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<blockquote data-quote="vantexan" data-source="post: 5681646" data-attributes="member: 24302">This is the problem with Americans.&nbsp; It&#039;s just black or white here.&nbsp; Africa is as ethnically diverse as Europe and Asia.&nbsp; They aren&#039;t just black.&nbsp; Nowhere on Earth right now are millions of a given race or ethnicity being subjugated by another race or ethnic group to do all the manual labor, etc.&nbsp; I can believe there are millions of people being enslaved in small groups or alone.&nbsp; But except for the Uighurs in China I&#039;m not aware of another group being enslaved in such numbers.What I don&#039;t get is the downplaying by some here of the severity and inhumanity of slavery in the U.S.&nbsp; It was bad, horrific.&nbsp; Does that mean every slave got beat all the time?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; But someone holding the power of life and death over another, not letting them be educated, separating families, restricting their movements, there&#039;s no way to justify it.&nbsp; And you know what?&nbsp; I&#039;ve said it before, if everything still required hard manual labor we&#039;d still have slavery.&nbsp; Everywhere.&nbsp; Not someone holding some woman against her will for sex.&nbsp; Institutionalized and accepted as a necessary evil.&nbsp; A whole class of people used for the benefit of another class of people.&nbsp; Rickyb sneers at capitalism but it was the invention of machinery that reduced labor costs to make more profits that was the catalyst for freeing the slaves.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="vantexan, post: 5681646, member: 24302"] This is the problem with Americans. It's just black or white here. Africa is as ethnically diverse as Europe and Asia. They aren't just black. Nowhere on Earth right now are millions of a given race or ethnicity being subjugated by another race or ethnic group to do all the manual labor, etc. I can believe there are millions of people being enslaved in small groups or alone. But except for the Uighurs in China I'm not aware of another group being enslaved in such numbers. What I don't get is the downplaying by some here of the severity and inhumanity of slavery in the U.S. It was bad, horrific. Does that mean every slave got beat all the time? No. But someone holding the power of life and death over another, not letting them be educated, separating families, restricting their movements, there's no way to justify it. And you know what? I've said it before, if everything still required hard manual labor we'd still have slavery. Everywhere. Not someone holding some woman against her will for sex. Institutionalized and accepted as a necessary evil. A whole class of people used for the benefit of another class of people. Rickyb sneers at capitalism but it was the invention of machinery that reduced labor costs to make more profits that was the catalyst for freeing the slaves. [/QUOTE]

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