the logic that justifies colonialism justifies rape

ive seen the argument that colonialism/slavery was justified as it improved the condition of today's current black americans as well as the condition of today's black africans.

the premise relies on the subjectivity of what one defines as better. it also coyly allows the offender to determine that life is better.

here is the same logic applied to other arguments:

1. man rapes woman - man claims the woman had the best sex she ever had and therefore, his action was just because it improved her life
2. man captures woman sex slave - puts her up in a luxurious mansion with all the amenitities - man claims actions are just as she was not living that life style prior to her kidnapping

arguments 1 & 2 would not hold up yet they mirror the justification of colonialism in logical structure. crime against man or property always involves coercively removing choice. it is the removal of choice that defines crime. anytime it is present, you have a criminal activity.

if there was no agreement, there was a crime and with that - no justification.

thoughts?

 

depends on view point, from a child born of rape, they are better off because of the rape even though they know rape is bad

even a child born of rape can see that rape is bad..... but can't deny they themselves would not be better off if they had never been born (IE had mom never been raped)

same is true of slavery, I do not think a black person alive thinks they would be better off had their ancestors never came to America, yet slavery is still bad... just cause something good came of it doesn't make the act itself good

but anyone that was a slave at the time, would of had a different view point, same with a women being raped vs the view of her great grand children that exist because of the rape

crazy to think about


....

 

let's put it another way, you find out your great great great grandma was raped, if you could go back in time.... would you stop the rape from happening? if you do, many people cease to exist.. including you

I doubt any black person would want to go back in time and stop slavery from today's point of view... though some kkk types might wish to do so as they would prefer this be a white nation

.

 

the crime still took place. and thus so long as you improve someone's station you logically could do whatever you want to them.

to avoid crime all together, all one has to do is ask...

may I have sex with you?

Would you like to go work in this foreign country?

if you don't ask, and ignore the other person's consent, it's a violation and thus a crime. all black people could agree with you they like being in america. this would be problematic as they know no other life. one would doubt they would not love their lives.

several tests:
if you went to african villagers today, that were untouched by colonialism, do you think any of them would voluntarily leave their people? they may live a meager existence in your eyes, but its highly dubious they would want for technology or fashion or any creature comforts of the west if what they know is what their life is today.

another quesiton
if an alien landed on earth and it asked you if you would like to join it to go back to its planet where technology is highly abundant and decimates anything here on earth but you would not be able to bring your family...would you do it? highly doubtful no?
yet, if he took you by force, he would be able to justify it centuries later stating your lifespan, culture, were as nothing compared to his culture's superiority...

 

Let's dispense with the second point first. There are only two elements in our current society that justifies rape., They are a small Mormon offshoot, and the Muslims. So, mainstream America does not condone or justify rape. Therefore the point is mute.

As for the first point, you confuse a reason not to pay reparations to African-Americans as justification for the practice. They are two separate issues. Slavery is, and always have been wrong. But it existed long before this country was founded. Many of our founding fathers were against slavery, but could not outlaw the practice. If they had then the southern states would have remained under British control. The Colonial Government knew that if only the northeast were to declare independence without the southern states then they would fail. Years later during the Civil War, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. That freed the slaves in Confederacy states only. Slave owning states like Maryland and Delaware as well as liberated areas of Tennessee and New Orleans were excluded from the Proclamation. That is because Lincoln realized that if Maryland and Delaware were to join the Confederacy, then Washington, DC would have been surrounded and cutoff from the rest of the Union. It was not until the signing of the 13th Amendment on April 8, 1864 that slavery was finally outlawed. From the beginning, this nations leadership knew that slavery was wrong, but it was too entrenched in the south to outlaw it before or during the Civil War.

But when you start talking about paying reparations for an institution that ended over a century and a half ago, you have to consider the conditions that they live in now vs the conditions that they would be living in in Africa. While there is no justification for the institution of slavery, there is also no justification for paying reparations a century and a half later. Anyone that says otherwise, has never been to Africa.

 

no you could not, rape is wrong, slavery is wrong, you do either you should go to prison for life

that said, someone could down the road benefit from your actions... as many of the decedents of slaves did or the decedents of a rape victim did, doesn't make what happened any more right

"another quesiton
if an alien landed on earth and it asked you if you would like to join it to go back to its planet where technology is highly abundant and decimates anything here on earth but you would not be able to bring your family...would you do it? highly doubtful no?
yet, if he took you by force, he would be able to justify it centuries later stating your lifespan, culture, were as nothing compared to his culture's superiority..."

if my great great grand children were better off, then it benefited them..... doesn't make what they did right, but people can sometimes benefit from the bad acts of others in reality

I answered your questions, unless you now go back and answer mine.... I will answer no more of yours.....

.

 

this is a logic exercise not a justification for reparations. why i introduced the absurdity of rape and aliens to see how the logic applies.

you are right in that colonization only attempts to justify itself when reparations get brought up...but i was hoping to avoid reparations as a talking point because in my opinion, there is nothing intellectually stimulating about discussing it. its been done to death and there is another thread on it.

I like the justification conversation because it does lead to absurdities and wanted to understand any would be counter arguments.

 

You cannot equate colonialism and slavery. Slavery was the worst practice during the colonial era and Britain made efforts to abolish slavery in her overseas colonies. The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire because of an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the Empire among the British public in the late 18th century. It was the first successful political campaign in history, which resulted in the abolition of slavery in 1865 in America in the long run. Dutch pirates accidentally introduced slavery to American colonies by bringing in few captured slaves and it was a criminal enterprise from the beginning.

 

Go back and read your OP. You made this about justification. Not me.

 

I think there's a huge difference between the words colonialism, as a political financial endeavor, and colonization. And I think you need to spend serious time doing history to uncover what logic, if any, drove America's colonization and decisions that permitted indefinite servitude. It becomes a question, really, if you're even intellectually capable of making the journey. And believe me, very few are. Those that do are aptly labeled "brilliant."

Rape? You've got to be kidding. Because "logic" is not a word that intelligent people associate with rape. Not when we have a litany of other words at our disposal.

 

Dutch pirates? No the Dutch East Indies company took thousands of slaves to Recif, Brazil to provide labor for the sugar Jews..

 

justification of colonialism...didn't mention reparations and have no interest in it.

 

narrow in on the argument - it can be applied to any scenario: one can justify a crime if that crime results in improving the victim's station

it is not an argument i would use because i dont think coercive colonialism was just...just that i have heard it uttered numerous times that it improved black amer's lives and thus it was just.

if a rapist improved the life of a rape victim by giving her the gift of great sex - he uses the same logic as the colonialism justifier
if a murderer kills a depressed person and improves their life by bringing them relief - he uses the same logic as the colonialism justifier
if a thief improves the life of a farmer by stealing a cow and claims it relieves him of the burden of raising it, thereby making life better - he uses same justification

in all cases you have coercion...which these arguments are ignore and of course making them unsound. they are valid logically but unsound logically due to slight of hand.

 

Colonialism was about greed, and power, not about racism.

 

meanwhile slavery still exists in the Muslim world

 

What about the Slavic slave girls taken to Israel?

Let's face it Jews, and Arabs are Semitic relatives.

 

I cannot say I have ever actually heard (or read) anyone justify colonialism or slavery.

What I have heard are arguments that once colonization of regions began, there were instances wherein the timing of the withdrawal of the colonial governments left the new nation politically, economically, and culturally stable, and instances when the nation rapidly devolved into chaos, or oppression and cleptocracy. I have also heard people acknowledge that some American descendants of African slaves have the particular lives they have as a result of their ancestors' transportation on slave ships. When these people like the lives they have, they might validly describe themselves as "better off" as a direct result of the Middle Passage slave trade. Likewise, those slave ancestors would validly describe themselves as "worse off".

Neither is wrong.

Moreover, the two are inseparable.

Evaluation of historical events is problematic for multiple reasons. When we make an evaluation of what happened, our conclusion as to whether it was beneficial is subject to the period covered by the analysis, as well as the values that preside over the evaluation, and the interests of the evaluator. For example, when Hong Kong was annexed by the British Empire, the people lost their sovereignty, wealth was siphoned off to England, etc.. When the Cultural Revolution happened, the Chinese in Hong Kong were spared the violence and oppression of Maoist communism, had access to foreign trade, modern technology, and were able to have a much higher standard of living than their counterparts on the mainland. Evaluations of British colonialism in Hong Kong differ depending on whether the evaluation is based on the period immediately following the British invasion, during the Cultural Revolution, or after a wealthy Hong Kong was ceded back to China. Likewise, an English businessperson, a resident of Hong Kong, and a Chinese mainlander might all vary in their conclusions, depending on their points of view, their interest, and how they prioritize independence, personal freedom, prosperity, and tradition.

The Grandmother of Filipino friend of mine was raped by a Japanese soldier during the Second World War. When my friend talked to her grandmother about it, her grandmother said she was not unhappy anymore that the man had raped her because without that event, my friend would not have been born. This was not a statement that the rape was a “good” thing, nor a justification of it. It was simply an acknowledgement that something she found beautiful resulted from it.

It would be convenient if life, history, the flow of time and events, and our perceptions of these things were ruled by some absolute standard that was perceived uniformly and universally. The problem is that when people evaluate and explain our own actions, the actions of others, and the results of these actions, our analyses are filtered through time and personal limitations of perception.

“…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (Hamlet: Act 2, Scene 2)

 

JAMESTOWN -- They were known as the "20 and odd," the first African slaves to set foot in North America at the English colony settled in 1607.

For nearly 400 years, historians believed they were transported to Virginia from the West Indies on a Dutch warship. Little else was known of the Africans, who left no trace.

Now, new scholarship and transatlantic detective work have solved the puzzle of who they were and where their forced journey across the Atlantic Ocean began.

The slaves were herded onto a Portuguese slave ship in Angola, in Southwest Africa. The ship was seized by British pirates on the high seas -- not brought to Virginia after a period of time in the Caribbean. The slaves represented one ethnic group, not many, as historians first believed.

The discovery has tapped a rich vein of history that will go on public view next month at the Jamestown Settlement. The museum and living history program will commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding by revamping the exhibits and artifacts -- as well as the story of the settlement itself.

Although historians have thoroughly documented the direct slave trade from Africa starting in the 1700s, far less was known of the first blacks who arrived in Virginia and other colonies a century earlier. A story of memory and cultural connections between Africa and the early New World is being unearthed in a state whose plantation economy set the course for the Civil War.

"We went entirely back to the drawing board," said Tom Davidson, senior curator of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. "The problem has always been that all of the things that make for a human story [of the Africans] were missing. . . . Now we can talk about the Africans with the same richness we talk about the English and the Powhatans."

The early 1600s was a time of war and empire-building in Southwest Africa; Portuguese traders under the rule of the king of Spain had established the colony of Angola. The exporting of slaves to the Spanish New World was a profitable enterprise. The Portuguese waged war against the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo to the north, capturing and deporting thousands of men and women. They passed through a slave fortress at the port city of Luanda, still Angola's capital.

At Jamestown, tobacco was on the verge of a boom after the British had failed at several industries. Indentured servants from England were common in the settlement, now close to 1,000 people strong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/02/AR2006090201097.html

 

Well to begin, colonialism was a political economic endeavor. Mercantilism, the political economy, gone intercontinental as the crown sought greater wealth. Technically America was never colonized because the crown failed to provide that structure, those mechanisms, that they provided in places like Africa. U.S. settlement was a corporate endeavor, independent proprietors who invested, who purchased shares, as real estate developers and speculators. Secondly. when we examine slavery we are not examining from the top down but rather from the bottom up. The question is not how or if we justify slavery - Americans do not - but how our ancestors justified it. And what we find is a rather mixed bag. We have families like the Browns of Rhode Island, for example - Moses and his brother, John - that acquired tremendous wealth importing Africans. But even they met with resistance here. Bear in mind too that slavery in America was entirely color blind - whites were sold into indefinite servitude on the very same blocks, in the very same chains, as the Africans. More readily available, more cheaply acquired, the white slave was far less profitable. And most were worked to death because they were of little value. Slavery varies from location to location, over time, too. It was not the same in Connecticut in 1750 as it was on the outer fringes of Carolina in 1700. In 1640, we had Scotch slaves within just miles of my present location, developing our first iron works; in the following decades Africans were employed in brick manufacture. The point is, you can't address this question of justification through the eyes of the present.Likewise you would be foolish to assume that those of religious mission did not formally address it, they did.

A more apt question might be how the murderer justifies his wanton heinous acts. And what we find is that they generally justify it as a defensive action. Today in the U.S. many are led to believe that violent actions are indeed justified. And so there is murder with no remorse. Violence begets violence, if left unchecked it becomes a communal effort, and we devolve into warrior nations. We are reprimitivizing. But, they lack the sophistication of our Druid forefathers. Their actions were economically purposeful, hence the rise of Christianity, as cohesive bond. It allowed our tribal forefathers to forgo continuous inter-tribal and clan warfare and unite to challenge the greater foe. Thus the eventual rise of kingdoms, expanded as fief-doms, the eventual nation-state.

But I agree, justification of heinous acts is a curious matter. Without which the individual psychotically implodes.

 

Slavery was not a result of colonialism, but rather an age-old and pervasive practice world-wide. Some colonial powers prohibited the practice, some allowed the practice, some encouraged it, and some coopted it as a feature of colonial governance, but none of them created the practice. Slavery is like war and genocide in that it is a historically normal feature of cultural interaction and societal structure. (It is unlikely that there are any people now living who do not have slave ancestors.) It is a particularly common feature in colonialism.

Because the period of European colonialism was the geographic expansion of European cultures, which were feudal at their roots, there was a drive for the nobility's second sons and the merchant class to try to set themselves up as lords over colonized areas. This was common worldwide, but most blatant in Spanish Colonies. Outright slavery was not a big jump from the basic feudal attitude that higher ranking people essentially owned the people who lived on the land they owned and governed.

The introduction of slavery to the North American colonies was in no way accidental, nor did it begin with pirates or African slaves. In British colonialism, some of the first slaves were prisoners, "convicted" of some crime or other and sentenced to "transportation" from the colonizing country to the colonies worldwide, including America, to work there as slaves, sometimes for a set sentence, and sometimes indefinitely. Some slaves were simply kidnapped in Britain and taken involuntarily to the colony by other colonists. An estimated 55,000 of the half million German or British American colonists in 1775 were involuntary immigrant prisoners (slaves). Other slaves were indentured servants paying off debts, often for their passage to the colony. An estimated 48% of the voluntary immigrants were indentured. (Christopher Tomlins' Reconsidering Indentured Servitude: European Migration and the Early American Labor Force, 1600–1775) These indentured servants were due a cash payment at the end of the term of servitude. They therefore became less valuable as they neared the end of the term, and so were often increasingly poorly fed, badly treated, and required to do increasingly hazardous tasks.

In the North American colonies, this devolved to the more familiar model of American slavery wherein merchants bought people already enslaved in Africa from African slave owners, transported them on the Middle Passage, and sold them to colonists. The original model often resembled indentured servitude, and was for a set period after which the servant was freed. Lifetime servitude did not originally include the enslavement of the slaves' children, but this changed as the African slaves became an increasingly large segment of the workforce of the southern colonies.

 

i dont want to get off topic so wont address the history you bring to bear, although it is indeed fascinating...

you may not justify colonization. but some people do. so when you say, we do not as americans, justify either slavery or colonization today... this is not true. and i did not know this until i read people's comments on this forum. they do so by saying it improved the lives of the people it was done to. these folks justify slavery and colonization equally...the argument goes something like this:
if it weren't for slavery, black people would be stuck in the hell hole they call africa

it is their argument, not mine. im merely exploring what happens when you apply the logic to different scenarios.

 

My thoughts is that this is more of your Leftist/PC BS.
No one justifies Rape nor Colonialism.
If anything, Post-colonial/"White Guilt" is the predominant sentiment in the West for half a century.

The concept of Race, ie, is rejected for reason of PC, as are the differences between them.
This is contrary to Taxonomy in ALL other living things.
YOU in particular, are the Thought Police/a Smear artist who doesn't want to hear the truth because, according to YOU, 'what purpose does the Truth serve' in this case.

So the premise/Spin of your OP (and Every post you make here) is a False. Virtually no one Justifies Slavery, Colonialism or Rape.
Are there consequences that were Unintentionally Beneficial? YES, but virtually no one uses them as "justification."
+

 

Ive seen a half dozen people justify both slavery and colonialism on this very site. search the poster juanvaldez for proof; he is one i can think of offhand. he and others made their feelings clear in a reparations thread. they used the logical structure and argument that i isolated in this thread. the purpose of the thread is to critique the logic and produce absurd conclusions applying to different circumstances.
comment on the logic - this thread is about nothing else.

some have brought up reparations, some have brought up history, and now you bring up white guilt - I have no interest in discussing any of that in this thread. this thread is a logical exercise...thought i worded the OP describing as such not sure why people continue going tangent.

read my response to the poster right above you. i responded in the exact same way.

 

I've never heard anyone suggest that slavery was good for them. And historically the question is not how we justify colonization and slavery but how they themselves justified them. It would be illogical to suggest that we can either justify or condemn past actions; these people no longer exist. So really what we are doing is exploring the mindset.

Justifying rape? I think you have some major screws loose.

 

did you read the message?

did you read the OP?

my goodness man, this is not my argument. im not even sure why im writing this you will probably just ignore this once again.

the purpose of the thread is to expose the absurdity (a word i have used numerous times with you) of the logic of justifying slavery/colonization.

if you want to see the poster that originally justified slavery, click this link: http://www.politicalforum.com/race-relations/475151-reparations-slavery.html

The very first response to that thread is a guy, juanvaldez, that says "we did 'em a big favor (referring to slavery). just look at sub-saharan Africa."
and the original poster 'liked' his comment. is it a stretch to say a 'like' equates to agreement? so thats at least two people within the first two posts!
so now you cant say you have not seen this argument before.

Do you understand now? you have proven with your eloquence you are more than capable to grasp what im saying to you.