Don't feel guilty Whitey Cracker

Freed slaves in the USA were given the option to return to Africa, to modern day Liberia, the ones who went back became slave masters and created a caste system. Friend just told me to read this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sun-Ryszar...0679779078

1. The freed slave population was only 6000 when Liberia was established and never ever reached even 20,000 at any point in time during repatriation. Freed slaves represented less than 1% of Liberia's population.

2. Americo-Liberians knew but one system of governance: Master-Slave. Their first move was the recreate the SAME social structure they had left in America but was one which they could control and exploit using the indigenous population.

3. Liberia is mostly thick jungle populated by weakly organized tribes. The newcomers essentially took the lands next to the coast and made their settlements. Then was declared that only Americo-Liberians could be citizens and laws were passed which declared that the 99% of the population, indigenous people, were merely "tribesmen" (heathens) with no rights whatsoever. Americo-Liberians stuck to the coast and ruled from there. It was only after 100 years that a Liberian president ever ventured into the interior of the country.

4. Americo-Liberians could not set themselves apart by skin color. To fix this they took to dressing in English style clothing (derby hats, knickers, white gloves, heavy wigs, etc). Women embodied the southern belle- they very frequently left the home but for balls. Manors and plantation homes in the southern style were built all over the settlements.

5. Americo-Liberians established religious institutions. They were ardent Baptists and Methodist. These faiths were closed and inaccessible to the indigenous population.

6. In the mid 1800's Americo-Liberians effectively established the Africa's first system of Apartheid. Intermarriage between Americo-Liberians and tribesmen was banned and several contact laws were passed so that the "savages knew their place". The jungle was already the natural barrier between the, but the Americo-Liberians took it a step further- each of the 16 tribes were allocated a "homeland", or territory where they were allowed to live. Unsubmissive and rebellious tribes were murdered wholesale or imprisoned, with their villages and crops burnt to the ground.

6. Expeditions to the interior were organized with one single goal in mind: to capture slaves. Liberia needed laborers. History shows us that after 1850 the overwhelming majority of farm and business labor were slaves. Other slaves were sold to Sierra Leone and Guinea. This went on in broad daylight until the League of Nations condemned it in 1920, but the practice continued but stealthily until almost the end of the 20th century.

7. Americo-Liberians formed a single party government. Their party, the True Whig Party, ruled for 111 years. This party decided every single detail regarding the running of the country. Its opponents were either killed or fled the country.

And another good book,
The House at Sugar Beach
In Search of a Lost African Childhood
By Helene Cooper

ournalist Helene Cooper examines the violent past of her home country Liberia and the effects of its 1980 military coup in this deeply personal memoir and finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Helene Cooper is “Congo,” a descendant of two Liberian dynasties—traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child—a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as “Mrs. Cooper’s daughter.”

For years the Cooper daughters—Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice—blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. But Liberia was like an unwatched pot of water left boiling on the stove. And on April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers staged a coup d'état, assassinating President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. The Coopers and the entire Congo class were now the hunted, being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. After a brutal daylight attack by a ragtag crew of soldiers, Helene, Marlene, and their mother fled Sugar Beach, and then Liberia, for America. They left Eunice behind.

It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

(07-18-2016 04:14 PM)Niner National Wrote:  It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

Cracker hands clean if you are Irish Catholic, just saying.

(07-18-2016 04:14 PM)Niner National Wrote:  It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

I know you're being sarcastic but let's turn this into a conversation.

Slavery would've been there if they had never left Africa in the first place, left to their own devices. It was just part of the world. But, the brand that they brought was the game changer. That may have been the American influence on them.

(07-18-2016 04:18 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:14 PM)Niner National Wrote:  It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

Cracker hands clean if you are Irish Catholic, just saying.

Or any European descendent who immigrated as poor people. My ancestors were slaves too in their own way before unions formed and gained power.

I just think they are a couple of good books to read. People often don't get a first hand account from other countries.

Blacks were slave holders here in the colonies through 1865 in the USA and CSA.

(07-18-2016 03:50 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  Don't feel guilty Whitey Cracker

I'm triggered. In the future please use the term Toll House American

(07-18-2016 04:27 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:18 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:14 PM)Niner National Wrote:  It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

Cracker hands clean if you are Irish Catholic, just saying.

Or any European descendent who immigrated as poor people. My ancestors were slaves too in their own way before unions formed and gained power.

No comment

(07-18-2016 06:13 PM)shere khan Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:27 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:18 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  

(07-18-2016 04:14 PM)Niner National Wrote:  It's our fault. We only taught them one way of life. We didn't tell them it was bad.

Cracker hands clean if you are Irish Catholic, just saying.

Or any European descendent who immigrated as poor people. My ancestors were slaves too in their own way before unions formed and gained power.

No comment

Not sure if you're signaling disagreement, disapproval or the opposite. To expand on that, the plight of immigrant workers in the coal mines, steel plants and other dangerous jobs was bad. Appalachia was affected by the "company store" making working people into paupers as well as brutal working conditions with no thought or care for workers.

I'm not saying it was as brutal as slavery for blacks, but it shows that the more recent European immigrants post 1865 did not benefit from slavery either. Far from it.