WHITE PEOPLE...WHAT DO YOU...

Well as my great gram used to say, "That cat that sleeps on the wall can see what is growing in both gardens." A post going strong since April I must say that is a rather interesting thing as well as a topic, 'the sins of the father shall lay down up the son', 'house's rise and fall', 'the blood stained family'.

No, it has nothing to do with me. My father's family is Mexican, been in America since Santanna fell the american Amry. We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us. Going back to my great great grandfather, Mexican American Army, fought in Cuba against the spanish he was a Rough Rider. Who feels sarrow for me, your ancestors were brought against their will to America. My ancestors became slaves on their own land, our history, our treasure or culture sit in French, Spanish and British musems. Who owe's us an apology?

My mother's family, Irish. She is the first born American, my grand parent's were right off the boat Mic's. Their ancestors fought the British and England's war's. My great grand dad had six brother's all died in the first World War, who owe's my couisn's an apology?

Who Owe's the Japanese American's forced tolive in camps during WW2? The Native American's or The Russian's or The French? How long do people need to labor the crimes of their ancestor's? And that is our problem, we all like to think we didn't do something or it never happened. We need to get past what happened, we can learn alot from our past but their must be a focus on the future. And we will get past it, I am the reason.

Some would call me a 'half-breed' , 'multi ethnic' 'interracial' I am a lot of things to a lot of people but I am one of the many. The New American. I am a Mexican Irish American, I drink Guinness, listen to Heavy Metal, can't speak a word of spanish and been to 12 MOTORHEAD shows in Canada.


and there are more of us,



Satan
http://www.myspace.com/murderfacemesa

Well, I personally feel slavery was a terrible thing. But, you should also not associate ALL white Americans as being ancestors of slave owners. My ancestors came to America as Jewish immigrants from Russia in 1890, so we had nothing to do with slavery.

I asked for ketchup, I'm eating salad here!

Well, considering the fact that my ancestors didn't land in the USA untill after slavery ended, therefore, they didn't have anything to do with it, and neither do I.
Not all white people's ancestors were slave owners. Not all of them were even in this country during slavery. Often times, uneducated people asume that every single white person in the USA is the descendant of multiple big rich horrific slave owners, and that because of it, they should feel guilty and be ashamed of themselves. When in reality, many American caucasians relatives did not even come to this country untill the early 1900's. Or they were poor immigrants that couldn't even aford slaves, if they did get to the USA during slavery. Not to mention, If a white person is from the north, chances are that's where their ancestors came from. Thus, they were not slave owners.
Saying that every single caucasian person should feel bad for something SOME white people did 150 years ago is like saying every single person of Asian decent, even the ones who weren't born untill the 1980's or '90's, should feel bad for what Pol Pot did.

-T (Tobias)

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I am white. Saw Roots in the 1976-1977 school year, when I was in 4th grade. My grandma and mom traced out my family's ancestry when I was a kid. None of my ancestors happened to have owned slaves. They were all in Canada or living in areas in the US where slaves were not common. None of them were rich. So I don't feel sickened,angry,bad,guilty,or regret about them. I do feel these things, though, as an American citizen, about what people in my country once did to other people in my country.

Why should I care what my ancestors did? That's the problem with black people, always dwelling on the past, as if black people alive today were enslaved, and white people alive today enslaved them. The fact is no one alive today had anything to do with slavery, so stop trying to guilt trip us into giving you reparations or whatever the hell you want out of us. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves, and make something out of yourself using your own power instead of expecting the white man to do it for you.

And as I side note, there's one thing that annoys me more than black people, and that's the white self-hating liberals who allow black people to constantly use the race card and cry racism and use their race to their advantage through quotas and affirmative action, solely because those white liberals feel guilty about something their distant ancestors did. These self-loathing black apologists disgust me.

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Like others have said, this isn't about what MY ancestors did to anyone...my people emigrated to the US from Sweden in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and therefore never owned black slaves.

That being said, I am HORRIFIED by what people did to other people. I realize that what is depicted in Roots isn't nearly as bad as what really happened...there's no way that the reality could be shown on TV as it's far too violent.

I encourage my children to watch/read stories like these - about slavery, about the Holocaust, about the Crusades, about the treatment of the native Americans - so they can understand how grim human history has been and how grim it will continue to be if we cannot view other human beings as people like us. That seems to be the one common thread...any time one group of people begins to view another as less than them...less intelligent, less civilized, less spiritually enlightened, or whatever...there's going to be trouble and probably someone is going to suffer greatly.

The pompous attitude of Europeans and later Americans that they are the standard of humanity...that anyone who differs from them in culture or religion must somehow be inferior...makes me sick. It's that attitude that most likely enabled the first slave traders to think, "Gee, these people live in huts rather than the kinds of houses I'm used to, and instead of speaking a real language like English (or Dutch, or French) they just speak some sort of mumbo jumbo...they must be less human than me somehow."

Of course, when stated that way, my children just look at me and say, "Boy, that's pretty stupid." Of course it is! That white supremist crap thinking IS stupid!!! The people in African villages at that time didn't build the sorts of houses that the Europeans did BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T NEED TO! Why in the heck would intelligent people waste their time building much bigger, stronger, warmer houses than they needed to? They wouldn't and they didn't. And the idea that someone isn't making sense just because you don't understand their language? Most of us outgrow that sort of thinking before age 5.

It would be so ridiculous, if it were not for the millions of people who were killed or otherwise harmed by that sort of thinking. So that's the message I try to impart to my children. Yes, this really happened (OK...some of Roots isn't exactly factual, but something like EVERY situation depicted happened to someone...probably several someones). Yes, the thinking that allowed it to happen is stupid, but very, very dangerous. And how do we keep it from happening in our generation? Learning about the past, and also keeping an open mind about people. I don't go out of my way to "integrate" my children artificially with people of other backgrounds, but when it happens naturally, I'm not afraid of it, nor am I afraid of talking about it. My children have friends who are black, who are Asian, who are hispanic. They have different customs than our family. They eat different sorts of food than our family. But first and foremost, they are PEOPLE.