Atillah Moor Member since Sep 05th 2013 13825 posts
Mon Feb-23-15 10:04 PM
"I used to think African Americans and Jewish folks were in the same boat"
It would seem many a Jewish person apparently profited from the trade. Being somewhat in a state of disbelief I checked a number of sites just to make sure I wasn't on any hate related pages and came across the following:
Atillah Moor Member since Sep 05th 2013 13825 posts
Tue Feb-24-15 08:19 AM
5. "I was a fan, but never really understood his angle" In response to Reply # 3
on the relationship between the two groups. I'd heard him say critical things of Jewish culture but never in direct connection to the mid Atlantic trade. So to me at the time it sounded like anti Semitic rhetoric. I'm still not his biggest fan for other reasons, but knowing this certainly puts more of what he said into context.
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Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days
Atillah Moor Member since Sep 05th 2013 13825 posts
Tue Feb-24-15 08:24 AM
6. "Im not following " In response to Reply # 4 Tue Feb-24-15 08:50 AM by Atillah Moor
Are you referring to African involvement in the trade? If so I'd argue that even though it's true Africans had a hand in it they're still in the same boat as us as far as getting painted with the same brush of injustice. Mike Brown could just as easily be Mugabe Olajuwon.
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Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days
blkprinceMD05 Member since Nov 29th 2004 41323 posts
Tue Feb-24-15 09:06 AM
10. "Well if that's the case why did u ever think Jewish ppl were in the same" In response to Reply # 6
Boat? Seems like u just wanted to share this information about Jews that were involved in the slave trade and that's perfectly fine to share but u don't need to try to dress it up with this weird faux naïveté
Cause it's coming off like ur saying injustices havent been done to Jewish ppl as well and that's clearly not the case
prototype
stand ur ground, believe in urself, believe in love, prepare urself for love, remove the negativity from ur life, and accept the love u kno u deserve
Atillah Moor Member since Sep 05th 2013 13825 posts
Tue Feb-24-15 09:25 AM
13. "Clearly there have been, but they seem to be doing ok" In response to Reply # 10
It's more surprise than anything else. Like surprise at the narrative that's spun pretty much all the way through high school. A lot of you all may have already known this, but it is genuinely new to me and I guess growing up in a largely Jewish area I just never knew.
Yes there's the Holocaust and Israeli/Arab relations that seemed to paint a picture (to me at least) that when it came to struggles the two cultures had a lot in common, but obviously not so much. I guess I'm just in awe of how unspoken this particular level of involvement is.
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Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days
39. "i think the two groups have things to learn from one another" In response to Reply # 13
and often have. there are a lot of circumstantial differences (sizes of the groups, solidarity of culture across a broad diaspora, etc) but i think minority groups can all learn from each other's successes and failure and often do.
And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
25. "Both things can be true" In response to Reply # 0
Jews and African-Americans share similarities in that they both have felt centuries of oppression, and both derive their cultural identity from something other than a national identity.
Where they differ (among other things) is that Jews were directly involved in the oppression of Black people, and the same cannot be said of Black people oppressing Jews.
*Jews you*
"this is okp tho, reading is completely optional" (c) desus
The 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States — Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment in late January 1865 — comes at an fraught moment in the history of race relations. Considering that black men are being killed by police at the same rate as they were lynched in the era of Jim Crow, it can be depressing to reflect on how many promises of 1865, not to mention 1776, have not yet been fulfilled. But it can also be edifying to probe into some of the lesser-known aspects of the story of how the emancipation of slaves was finally accomplished. The history of the abolitionist movement is of more than antiquarian interest: it should serve to inspire us to finish the job today. Nobody can argue that the balance of the Jewish record on the question of American slavery and the Civil War is anything but regrettable. If the career of Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin were not enough, the overwhelming complacency of the antebellum Jewish community, even in the North, provides a record sufficiently embarrassing to warrant official acknowledgement — even, perhaps, reparation.
Whenever I told someone that I was working on an exhibition called “Passages Through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War,” I typically got two responses. Both reflect the need for the exhibit (now on display at Yeshiva University Museum in New York), which presents the widely forgotten story of the full participation of Jews in the nation’s great existential crisis. My sister’s reaction was typical: There were Jews in the Civil War? Who knew? The second most common response was in some ways more interesting: The Jews who fought in the Civil War were against slavery, right? The discomfiting answer: not so much. As Jewish historian Dale Rosengarten expresses it, quoting a Talmudic precept: “The law of the land is the law of the Jews.” From a modern perspective, it seems anomalous that a people whose history hinged on an epic escape from servitude would not have been deeply troubled by America’s “peculiar institution” — but few were. Some Jews owned slaves, a few traded them, and the livelihoods of many, North and South, were inextricably bound to the slave system. Most southern Jews defended slavery, and some went further, advocating its expansion. Notable among these was Judah P. Benjamin, labeled by the abolitionist Ben Wade, who served with Benjamin in the U.S. Senate, as “an Israelite with Egyptian principles.” Even in the North, many sympathized with the South and only a very few were abolitionists. Almost all Jews sought peace above all else. Until the war was at hand, they remained silent on the subject. For me, that silence is problematic.
So what did it mean to be a Jewish citizen of Charleston during the early years of the 19th century? The story of Mordecai Cohen allows us to understand a small part of the privilege and price of being a leading Jewish citizen of Charleston.
in that if something goes wrong fingers get pointed invariably at us or them
and now we can add muslims to the mix yay? ~~~~ When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries. ~~~~ You cannot hate people for their own good.
33. "I hate this statement, but have nothing to counter it with." In response to Reply # 32
We're obviously not solely responsible for the trans-atlantic slave trade, but some of us participated and those that didn't didn't do much to stop it.
37. "I dunno where to start there" In response to Reply # 0
On one hand, I don't think the two groups were "in the same boat," but they do have some commonalities in their history around the world and, in the United States, their culture.
On the other, I think your wake-up moment here is a little odd. I won't say this is isolated or the only example you could find of Jews participating in the transatlantic slave trade, but they were hardly a huge part of it either.
And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
40. "Confederacy's first Secretary of War AND State was Jewish." In response to Reply # 37
It was not a shining moment for us as a people.
I think like most things, our position history in the slave trade is nuanced by a very relative power structure -- one that was more rigid in the Old World than the New. In North America and the Caribbean, we were far more emancipated, and were allowed in many cases (prior to the great waves of immigration in late 19th/early 20th centuries) to assimilate, especially in the South... which is interesting and ironic given how the South is viewed as this intolerant backwater even today. That privilege clearly impacted our presence and role in chattel slavery, which was considered acceptable, and created a kind of padding for us -- we were no longer the lowest on the totem pole, why not indulge a little? Everyone else is doing it.
And that doesn't negate later waves of socialists, abolitionists, racists, progressives, and everything in between. It's just due diligence. Our claws are not completely clean.
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