Talk:Racism in the United States/Archive 10

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Anti-Blackness in the United States was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 5 December 2015 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Racism in the United States/Archive 10. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

misleading sentence on slave trade: "The Atlantic slave trade prospered, with more than 470,000 slaves having been forcibly transported from Africa between 1626 and 1860..."

Latest comment: 3 years ago13 comments4 people in discussion

Congress actually banned the importation of slaves into the United States in 1808 (the earliest year it was allowed to do so under the U.S. Constitution). Beginning in 1808, any trans-Atlantic or other international slave trade with its destination as the United States was illegal smuggling (that's why the "Amistad" blacks were freed)... AnonMoos (talk) 13:16, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

According to the article on the Atlantic slave trade, the last slave ship to arrive in the United States was the Clotilda in 1859. The Atlantic slave trade continued without the United States, until 1870 when Portugal ended the last trade route with the Americas. Brazil ended the importation of slaves in 1870, and abolished slavery in 1888. It was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Dimadick (talk) 14:10, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the Clotilda is now very famous, but it was a surreptitious illegal smuggling venture, undertaken for ideological reasons (not an ordinary profit-seeking enterprise), and the smugglers felt the need to burn their boat immediately after offloading the slaves. So it's hard to see how the Clotilda can be evidence that the transatlantic slave trade to the United States was "prospering" in 1860.

The transatlantic slave trade, and attempts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade, had a number of ups and downs and complications during the 19th century, but ordinary commercial slave trading to the United States did not generally "prosper" after 1808 (there were a number of smuggling attempts, some successful and some unsuccessful, but slaves were not imported in large numbers). AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Smuggling is hardly exclusive of a trade being prosperous. The Old China Trade for the U.S. and the British mercantile drug running to China were highly illegal, as in Chinese people were constantly executed for any involvement in it levels of illegal, but still made many individuals in both empires fabulously rich and furnished lavish customs revenues as second-order and third-order effects.

Similarly, the Atlantic slave trade was prosperous enough that, for example, the ship Nightingale of Boston could be built in Eliot, Maine in 1851 and be outfitted in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (both locations in free states, notably, not slave states) and serve for both drug running to China and as a slave ship before its capture by the African Slave Trade Patrol in 1861.

So yeah, prosperous.

And not only is the sentence not misleading, it should probably be extended much further: the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution only outlawed slavery except as a punishment for crime and IIRC the figure is that by the turn of the 19th–20th century the state government of Alabama, for example, got more than 70% of its revenue from convict leasing. So yes, prosperous indeed, and we are long past the point in history when we need to pretend that the United States became “the Land of the Free” some time in the early 19th century when Thomas Jefferson freed his own children who he'd been owning as slaves, or whatever the current mythology is. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 20:46, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The opium trade is a poor analogy, since the British government encouraged, facilitated, and protected poppy-growing within its imperial territories, and the export of opium from its imperial territories, and the ships that carried the opium to China. The only smuggling as such occurred during the last few miles of the ships' journeys, when they were in Chinese coastal waters and ports -- however, during much of the period, bribed Chinese officials allowed the trade to be carried out quite openly at Chinese ports. This is not particularly analogous to the transatlantic slave trade after 1808.

Some proprietors of ships smuggling slaves to the U.S. made a lot of money. However, they also often ran high risks of losing their whole investment. Such smuggling efforts do not seem to have had a significant overall demographic impact on slavery in the United States, so that they were not a real substitute for the legal commercial transatlantic slave trade. And I fail to see what coerced convict labor inside U.S. prisons has to do with the transatlantic slave trade. AnonMoos (talk) 22:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, “involving risk” is another criterion that is not exclusive of an enterprise or industry being prosperous. Lots of gold prospectors lost their entire investment but it's hardly true that gold prospecting and mining has never been prosperous.

I'm left wondering what type of analysis you're doing to make a comparison concluding that the opium trade, which also started multiple wars, is a “poor analogy” when you raise the objection that bribed Chinese officials allowed the trade to be carried out quite openly at Chinese ports—since obviously this points to illegal opium smuggling being quite prosperous and profitable, like the illegal slave trade.

The article does not say that smuggling of slaves or US concerns reaping large profits from external involvement in the trade was a real substitute for the legal commercial transatlantic slave trade, it says what you quoted in the header of this talk page section.

Claiming that you just can't see the relevance of slavery as a punishment for a crime, race in the United States criminal justice system even in the twenty-first century being a factor in unequal punishments and things like a drastically unequal rate of vacated capital convictions even, in a discussion about slavery in the Wikipedia article titled “Racism in the United States”, is WP:DONTGETIT behavior. Wikipedia is WP:NOTFORUM not a discussion forum and not a publisher of original thought—if you want to proselytize a view that the effects of the Atlantic slave trade weren't so bad after 1808, or that the horrifying depredations of Americans owning other Americans or profiting from people being kidnapped from Africa and sold with their descendants into bondage “don't count” as related to the Atlantic slave trade system after 1808 or something, or engage in arguments about novel theories of those sorts, this is not the place to do it.

Please do not edit my comments or my signature. Doing so is a violation of conduct guidelines: Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines § Editing others' comments. I'm seeing from your talk page that you have been repeatedly cautioned about this during the past year. Use of an automated tool isn't an excuse; you still have to take responsibility for your edits. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 08:47, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

No reasonable person has ever doubted that some people made money from smuggling slaves from Africa into the United States, or that slavery and slave-trading had a number of horrific aspects, but that is not the issue. The main issue is that the wording of the article gives the impression that the transatlantic slave trade to the United States continued unimpaired, or only very slightly impaired, after 1808. There were a number of ups and downs and complications with slave smuggling after 1808, but the short answer is that the transatlantic slave trade to the United States DID NOT continue unimpaired, or only very slightly impaired, after 1808, so that the wording on the article is therefore misleading. Also, racism is a very bad thing, but domestic U.S. prisons after 1865 and the translatlantic slave trade from 1808-1860 have no ascertainable direct relationship, so that your remarks on the former are completely irrelevant and off-topic here. And I'm not posting using an "automated tool" -- I'm contributing to Wikipedia in the ONLY WAY I CAN the vast majority of the time under the circumstances of the stupid encryption protocol upgrade (announced to occur on Dec 31st 2019, but imposed 22 days earlier without warning on Dec 9th) combined with coronavirus isolation/shutdowns, as explained at User talk:Baseball Bugs/Archive024#Ref desks edits. You attempting to silence my voice because you give the highest priority to the fussy prettification of your talk-page signature does not seem to throw a very favorable light on your personality. AnonMoos (talk) 19:44, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I am not “silencing” you, I am asking you to follow WP:P&G like everyone else, which is what I'm giving the highest priority to here. If you think there should be a special policy carve-out for your situation, the place to argue that is at the WP:TALK guideline's talk page. Or, there are certain sections of established P&G which could apply, but you'd have to point them out, or otherwise explain what's going on in a tad more detail.

I read the thread on Baseball Bugs's talk page you link to before I commented above; it does not explain what is actually preventing you from using a method that wouldn't alter others' comments. At the very least, it appears section editing works properly for you, so in this specific case of a talk page discussion going on at the bottom of the page I would think you'd be able to press “new section” and leave the title blank to add a comment.

I am an internet software engineer; so if you can point me to the discussion where you tried to get technical assistance with this problem, I can see if there's anything anyone missed.

...the article gives the impression that the transatlantic slave trade to the United States continued unimpaired, or only very slightly impaired, after 1808.—no, it doesn't, it explicitly says,

Although the “importation” of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, the domestic trade in slaves continued to be a major economic activity.

Your perceptions here seem somewhat skewed if you're trying to work on the Wikipedia article “racism in the United States” but you just can't possibly think of any connection between domestic U.S. prisons after 1865 and the translatlantic slave trade from 1808-1860 and you regard slavery in the US as a punishment for a crime to be completely irrelevant and off-topic. There's at least one entire Academy-Award-winning and Emmy-winning documentary devoted to making the connections, though I doubt there's really any shortage of material on those connections elsewhere.

I note that you keep using the term “transatlantic slave trade” even though the section of the article we're discussing is entitled “Atlantic slave trade” and thus concerns the slave trade in the Atlantic World, of which the Eastern US is a part as well as territories and states on the Gulf of Mexico. There is no neat separation of domestic US human trafficking from the Atlantic trade here, any more than all issues of colonialism ceased the moment when the Thirteen Colonies were renamed “United States”. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 09:15, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

1) Your equivocation on the word "Atlantic" is pointless. Conveying slaves along the coastal waters of the Eastern seaboard is simply not what is commonly called the "Atlantic slave trade".

2) I could go on at extreme and boring length in technical detail as to why I'm currently forced to use a non-fully-Unicode-compliant tool when editing Wikipedia from home (and how I can only infrequently edit Wikipedia from other places during Coronavirus restrictions), but I don't see how that would help anything. If the Wikimedia/Wikipedia authorities didn't want to put me in this position, they shouldn't have imposed the stupid encryption protocol upgrade...

3) It's a little sad for you that you'll be unable to participate in this conversation in any useful or productive way until you can get it through your head that I'm not trying to minimize the evils of slavery in any way, but trying to fix a factual error in a Wikipedia article. AnonMoos (talk) 20:56, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I have to agree with AnonMoos on this point. The phrase "Atlantic slave trade" in this article clearly refers to the "trans-Atlantic slave trade", which was not a common or generally prosperous trade after 1808. The slave trade was overwhelmingly internal after 1808, and most attempts to smuggle slaves into the United States were massive failures. Either the word "Atlantic" should be removed entirely, or more clarification is needed. CessnaMan1989 (talk) 01:25, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

If it was so uncommon and unprosperous, why did the United States need the entire African Slave Trade Patrol and Britain the West Africa Squadron to try to obstruct it? Citation still needed, as from the very beginning of the discussion, that the Atlantic slave trade was not common or prosperous.

Hey, maybe we could clarify it all by adding something such as,

Although the “importation” of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, the domestic trade in slaves continued to be a major economic activity.

—oh wait, that's already in the article.

I'm not really clear, even after all this, about what the actual complaint would be here. What does the sentence containing the term "Atlantic slave trade"—which, again, was not unrelated to racism in the United States nor the racism-and-slavery-driven US economy after 1808—what does that sentence say which is inaccurate? No "factual error" has been pointed out in the course of this whole discussion.

And no, again, to both of you, the Atlantic slave trade does not exclusively involve crossing the Atlantic, it's about slavery in the Atlantic World. Note that our article has a section Atlantic slave trade § European slavery in Portugal and Spain—just bringing slaves up the coast of Africa to Portugal and Spain was part of it. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 09:21, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Whatever, dude -- you appear to lack an understanding of basic economic concepts. If the transatlantic slave trade had remained completely unobstructed after 1808 (as it had been before 1808), then it certainly would have continued to be highly profitable. But it was not unobstructed. The African Slave Trade Patrol and the West Africa Squadron were there for the exact purpose of reducing the profits of slave-smugglers, and making the transatlantic slave trade not "prosperous" accordingly. A few individual slave-smugglers still managed to turn a handsome profit from time to time, but the overall transatlantic slave trade to the U.S. was significantly reduced (during some years, severely reduced), so that the sentence quoted in the title to this section is wrong. The problem is the word "prosper". The translantic slave trade continued illicitly during 1808-1860, and some people made money, but this overall trade did not "prosper" in any ordinary and accurate meaning of that word.

Your extended metaphorical stuff could lead to other interesting discussions, but it's quite irrelevant to this discussion, since the sentence quoted to the title to this section includes the phrase "FORCIBLY TRANSPORTED FROM AFRICA" as a qualifying clause to "Atlantic slave trade"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

No metaphors. In the weeks since you started this discussion you have pointed out no "factual error" in

The Atlantic slave trade prospered, with more than 470,000 slaves having been forcibly transported from Africa between 1626 and 1860 to what is now the United States.

The Atlantic slave trade prospered throughout the course of its existence, as documented here and in our article on it. You're trying every logical backflip to make it seem like a trade in hereditary chattel slaves and commerce in populating the laboring racial underclasses of colonial societies, where each individual captive and his or her descendants represented a theoretically-infinite supply of labor if they weren't worked to death first, was just some terrible narrow-margins business model and unenviable hardship for slave traffickers and their business partners, suppliers, and customers; all so you can have a pretense to handwavily dismiss the word "prospered", but that's the complete opposite of the truth.

There's nothing wrong with what the article says, which is why you have to keep standing up straw men to knock down: it was not unobstructed matters not a whit if the article doesn't claim the Atlantic slave trade was unobstructed. Trying to steer the discussion into attempts to insult my intelligence or comprehension and hyperbole that you're being silenced simply highlights the fallacious and untrue nature of the criticism you're making of this article. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 01:59, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Medical Racism

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi all! I've read through the Health section and would to expand it. The subsection briefly covers topics like implicit bias, pain tolerance, treatment of various conditions, etc. I would like to continue to build upon these topics, as well as include info regarding the speculum and spirometer. Check my user page for more info. Mgregg21 (talk) 02:31, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Footnote 1 is misleading

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Almost all the "German-Americans" and "Italian-Americans" who were interned in WW2 had actual German or Italian citizenship, while Japanese-Americans were interned regardless of citizenship status... AnonMoos (talk) 12:51, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a source you could use to change this? TablemannDanny231 (talk) 18:50, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Misleading statement on Thomas Jefferson's views

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion

"He concluded that blacks were 'inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.[16]' This statement says that Thomas Jefferson concluded that blacks were inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind. First off, the source is biased against Jefferson. It does quote correctly from the Notes of the State of Virginia, published by Jefferson in 1785. But in the chapter on slavery Jefferson explicitly says "let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may posses different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct" Basically here he says that he doesn't have enough evidence to prove anything he said about inferiority. And, he even suggests that perhaps the Creator has given blacks an equal status (or at least a higher one than what Jefferson's suspicions were) to whites. Link to the book and text, its in the section Laws https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/jefferson.html#p138 TablemannDanny231 (talk) 19:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)TablemannDanny231, 2/26/2021

I'm new to this so I'm not sure of the exact procedure I should go through since the portion I'm mentioning is cited and this is a controversial topic. Do I need consensus from other people first? TablemannDanny231 (talk) 19:35, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi TablemannDanny231. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia too so I'm not an expert, but I will say two things:

1. Consensus is preferred. Since this is a very controversial topic, you should be careful about editing and one way to know that you should edit is through consensus.

2. Be bold (but not reckless). Remember that the worst that could happen if you edit it is it being reverted. If you want my advice, I think you should briefly include it by saying something like "However, Jefferson later stated that his views were unfounded (add reference)". EvanTaylor1289 (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice. However, I do not know if that correction would work, because it implies he came to a conclusion and then refuted it, while in reality (with at least how i interpret the primary doc) he didn't come to any conclusions. I'm not sure, I'm looking at the entire sentence "One such slave owner was Thomas Jefferson, and it was his call for science to determine the obvious "inferiority" of blacks that is regarded as "an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism."[15] He concluded that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." I think maybe saying "One such slave owner was Thomas Jefferson, and it was his scientific suspicions to determine the obvious "inferiority" of blacks and that is regarded as "an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism." While Jefferson had suspicions that blacks were inferior, he found that he could not come to any conclusion due to lack of proper research. TablemannDanny231 (talk) 18:47, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

TablemannDanny231 From this viewpoint, I would say that you should NOT include this. This is an article regarding racism; racism doesn’t have to be (and almost always isn’t) founded on actual reason and research. I think what the article is saying is that Jefferson, through this comment, did cause a huge change in scientific racism (regardless of whether his opinions were knowingly unfounded). I am neither an expert in racism nor the United States, but it seems to me that the sentence is focusing on the EFFECT of Jefferson’s speech while you are fovuaing on the INTENT and GROUNDS of Jefferson’s speech. However, once again, be bold EvanTaylor1289 (talk) 00:00, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

EvanTaylor1289 Well, scientific racism was based on reason and logic, not correct reason and logic, but nevertheless reason and logic. Hmm, well wouldn't it make sense to incorporate both the effects of his ideas and his intents? Since that might be  the only way to accurately represent his views but also stay in line with the purpose of the sentence TablemannDanny231 (talk) 00:11, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@TablemannDanny231 and EvanTaylor1289: Of course, being bold is often a good idea. But in this case I'm quite happy that you started a discussion first. The reason is the problem of primary and secondary sources, see WP:PSTS. Wikipedians are not expected to be academic scholars, so we are not expected to deal with all the problems of interpretation of primary sources like Jefferson's text. That is the work of academic historians who write what we call "secondary sources". The sentence you have doubts about is based on a secondary (or perhaps tertiary) source, so you can't change it based on a primary source. What you can do is searching for another secondary source with a different view. Or you can take a closer look into the sources and maybe you will see that they have been misrepresented. --Rsk6400 (talk) 12:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@Rsk6400: So the idea is I would have to find a secondary source that agrees with my interpretation of the primary source? I think I get what you're getting at preceding unsigned comment by TablemannDanny231 (talk)

Maybe I didn't express myself very well. I was focusing on the problem of primary and secondary sources. But there is another problem: Neutrality. Our readers have a right to be informed correctly about what modern scholarship says. That means that we are not allowed to cherry-pick sources according to our views, but that our views should be informed by the sources. Or at least that we present those sources that we don't like as well as those that we like. At best, our readers will never know whether we personally view Jefferson as a national hero or as a child abuser. --Rsk6400 (talk) 11:09, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Good places to get more information might be WP:NPOV, especially WP:DUE. --Rsk6400 (talk) 11:12, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Oh I see, well I want to be be neutral of course, I guess it just seemed like a misinterpretation to me whether or not you view Jefferson in a bad or good light. But I think that makes sense, sources inform our views. Back to the problem of primary and secondary though, I thought I understood? Or am I misinterpretation, I thought your point was that we can't put forward our own interpretations of primary sources but we need to cite the academic views on the primary source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TablemannDanny231 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Non-Protestants not white ?

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

@Suppcuzz: The source says: The Poles, in other words, were not considered white. Yes, but there is a context in the source. And that context is not the legal situation, but the reaction of some or many bosses or other people. The article is about the legal and the social aspects of whiteness. Furthermore, the source is not a scholarly one, and you added the text to the lede, which should not be done if the problem is not discussed in the text. --Rsk6400 (talk) 17:28, 8 March 2021 (UTC)