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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I also object to the claim that hundreds of years of chattel slavery, followed by 100+ of abuse in a time of relatively limited mobility, counts as “digging themselves in” a hole. But I suppose that’s a moot point if you don’t actually care about culpability.

Consider that hundreds of years of chattel slavery is actually still ongoing right now in the continent they escaped from. If you look at a family, the ones that stayed behind are more likely to be enslaved or in horrible conditions right now than the ones whose ancestors were transported to North-America.

North-American Africans actually have way higher living standards than their cousins from back home.

Living standards do not sum up the entirety of the human conditions, but there is a case to be made about simply stopping to teach racial history to African-Americans.

The recollection of the racial violence seems to be just as bad if not worse than the actual effects of the racial violence. After all, the African-Americans alive today are objectively better-off materially than if their ancestors (not them) had not been enslaved.

They admit it themselves:

When her son wanted to leave America and give up his passport, she recalls telling him: “You will not give up the passport because it is the key to the candy shop” — meaning access to all the economic opportunities America provides. “It would be rewarding people who did what they did to my ancestors to give the key to the candy shop,” she told me. “I will stay here and throw the Constitution up in their face. I am going to be here. They would be so happy if we all got on a boat and left. And I do not want to make them happy.”