Would you feel guilty if....

• sherm03

  

  justcompete wrote: UA, this is a college class. You had better say what the teacher wants to hear and receive a good grade. It doesn't matter what you think. Been there, done that, got burned.

  And then you go to the department head and explain the situation and things get rectified very quickly.
• JamesDeWolf

  UA5straightin2008 wrote: well along with what a lot of people on here said, i find it a bit odd how bad some of your relatives felt about the whole being descendants....you guys did nothing wrong

  I'm not surprised that some of them felt so badly about being descended from slave traders. After all, this is a terrible family legacy, and some of them enjoy benefits from their ancestors' slave trading: a better-than-average standard of living, for instance, or better education, which can be traced back to coming from what was, two centuries ago, a very wealthy family.
  
  There's also the fact that all Americans today enjoy benefits from slavery and slave trading, and all white Americans enjoy practical benefits from our nation's legacy of racial discrimination. That's something that makes a lot of people feel quite uncomfortable, even if they aren't responsible for what happened long ago.
  

  Sonofanump wrote: That was me, it was more of an allusion than factual example. I know that my family was not involved, so I was trying to think of any example that might make me think such a way.

  I hear that a lot: "at least my family wasn't involved in slavery."
  
  I don't know anything about your family's history (just your wife's), but the vast majority of Americans are descended from people who were here before the Civil War. In that case, their ancestors may well have owned slaves, no matter where in the country they came from and no matter what their station in life. Even if none of their ancestors owned a slave, their family is highly likely to have benefited quite directly from slavery, since the economy in each region of the country was driven largely by slavery until the 1860s. New England farmers and mill workers, for instance, were tied directly to slavery elsewhere, as were pioneers who headed west to homestead.
  
  Of course, there are plenty of Americans (although a minority) who are descended only from people who immigrated here after slavery ended. Even these immigrant families, though, benefited powerfully from the legacy of slavery, and would not have benefited from the "land of opportunity" without that legacy.
• HitsRus

  

  Explain that^^^.
  
  My ancestors made their way across Europe to escape poverty and subjegation to land barons. When they made it to America, my grandfather worked 12 hour days in Pennslyvania coal mines before finally becoming a "highly paid" bricklayer. I'm not sure how he 'benefitted from the legacy' of slavery 70 years after the Civil War...except to say that he worked for a lonmg time for wages that were nearly slavery itself.
  
  I will reiterate that we should not judge 18th century men by 21st century standards. People did what they did acting in their own self interst. If it was not illegal, you cannot fault them. Morality changes with the times.
• JamesDeWolf

  HitsRus wrote: When they made it to America, my grandfather worked 12 hour days in Pennslyvania coal mines before finally becoming a "highly paid" bricklayer. I'm not sure how he 'benefitted from the legacy' of slavery 70 years after the Civil War ....

  This is a typical immigrant story, and your grandfather probably deserves enormous credit for hard work and for laying the foundation for his descendants to have a better life.
  
  However, it's equally true that he benefited dramatically from the legacy of slavery. How? For starters, what brought him to the U.S.? Most immigrants came primarily because of the booming industrial economy and the ready availability of jobs. U.S. industrialization occurred in the generations before the Civil War, and was the result of slavery. (The U.S. industrialized with the cotton textile industry, made possible by vast quantities of cheap, slave-produced cotton and the surplus profits from slavery, and couldn't have industrialized otherwise.) The economic success of the U.S. in the late 19th and the 20th centuries, and the arrival of millions of European immigrants, depended on this foundation.
  
  Next, your grandfather arrived into a society experiencing profound racial discrimination as a result of the unresolved legacy of slavery. So, because he was a poor but white immigrant, he was eligible to move where he could find work, and to apply for the most desirable of jobs at his skill level. Black families, the descendants of slaves, were limited to the least desirable of the low-skilled jobs, and were given lower wages and no promotions when they did the same jobs. Their children were denied good education and could not use their schooling to get better jobs than their parents. Black families were segregated into the worst neighborhoods, much worse than where poor, hard-working white immigrants lived. This doesn't even account for lynchings and other forms of violence, "sun-down towns," and so on.
  
  Finally, how did these white immigrants and their families get ahead, and become members of the growing American middle class? It was partly about hard work, skill and determination, of course. It was partly, as I just mentioned, about not facing the terrible discrimination endured by black citizens. But it was largely about the vast federal aid programs for working-class white families, which provided easy financing for home ownership, education, and entrepreneurship.
  
  These aid programs were how many white immigrant families first came to own their own homes, start small businesses, or send children to college. These programs largely built the white middle class in the U.S., and black families were excluded from them.
  
  None of this should detract from the immigrant success story that many of our families are so proud of. But I think this history should cause us to be careful about suggesting that the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination hasn't affected our families and our own lives.
• UA5straightin2008

  

  JamesDeWolf wrote:

  HitsRus wrote: When they made it to America, my grandfather worked 12 hour days in Pennslyvania coal mines before finally becoming a "highly paid" bricklayer. I'm not sure how he 'benefitted from the legacy' of slavery 70 years after the Civil War ....

  This is a typical immigrant story, and your grandfather probably deserves enormous credit for hard work and for laying the foundation for his descendants to have a better life.
  
  However, it's equally true that he benefited dramatically from the legacy of slavery. How? For starters, what brought him to the U.S.? Most immigrants came primarily because of the booming industrial economy and the ready availability of jobs. U.S. industrialization occurred in the generations before the Civil War, and was the result of slavery. (The U.S. industrialized with the cotton textile industry, made possible by vast quantities of cheap, slave-produced cotton and the surplus profits from slavery, and couldn't have industrialized otherwise.) The economic success of the U.S. in the late 19th and the 20th centuries, and the arrival of millions of European immigrants, depended on this foundation.
  
  Next, your grandfather arrived into a society experiencing profound racial discrimination as a result of the unresolved legacy of slavery. So, because he was a poor but white immigrant, he was eligible to move where he could find work, and to apply for the most desirable of jobs at his skill level. Black families, the descendants of slaves, were limited to the least desirable of the low-skilled jobs, and were given lower wages and no promotions when they did the same jobs. Their children were denied good education and could not use their schooling to get better jobs than their parents. Black families were segregated into the worst neighborhoods, much worse than where poor, hard-working white immigrants lived. This doesn't even account for lynchings and other forms of violence, "sun-down towns," and so on.
  
  Finally, how did these white immigrants and their families get ahead, and become members of the growing American middle class? It was partly about hard work, skill and determination, of course. It was partly, as I just mentioned, about not facing the terrible discrimination endured by black citizens. But it was largely about the vast federal aid programs for working-class white families, which provided easy financing for home ownership, education, and entrepreneurship.
  
  These aid programs were how many white immigrant families first came to own their own homes, start small businesses, or send children to college. These programs largely built the white middle class in the U.S., and black families were excluded from them.
  
  None of this should detract from the immigrant success story that many of our families are so proud of. But I think this history should cause us to be careful about suggesting that the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination hasn't affected our families and our own lives.

  great post, its obvious you are very educated on the subject
  
  but in response to your previous post...you guys didnt choose to be born to this family, what are you supposed to do? pass up on the opportunity to go to Harvard, Brown, Princeton, etc.? that seems silly to me...and i thought i remembered hearing in the film that all the money from the slave trade was now "gone"
• Al Bundy

  HitsRus wrote:
  
  I will reiterate that we should not judge 18th century men by 21st century standards. People did what they did acting in their own self interst. If it was not illegal, you cannot fault them. Morality changes with the times.

  Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is moral.
  
  I don't feel it is fair to judge someone on what their ancestors have done (good or bad). We have to look at the individual.
• Society

  Al Bundy wrote:

  HitsRus wrote:
  
  I will reiterate that we should not judge 18th century men by 21st century standards. People did what they did acting in their own self interst. If it was not illegal, you cannot fault them. Morality changes with the times.

  Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is moral.
  
  I don't feel it fair to judge someone on what their ancestors have done (good or bad). We have to look at the individual.

  Take Tiger Woods for example.
• Swamp Fox

  What my ancestors did is what they did. I obviously had no control or no say in those decisions. I feel no guilt whatsoever for what they decided to do or to believe. In fact, one might say that their decisions perhaps contributed to the eradication of those horrendous practices over time, as people realized how incredibly unfair and cruel the culture of slavery was. In any event, the answer is an emphatic "No"!!!!!!!!!!