Some Americans accuse current immigrants of being a threat to the American dream. I wonder what they are dreaming of? by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
We Americans like to talk about American values and the American dream. But I really wonder what dream they are talking about. There is nothing new about anti-immigrant agitation, usually invoking the danger of a particular group of immigrants because they don't fit into the American mold. But the country has been fortunate throughout its history that the resistance to this agitation triumphed in the past and has limited the success of the exclusionists more recently.
A part of the rhetoric of the current anti immigrant warriors is that the admission of immigrants threatens the American dream. But exactly what is the American dream? Both our the political leaders and their followers seem a little confused about it. Barack Obama, in touting his national health care plan, said that it is a part of the American dream that "when we get sick we will get well." That would seem to be a universal dream, and most of the time it comes true, as we know from experience. We also know that it will not always come true. Eternal life is the busines of religion not of the doctors. But having someone else pay the doctor is not a part of the American dream.
The American dream that drew the original colonists and has drawn every wave of immigrants throughout American history is the dream of freedom, first of all. The dream of having freedom of, or from, religion. The dream of not being taxed to support an established church to which you do not belong. The dream of finding work, working hard and advancing yourself economically, and having your children start with advanges you did not have so that your children can begin their economic life at a higher level than you did. It is the dream of a republic where the citizens ultimately make the decisions, and do not simply receive orders from above.
But just as these were the dreams that drew people to American in colonial days and during every wave of immigration throughout our history is that when the dream began to be realized, a different dream began to appear. The colonists who cam seeking religious freedom saw no reason not to prevent other religions from being practiced. The Pilgrims outlawed all churches except their own. The more tolerant Carolinians welcomed Jewish immigrants and had no established church, but outlawed Catholics. Virginia established the Church of England and used tax monies to pay the salaries of the Anglican ministers. Maryland was open to all Christians and Pennsylvania to all who believed in God. It was the American Revolution and the Constitution which gave real impetus to the idea of a society which in which the people were religiously and economically free to pursue happiness in their own way.
After the Revolution, Americans followed the American Dream and succeeded to a large extent. Because there was a high demand for labor wages were for the most part relatively high in the United States, land was available for the establishment of farms and the American economy was prospering. The people did work hard, they did advance their economic and social position and gave their children a better start in life than they had had themselves. The success of the American experiment in political, social and economic freedom brought immigrants who wanted to share in it.
For the Americans who achieved the American dream, the dream became less important. Once a measure of wealth was achieved, the need for hard work and advancement was less important, and conspicuous consumption and a desire for less taxing work became more important. For the next generation, which was, as the dream suggested, starting on a higher level, the desire was for immediate attainment of the more leisured and pleasant life their parents had earned without earning it themselves. During the Nineteenth Century there was a saying in America: " Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations ". The first generation worked hard and raised themselves from poverty. The second lived on the interest from what the first generation had earned, and did not work as hard. The third generation consumed the principle and the family was starting again from the bottom. This formulation is not, of course, completely true, But it was not and is not completely false.
A part of the appeal of America was high wages. These existed from the beginning because of a shortage of labor. As native Americans moved up, they wanted ever higher wages, and would not take the jobs which paid less money for harder work. These were the jobs the immigrants filled as they began their own pursuit of the American dream. There was always complaint about the new immigrants. They came from societies with different values. They worshiped in strange churches. They did't talk "like us" , they didn't dress "like us", they tended to be "clannish".
This last group of objections, by the way, was applied not just to immigrants but to native Americans who migrated from one state to another in search of more prosperity, more freedom, and a better life. When the depression and the dust storms of the nineteent thirties drove people from Oklahoma to move to California, they were regarded as foreigners, and attempts were made to exclude them by law. During World War II, there was a joke in Indiana: "Did you know there are only forty five states left in the United States"" "No. What happened?" "Kentucky and Tennessee moved to Indiana, and Indiana went to Hell" . The same reaction greeted the black descendents of the slaves when they migrated to the North in large numbers following World War I. The earlier resdents of the area (including the descendents of the Irish, Jewish, German, Italian and Polish immigrants, now in the second and third generation were just as vociferous in their objection to the newcomers as earlier Americans had been in opposing their families immigration. The resentment of newcomers is a given, no matter where they come from.
But the immigrants, in each of their succeeding waves, and the internal migrants of the past and of today are the ones who are keeping alive the American dream. To leave your home and the society you are familiar with to travel to a strange place to do menial work for the chance to advance is not a drag on the society which receives you. It was primarily the immigrants who built the canals and the railroads of the nineteenth century, it was primarily the immigrants who supplied the industrial work force which made America an economic giant. it was largely the immigrants who settled the west. America became great because of the American dream, and it has been the immigrants who have kept that dream and come here to fulfill it themselves, while each new native born generation moves farther away from it, and relies on credit cards and the government for support. The immigrants, on the whole, do not come here to collect welfare or social security, and through their taxes they fund these programs for the natives.
The current version of the war against the immigrants, like all the previous manifestations, has an explanation of why this time is both the same and different. It is the same since it claims that the immigrants deprive native Americans of high paying jobs. The immigrants, however, expecially those who are the special objects of disdain, do not get the high paying jobs. In this society and this economy, there are still low paying jobs, and today most Americans will not take them because they invelve more work, particularly physical labor, for less pay. When the United States several years ago decided to apply the minimum wage to agricultural work, they discovered that there were not many native born Americans who were willing to take them. That is why the immigration from Mexico continued. The former President of Mexico, in an undiplomatic but true statement, observed that in the United States, the black citizens fill the jobs which the white citizens will not take, and the Mexicans fill the jobs that the black citizens will not take. Not every job is a high paying job. High pay brings high prices. American citizens want high wages and low prices. This depends on people willing to take low paying jobs as an entry to the American dream. But businesses cannot provide low priced goods if every job is high paying. Either workers willing to take the lower pay (this means either immigrants or migrants from poorer states) must come to the businesses or the businesses will move either to the poorer states in the United States or in American territories or to other countries. Follow the history of the American textile industry, which moved from New England to the Carolinas in search of cheaper labor, and has now moved largely overseas.
The new element in the attack on the immigrants is that they are here illegally taking the high priced jobs. But it is the legal immigrants in the "high demand professions" who are getting the high priced jobs, a lot of them paid for by taxes through, for example, medicare and medicade. The illegal immigrants are illegals because we are trying once again to slam shut the door to opportunitu, the golden door to the American Dream. A dream which today has been largely forgotten by the American citizens and is kept alive, now as in the past, by the immigrants who risk their lives and suffer disdain in their effort to achieve it.
NOTE: I am sure that some people will be annoyed that I talk about American History and do not mention the institution of slavery or the dispossession of the Native Americans. I am awre of these things and I do not minimize their importance, but this article is about something else.
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Sorry but this issue has nothing to do with yesterday. These people are not immigrants, there labor. They are here illegally (smuggled), without permission and are really not needed. And since these laborers could really care less or have absolutely no knowledge of what the American dream is really about (practice what you preach) this article is nothing more then liberal dribble defending illegal behavior at the expense of America.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2008-06-11 19:56:54
Every time a market is manipulated by force a black market will arise. Illegal immigration is the same problem as prohibition, the war on drugs and food shortages in Venezuela. Where there is demand, the lowest cost supply will always find a way of satisfying it.
High wages did not bring immigrants to America. The ideal of freedom did. Many immigrants suffered horribly both before and after coming here; many still do to this day. We could slow the rate of illegal immigration by ending the welfare state and eliminating minimum wage laws. We would also have to make it very easy for seasonal workers to get here when they are needed. We would also need to eliminate the anchor baby loophole.
Without all of these things being done together we're not talking about a solution at all, merely a political tug-of-war where the political power is in the struggle more than in winning. When there is struggle, money flows. When money is flowing, those in power can skim, funnel, splash and gulp without being caught. This is the same reason the US has been in a perpetual state of war for decades. Where there is struggle, money flows.
We have no plan for victory in any of the dozens of places around the world where our troops are in combat. Power is in the struggle, not in victory.
Today our economy is grinding to a stop. Not because illegal immigrants are here tending hedges but because of our unsustainable economic policy, foreign policy and domestic policy.
Today's immigrants are not different from other immigrants who have arrived here in the past. Throughout the 1800s, there was a huge wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Italians, Polish, Russsians, Jews, who arrived on our shores with no knowledge of English. These newcomers encountered the same racist nativist bullshit that is being heard today. It is estimated that four million Italians and three million Slavs arrived during that time. More than two million Jews also emigrated to the US. These people were poor and illiterate. They could not read or write in their own language, much less in English. Germans and English also arrived in the millions to escape political instability and food shortages in their countries. Newspapers of the day decried that arrival of these aliens and condemned the corrupt governments who sent these people to the shores of the United States.
Riots erupted in opposition to the presence of these immigrants. Just like in the previous century, when Germans were accused by Anglos of being the cause of all ills in society, immigrants were scapegoated.
The Irish fled Ireland starting in the 1840s to escape the deadly potato famine. Millions of Irish arrived to the American continent, almost a third of North America's immigrants. They were escaping political corruption and certain starvation in their country.
Most immigrants came for economic reasons and were part of extensive migratory systems that responded to changing demands in labor markets. The American economy had needed both unskilled and skilled workers through much of the nineteenth century. But after the 1880s, the demand was almost exclusively for unskilled workers to fill the growing number of factory jobs. More than five million immigrants came to the US during the 1880s alone. Southern and eastern Europeans, dislocated from their land and possessing few skills, were attracted to the burgeoning industries in the United States.
Like today’s Latino immigrants, Italian immigrants were particularly likely to take heavy construction jobs after arrival in the US. About half of all late 19th century Italian immigrants were manual laborers. Contracted out by a professional labor broker known as a “Padrone,” Italians dug tunnels, laid railroad tracks, constructed bridges and roads. They were mostly young, single, and had little money. The Irish immigrants had few technical skills, and their agricultural skills were limited to the spade-culture of potatoes and animal tending. They were half-starved, weak and destitute. A New York Times Editorial, June 2, 1874, urged the US government to turn a million Italian beggars into prosperous citizens.
Too poor to leave Ireland when the Potato famine began, families found passage on overcrowded, fever-ridden ships after unscrupulous businessmen discovered they could make money transporting desperate people to the US. On these "coffin ships," as they came to be known, many of them died during or just after the trip, but they had no choice but to leave for a better future or to starve to death in their own countries. These aliens had no skills, no tools, no education. Sometimes immigrant men had to be supported by their wives and daughters who worked as domestic servants in hotels and private homes, while they themselves worked sporadically sweeping streets, tending horses, cleaning stables, cutting fish, and performing any other menial work they could find.
The Italians immigrants were escaping poverty from their country, unemployment, high mortality, no medical care, little or no schooling, poor housing, semi-starvation, and exploitation. The majority of immigrants around the turn of the century were males who worked and saved money to send back to their families back home. Shipping companies made large profits by carrying immigrant aliens to the United States. They would bring cotton, wood, and crop cargoes to Europe and on the return trip bring immigrants to the US. There was hardly a city of any size in US that did not have a section designated as “Little Italy.” Italians would look to settle in these areas, for it was here that they felt free from the discrimination around them. This resulted in the formation of very definite ethnic communities: Irish, Polish and Jewish ethnic enclaves developed.
The majority of these European aliens entered the country illegally. For this reason, in 1891, Congress passed a law stating that those who had entered the country illegally could be expelled within one year. See Reports of the Immigration Commission (61 Cong., 3 Sess., Senate Doc. No. 758.) However, these aliens simply got off the boats, declared themselves to be American, and blended with the larger society.
By blaming immigrants for all the problems in their cities, politicians hoped to easily win election to office. In 1884 US congressmen decried that Italy and Hungary were shipping “as many cattle, large number of degraded, ignorant, brutal foreign serfs” to replace American citizens.
The racist media, which has always been the main conduct of anti-immigrant propaganda, proclaimed:
“These people are not Americans, but the very scum and offal of Europe…an invasion of venomous reptiles…long-haired, wild-eyes, bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless foreign wretches, who never did an honest hour’s work in their lives..crush such snakes…before they have time to bite.” See Public Opinion, I (1886), 82-86, iii (1887), 49 and V (1888), 432.
In 1882, the New York Tribune spoke against Jewish immigrants: “Numerous complaints have been made in regard to the Hebrew immigrants who lounge about Battery Park, obstructing the walks and sitting on the chains. Their filthy condition has caused many of the people who are accustomed to go to the park to seek a little recreation and fresh air to give up this practice. The immigrants also greatly annoy the persons who cross the park to take the boats to Coney Island, Staten Island and Brooklyn. The police have had many battles with these newcomers, who seem determined to have their own way.”
The Chinese immigrants also arrived, but they experienced more direct discrimination because of their non-European origins. There were numerous riots against Chinese miners in California in the mid 1800s. In 1885, the population of Eureka drove all the Chinese out of Humboldt county by threat of force. In 1885, there were anti-Chinese riots in Rock Springs, Wyoming. An Arizona newspaper editorialized against the Chinese immigrants who sent money back to their families: “The Chinese are the least desired immigrants who have ever sought the United States…the almond-eyed Mongolian with his pig-tail, his heathenism, his filthy habits, his thrift and careful accumulation of savings to be sent back to the flowery kingdom.”
The Montanian newspaper in 1873 editorialized against the Chinese: “We don’t mind hearing of a Chinaman being killed now and then, but it has been coming too thick of late…Don’t kill them unless they deserve it, but when they do--why kill’em lots.” In 1869, Montana governor James M. Ashley advocated” …Montana is better adopted to the hardy races of men and women from Great Britain and Northern Europe…” The Chinatowns that sprang up in cities like San Francisco and New York was a defense mechanism against the hatred and prejudice of the society around them. According to the racist newspaper editorials of the time, “The manners and habits of the Chinese are very repugnant to Americans in California. Of different language, blood, religion, and character, inferior in most mental and bodily qualities, the Chinaman is looked upon by some as only a little superior to the Negro, and by others as somewhat inferior. See Frank Soule, John H. Gihon, and James Nisbet, The Annals of San Franciso (1966).
Anti-Chinese riots occurred in San Francisco in 1869, and in Los Angeles in Chinatown, when whites descended on the area and burned and looted businesses, beat the Chinese , and killed at least 19 Chinese during four hours. See “Chinese Massacre at Los Angeles in 1871,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California (Los Angeles, 1894), C.P. Dorland. In 1877, a similar even took place in San Francisco when whites attacked the Chinese ghetto in San Francisco. In the California Constitution, Article XIX was added in 1879, which forbade employment of any Chinese in any public work and allowed any city to expel its Chinese residents. In the 1850s, the California’s Supreme Court stated that Chinese were Indians, and similarly as with Mexicans, they could not testify in court against a white man.
Between 1820 and 1890, fifteen million people immigrated to the US, 2/3s of them from Germany, Ireland and Great Britain. The majority of the British immigrants were paupers.
It was during this period that the Know-Nothing organizations were created in response to the arrival of these new immigrants who were considered different from "true Americans". Immigrants were often lynched by mobs. Riots were common throughout the nation to protest the arrival of these undesirables. Irish immigrants were considered by nativists to be lazy drunks. Poles, Italians and Jews were considered to be racially inferior and to be detrimental to America society.
The Know Nothing Party feared the arrival of Catholic Irish. They advocated banning immigrants from holding office, and a 21-year wait for citizenship. They used criminal statistics to show that Irish were the group with the greatest number of arrest in cities like New York. Eugenicists like Edward Jarvis published studies that indicated that immigrants had higher rates of mental disorders.
In the early 1850s the anti-Catholic Native American Party was established to attack the foreign religious elements of the German and Irish. Convents were burned, priests were driven from their pulpits.
Nativists blamed Catholics for unemployment by stating that Papal agents had unleashed millions of Italians on American soil to take away the jobs from native Americans. They stated that Catholics had started a run on banks to prepare the way for the seizure of the US government by Italy’s Pope. They fabricated a document “Instructions to Catholics”, which detailed a conspiracy by Catholics to control the American workplace. See Washington Gladden, “The Anti-Catholic Crusade”, Century Magazine, XLVII (1894), 790.
In 1855, German immigrants, who were routinely persecuted, were involved in deadly riots against Know Nothings in Cincinnati, Columbus and Louisville.
These immigrants were accused by the larger society of refusing to assimilate. Little Italys and Irelands could be found in major cities like Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury, and New Britain, where they were sealed off from the wider American society. New Haven's Italian colony centered around Wooster Square. It was at first a neighborhood for the Irish. There were many large mansions in the area. However, after the Civil War, industry began flourishing and factories moved into the area. Landlords turned the remaining homes into multiple dwellings which became overcrowded and neglected.
In The Children of Columbus by Erik Amfitheatrof, he describes the worst of the padroni as "flesh peddlers" who recruited peasants from southern Italy, stuck dozens of people in disgusting tenements and took over 60% of their pay as their commission. Jacob Riis, an immigrant, described the horrors of these tenements in his book How The Other Half Lives. He reports "one room 12x12 with five families living in it, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partitions, screen, chair or table." In New Orleans in the 1800s, many Sicilians had settled in this area and were employed as fishermen or farmers. Italians were generally stereotyped as mafioso criminals. In 1891, the police chief had been investigating reports of what he considered to be mafia activity in the city. He was assassinated by unknown assailants and the backlash against the Italian community was hysterically racist. Suspicion fell on the Italians in the community and ten were arrested and put on trial for the crime. The mayor of the city had made an announcement to the press that "We must teach these people a lesson they will not forget for all time." All ten of the men were acquitted. However, after the verdict, a mob of 5,000 angry New Orleaneans stormed the jail and shot the men to death in their cells.
In "Restriction of Immigration"(Atlantic Monthly, June, 1896) Francis A. Walker warned that vast inpourings of southern European immigrants threatened to overwhelm and thereby degrade American culture and institutions.
According to Walker "for nearly two generations, great numbers of persons utterly unable to earn their living, by reason of one or another form of physical or mental disability, and others who were, from widely different causes, unfit to be members of any decent community, were admitted to our ports without challenge or question. It is a matter of official record that in many cases these persons had been directly shipped to us by states or municipalities desiring to rid themselves of a burden and a nuisance...while yet the patriotic American of to-day may properly shrink in terror from the contemplation of the vast hordes of ignorant and brutalized peasantry thronging to our shores...The arrival in the United States, between 1830 and 1840, and thereafter increasingly, of large numbers of degraded peasantry created for the first time in this country distinct social classes, and produced an alteration of economic relations which could not fail powerfully to affect population. The appearance of vast numbers of men, foreign in birth and often in language, with a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, of an industrial grade suited only to the lowest kind of manual labor, was exactly such a cause as by any student of population would be expected to affect profoundly the growth of the native population. Americans shrank alike from the social contact and the economic competition thus created. They became increasingly unwilling to bring forth sons and daughters who should be obliged to compete in the market for labor and in the walks of life with those whom they did not recognize as of their own grade and condition. It has been said by some that during this time habits of luxury were entering, to reduce both the disposition and the ability to increase among our own population. In some small degree, in some restricted localities, this undoubtedly was the case; but prior to 1860 there was no such general growth of luxury in the United States as is competent to account for the effect seen. Indeed, I believe this was almost wholly due to the cause which has been indicated,--a cause recognized by every student of statistics and economics."
According to a 1911 study of the US Immigration Commission, the new immigrants "...has been largely a movement of unskilled laboring men who have come from the less progressive countries of Europe...They have...congregated together in sections apart from native Americans and the older immigrants to such an extent that assimilation has been slow." Citing from the racist book The Passing of the Great Race, a book by Madison Grant, the Commission stated: "The new immigration contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken, and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Meditarranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish ghettoes. Our jails, insane asylums, and almshouses are filled with human flotsam and the whole tone of American life, social, moral, and political, has been lowered and vulgarized by them."
European Immigration to the US:
1841-50: 1.6 million
1851-60: 2.5 million
1861-70: 2.1 million
1871-80: 2.3 million
1881-90: 4.7 million
1891-900: 3.6 million
1901-1910: 8.1 million
1911-20: 4.3 million
1921-30: 2.5 million
Dr. Larry Laughlin, appointed as consultant to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in 1922, provided support to the anti-immigrant propaganda, by stating in testimony to congress that Italians, Slovaks, Russian and Polish Jews had three times the insanity rate of American natives.
Today, about 11 percent of U.S. residents are foreign-born, far short of the 14.7 percent who were foreign-born in 1910.
You may impress yourself with your historic dribble but your still a bleeding heart who wants other people finance what you think is a monumental bad treatment of people who deserve to no better! We have 300 million people in our country and rapidly out growing our resources. When others came they did not leave their love ones home and send our resources back to the old country. They did not demand welfare, cheap education and free medical care. They assimilated and learned english rather than insisting we speak their language. I did not live then neither did you, but we both live today and I love our country just like it is, no change is needed.
rtbohan:
There is nothing wrong with reminiscing about the past, but we need to evolve and not repeat the same mistakes over and over again. These people are not immigrants and they have no intention of being American. They are a burden unto themselves and others because they don't have the will to change.
Although I agree with your premise regarding immigrants, you simple assessment of Maryland's religious freedom is a bit of a gloss. The colony was at it's inception a remarkable experiment in religious freedom, which was founded by Lord Baltimore, but the experiment failed.
When Philip Calvert died in 1682, Maryland was a growing colony in which religious pluralism prevailed. Within a decade, however, a revolution by Protestants toppled Lord Baltimore's government, led to the appointment of a royal governor, and brought an end to religious freedom in the colony. In 1692, the Church of England was established as Maryland's official religion. Two years later the colony's government moved to Annapolis. St. Mary's was soon abandoned, as government was its sole purpose for existing. Within a decade or so, Jesuit laborers dismantled the chapel and used its bricks to build a manor house a few miles from St. Mary's. Thus ended the first experiment in religious freedom in English America. It would be a century before Lord Baltimore's dream of "liberty of conscience" again prevailed in Maryland.
During the intervening period, Catholics suffered oppression and lost their political rights, and Jesuits were persecuted. Despite this ordeal, the underground church endured and from it emerged the first diocese in the United States, the See of Baltimore, led by Maryland-born Bp. John Carroll, SJ. From the seeds of faith first planted at St. Mary's in 1634 the modern American Catholic Church grew.
Also, even a short gloss about colonial and revolutionary America's religious tolerance should have a reference to Roger Williams and Rhode Island.
Roger Williams was a true radical regarding religious tolerance for his time, but his experiences as a proselytizing Anabaptist in The Massachusetts Bay Colony, had come close to costing him his life. Williams even advance the idea that Muslims, Hindus and atheists should be tolerated by the state, at the civil government had no business in the affairs of conscious, and that real Christian conversion could not be accomplished through coercison.
Thanks for the adding the information on Maryland and Rhode Island. Some of my family were among the Catholic immigrants to Maryland, and a part of the group which later formed the Catholic settlement around Bardstown, Kentucky . Of course, Roger Williams is one of the great heros of religious freedom. But I was trying to present a quick overview, since my article was a little long with the brief summary I attempted.
Ok basically it goes down like this, Europeans and other immigrants who came here early in the century came here to work and assimilated and learned the language and didn't extort our dollars back to their own country to benefit the mother land. Like todays immigrants, so today they are theives and are stealing our resources, not to mention freeloading off our welfare and free medical system. You people need to stop that, and thats why their is so much ambigious hatred to you and your race. And I hate to break the news to you when you steal from the U.S. you make all latinos and latinas look bad. The ones who were born here or came here and became a citizen and are now hardworking Americans helping the economy to thrive, and also go to college. But you scum of a people who come here and steal from this great land of opportunity is doing this country a disservice and have no right to do so and is making other Latinos who are citizens look bad. Thanks allot by the way scum bags. Also phillipinos do the same thing as those people, because our dollar is worth 55 to 1 in the phillipines so they work here and make like a bandit in their own countries. Also people stop mentioning well Americans stole the U.S. from the indians truth be told it's a hell of allot better here to live than when the primitive indians lived here. If you want to complain and say we stole this country then go to the reserves and get your self a nice tee pee, and dig a hole in the ground so you can go to the bath room, do you wanna live like that I didn't think so and neither do we. So you should be thanking the Europeans for making America the great country it is today, instead of citing bitter nothings in retaliatian for your comebacks on the American populace because we dislike you stealing our resources and degrading our economy as a whole. Also black people stop saying Americans stole you from your own country Africa. Because truth be told your ancestors were sold into slavery by your own people in the early 17-1800's. They were sold by Africans, ie black people to the puertuguese traders who bought your ancestors for dirt cheap, and made a profit by auctioning you off in America, and other slave friendly countries at that time. It was cheaper to have slaves do the work thats why your ancestors were bought, and were given the essentials for white people in the U.S. So stop hating Americans you should really be hating your own African people who sold you into slavery in the first place. You don't belive me look it up in the early history books. You will see your own people selling you off, instead of revolutioning your country and resources like the Europeans did to the U.S. after they conqured the primitive indians. If your own people industrialized and grew as a country instead of a few people getting rich off the rest of you black people then your country would be great and not so poor like it is today. So now that you have had a lesson in history shut your mouths and stop feeling bad for yourselves. And thinking everyone hates you, its your own people who hated you and sold you as a slave. Most times slaves were sold because of debts owed by the family, or they needed money. But as you can see its a very selfish idea that Africans thought of, instead they should have came together like Europeans have learned to and other nationalities under the American democratic system. And built this great country. If your people built up Africa and thought of helping each other Africa also would be great and wouldn't be as primitive as it is today even still. Your people have not evolved much since early times, when your people sold you black people into slavery. Thats why you are looked as an inferior race, because if you can't even help yourselves then how can you help other people. Even today their is allot of killings in the U.S. by largely blacks who are in gangs that instead of coming together and figuring out how to better themselves, they still basically are selling each other into slavery and profitting off one another. Like all these turf wars killing another person just because their not from your block is very stupid. The drug trade doesn't help either. Instead of trying to get over each other, why not learn to be capitalistic and grow your money and build legal businesses and stop saying white people hate you so damn much. Yourselves hate you, if not then why all the strife, and then you blame white people for your self imposed problems. Thats very rediculous don't you think. Try to think outside the box and come together like Africans didn't learn to back then and help one another and other Americans. Stop trying to get over on one another and being survivalist. Theirs more than enough money to go around if you stop and think of doing things legal, and staying out of prison. Who cares what the statistics say the truth is blacks are more susceptible to violence because of all this malice that takes place in your own communities. Look at how you live and then take over other communities. You make your own place a ghetto, trash your neighborhoods, to lazy to just throw garbage away, and wont take care of your houses. Come on enough is enough, stop feeling bad for yourselves, the crying game is over, open your eyes and look at Obama hes a president. I don't see him blaming white people for his problems. Truth be told hes allot smarter than a hell of allot of people. So break free from stinking thinking and look at life as a new age and free your minds, and start being capitalistic and stop being survivalist who live only for the day or week. Open stores and money making ventures, and invest and grow wealthy like other Americans, and produce and take care of your properties and neighborhoods, a nation as a whole can't stop thinking crap until the crap stops and total appreication of your own people happens first. People treat you like you perceive yourself. Like we learned in the Marines if you act like a bitch you get treated like a bitch, first you have to respect yourself then others will respect you. I believe all Americans regardless of skin color has opportunity to change if they want to, and better themselves and the whole U.S. as a whole. Good luck to everyone and remember those who don't know the errors of the past are doomed to repeat it in the future. So know your history and stop making the same mistakes made centuries ago, when your ancestors sold you to wealthy puertuguese and other people who had money to spend. One other interesting thing to note is Africans also had slaves too, their own slaves black people working for them. Just like Europeans did, the Puertuguese and Spaniards. So think about that before you think of white people as bad. For the record I am a mixture of 6 nationalities, in case people are wondering I am Puertican, Puertuguese, French, Italian, Narraganset Indian, and part Spaniard. Also my ancestor is Christopher Columbus. So I myself have allot of mixes like most Americans do. This is the great melting pot the U.S. so we can't really say anyone is truly pure anymore, and hate to break the news to you white people if your even remotely related to Abraham Lincoln chances are you have black in you mixed with white. As we all know he had a thing for black chicks. As did many early settlers can't say I blame em allot of white chicks have nothing to offer body wise. So yea. But the tables have turned because now white chicks love big black dudes cause of their sexual dominance. So it all balances out and I truly love the U.S. I have been around the world twice and hate to break the news to you people the U.S. is 100% better than any other country out there. We have freedoms here other countries only dream about, China should I say more. Their economic policy after thousands of years finally has allowed a regulated bit of free trade and has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty and they our becoming rich as a nation. So thank you all for reading, and I hope I have lifted allot of ignorances and stereotypes people have on other people. Just look in the history books for guidance and remember a person who knows his history and others and learns from their mistakes will become a better person and wiser, from others mistakes. Theirs no need to reinvent the wheel, just learn from others. By the way I have an above average intelligence, as I have had my IQ tested before and have always been very intelligent. Also I have been to college, and Marines and starting my own business and company, and possibly buying some property within the next few days in the U.S. If I can do it so can everyone else. Stop stinking thinking and think of ways to be productive. So if it seems like I know allot its because I do. I hope I have taught you all something my American brothers and sisters some history and some facts of life, and now its up to us to make it better for all Americans rich or poor. I am republican by the way. Thats enough about me thanks for your time and have a great day. God Bless.
Glad you got that off your chest. Such a mass of misinformation and bigotry must be a burden to carry through life. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to correct you, nor the faith that I can convince you. I do have the faith that most who read your diatribe are intelligent and honest enough to reject your tirade.
