a reply to:
JoshuaCox
Ok, lets see if I can organize my thoughts.
1) I agree that American minorities faced barbaric oppression after slavery ended.
2) I agree that American slaveowners lost a lot of money from losing the institution of slavery.
3) I disagree that the American slaveowners lost more money from losing slaves than the imperial powers lost from losing their colonies.
4) When comparing American civil rights figures to other American civil rights figures, people like Frederick Douglass definitely stand out. His
impact is better viewed in context though (as in, based on his time period), since each time period had completely different hurdles to overcome. He
helped us get our status from a 0 to a 2, but the end goal was to get to a 10 (full equality).
5) When comparing American civil rights figures to non-American civil rights figures (particularly the ones in Africa), most of our American civil
rights advances come up woefully short, especially when looking at the amount of time it took to make those advances.
6) I actually think the American civil rights movement hasn't gone far enough. I think people forget that we still have many Natives trapped on
poverty stricken reservations.
7) I don't think it's possible to accurately say which country or region suffered the most from civil rights abuses and backlashes from their former
ruling class.
For example, some estimates say that more than 1 million Algerian citizens died in Algeria's war for independence from France (Algerian historians
usually say around 1.5 million while French historians usually say 300,000-400,000). Several million Indochina citizens died fighting off their former
French colonial masters in the First and 2nd Indochina Wars (The 2nd Indochina War is called the Vietnam War in the US). The CIA and Apartheid South
Africa waged a proxy war in Angola that lasted roughly 30 years & decimated much of the country after the Portuguese were kicked out in the 1970s.
Sudan had a roughly 30 year proxy war after independence. DR Congo's leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated and they've been embroiled in one proxy
war after another ever since (in fact, a lot of those decolonization leaders were eventually assassinated).
Then you have places like South Africa and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe only achieved independence around 1980 and the West has been bitter about it ever since.
Sanctions, assassination attempts, currency manipulation to crash their economy, etc (like what happened in Haiti). Go look at the anti-Mugabe threads
right now on ATS to get a better idea. Yes, he's a crappy leader in many regards. But Zimbabwe is/was still better under his rule
for the black
majority than it was under the oppressive British rule. But many people in the West still hate him to this day for kicking out so many of the
former oppressors and exploiters (he was the leader of one of the major rebel groups that opposed British rule).
8) You should definitely look into the decolonization efforts. It'll change your perspective on a lot of things & you'll see why I have much highers
standards when it comes to civil rights successes. Almost the entire Cold War was about former empires (the capitalist countries) trying to keep their
former colonies as vassal states, while the communists helped arm and support the former colonial workers to help them achieve independence. What
couldn't be settled through war was often settled by giving "independence" that came with strings attached, like strategic alliances, central banking
controls, trade deals, reconciliation without punishment, etc.
That's why the proxy wars lasted so long and that's why many places in Africa are having to rebuild from scratch. But of course they don't teach this
in our schools here, so most US citizens don't have the slightest clue. It would be like looking at Iraq or Libya 10 years from now and saying "wow,
those people are poor and poverty stricken. WTF is wrong with them?", all while completely ignoring the wars and sanctions that destroyed them in the
first place.
edit on 21-11-2017 by enlightenedservant because: (no reason given)