Tagged: profit

“Pope Francis, who is visiting South America, says Christians are victims of genocide as he also begs forgiveness for crimes committed by Catholic church during colonial conquests. LPope Francis on Thursday launched a blistering attack on the “new colonialism” of austerity, describing unfettered capitalism as ‘the dung of the devil’ and apologising for the Catholic church’s role in the conquest of indigenous populations in the Americas.”

Source: “Pope Calls Unfettered Capitalism ‘The Dung Of The Devil.'” The Telegraph. July 10, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/11730371/Pope-calls-for-an-end-to-the-murders-of-Christians-in-the-Middle-East-and-beyond.html.

“The sellers of slaves, [Cornell University professor and author Edward E.] Baptist insists [in his book “The Half Has Never Been Told”], were not generally paternalistic owners who fell on hard times and parted reluctantly with members of their metaphorical plantation ‘families,’ but entrepreneurs who knew an opportunity for gain when they saw one. As for the slave traders — the middlemen — they excelled at maximizing profits. They not only emphasized the labor abilities of those for sale (reinforced by humiliating public inspections of their bodies), but appealed to buyer’s salacious fantasies. In the 1830s, the term ‘fancy girl’ began to appear in slave-trade notices to describe young women who fetched high prices because of their physical attractiveness. ‘Slavery’s frontier,’ Baptist writes, ‘was a white man’s sexual playground.'”

To carry on in the tradition and spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “nonviolent, creative protest,” we — American citizens of African descent — must now seek and demand REPARATIONS. Over the last five hundred years, whites have demonstrated to us that they are never going to change and as a result, they must pay for their egregious and on-going crimes against humanity (e.g. slavery, Jim Crow, continuing discrimination, genocide, using Hollywood to project the myth of black inferiority on the collective conscience, etc.).

Source: Eric Foner. “A Brutal Process.” New York Times. October 3, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/the-half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-e-baptist.html.