When Europeans first showed up along the eastern coast of what would become the United States they found it heavily populated. But epidemics introduced by Europeans devasted the Native population and our Pilgrim forebearers had plenty of room to settle down in New England a few years later in the 1620s.

The Natives didn't make good slaves, many refused to work or killed themselves (I read somewhere that some of the surviving Caribs and Arawaks committed suicide by eating dirt rather than work for the Spaniards).

There weren't many left, they were suffering from crushing plagues and over the next 280 years we pushed them West into barren nooks and crannies we didn't want. And the land was rich, free and empty.

WHAT A BARGAIN!

We needed cheap labor so we looked to Sub-Saharan Africa. We imported millions of Africans to work as chattel slaves. The center of the slave import business was Rhode Island. Most of the slaves, however, worked on plantations in the agricultural South.

Then, after the North decided that chattel slavery had become a bigger minus than plus, America freed the slaves and immediately re-enslaved them using ledger books and share cropping.

Then they used apartheid and lynch law to keep the Blacks in the ass end of the economy, working on the cheap and no competitive threat to the majority. This system only gave up the ghost in the 1960s.

WHAT A BARGAIN!

And to augment the cheap labor supplied by Blacks we had immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, segregated not by color but by language and culture, not as reliable as Blacks because they eventually assimilated, but useful for a spell.

WHAT A BARGAIN!

After the last shovel full of dirt had been thrown on Jim Crow's grave, it still took the Blacks 10 or 15 years to begin integrating into the mainstream economy. But as luck would have it zillions of illegal Mexicans and the world economy appeared on the horizon at that time.

Now the low paying, dangerous, shit jobs that had to remain in the U.S. could be done by illegal Latinos and the low paying, dangerous, shit jobs that were mobile could be shipped offshore to East Asia or other foreign locales. Color was no longer the factor that maintained a segregated pool of cheap labor. Now it was legal status or compliant foreign governments that kept the labor cheap.

WHAT A BARGAIN!

One day someone will fix the illegal and foreign sweat-shop "problems."

WELL I STILL WANT MY FREE LUNCH GODAMMIT!!

Who's Next?

building the railroads in the west.

you also left out the internship of the Japanese during World war II.

USA - land of slavery, and the home of the banker.

The Chinese were kept cheap and non-competitive through laws of the type that Mr. Yick Wo encountered and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chinese miners that were successful were attacked and lynched during the California Gold Rush.

The Issei and Nissei weren't interned for economic advantage during WWII.

Anyway, you failed to answer my question.

WHO'S NEXT?

(that has 5 o's, like raaaaacist).

Um, this is an awful lot of trouble to go for a lame joke, so I'll assume you're not joking.

Though you could be drunk. I certainly am.

What exactly would you prescribe based on this insightful reading of history?

They were a part of the "Southern and Eastern Europeans" that worked in sweatshops, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, for 16 hours a days for shit pay until they learned English, moved out of their ethnic enclaves and into the mainstream economy.

Who's next?

We have turned the entire lower and middle classes into economic slaves.... but it is far more cruel than the old days, we are turning another two million home dwellers into homeless non-contributing human dross (therefore falling out of economic slavery into the streets) ... by the end of the year.

The system that reduces has continued to the point where nothing is left.

slavery marches on.... and it grabs anyone in it's path.

Our children. And their children. It's morning in America, remember?

have access to cheap stuff at Wal-Mart made by Chinese and Vietnamese, they get cheap services from illegals, etc. How are we gonna make them into serfs when their living standards are so high?

The gravy train may have come to a screeching halt, or at least slowed down considerably. Once the Chinese become ardent spenders, but stop buying our debt, and the corporations run of new cheap locations to move to and we deport or legalize all the Mexicans, who will bake our bread and man our circuses?

Can "Real Uhmericans" really be the replacements for Blacks, Foreigners and Illegals? I doubt it. How would it work? How would we make it a stable system?

Who's next?

Describe how that's gonna work.

Really now.

Who's next?

A few more changes in bankruptcy law, like the most recent that was passed under W., will make every working class American a wage slave (not to mention most of the middle class as well). The process is moving ahead at full steam.

Can "Real Uhmericans"

I know you think you're being cute by ridiculing how you think southeners say the word Americans; but you are fucking it up and making yourself look like the dumbass you seek to portray them to be.

LBJ was the first person I recall being made fun of for the way he said Americans. The southern dialect does not mispronounce the word Uhmericans, as you have written. The pronunciation is Uhmurricans, with the emphasis on the murr.

If you wish to be a snotty asshole, then get your facts straight.

Jack

as far as i can recall (from history classes) the babylonians and persians and ancient greeks enslaved the people's the captured. the men because soldiers or miners (production of bronze and copper was ultra necessary, but ultra dangerous), and the younger women became . . . well . . .many things.

slavery was perpetuated by the romans, then the christians and muslims. i dont recall any historical examples of judaisim encouraging or enacting any slavery, perhaps owing to all those years they were enslaved themselves.

it was the christian religion, in the 19th century, that sparked a tide of reform and significant obstacles to slavery

the only major religion/culture which still practices slavery today is islam

be informed

Still waiting for the salient point of your charge here. Is it that European Americans are evil and American Indians are innocent, and we should all withdraw from the continent, or make public apologies at the first of every month? Or was this just an exercise for you to separate your sanctified self from all the filth that surrounds you?

I guess we are to assume that the indigenous tribes of the Americas all were loving and peaceful with their neighboring tribes. No one ever attempted to confiscate another’s land or women or possessions. The torture and human sacrifice that we know of that was going on, well, there were justifiable reasons for that.

I can also see that your sympathy stops at the borders of North and South America. You make no mention of any other ancient folk being taken over, subjugated, given diseases or new orders from exploring peoples. I guess the Anglos and Saxons from Germany did nothing wrong to the indigenous people when they moved in on Brittania. And I doubt there was any ill feelings when Asia and Africa were settled over time and again by this tribe or that tribe. No, it’s only American Indians who got screwed in world history and the fact the USA has attempted to make amends and subsidize their cultures for the past 500 years counts for nothing.

We get it about slavery. We get it. What’s your point, you want money for what happened to your great, great, grandfather? I will send you some when you publicly give a confession to all the anger, hatred and selfishness lodged in your heart. Or did you think it was only white men who sinned?

How has BAPCPA turned people into slaves?

They were required to either listen to his jokes or have sex with him. 

Like Abu Ghraib on Broadway.