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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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In any case, while I sympathize with South Africans of British or Bantu or most other origins, I can’t stand Afrikaners whining about the state of their country. It was Afrikaners who campaigned vigorously against white settlement by non-Boers and who therefore ensured South Africa’s present-day demographics. If they had welcomed more Brits, the country might well have a European majority to this day. But the Dutch have always been an obstinate people.

Reminds me of the US south, which was largely populated by the Brits (compared to the more mixed-German Midwest). It was they who insisted on importing massive amounts of slaves to feed their plantations. Had they won the civil war, the US black population would have been >30% instead of 13%. So I don't think it's a Dutch issue. It's just white autism.

It was they who insisted on importing massive amounts of slaves to feed their plantations.

The importation of slaves into the U.S. meaningfully ceased in the early 1800's when it was banned by act of Congress. The increase of slave populations in the U.S. south was overwhelmingly caused by normal demographic expansion - people having kids, who unfortunately inherited their parents' legal status. This is a notable distinction from just about everywhere else in the Americas, where the population of slaves was well below replacement-level fertility (disease and the extreme harshness of work conditions being two major factors) and thus had to be constantly replenished via new imports.

If memory serves, Lincoln even wanted to deport most of the freed slaves back to Africa but was prevented because capitalists lobbied hard to keep their cheap (though no longer free) labour. The more things change...

Ironically, the repatriation/colonization movement was not very successful precisely because most slaves weren't fresh off the boat, but instead were the american-born children (often two or three generations back) of slaves. The dynamics of Liberia (Americanized freedmen recapitulating the southern plantation slave system with the local black tribesmen for generations) demonstrate the inescapable fact of an Amwrican "black" ethnogenesis early on in our history.

Yes. IIRC, the 13 colonies (and later the U.S.) only represented 4% of the Atlantic slave trade.

The number I recall is 6%, but either way its a tiny minority.

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