of the blame for allowing racial discrimination to continue (and perhaps grow) within Canada. If they don’t want to be second class citizens then don’t separate into special socially dependent enclaves. Instead, integrate and contribute to build a greater society for everyone. Be real Canadians.
I expect no special treatment from crimes committed against my own ancestors and I have no patience for those that do.
I wonder if the Tutsis will get compensation from the Hutus? Or non-Kikuyu’s from the Kikuyu’s? Probably not and that’s how it should be.
My ancestors come from both Lords and Serfs. I guess I’ll just sit here and feel conflicted.
BTW Irwin Daisy, Thank you for your very educational posts. I always learn so much from them and look forward to more.
I have a questions for those who want me to feel white guilt,
If I do feel the white guilt, and I have it so bad that I can not sleep, I am depressed, it affects my health, I can not work and can not function as a normal person,
then do you agree the government should send me money every month to help me cope with my white guilt syndrome?
I propose the creation of a new special day of recognition.
It will be called “Self Loathing White Liberal” day and I’d like to also start a custom for that day.
All self loathing white LIberals will be offered a slap in the head and a boot in the ass.
How about we have a “ship to nowhere day” where people who think our society sucks can chose where they’d rather be then go there – white leftards especially.
Or even better, we’d do the chosing for them – they’re too stupid to make these kinds of decisions.
“We’re not responsible for slavery, according to the G&M we’re responsible for aboriginal alcoholism”
Speaking as an alkie with nearly 16 years of clean living on my record now, I’d like to state that the only person responsible for my alcoholism is me. My drinking was my fault and mine alone, and it was my responsibility to seek help for it. Which I did.
There are plenty of 12-step meetings, both on reserve and off, and people of all colours and cultures are welcome to attend and share with the others there.
lemme see if I understand this…
A certain group of people believe/assert that “blacks” and “whites” are different…that how one is treated should depend on skin colour. The same group, oddly enough, appears to believe in universality so strongly as to make it an artilce of law.
So, this group supports schools for blacks only? Clearly, then, all blacks must attend segregated schools…
“Slavery, Christianity and Islam” by Robert Spencer
firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=962
White males of northern European ancestry didn’t need slaves – they had wives.
I demand Restitution!! Throughout the millenia my Dutch ancestors have been ruled by the Huns, the Romans, the Britain’s, the Spanish, the French and the Germans. Where do I sign up for the gravy train??
White folks engaged in slavery for approximately 300 years. Muslims have been engaging in slavery for over 1400 years right up to today. Why is no one going after them?
Fritz,
If you were married, you’d know you have it backwards.
Okay, let’s just say for a second we buy into this — for everyone. So; we’ve given you (whoever “you” happen to be) all your “rights”. We’ve paid you “reparations” for all the injustices done to your ancestors. We’ve “compensated” you for all the land “we” stole from “you” (never mind that you stole it from whoever was sitting on it before you came along). So, you’ve got your compensation, you’ve got your reparations, you’ve got your rights. Now let’s say it’s seven o’clock in the morning the following day; the alarm goes off (assuming you can even be bothered to set an alarm). Exactly what is it that you’re going to do differently? — speak to your financial adviser about your investments? Start school to get that MBA you always wanted? Get back together with the mother of your children? (I know, which child and which mother?) Attend an AA meeting? Start working? Move to Alberta to work as a rig hand? Or sit on your arse whining and complaining, avoiding education, drinking to excess, screwing around, squandering your cheques from whatever source, and generally carrying on in the same old dysfunctional way that put you in your mess in the first place?
DrD,
The really amazing this about all this talk of compensation is that in the case of our “natives,” we’ve actually paid for the whole of Canada a few million times over.
The USA only paid Russia $7.2million for all Alaska for christ sakes and it didn’t come with a bunch of whining Russians! We send the “natives” $10 billion a year, free everything and land to boot!
I’ll never wear cotton or wool again. I’d eat haggis, but haven’t the guts.
“White males of northern European ancestry didn’t need slaves – they had wives.”
A guaranteed remedy for all guilted out white Liberals.
How to tie a noose: realknots.com/knots/noose.htm
“So, this group supports schools for blacks only? Clearly, then, all blacks must attend segregated schools…”
Yes, but will those be residential schools? ‘Cuz I need to know.
The best and surest way to provide reparations for everybody’s* past “misdeeds” is not to repeat them.
* And I do mean everybody.
First Neandrathal man needs to write a cheque to Australiopithicus. A good time later all the Mohawks have to write a check to the Cree, cause we’re gonna do this chronologically.
Let me know when it’s my turn.
Disclaimer
My spelling is bad because my ancestors were victimized at the single cell level of evolution by one of those two cell son of a &@*$&’s.
When will the Chipewyan pay reparations to the Inuit for the Massacre at Bloody Falls (that they don’t teach in Canadian schools)?
“Bloody Falls are rapids located about 15 km above the mouth of the COPPERMINE RIVER in the central Arctic. The falls were named by European explorer Samuel HEARNE in 1771, after he witnessed the massacre of local INUIT by a group of CHIPEWYAN travelling with his expedition.
…
At Bloody Falls, archaeologists discovered traces of Inuit occupation dating to about 1500 AD. The area was also occupied previously by Paleoeskimos around 1300 BC, and by Indian caribou hunters between roughly 500 BC and 500 AD. For more than 3000 years, this place probably marked a zone of tension between First Nations and Inuit cultures.”
How do you think Great Slave Lake (and the Slavey language) got its name? If you guessed “Some Indians took some other Indians as slaves” then give yourself a prize.
The UN should make an award to the British for making slavery illegal for the first time in hsitory, and doing something about it – like ending it.
A settlement of a historical wrong is proposed. There is a cost. Is it a finite cost? What is that cost? How can anyone be expected to accept payment in settlement when the amount of the damages is not finite and articulated? So let’s hear the figure.
I sold two slaves
and they sold two slaves
and so on and so on.
I could write a damn slave commercial.
Some of us are Slaves to Love.
Dr.D nails it. Why get off of your ass when in the Age of the Liberals you have a trust fund into perpetuity for just being a descendant of a footnote in history.
It’s amusing the racial mix threshold that is accepted for tribal benefits here in the US with some tribes in the east requiring only 1/64 blood quantum as qualification for tribal membership ranging for the Navajos with 1/4.
Donald Trump once quipped regarding eastern Native American casinos and their tax breaks that he was frozen out of something to the effect that the farce was that most of them were blue eyes.
Pathetic, isn’t it.