This doesn't look right to me, either. The number of slaves in the U.S.
topped out at about 600,000. (Contrasted with 6 MILLION in the Carribean --
source: "A Brief History of the Caribbean : From the Arawak and the Carib to
the Present", Jan Rogozinski).
This is not to say that conditions on "the Middle Passage" weren't horrific;
they were.
BTW, regarding the question of the historical burden of slavery, I like to
say that the current cost in the U.S. of slavery is the present value of the
price of 40 acres and a mule in 1865.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitchell, Jerry (3337)" <Jerry.Mitchell@esavio.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Reparations
> Olga wrote:
> Ten million to twenty-five million (estimates vary) Africans dead on slave
> ships before arriving to our shores for the privilege of being sold; 246
> years of slavery (something not experienced by any other
> ethnic/racial group) (rape, murder, torture, and lynching of slaves
legal);
> 100 more years of de jure segregation (rape, murder, torture and lynching
of
> black American citizens tolerated); still ongoing de facto segregation
after
> all those hundreds of years of mean yesterdays; a broken underclass - like
> no other underclass in the United States - today.
> (end)
>
>
> 10 to 25 MILLION?! I had to run some numbers on those....
>
> Being conservative, I took the 10 million figure. Divide that by how many
> were on the boat, I went for possible an extreme number of 1000 slaves on
a
> boat (Unless they were driving oil tankers). This would still take 10000
> trips. Did they REALLY have that many boats, or were they shipping people
> from like 5000 B.C. forward? These ships took weeks/months to traverse the
> Atlantic.
>
> Jerry Mitchell
>
> P.S. I don't feel sympathetic to any cultures. I never met a culture, only
> individuals. Sorry, I dont think group speak, youll have to rephrase the
> argument without using masses of faceless people you never met and
certainly
> cant speak for.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:59 MDT