Richard Dawkins is an evil, slave-owning bastard

[Clinton Huxley]

Of course, Britons never, never, NEVER shall be slaves.

Britons? What's a "Briton?"

It is the quality to which you aspire but shall never attain.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Of course, Britons never, never, NEVER shall be slaves.

Britons? What's a "Briton?"

It is the quality to which you aspire but shall never attain.

Thank fuck for that.

[Rum]

The fact that Dawkins considers his 400 acres of Oxfordshire to be worth "peanuts" says far more about him than the fact that it may have originally been paid for off the profits of slavery.

According to this website, grazing/pasture land in Oxfordshire is going for about 16,400 pounds per acre. Have to agree -- I wish I had a few of those peanuts!

Not to mention the farmhouse. I used to live in that neck of the woods. We are talking a million plus for a decent sized farmhouse.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

My ancestors kept salves too. I come from a long line of apothecaries.

[Jesus_of_Nazareth]

I would "hope" that I would be enlightened and ahead of my times, had I lived then. But, we are largely a product of our cultures. So, I don't think any of us can say that we would clearly have seen what most others did not.

I imagine Seth would have been standing in a pulpit on a Sunday lecturing his slaves on the evils of sloth. and explaining that to release them would be Socialism

He would probably name them all Obama. I would .

[Rum]

Slavery is the new capitalism.

[Clinton Huxley]

I like to go serfing in Cornwall.

Needs a bit of work, that.....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I like to go serfing in Cornwall.

Needs a bit of work, that.....

Just think. If the Feral OT gang hadn't fled to the far shores of Newforumland, we might be toiling in his fields right now.

[Coito ergo sum]

Of course, Britons never, never, NEVER shall be slaves.

Britons? What's a "Briton?"

It is the quality to which you aspire but shall never attain.

Funny accent, pomposity and bad teeth? I don't aspire that!

[FBM]

Meh. Anyone living in Britain during that time (and later) probably benefited from the slave trade, even if they owned none themselves...

Except the slaves, I'd say.

Well, I was assuming most of them were being worked to death in the West Indies and North America, but I'd forgotten that there would be quite a few in Britain itself

I know this is a non sequitur, but that's what you get for replying to me:

It's little-known fact outside the country, but Koreans used to have slaves, too. Other Koreans. Poor ones. And if you were born into a slave family, you got to play slave for the rest of your life, too!

They don't like it when you bring it up at dinner, tho.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Workhouses would be close enough to slavery for me.

[Hermit]

I think it's possible that some of my forebears voted for.....Hitler.

If the descendants of people who worked for Hitler had to make reparations, I'd be well and truly fucked. My father and his father in 1944:



Unlike them, my mother's father actually was a Nazi. No judge of the Weimar Republic remained a judge in the Third Empire unless they were properly vetted and found suitable for Hitler's purposes. He finished the war as a colonel, spent seven years enjoying the Siberian taiga and died shortly after his return, in the same year I was born.

[Atheist-Lite]

That's why I never trace my family tree. I know what I'm like and very likely my forebearers would have been even worse?

[Atheist-Lite]

That's why I never trace my family tree. I know what I'm like and very likely my forebearers would have been even worse?

[hadespussercats]

My family owned a couple of slaves. If not for you fucking Yankees I would have inherited a few.

My mom always made a big deal out of how we're descended from a long line of Quaker abolitionists.

Which is true. What's also true, though, is that there's a record of one of our ancestors being thrown out of Meeting for refusing to give up his slave.

We've all got blood on our hands.

I reject that. I don't have blood on my hands.

We no more have blood on our hands for the sins of our ancestors than we do if a family member commits a crime. Genetics is only a link in that regard in mysticism and religion.

We all, most certainly, have criminals and evil men and women in our bloodlines. Go back far enough, and we're all related to the same people anyway. Accepting some sort of guilt for that is, to me, quite silly.

With respect to something like slavery, though, we need to be careful about harboring self-righteous judgments about the behavior of 18th and 19th century people, or the behavior of ancient Romans, or any other group of slaveholding people (which actually is most of humanity for a large portion of human history). Had any one of us been raised on a plantation in Mississippi in the 1750's, or in Rome in the 200's, can we say that we would most certainly have seen the immorality of slavery? Most folks of the times did not.

While we see slavery as abhorrent now, for much of human history it was the natural order of things. The ancient Greeks had slaves. The Romans had slaves. Throughout the years sometimes referred to as "The Dark Ages" one kingdom or another enslaved their captured enemies. The Chinese traditionally had slaves. The Arab world traditionally had slaves. Much of Africa practiced slavery - and in some parts it is still practiced today. Brazil had slaves a generation longer than it existed in the US, and slavery was common in all the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

I would "hope" that I would be enlightened and ahead of my times, had I lived then. But, we are largely a product of our cultures. So, I don't think any of us can say that we would clearly have seen what most others did not.

I didn't mean we REALLY have blood on our hands. I don't. At least, not at the moment.

I just meant that, re- the interviewer's perspective, everyone has something in their family history (if such a history is documented/can be found) that they could decide to be ashamed of. When I was little I used to feel exempt from "white guilt," because my family supposedly only tried to free the slaves. Turns out that was far from the whole story.

I don't believe in inherited sin. Though being white does give me pause, from time to time.