“I felt embarrassed,” Affleck wrote on Facebook. “The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Yet he works in Hollywood, one of the last segregated industries in America?
Hey Ben, your ancestors have nothing to do with you. You do have a chance to make a difference in your generation by speaking out against the rampant institutional racism in Hollywood.
He owned blacks? I think you may have misunderstood the article.
Why be a white liberal if you can't feel guilty?
Seriously though, Slavery was a travesty, but what does it have to do with people of this generation? Probably everyone, worldwide, had ancestors who were slaveholders. Injustice is part of the human condition. If he feels so embarrassed about slavery, he should take action against sex trafficking or something.
Who cares? The majority of white Americans have a slave-owning past. This flack he is catching is like blaming your grandfather for drinking during Prohibition or your dad for lighting a joint in the 70s in college. If you could own slaves back then, you did. It was not an issue. Liberals are always trying to take a successful figure down and take their money and reputation, even resorting to low blows like bringing up their ancestry that they had no control over, and blasting them when they reveal they were trying to keep some aspects of their family's past hidden from the limelight.
Not true at all. I would say people of British ancestry and French or Spanish ancestry that can be traced to colonial times. More recent immigrants have no ancestors that were involved in the slave trade. Anyway this is all pathetic guilt trips, all people of European stock that weren't nobleman were Serfs and those were essentially slaves.
Serfs tended land that were owned by a nobleman who took their crops by force. If they resisted he could kill their families. He also could have his way with women. This sounds like an episode of Roots...
ben aflac wrote:
Who cares? The majority of white Americans have a slave-owning past.
The majority of white Americans had ancestors who immigrated to America after slavery was abolished.
Why is Hollywood, one of the few segregated industries left in America, allowed to skate by without criticism?
Whitelib wrote:
Why be a white liberal if you can't feel guilty?
Seriously though, Slavery was a travesty, but what does it have to do with people of this generation? Probably everyone, worldwide, had ancestors who were slaveholders. Injustice is part of the human condition. If he feels so embarrassed about slavery, he should take action against sex trafficking or something.
I completely agree.
Racism in 2015 has virtually nothing to do with slavery, but rather with the unequal enforcement of the law and preferential treatment in job applications, all favoring Americans of European descent over those of African descent.
Any attempts at formal legislation trying to correct these injustices is met with hostility from the right.
Ben Affleck is a fool.
wait a cotton pickin minute wrote:
http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/ben-affleck-slavery-pbs-censor-ancestors-1201477075/
From Time:
Ben Affleck testified before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday (March 26) as a former slave owner, not as Batman. But he still found a way to mention Batman in his opening remarks.
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs hearing was on diplomacy and national security; Affleck is the founder of Eastern Congo Initiative, an advocacy and grant initiative focused on helping communities in eastern Congo.
Affleck is starring as Batman in next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
There is a far greater chance that a black American's ancestor was a slave trader in Africa than for a white American to have an ancestor that was a slave trader in America.
That being said Jews pretty much ran the slave Trade in North America, so it would not be surprising if many Hollywood types ancestors had slaves.
The only time the Slave Trade was closed in America was during Jewish Holidays.
The following passages are from Dr. Raphael's book Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, Inc., Pub, 1983), pp. 14, 23-25.
"Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of five soldos for each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company. Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. In Curacao in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British colonies of Barbados and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.
"This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent."
Dr. Raphael discusses the central role of the Jews in the New World commerce and the African slave trade (pp. 23-25):
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES JEWISH INTER-ISLAND TRADE: CURACAO, 1656
During the sixteenth century, exiled from their Spanish homeland and hard-pressed to escape the clutches of the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands; the Dutch enthusiastically welcomed these talented, skilled husinessmen.
While thriving in Amsterdam - where they became the hub of a unique urban Jewish universe and attained status that anticipated Jewish emancipation in the West by over a century - they began in the 1500's and 1600's to establish themselves in the Dutch and English colonies in the New World. These included Curacao, Surinam, Recife, and New Amsterdam (Dutch) as well as Barbados, Jamaica, Newport, and Savannah (English).
In these European outposts the Jews, with their years of mercantile experience and networks of friends and family providing market reports of great use, played a significant role in the merchant capitalism, commercial revolution, and territorial expansion that developed the New World and established the colonial economies. The Jewish-Caribbean nexus provided Jews with the opportunity to claim a disproportionate influence in seventeenth and eighteenth century New World commerce, and enabled West Indian Jewry-far outnumbering its coreligionists further north-to enjoy a centrality which North American Jewry would not achieve for a long time to come.
Groups of Jews began to arrive in Surinam in the middle of the seven-teenth century, after the Portuguese regained control of northern Brazil. By 1694, twenty-seven years after the British had surrendered Surinam to the Dutch, there were about 100 Jewish families and fifty single Jews there, or about 570 persons. They possessed more than forty estates and 9,000 slaves, contributed 25,905 pounds of sugar as a gift for the building of a hospital, and carried on an active trade with Newport and other colonial ports. By 1730, Jews owned 115 plantations and were a large part of a sugar export business which sent out 21,680,000 pounds of sugar to European and New World markets in 1730 alone.
Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam which as a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers (10,400 guilders) spent more than 25 percent of the total funds (38,605 guilders) exchanged.
Jewish economic life in the Dutch West Indies, as in the North American colonies, consisted primarily of mercantile communities, with large inequities in the distribution of wealth. Most Jews were shopkeepers, middlemen, or petty merchants who received encouragement and support from Dutch authorities. In Curacao, for example, Jewish communal life began after the Portuguese victory in 1654.
In 1656, the community founded a congregation, and in the early 1670's brought its first rabbi to the island. Curacao, with its large natural harbor, was the steppng-stone to the other Caribbean islands and thus ideally suited geographically for commerce.
The Jews were the recipients of favorable charters containing generous economic privileges granted by the Dutch West Indies Company in Amsterdam. The economic life of the Jewish community of Curacao revolved around ownership of sugar plantations and marketing of sugar, the importing of manufactured goods, and a heavy involvement in the slave trade, within a decade of their arrival, Jews owned 80 percent of the Curacao plantations. The strength of the Jewish trade lay in connections in Western Europe as well as ownership of the ships used in commerce. While Jews carried on an active trade with French and English colonies in the Caribbean, their principal market was the Spanish Main (today Venezuela and Colombia).
Extant tax lists give us a glimpse of their dominance. Of the eighteen wealthiest Jews in the 1702 and 1707 tax lists, nine either owned a ship or had at least a share in a vessel. By 1721 a letter to the Amsterdam Jewish community claimed that "nearly all the navigation...was in the hands of the Jews."' Yet another indication of the economic success of Curacao's Jews is the fact that in 1707 the island's 377 residents were assessed by the Governor and his Council a total of 4,002 pesos; 104 Jews, or 27.6 percent of the taxpayers, contributed 1,380 pesos, or 34.5 percent of the entire amount assessed.
In the British West Indies, two 1680 tax lists survive, both from Barbados; they, too, provide useful information about Jewish economic life. In Bridgetown itself, out of a total of 404 households, 54 households or 300 persons were Jewish, 240 of them living in "ye Towne of S. Michael ye Bridge Town." Contrary to most impressions, "many, indeed, most of them, were very poor." There were only a few planters, and most Jews were not naturalized or endenizened (and thus could not import goods or pursue debtors in court). But for merchants holding letters of endenization, opportunities were not lacking. Barbados sugar-and its by-products rum and molasses-were in great demand, and in addition to playing a role in its export, Jewish merchants were active in the import trade.
Forty-five Jewish households were taxed in Barbados in 1680, and more than half of them contributed only 11.7 percent of the total sum raised. While the richest five gave almost half the Jewish total, they were but 11.1 percent of the taxable population. The tax list of 1679-80 shows a similar picture; of fifty-one householders, nineteen (37.2 percent) gave less than one-tenth of the total, while the four richest merchants gave almost one-third of the total.
An interesting record of interisland trade involving a Jewish merchant and the islands of Barbados and Curacao comes from correspondence of 1656. It reminds us that sometimes the commercial trips were not well planned and that Jewish captains - who frequently acted as commercial agents as well - would decide where to sell their cargo, at what price, and what goods to bring back on the return trip.
Proud Liberal wrote:
Racism in 2015 has virtually nothing to do with slavery, but rather with the unequal enforcement of the law and preferential treatment in job applications, all favoring Americans of European descent over those of African descent.
Any attempts at formal legislation trying to correct these injustices is met with hostility from the right...
Yeah, imagine if these attempts had succeeded in becoming law:
Civil Rights Act of 1964: Title VII (Equal Employment Opportunities)
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act
U.S. Code Title 42, Chapter 21 -- Civil Rights
Fair Housing Act
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act
Proud Liberal wrote:
Whitelib wrote:Why be a white liberal if you can't feel guilty?
Seriously though, Slavery was a travesty, but what does it have to do with people of this generation? Probably everyone, worldwide, had ancestors who were slaveholders. Injustice is part of the human condition. If he feels so embarrassed about slavery, he should take action against sex trafficking or something.
I completely agree.
Racism in 2015 has virtually nothing to do with slavery, but rather with the unequal enforcement of the law and preferential treatment in job applications, all favoring Americans of European descent over those of African descent.
Any attempts at formal legislation trying to correct these injustices is met with hostility from the right.
Ben Affleck is a fool.
Well, I don't necessarily agree with you. I think affirmative action actually prolongs inequality, and is ultimately patronizing and demeaning to minorities. In the news recently, Mindy Khaling's brother made it into med school with a low gpa by pretending to be black. In my view, all Doctors should be held to the highest standards, and that means no passes- period. Some minorities seem to do just fine in medicine, despite "white America." Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, etc.
Affirmative action tends to have a lot of negative and far reaching consequences, but the Affleck's of the world can't seem to look past their own guilt, and in the end come up with legislation such as Bill Clinton's Fair Housing Act, which probably precipitated the 2008 housing bubble more than any other single factor.
[quote]ben aflac wrote:
Who cares? The majority of white Americans have a slave-owning past. [quote]
I disagree with this part of your post, as many white Americans can't trace their ancestors back to this era due to immigration. Quite a few of us are not far "off the boat." All of my grandparents are immigrants from Norway (and LEGAL immigrants I might add). Every time I hear this nonsense about reparations, I think, "Seriously??"
Ja, Ja wrote:
[quote]ben aflac wrote:
Who cares? The majority of white Americans have a slave-owning past. [quote]
I disagree with this part of your post, as many white Americans can't trace their ancestors back to this era due to immigration. Quite a few of us are not far "off the boat." All of my grandparents are immigrants from Norway (and LEGAL immigrants I might add). Every time I hear this nonsense about reparations, I think, "Seriously??"
Pay up. Your Viking ancestors enslaved the people of Iceland, Ireland and the UK to name a few.
Interestingly, The first slave owners in North America were the Native Americans or First Nation people (Canada) as tribes frequently enslaved those of other tribes they conquered. Long before the transatlantic African slave trade was established in North America a transatlantic slave trade in Indians had been occurring since the very earliest European arrivals. It was used as a weapon of war among the European colonists and as a tactic for survival among Indians who participated in the slave trade as slavers. It contributed to the fierce decline in Indian populations after the coming of the Europeans along with devastating disease epidemics, and lasted well into the eighteenth century when it was replaced by African slavery.
It has left a legacy still felt among Native populations in the east, and it is also one of the most hidden narratives in American historical literature.
http://nativeamericanhistory.about.com/od/controversies/a/The-Untold-History-Of-American-Indian-Slavery.htmJews Own All wrote:
The following passages are from Dr. Raphael's book Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, Inc., Pub, 1983), pp. 14, 23-25.
"Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of five soldos for each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company. Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. In Curacao in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British colonies of Barbados and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.
"This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent."
Dr. Raphael discusses the central role of the Jews in the New World commerce and the African slave trade (pp. 23-25):
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES JEWISH INTER-ISLAND TRADE: CURACAO, 1656
During the sixteenth century, exiled from their Spanish homeland and hard-pressed to escape the clutches of the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands; the Dutch enthusiastically welcomed these talented, skilled husinessmen.
While thriving in Amsterdam - where they became the hub of a unique urban Jewish universe and attained status that anticipated Jewish emancipation in the West by over a century - they began in the 1500's and 1600's to establish themselves in the Dutch and English colonies in the New World. These included Curacao, Surinam, Recife, and New Amsterdam (Dutch) as well as Barbados, Jamaica, Newport, and Savannah (English).
In these European outposts the Jews, with their years of mercantile experience and networks of friends and family providing market reports of great use, played a significant role in the merchant capitalism, commercial revolution, and territorial expansion that developed the New World and established the colonial economies. The Jewish-Caribbean nexus provided Jews with the opportunity to claim a disproportionate influence in seventeenth and eighteenth century New World commerce, and enabled West Indian Jewry-far outnumbering its coreligionists further north-to enjoy a centrality which North American Jewry would not achieve for a long time to come.
Groups of Jews began to arrive in Surinam in the middle of the seven-teenth century, after the Portuguese regained control of northern Brazil. By 1694, twenty-seven years after the British had surrendered Surinam to the Dutch, there were about 100 Jewish families and fifty single Jews there, or about 570 persons. They possessed more than forty estates and 9,000 slaves, contributed 25,905 pounds of sugar as a gift for the building of a hospital, and carried on an active trade with Newport and other colonial ports. By 1730, Jews owned 115 plantations and were a large part of a sugar export business which sent out 21,680,000 pounds of sugar to European and New World markets in 1730 alone.
Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam which as a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers (10,400 guilders) spent more than 25 percent of the total funds (38,605 guilders) exchanged.
Jewish economic life in the Dutch West Indies, as in the North American colonies, consisted primarily of mercantile communities, with large inequities in the distribution of wealth. Most Jews were shopkeepers, middlemen, or petty merchants who received encouragement and support from Dutch authorities. In Curacao, for example, Jewish communal life began after the Portuguese victory in 1654.
In 1656, the community founded a congregation, and in the early 1670's brought its first rabbi to the island. Curacao, with its large natural harbor, was the steppng-stone to the other Caribbean islands and thus ideally suited geographically for commerce.
The Jews were the recipients of favorable charters containing generous economic privileges granted by the Dutch West Indies Company in Amsterdam. The economic life of the Jewish community of Curacao revolved around ownership of sugar plantations and marketing of sugar, the importing of manufactured goods, and a heavy involvement in the slave trade, within a decade of their arrival, Jews owned 80 percent of the Curacao plantations. The strength of the Jewish trade lay in connections in Western Europe as well as ownership of the ships used in commerce. While Jews carried on an active trade with French and English colonies in the Caribbean, their principal market was the Spanish Main (today Venezuela and Colombia).
Extant tax lists give us a glimpse of their dominance. Of the eighteen wealthiest Jews in the 1702 and 1707 tax lists, nine either owned a ship or had at least a share in a vessel. By 1721 a letter to the Amsterdam Jewish community claimed that "nearly all the navigation...was in the hands of the Jews."' Yet another indication of the economic success of Curacao's Jews is the fact that in 1707 the island's 377 residents were assessed by the Governor and his Council a total of 4,002 pesos; 104 Jews, or 27.6 percent of the taxpayers, contributed 1,380 pesos, or 34.5 percent of the entire amount assessed.
In the British West Indies, two 1680 tax lists survive, both from Barbados; they, too, provide useful information about Jewish economic life. In Bridgetown itself, out of a total of 404 households, 54 households or 300 persons were Jewish, 240 of them living in "ye Towne of S. Michael ye Bridge Town." Contrary to most impressions, "many, indeed, most of them, were very poor." There were only a few planters, and most Jews were not naturalized or endenizened (and thus could not import goods or pursue debtors in court). But for merchants holding letters of endenization, opportunities were not lacking. Barbados sugar-and its by-products rum and molasses-were in great demand, and in addition to playing a role in its export, Jewish merchants were active in the import trade.
Forty-five Jewish households were taxed in Barbados in 1680, and more than half of them contributed only 11.7 percent of the total sum raised. While the richest five gave almost half the Jewish total, they were but 11.1 percent of the taxable population. The tax list of 1679-80 shows a similar picture; of fifty-one householders, nineteen (37.2 percent) gave less than one-tenth of the total, while the four richest merchants gave almost one-third of the total.
An interesting record of interisland trade involving a Jewish merchant and the islands of Barbados and Curacao comes from correspondence of 1656. It reminds us that sometimes the commercial trips were not well planned and that Jewish captains - who frequently acted as commercial agents as well - would decide where to sell their cargo, at what price, and what goods to bring back on the return trip.
Hi K5. How goes?