The World's Dark Histories. | Different People Had Different Problems.

How much longer will some people blame the world's problems on one race and / or on a select few races? Basically all of us have our differences in some way or in another way. Different values, different morals, different beliefs. A lot of the world's dark past occurred over misunderstandings and / or over cultural differences. (Yes, even things like racism and / or like prejudice can stem from those kinds of things.)

Wait so generalizing white people as hypocritical racists is supposed to accomplish what? You can't even make your point w/o being racist. https://t.co/bvPN7ZMN8y

— Joseph Murray (@joseph_murray88) March 16, 2017[.]

We live in a world where, yes, we are equal, but we are not always all treated equally by everyone. Some people want to believe in equality whilst treating each other unequally. They want to focus on their own problems whilst claiming that nobody else has their own problems and whilst believing that everyone else has more "privileges" than they have "privileges". Basically almost everyone has their own issues and their own advantages. This isn't a monopoly that one race or another race holds over everyone else. 

It's not "a privilege". It's the racist actions of prejudiced people. How is that even a privilege? That's just something that happens ... and that doesn't mean that it's right. Some people just so happen to be racist. (And, obviously, that's not something that is collectively condoned. The majority of people are against racism.) Why is that the fault of one whole race? That's called "generalizing". A single group of people doesn't have a monopoly on prejudice and / or on racism. We do not really have a choice in how we are born and / or a choice in a some of the demographics that we might belong to.

"rac·ism

ˈrāˌsizəm/

noun

1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

Eric Altschuler Debunks "White Privilege":

"“White” privilege means that your race is represented and spoken for across all spectrums of media, such as books, movies, television shows, etc. That is, providing that you feel attachment to the so-called “white” race, which in my experience most light-skinned people do not. Here in New York there are very few people who identify as “white,” or exhibit any sort of “white” pride. There are, however, plenty of Italians, Irish, Albanians, Jews, Greeks, Poles and Russians, none of whom seem to be overrepresented or spoken for by any media." - "18 Things People Don’t Seem To Get About White People (Because, Racism)" by Eric Altschuler.

How is a person with a similar skin tone to another person supposed to perfectly represent them just because of that little detail? That doesn't necessarily mean that they perfectly agree with each other.

"You did not choose how you were born." - Catalina Ferrara, on the subject of how Drew Hawk is / was a so-called "half-breed" [he is / was half Native American and half white] ("Native Hawk" [the third book out of the California Legends trilogy] by Glynnis Campbell).

Some of the World's Dark Histories:

Some of the Spaniards took some of the Native American Indians as slaves.

"The Spanish were almost totally dependent on Indian labor in most of their colonies, and even where unfree labor did not predominate, as in the New England colonies, colonial production was geared toward supporting the slave plantation complex of the West Indies." - 

Https://www.GilderLehrman.org/history-by-era/origins-slavery/essays/indian-slavery-Americas.

The Mexican government used to pay people to scalp Native American Indians. The payment amount depended on whether the scalp was from a man, from a woman, or from a child.

"Although the origins of the practice of scalping may be lost in the nebulous hinterlands of the past, the industry of scalp hunting has a specific and documented history. Although some of the particulars may be shrouded in rumors, the scalp bounty laws instituted a peculiar economic venture between the Mexican government and, primarily, American citizens. Between 1835 and the 1880s, the Mexican authorities paid private armies to hunt Native Americans, paying per kill and using scalps as receipts. The practice began when the Mexican government could no longer provide adequate protection to its citizens from the marauding Apaches and Comanches. The natives rode down from the U.S. killing peons, kidnapping women, and stealing livestock and then would escape back over the border. Because the Mexican military was unable to effectively ward off the threat over such a large expanse and because the Mexican farmers either could not afford or were forbidden to possess arms, the government had to look to alternative methods of suppressing native violence." - Http://XRoads.Virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/oldfolks.html.

The English persecuted the Irish for about 800 years.

"Anti-Irish sentiment (or Hibernophobia) may refer to or include racism, oppression, bigotry, persecution, discrimination, hatred or fear of Irish people as an ethnic group or nation, whether directed against Ireland in general or against Irish emigrants and their descendants in the Irish diaspora.

It is traditionally rooted in the medieval period, and is also evidenced in Irish immigration to North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. Anti-Irish sentiment can include both social and cultural discrimination in Ireland itself, such as sectarianism or cultural religious political conflicts in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.

Discrimination towards Irish Travellers, an Irish minority group, is evident in both the Republic of Ireland^[1] and the United Kingdom.^{[2]" - Https://En.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment.}

Yes, there were Irish slaves ... not just Irish indentured servants.

Calling the enslavement of the Irish "a myth" and / or "a meme" is like invalidating what a large group of people went through. Doing the same thing to non-European races would most likely cause a huge ordeal. It's hypocritical to demand so-called "acknowledgement(s)" for only a select few people's problems whilst ignoring other people's problems. Shouldn't the serious problems of basically everyone be considered as "valid"? Because then that would be true equality.

"In 1629 a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guiana, and by 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies. By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves, which records show was a cause of concern to the English planters. But there were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so every petty infraction carried a sentence of transporting, and slaver gangs combed the country sides to kidnap enough people to fill out their quotas. [. . .] 

The slavers were so full of zest that they sometimes grabbed non-Irishmen. On March 25, 1659, a petition was received in London claiming that 72 Englishmen were wrongly sold as slaves in Barbados, along with 200 Frenchmen and 7-8,000 Scots. [. . .] So many Irish slaves were sent to Barbados, between 12,000 and 60,000, that the term “barbadosed” began to be used. By the 1630’s, Ireland was the primary source of the English slave trade.   And then disaster struck." - "The Irish Slave Trade - The Slaves That Time Forgot" by Christian Winthrop.

"The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle. [. . .] The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude." - "The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves" by John Martin.

The English government variously referred to Irish to be transported as rogues, vagabonds, rebels, neutrals, felons, military prisoners, teachers, priests, maidens etc. All historians call them servants, bondsman, indentured servants, slaves, etc., and agree that they were all political victims. The plain facts are that most were treated as slaves. After their land was confiscated by England, which drove them from their ancestral homes to forage for roots like animals, they were kidnapped, rounded up and driven like cattle to waiting ships and transported to English colonies in America, never to see their country again. They were the victims of what many called the immense “Irish Slave Trade.”

All writers on the 17th century American colonies are in agreement that the treatment of white servants or white slaves in English colonies was cruel to the extreme, worse than that of black slaves; that inhuman treatment was the norm, that torture (and branding FT, fugitive traitor, on the forehead) was the punishment for attempted escape. (*A Note: The idea that one form of slavery is / was worse than another might be kind of questionable and / or might be kind of subjective ... depending on the situation[s] ... so I'm not necessarily endorsing that part.*) Dunn stated:

“Servants were punished by whipping, strung up by the hands and matches lighted between their fingers, beaten over the head until blood ran,” –all this on the slightest provocation.(30) Ligon, an eyewitness in Barbados from 1647-1650 said, “Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another.”(31)" - "England’s Irish Slaves" by Robert E. West.

Some of the Africans sold some of their own people into slavery.

That obviously doesn't mean that two wrongs make a right. (In other words: That obviously doesn't mean that it was "a-okay" for people of other races to buy African slaves. Slavery is just wrong in general.)

Some of the first slaves in America were Jewish people that were brought here by Polish people.

The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites.

Did the Europeans really "steal" the land of the Native American Indians?

Now ... about the idea that the Europeans "stole" the land of the Native American Indians. First of all, the Native American Indians didn't believe that the land could be owned anyone, so it wasn't really "stealing" for the Europeans to decide to live in the world (and they were trying to escape the persecution of a certain controlling king [King James] ... remember?). Second of all, the Europeans and the Native American Indians had cultural differences. They had different values and different morals. A lot of people by that time had the same value of people having their own properties. And to say that the Europeans shouldn't have tried to live in the new world is kind of a hypocritical belief (unless you somehow believe that everyone should just stay in their own countries for some reason), because many different people have travelled to many different countries to live in over the course of the world's history. If the world is not ours to own, then it is not ours to say that certain people cannot live in certain places. Both the Native American Indians and the Europeans had rights to freely live where they chose. You cannot blame the whole of either groups of people for the warring that some of their peoples did.

"Since we are dealing with a conflict between two nations or races, the white race and the Indian race, we need to turn to the Law of Nations or International Law for the solution. The following are some basic maxims of the International Law:

FIRST: That every nation possesses an exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction in its own territory.

SECOND: That no state or nation can by its law directly affect or bind property that lies outside of its own territory, or persons not resident therein.

THIRD: That whatever force the laws of one country have in another depends solely on the municipal laws of the latter.

[. . .]

It must also be addressed as to whether the white man encroached upon and took possession of lands that were legally claimed by the Indian. The third maxim of International Law says we have to look at the Indian's law, and that whatever measures or acts the white man took in regards to Indian land must be pursuant to Indian law. The following are some of the laws that were generally held by the Indians:

1. It was a law common among Indians that the stronger of two tribes or people (nations) has the right to conquer and subdue the weaker.

2. Under Indian common law it was understood that land claims existed by inhabiting the land and by any use of the land.

3. When any land was unoccupied or not used for one year, the land was free for anyone to claim and settle." - "Did the White Man Steal North America From the Indians?" by Charles Weisman.

(A NOTE: I DON'T NECESSARILY AGREE WITH AND / OR ENDORSE EVERYTHING THAT THE PREVIOUSLY LINKED-TO ARTICLE STATES. SOME OF IT MIGHT BE KIND OF SUBJECTIVE. I GUESS THAT I THINK THAT MOST PEOPLE SHOULD GENERALLY HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREELY LIVE WHEREVER THEY CHOOSE AS LONG AS IT IS WITHIN REASON / PERMISSIBLE / BENEFICIAL [OBVIOUSLY, CRIMINALS SHOULD JUST BE SENT TO JAIL / TO PRISON / TO ASYLUMS ... HENCE THE WHOLE "MOST PEOPLE" THING.)