Black Culture Discussion Thread

[wr]

American finance grew on the back of slaves
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherv...-grew-on-the-back-of-slaves.html#.VB8fa_ldW75

BY Edward E. Baptist and Louis Hyman March 7, 2014 12:32AM
Last weekend we watched the Oscars and, like most people, were pleased that “Twelve Years a Slave” won Best Picture. No previous film has so accurately captured the reality of enslaved people’s lives. Yet though Twelve Years shows us the labor of slavery, it omits the financial system — asset securitization — that made slavery possible.

Most people can see how slave labor, like the cotton-picking in “Twelve Years A Slave,” was pure exploitation. Few recognize that a financial system nearly as sophisticated as ours today helped Solomon Northup’s enslavers steal him, buy him, and market the cotton he made. The key patterns of that financial history continue to repeat themselves in our history. Again and again, African-American individuals and families have worked hard to produce wealth, but American finance, whether in the antebellum period or today, has snatched black wealth through bonds backed by asset securitization.

Recently, the assets behind these bonds were houses. In the antebellum period, the assets were slaves themselves.

Every year or two, somebody discovers that a famous bank on Wall Street profited from slavery. This discovery is always treated as if the relationship between slavery and the American financial system were some kind of odd accident, disconnected from the present. But it was not an accident. The cotton and slave trades were the biggest businesses in antebellum America, and then as now, American finance developed its most innovative products to finance the biggest businesses.

In the 1830s, powerful Southern slaveowners wanted to import capital into their states so they could buy more slaves. They came up with a new, two-part idea: mortgaging slaves; and then turning the mortgages into bonds that could be marketed all over the world.

First, American planters organized new banks, usually in new states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Drawing up lists of slaves for collateral, the planters then mortgaged them to the banks they had created, enabling themselves to buy additional slaves to expand cotton production. To provide capital for those loans, the banks sold bonds to investors from around the globe — London, New York, Amsterdam, Paris. The bond buyers, many of whom lived in countries where slavery was illegal, didn’t own individual slaves — just bonds backed by their value. Planters’ mortgage payments paid the interest and the principle on these bond payments. Enslaved human beings had been, in modern financial lingo, “securitized.”

As slave-backed mortgages became paper bonds, everybody profited — except, obviously, enslaved African Americans whose forced labor repaid owners’ mortgages. But investors owed a piece of slave-earned income. Older slave states such as Maryland and Virginia sold slaves to the new cotton states, at securitization-inflated prices, resulting in slave asset bubble. Cotton factor firms like the now-defunct Lehman Brothers — founded in Alabama — became wildly successful. Lehman moved to Wall Street, and for all these firms, every transaction in slave-earned money flowing in and out of the U.S. earned Wall Street firms a fee.

The infant American financial industry nourished itself on profits taken from financing slave traders, cotton brokers and underwriting slave-backed bonds. But though slavery ended in 1865, in the years after the Civil War, black entrepreneurs would find themselves excluded from a financial system originally built on their bodies. As we remind our students in our new online course American Capitalism: A History, African-Americans — unable to borrow either to buy property or start businesses — lived in a capitalist economy that allowed them to work, but not to benefit.

More recently, history repeated itself — or more accurately, continued. The antebellum world eerily prefigured the recent financial crisis, in which Wall Street securitization once again stepped in to strip black families of their wealth.

In the 1990s red-lining began to end and black homeownership rates began to rise, increasing the typical family’s wealth to $12,100 by 2005 — or one-twelfth that of white households. In those years, African-American family incomes were also rising about as rapidly as white family incomes. And yet, African-American buyers, playing catch-up after centuries of exclusion from the benefits of credit, still typically had lower net worth and credit ratings. They paid higher interest rates and fees to join the housing bubble, and so securitizing their mortgages brought enormous profits to lenders and investors.

Then the crash of 2008 came. By 2010, median African-American household wealth had plunged by 60 percent — all those years of hard work lost in fees, interest, and falling prices. For whites, the decline was only 23 percent, and those losses were short-lived. Lenders resumed lending to white borrowers, restoring the value of their assets. But African-American borrowers have had a much harder time getting new loans, much less holding on to property bought at securitization-inflated prices. Median white household wealth is now back up to 22 times that of blacks — erasing African-Americans’ asset gains over the preceding 20 years.

Recent foreclosures represent another transfer of wealth from African-Americans to the investors of the world. For the past 200 years, the success of American finance has been built on the impoverishment of African-American families. We should remember the heroic struggles of African Americans to get political equality, but to forget their exclusion from our financial system, except as a source of exploitation, is to miss a basic truth of not only black history but financial history.

Edward E. Baptist and Louis Hyman teach history at Cornell University.

 

[C.Magneto]

"I'm black if that matters."
Your pushing some made up, black people not from africa psudoscience, why do you not want to be from africa so bad?

You're a moron. Quote me on anything that suggests what you're saying. Also, point out something that I posted as pseudo science. For anyone that's disagreed with me or anything I've posted so far, no one has posted anything "scientific" so far. It's been gifs and child like insults.

At what point did I ever say I wasn't proud to be black/african? First I'm called out for pushing Farrakhan like mantras now I'm ashamed to be from Africa?

The whole thread I've been posting stuff that undeniably connects east and west Africa as an entire culture, yet people still wanna debate stuff in this fractal European mindset. This thread was supposed to be about the positive uplifting parts of culture, and how to move forward. (I'm aware I've let some of the trolls get to me and haven't been posting stuff that follows that ideology and I will make an effort to subscribe to the OP's original intentions)

I've got no problem with people posting artifacts and providing visual representations of the culture? But what do they mean. What were they trying to communicate? Or let me guess... They were trying to communicate psuedo science as well?


When you got pyramids in west Africa, east Africa, shoot all over the world for that matter what does it mean? Let me guess pseudo science as well?

So like I've been saying, west Africa may have been the last place we were "free" but our history is far greater then that. The ancestors described the soul as light because at our essence we're pure energy. Science tells you that energy can't be created or destroyed. (I'm guessing that's psuedo science as well) So if you truly believe that west Africa is all you need to in trying to understand who we are as a people do as you please....


Dudes are really reaching in here for troll opportunities with no true knowledge of self. Most of our people won't believe anything unless it comes from a white scientist's mouth. They're completely unaware that they're fighting for genetic survival and will do what ever they can to preserve their existence.
This is a war on all fronts. Politics, health, history, science, spiritual, mental, etc.

Watch hidden colors and get back to me. Read the Isis papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing and get back to me. But I'm sure you won't because you probably think it's pseudoscience.

 

[deleted]

The Hidden Colors films are full of half truths, unsourced details, and sometimes flat out misinformation.

They can be good as a starting point, but take the information they provide to you with a grain of salt.

 

[C.Magneto]

Agreed, but like you said for someone who has little to no knowledge on the topics it's a good place to start. Plus, most of the people featured in the film have their independent fields of study that you can further explore that provide the sources to look into the things discussed.

It's a growing process. As we shake off this mental atrophy were gonna stumble a few times as we figure out who we are. We gotta provide them with the rational necessary support if we really intend to better ourselves.

 

[spottieottie305]

The Hidden Colors films are full of half truths, unsourced details, and sometimes flat out misinformation.

They can be good as a starting point, but take the information they provide to you with a grain of salt.

I disagree. The films as a whole are very solid. There is certainly some things that aren't 100%, but you could say that with just about every documentary.

Can you provide us with examples of what you thought were half truths, or flat out misinformation?

 

[tay1]

Just watched a documentary called Slavery By Another Name. It was something I didn't know about, so I thought it was a good view. There's also a book I plan on reading. Here's the synopsis from the website:

"In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—when a cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II.

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

The neoslavery system exploited legal loopholes and federal policies which discouraged prosecution of whites for continuing to hold black workers against their wills. As it poured millions of dollars into southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system.

Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today."
- See more at: http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/#sthash.eLJ4Pknb.dpuf

Link to the documentary: http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/

 

[Senoj]

I really would like to compile a list of the banks and companies still standing today that profited off slavery so I know where not to spend my money.

 

[C.Magneto]

You may as well stop spending your money in general.

 

[cjlaw228]

I really would like to compile a list of the banks and companies still standing today that profited off slavery so I know where not to spend my money.

Hope u don't live in the South

 

[gry60]

I really would like to compile a list of the banks and companies still standing today that profited off slavery so I know where not to spend my money.

Hope u don't live in the South

It's not just the South and it's not just the banks. Ivy league institutions were deep into the slave trade:



Amazon product ASIN 1596916818
Slaves used to be the single largest asset of the USA at the height of the trade.

.by 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the United States. In the same year, the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined. So, of course, the war was rooted in these two expanding and competing economies—but competing over what? What eventually tore asunder America's political culture was slavery's expansion into the Western territories.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/slavery-made-america/373288/

 

[spottieottie305]

When you have so much evidence of institutionalized racism in this country for some people to ignore it is crazy. I get that we should strive to overcome, but its not that simple.

How are black people supposed to get over it, when we are clearly still in it. The modern prison industrial complex really needs to be looked at.

Michelle Alexander has a lot of great information about how racism and Jim Crow have not been eliminated, they have just been reworked.

 

[C.Magneto]

I disagree. The films as a whole are very solid. There is certainly some things that aren't 100%, but you could say that with just about every documentary.

Can you provide us with examples of what you thought were half truths, or flat out misinformation?

 

[trynafeelmink]

In all honesty i know this may seem cliche but "the Wire" is one of the better portrayals of black culture assembled in this countries history. Mainly because it highlighted just how bias the institutions are and how things are handled and disregarded in the black community. I'm re watching for the 3rd time and there is just so much substance in this show and so much reality it's crazy.

I wouldn't have a problem with america's obsession with TV if all TV was this well produced. This contained more truth then almost any piece of art depicting the black experience in an inner city and it was 100& fiction.

 

[rico x hood]

That ain my culture. Speak for yourself b.

 

[Nouss]

@Gry60

Im actually in Malabo, EG. I've never been to Cameroon but I hear great things about Douala and Yaounde. Oh andI wasn't referring to you when I was talking about metaphysics and symbolism.

I'll be sure to bring up that other thing with my coworker tomorrow. "Le Maqui"

 

[trueprada]

 

[mr marcus]

Plvn white trying to bash hidden colors....watch out for these deceiving yakubs

 

[victor page]

If you're going to discredit any info...at least have a counter claim.

So if something Hidden Colors is wrong... Tell us why and how you came to that conclusion.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

Was the first Hidden Colors the one that people kept saying was misogynistic/homophobic?

 

[nawghtyhare]

View media item 1192221View media item 1192222View media item 1192223
Had to post this man


"It ain't them that's killin us
it's US that's killin us
It ain't them that's knockin us off
it's US that's knockin us off"

 

[trueprada]

 

[deleted]

If you're going to discredit any info...at least have a counter claim.

So if something Hidden Colors is wrong... Tell us why and how you came to that conclusion.

It's said in the first film that Beethoven was a black man. The only source given is a book called Beethoven's Hair. Tariq says the book has that title because people were infatuated with the texture of his hair which is described by supporters of this theory as being coarse and typical of a black man's hair. He would have you believe that the source he gave corroborates what he's telling us. In fact, the book has that title because it's about a lock of Beethoven's hair and the journey that it took before it was eventually sold at Sotheby's in 1994. The people who purchased the hair had heavy DNA testing ran on it to learn more about Beethoven's lifelong ailments and ultimately what could have cause his deafness.

And even after the many tests that were done, there is no mention in that book about Beethoven being a black man.

Spoiler: Here's a photo of the hair.

View media item 1192381

I'll add that I never said that you shoudn't watch them or that they're of no value. They're very entertaining and they DO contain a lot of truths, but they're shown alongside things that have little basis in reality and sources for the information presented are almost never given.

Let me reiterate. They're good starting points, but do your own further research.

 

[spottieottie305]

You said to take the information with a grain of salt and said the documentary was FULL of half truths and misinformation. That basically means the information is worthless fam...

Pulled directly from my post in the African History X thread

Beethoven's Secret African Heritage
View media item 991294

In an age where history is seriously being rewritten, new information is coming forth that is shocking intellectual sensitivities. What was once considered written in stone is now melting away with the discovery of facts that heretofore have been hidden or omitted; things so different that they are generally classified as controversial or unusual.

That brings us to the topic of this post; the true identity of Ludwig van Beethoven, long considered Europe’s greatest classical music composer. Said directly, Beethoven was a black man. Specifically, his mother was a Moor, that group of Muslim Northern Africans who conquered parts of Europe--making Spain their capital--for some 800 years.

In Alexander Thayer's Life of Beethoven, vol.1, p. 134, the author states, “there is none of that obscurity which exalts one to write history as he would have it and not as it really was. The facts are too patent.” On this same page, he states that the German composer Franz Josef Haydn was referred to as a “Moor” by Prince Esterhazy, and Beethoven had “even more of the Moor in his looks.” On p. 72, a Beethoven contemporary, Gottfried Fischer, describes him as round-nosed and of dark complexion. Also, he was called “der Spagnol” (the Spaniard).

http://open.salon.com/blog/ronp01/2009/09/27/the_african_heritage_of_ludwig_van_beethoven

 

[C.Magneto]

Not gonna lie. I kinda get the feeling you called the documentary out because you didn't think people would ask you to validate your claims.

I thought you were mainly saying it lacked the sources which I agreed with. But it was stated you can research most of the stuff to find out if it was true or not.


Not saying this is the case, but it seems like you kinda back pedaled once someone called you out for the half truths. Furthermore it seems like you were just looking for something to be wrong when that was the best example you could find and it was quickly proven true...

 

[deleted]

I knew I would get this kind of response.

Oh well.