AnOldFriend: “Blacks were not tortured on a daily basis. In fact the vast majority were treated much better than our current history books want to portray. The slave owners did not break the bones of their slaves nor did they perform other medical experiments on them like the Nazi’s did on the Jews. I am not trying to imply that slavery was right or justified. I am saying that they were two distinct and different occurrences that cannot really be compared as equal.”
Almost every point of this is false. Black women were operated on without anesthesia for gynecological experimental surgery multiple times. I doubt if they gave consent, or really needed over 30 procedures. Long considered “different” and biologically inferior, slaves, and blacks in post-slavery America – were often experimented on before treatments were prescribed to white patients. In their training and punishments, slaves were routinely disfigured, had bones broken and suffered early death.
In Nazi concentration camps (these preceded the extermination camps), many Jews weren’t immediately killed. They worked under slave like conditions – no pay, excessive hours, denial of proper food and nutrition – until they died from diseases, starvation and other things which were a direct result of the environment they were forced into. They were experimented on, because the Nazis considered them disposable, and biologically inferior (Africans and blacks didn’t have any more value). Prior to the harshest treatment, Jews were denied education and personal property was taken away.
There are people who even with overwhelming evidence, deny the holocaust ever happened. There are people who even with overwhelming evidence, deny that slavery was “that bad.”
While the events may have happened in different periods of time, in different orders, you really can’t see the parallels?
There aren’t any black people alive today who went through slavery, so I’m not saying it’s an excuse for anything. But I do understand anger, bitterness, etc. being passed through generations. Lionel Chetwynd didn’t experience the holocaust directly, but I understand why he could be bitter towards Germans. Jeremiah Wright didn’t experience slavery directly – though he probably was around for the Jim Crow laws which were similar to Nazi laws restricting the areas where a certain group could live, receive education, etc. I can understand why he would be bitter towards the US government who was complicit in the legal oppression of blacks. Who supported that government? By and large, white people.
Most young Jewish people I know are vividly aware of the holocaust, but don’t sit around stewing about it. Most young black people I know are aware of the problems their ancestors faced in the US, but don’t sit around stewing about it (really! There are large groups of blacks who DON’T sit around talking about how much they hate whitey and blaming their problems on slavery. Amazing, but true.)
