I Would Like to Talk (Civilly) About the Generalization of "White People"

[GMDino]

(09-28-2016, 08:48 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Irish slavery was a myth perpetuated by a holocaust denying white supremacist in the 1990's. It existed to discredit the struggles of Black Americans and give an excuse of "well, if we got past it, you can too".

Irish (and Scottish) people were sometimes sent to the colonies as prisoners and forced to do labor like prisoners often do. They were free to live in the colonies after their sentence was up. There were also indentured servants, but these people were not slaves. Almost all freely agreed to their contracts and worked less than a decade. Once done, they were given land and food to live on and grow. More than half of those who immigrated to the colonies were indentured at some point. The condition of indentured servants was not worse than those of slaves, despite what the myth says.

Also, despite slavery ending after the Civil War, there was only a brief period of time when the rights of the vast majority of black Americans were actually enforced. After Reconstruction ended, Jim Crow laws put them down until the 1960's. Most got stuck in sharecropping, which land owners manipulated to get poor, uneducated blacks to be legally bound to work their land for their whole lives. Even after the 60's, we have had to work to end discrimination in housing and hiring.

Most black Americans are only one or two generations removed from a time when they were legally treated like 2nd class citizens and denied access to much of society. Many grew up in that.

Honestly I did not know that.  Searches for Irish slavery never discussed the myth of it.  Very interesting.