[Floyd L.]

It is right to blame if the blame is right! When your family came in the 1940s, this was already a wealthy country made largely so by its exploitation of blacks. Cotton was king then, the defining economy of the deep South, a major contributor to the gross national product. It had been built on the exploitation of blacks since slavery. Without blacks, there would have been no Memphis, New Orleans or Atlanta nor a Mississippi or Alabama (aside from some steel works in the Birmingham area) to speak of, nor a single wealthy southerner whose wealth derived from cotton. In the Carolinas it was tobacco, rice and cotton with the same story of black exploitation feeding white wealth.

So America was largely what she was in the 1940s because of her exploitation of blacks. By partaking of the benefits of a society so sustained by exploitation, you in fact participate in that exploitation. Any Europeans (others were not welcomed here) accepting America’s welcome without working to eleminate that exploitation contributed to its continuation.

The moment your family stepped off the boat here, they had benefits secured by the color of their skin, regardless of whether you were raised to think white or not. Those benefits had been denied to blacks here for 320 years and continued to be denied for another 30.

User Detail :  

Name : Floyd L., Gender : M, Age : 59, City : Memphis, State : TN, Country : United States,