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Centuries of kidnapping, torture, murder, rape. What white person can understand black lives? Not me.

thomas011716
(Photo: AP)
My dad called Martin Luther King an “agitator.” I bet a lot of white dads did. Seems like every time Dr. King showed up somewhere, things got torn up or burned up.

So we killed him. Not me, of course. I’m not a racist. But who thinks he is?

So we tried to fix it. Made his birthday a national holiday. Put him on a pedestal. Where we can honor him. And he can’t poke us in the eye.

Plus, now we’ve squared everything. The Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. Come on, we’ve even elected a black president! That’s why people who look like me have a hard time understanding why so many black people are still angry while others have given up on America altogether.

I’ll let Ta-Nehisi Coates boil it down for you. White society was not achieved through “wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor and land.” In short, through three centuries of kidnapping, torture, murder and rape. Broken teeth, broken bones and broken spirits. Families ripped apart. Children taken from their parents. Men humiliated in front of their wives. Women brutalized within earshot of their husbands. Lash after bloody lash on bare backs. Then, sleep on a bare wooden floor. No doctor, no dentist, no nothing. Just non-stop misery with a few hymns on Sunday.

We built an entire society on these bruised and broken backs. That and countless Native Americans driven off their land. Then, after the house of horrors fell, and the sin was purged by the blood of more than a half-million young mostly white men, white America still did not relent. Despite passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, states found ways to disenfranchise blacks. We took back the vote, cordoned blacks off in the most undesirable parts of our cities, forced them into inferior schools and denied them opportunities. Few blacks owned their homes. Many could not read and write. Thousands were lynched. That’s Southern for murdered without a trial. Imagine if that’s what black men had done to Robert De Niro or David Bowie for marrying black women.

Now women need to seek those combat jobs: Column
When the Supreme Court — at the goading of America’s greatest black lawyer — finally struck down “separate but equal,” we dragged our feet for up to 10 years in some states before we would integrate our schools. Even then, thousands of white parents simply placed their children in private schools. Later, when progressive whites were able to enact some modest corrective measures to offset centuries of state-sponsored terrorism, a Supreme Court — composed of eight privileged whites and only one African American — struck them down as reverse discrimination. Checkmate. It is as if after cheating for seven innings and being caught in the eighth, the umpire could make no adjustment to the score because that would not be fair.

Now comes a phone call. I have been asked to speak at a Martin Luther King Day event. Me, a white preacher, speaking to a predominantly black audience filled with gifted preachers.

Supreme Court can help defeat educational inequality: Richard Riordan
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Well, here’s the message. No white person understands the black experience. Not Bill Clinton. Not Bernie Sanders. Not me. Not anybody. We can’t understand the black experience any more than I can understand how it feels to be a woman.

Where does this leave us? Are whites and blacks condemned to live only parallel lives with a great chasm forever separating us? Not necessarily. White people could rise to the occasion. We could perform the first and more fundamental act of love.

We could listen.

Oliver Thomas is a minister, lawyer and member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.

Ya sweet dreams.

I must be a miserable life to be a liberal . . . with the mental disorder thing and all.

GUILT! GUILT! GUILT! GUILT! GUILT! GUILT! WHITE GUILT!

To a left wing liberal bliss ninny, there is never, ever, enough WHITE GUILT! Nor enough laws, nor taxes, nor regulations, nor restrictions, nor rules.

They never change and they never, ever, disengage.

L.W.

Blacks were slaves because slavery was endemic to Africa. They captured and enslaved each other and sold their slaves to white and Muslim slavers. Their still is a lot of slavery in Africa so don't blame slavery on whites or the USA.

Furthermore, there haven't been slaves in the USA 150 years. Everyone who owned slaves or was a slave has died. So no one in the USA deserves compensation for slavery or has any guilt for slavery.

Slavery was for the most part a low profit agricultural institution in the South. It didn't produce great wealth. What wealth it created was largely destroyed during the civil war.

Furthermore, by any measure the ancestors of the slaves brought to the USA are a thousand times better off because of it.

Blacks who blame racism and slavery for their problems should look at their actions first. Have they attempted to earn an education? Have they chosen to obey the law and maintain integrity in their lives? Have they chosen to work for a living? The answer is generally no. That it isn't racism or slavery that holds them back. It is their own bad choices.

Actually slavery does still exist in America. The "plantation" where they toil is called the Democrat Party. The field hands live in the inner cities and the house [bleep] are the "black caucus" in congress.

Bull. I'm from the north. Didn't have a lot of black people experience, and couldn't figure why anybody had a problem with them, UNTIL I moved to the south, and lived among them. The stereotypes are true, for the D.C. area bunch. Get out to the country, and the population is made up of a LOT more good people. I can't seem to find anyplace where they are successful. I know one thing. It ain't MY damn fault. Getting pretty tired of being blamed for it.

White folks didn't invent slavery. We are one of the few races who banished it. Blacks are still doing it, as are Arabs.

That's a good analogy.

600,000 people, mostly white guys, died to free them in the Civil War. We aren't a perfect nation, but we are one that has constantly striven to better itself.

Lincoln:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

I am going to point out something that is hardly ever mentioned, but most most slave owners looked out for their slaves pretty good. Not all mind you, but most. They were considered farm animals. Look at farm animals and how they are treated. If you want work done, they are well fed and doctored as needed. Now they did not eat the same as the the plantation owner, except when the plantation was a small farm that just owned one or two slaves. Then they pretty much ate the same things, which was what they grew on the farm to eat. Lots of mis-information out there. Sure the trouble makers were punished, but most were never whipped or hurt in any way. miles

The article makes it sound like every white person had slaves. In truth, even in the South, less than 5% of anyone owned slaves.

So do I feel white guilt? Yes. Less than 5%.

Slavery in the US was practically paradise compared to the way Muslim nations treated black slaves. The males were castrated right off the boat, and the women were typically raped to death. The castrated men and boys (those who survived the process) were then worked to death, living constantly in chains, latched up at night.

40% of Jewish households living in slave states owned slaves in the US prior to the Civil War.

Black Slave owners:

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

http://www.theroot.com/did-black-people-own-slaves-1790895436

http://racisminamerica.org/five-of-the-wealthiest-blacks-who-owned-slaves-in-america/

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/emblack_slaveownersem_a_review.html

TRH, 40% of just a few is damn few.

I agree, a slave was worth a lot more than a poor white man back then. The slaves where well taken care of.

And there it is. Yankees in a nutshell, not a slam at you.

A slave couldn't pay for itself now.