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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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I’d say black Caribbean people should count as ADOS for obvious reasons, but according to Wikipedia they don’t consider them to. In any case, it didn’t matter for Obama and I doubt it would matter here; hostility toward rich African and Caribbean people ‘taking the slots’ for ADOS is limited to a tiny subset of wealthy African Americans in elite institutions, and their white peers don’t seem to care about the debate at all.

Funnily enough the African slaves who were sent to the US had it good in their new countries compared to the fates of those who were unlucky enough to be sent to the Caribbean or Brazil to break their backs on sugar plantations. If anything the Caribbean descendants should be eligible for first class tickets on the US racial gravy train.

On the "hereditary oppression" theory of what is wrong with Black America, ADOS experienced slavery until the 1860's, Jim Crow until the 1960's, and life under hostile white majority rule ever since. The British Caribbean abolished slavery in 1833 (de jure) or 1838-1840 (de facto) - by which point they had already repealed Jim Crow-style restrictions on free blacks, stopped trying to maintain a plantation economy by the 1860's, and brought in near-universal suffrage (and therefore black majority rule within the powers of the local elected assemblies) in 1944. Most Jamaicans in America emigrated after independence in 1962. So although sugar plantation slavery was more lethal than cotton plantation slavery, there is a pretty easy case that the descendants of the survivors suffered more hereditary oppression in the US.

ever since

So, Clinton Obama now??

If anything the Caribbean descendants should be eligible for first class tickets on the US racial gravy train.

Except their case to blaming white Americans for their plight is much weaker, and the US descendants of slaves aren't about to let them forget that.