Black Nationalism (Split from Zimmerman Trial)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There is nothing wrong with goat herding, the issue is that you intentionally conflated it with restoring "economic prosperity and cultural, linguistic and social integrity."

This is what you said:

For example, reestablishment of the Great Sioux Reservation as a Sovereign Protectorate of the United States would be a good first step in that direction, and one which would make sense environmentally as well due to the reversion of that area of the Great Plains into the "Great American Desert" where farming is increasingly unsustainable, but the land remains optimal for traditional low-intensity herding.

Note "traditional". I get that you are shoehorning in your very real environmental concern about drought and land usage into this issue but you prove you are falling into stereotypes again and again with comments like this:

They lost the land and watched foreigners come in and wreck it. They understand quite well the importance of managing it correctly now. That is all that aspect of the argument was.

I can just see you envisioning the lone warrior on a horse above a landfill letting a tear fall to the ground. That image is insulting and racist Duchess. There is no special relationship with the native american and the ground below him any more than there is for anyone else with the ground below them and in this case it’s the SAME GROUND. A white corn farmer or a Native American goat herder or visa versa, neither has any intrinsic closer connection to the land over the other. They have both been there for generations at this point.

If you want everyone to start herding goats that’s fine, but there is no special reason the Native Americans will be better at it than anyone else or would more readily chose it. Actually they may be worse than the current owners which is why I asked you what percentage of the reservation population is engaged in agriculture and more importantly sustainable agriculture different from that being used by the current users. I suspect that you will just be putting amateurs into a profession they don't currently perform but somehow think a magic connection with the land will make them better at . See Zimbabwe.

As of the last US census 78% of those identifying as native americans don't even live on reservations and 70% overall live in urban areas. Not exactly the best recruiting pool for the new agricultural labor you intend to usher in a new age of economic prosperity.

And while we are at it, why are we assuming goat herding is an avenue to economic prosperity? Note that sustainable and profitable are different things, and the Native Americans need something really profitable. Sure lots of the world eats goat, but can you point me to any area with a Western living standard that is supported by such? I can point to plenty of areas where corn and wheat and soy do so here in the US.

Here is a report on the world goat industry, you will note where the majority of it resides and the prosperity of the countries in question. You will note goat meat only made up 2% of meat inventories worldwide so local unrecorded consumption asside its hardly a "a premium item for billions of the world's population" as you contend. Surely a rare protein source for many, but because there is no other choice and its not like the mythical reservation in question is going to import it to Kenya.

You will also note there was no goat inventory at all in the US, meaning there is almost no market for it. This is your grand idea for economic prosperity? Producing a meat with no local demand except places you can't export it to and make up 2% of the market anyway? Maybe you can develop that market during the next half century, but it’s nothing to hang your hat on. I personally like goat, I am sure it will eventually be very popular here. I doubt you are buying futures in the industry right now though are you?

You have two scenarios here. Some local Native American farmers use goats in currently unoccupied land for subsistence, but that’s not "economic prosperity" now is it? Or they repurpose existing farmland to this end and destroy a currently economically viable enterprise to live on subsistence. The second may be the inevitable result of the drought you brought up anyway, but that still /= economic prosperity for anyone.

Goats are not going to produce what you want. I don't think that’s what you intend every Native American to do, but you specifically mentioned it as relevant to achieving your end goals.

Oh and you have been consistent, consistent on advocating forced deportation of people based on race. This needs to be remembered when you are throwing your reactionary racist accusations around.

I never once advocated forced deportation. I in fact expressly used the term "voluntary relocation", progressive scum. Goat herding was a casual example and I hereby concede it: You cannot, in fact, live your life entirely based off of goat herding. This does not invalidate one iota of my argument, which can be made with any kind of scientifically managed agricultural and herding processes in the great plains. You have turned goat herding, which was a casual example of how you could make money off of the land and of which many people would doubtless be involved in analyzing along with many other options, into some kind of bizarre litmus test over a very basic idea: Giving large areas of land back to Native Americans and expanding tribal sovereignty to include total domestic autonomy from the federal government. That is all I was ever arguing and I expect you to provide reasons why that is a bad idea instead of raising strawmen and red herrings. That is the only issue being debated.

Ah, self righteous indignation and a false resumption of authority without any actual details to support said authority. Is this really what you are going to rest on, you having visited a few reservations? The "I have a black friend defense?"

Nobody is suited to comment on this issue really except for natives, but I can certainly try to defend the rights of indigenous people instead of restricting them.

I don't doubt the sincerity of your intentions but unless you are about to tell us you work for the Department of Indian Affairs, are a member of a tribal council, live on one of these reservations or maybe just took a few courses in college you are just an amateur commenter just like everyone else. Your statements have to stand on their own and so far they do not.

I have actually studied the issue in college in classes heavily focusing on the transnational intersection of women's rights and indigenous rights including internal development and expressions of culture as expressions of independence and resistance. I don't expect you to understand any of these things and I don't necessarily agree with the theory, being quite conservative, but certainly from my own beliefs comes a profound conviction that the only course is to respect and honour tribal autonomy and sovereignty, and this I am quite prepared to defend.

And I was pretty sure I was careful not to claim you were a racist, but rather your barely thought out and unrealistic plan and the assumptions underlining it are.

So I have some half-baked ideas for land use? So what? My argument was this and only this: We should give large areas of land back to Native Americans and expanding tribal sovereignty to include total domestic autonomy from the federal government. I was not defending or saying anything else except by way of analogy and example.

I certainly do have a right to speak about it as do you or anyone else, and your assumption of authority is baseless. I have not claimed any special knowledge or expertise and am only commenting on your idiotic return fantasy that is no different than that of Saxonite and stupid for all the same reasons.

There is nothing stupid or fantastical about cultural autonomy. And unsurprisingly many Native Americans do in fact return to their land after they are forced out by economic factors.

1.) I have been to the plains states many times, I don't believe that gives me any particular insight into these issues and I know it doesn't give you any as your whole goats=gold fiasco above indicates.

It's only a fiasco because you made it one, you damned liar.

2.) Youth leaving reservations is as its heart no different than what all rural areas of the US are facing, only 16% of the population being rural. That’s far lower than than the Native American rural population but their percentage has been plummeting right alongside the rest of America. And they are leaving for the exact same reasons, lack of opportunity. Goat farming aside, you are not going to get those people to return or stay on the reservations any more than you are going to get black people to return or stay in rural southern communities based on that alone.

It's different because they move back as adults for cultural reasons, and of course economic opportunities are being created on more and more reservations which develop them. So, actually, there are now in fact effective programmes to get people to stay in the autonomous reservation community.

And while Native Americans probably do face a under layer of racism depending on where they go when they flee to urban areas its not going to be any different than any other minority. Or anyone from that matter leaving a rural setting for the big city.

The point isn't that the racism they face is similar, the point is that they have legal and traditional recourse to a solution: The expansion of reservation autonomy.

And you don't get to retreat to some nitpicky irrelevances about why I didn't spend fifty lines parsing different levels and types of agriculture. You knew damn well what I was talking about and the simple fact is that your anecdotal reference to a few Native Americans practicing sustainable (but not necessarily profitable) agriculture does not reflect at all on the 5.8 million Native Americans in this country, at least 70% of which have no connection to agriculture in any of its forms whatsoever.

They have the connection of returning to their land when they are old, after economic conditions drove them out. And you are the one who started nitpicking by treating an offhand suggestion for what could be done to the land (which they would be explicitly free to ignore under my actual proposal) as the essential basis of your whole argument.

You are the one who highlighted this as some special road to prosperity. If you didn't mean that fine but sustainable agriculture is NOT going to lift reservations out of poverty by itself. It will probably end up contributing to any successful reservation economy to the same degree it does any rural state such as Kansas, who has at a glance has over two million non farm jobs in a population of just 2.9 million people.

To compare rural states with the complete reservation economy is quite a different matter in a fully autonomist setting. One, after all, is just a state and the other would have considerably more power.

Yeah, and those changes are not to engage in agriculture. Just because you can raise goats doesn't mean it’s economically viable or something you are going to rely on to lift a population out of crushing poverty. And quite a bit of agriculture is wildly prosperous right now and the youth are STILL leaving as it is not the lifestyle they want profitable or not.

And no, as I quoted above you advocated them returning to TRADITIONAL agriculture processes, specifically herding, and somehow think that will magically not only uplift them out of poverty but also give them dignity and self respect (you as a white man knowing what that is, your standard used above not mine).

Traditional by which I meant, uses actually appropriate for the land (by both Indians and Anglos) before the development of the modern aquifer exploitation. By the way,I am a white woman, just to point it out. I had thought the handle on the board was indicative enough, but oh well.

How about this Dutchess, why don't they abandon your rural pipe dream and do what the local economy supports and demands? Being a natural gas driller or a banker or a baker or a pharmacist is not white people stuff, its modern economy and money producing stuff. There is no reason that can't produce dignity and self respect and that can be done in NYC or Spokane or Del Rio or the reservation. If one of those things is goat herding go for it, again these things are dictated by economic reality or anything else you would describe as “traditional” as you did for herding so be it.

Those occupations would never use more than a tiny fraction of the land on the reservation, and the point was entirely about how the land could be used on a much larger scale to benefit the existing population. The simple fact of the matter also is that economics is not very appropriate as a measure of cultural health and happiness. Let them make their own decisions for how involved in western life they want to be.

If you can quote where I said otherwise you get a cookie. As I said even the current residents will probably have to adapt to this but that /= goat herding. Not for the ends you want and whatever they decide to switch to (if they decide to stay, which people the youth of all races right now are NOT) is probably going to be not be done via the urban transplants you want bring in once you are done ethnically cleansing your new territory.

Goat herding was always irrelevant to the issue at hand, and I of course explicitly said people should have the right to remain who live there, albeit under tribal law.

I don't think you are a racist, I think you are haplessly saying racist things because you are not examining the reality of your position.

No, I know exactly what I am saying. If what I am saying is truly racist, then I am a racist and proud of it. If supporting the rights of indigenous people to their sovereignty, autonomy, way of life, and culture, makes you a racist, then I am a racist and I will never repent of being a racist and we will make a little deal, you can quote that wherever you want to as long as you quote this entire paragraph without editing it or removing a word from it, okay?

And I highly doubt goat herding is the ONLY think suitable for that land. After all we already have deserts in the US and goat herding accounts for exactly 0% of the economy of Phoenix.

You could have saved yourself all this trouble if you had just refrained from saying "traditional" in your goat herding appeal. Knowing something about goat herding probably would have helped too.

You were the one who chose to base an entire discussion of indigenous treaty rights on whether or not goat herding was economically viable. You are the one who thinks it has anything to do with anything. You are the one who derailed the argument.

Nope, but yes the current model is not sustainable. Your goal is economic prosperity, prove goat herding provides that.

I don't need to because we're not having a discussion about goat herding.

And you already tipped your hand with "they watched the white man ruin their land and they won't let it happen again!" BS. Science is not your sole motivation for deciding how this will all go down.

That's correct. I am also a defender of cultural autonomy and rights and traditional ways of living.

You use this word a lot but have yet to back it up. Please do.

If you object to the expansion of tribal sovereignty, you are a racist who deserves to suffer. Full stop. That's me backing it up.

1.) Oh please do point us to this indigenous population enjoying amazing economic prosperity following your process. Do they live in Zimbabwe?

No, though considerable improvement has been seen in populations like at the Warm Springs and Grand Ronde reservations thanks to a combination of sustainable businesses and casino revenues in allowing the expansion of linguistic and cultural programmes.

2.) So now you are an actual racist complete with racist slurs? Congratulations? Surely not, you can clarify for us yes? Land is only an issue here if you intend to have them revert to a centuries dead economic model of yesteryear where these practices were viable (and even then not very) and required said land. Land and agriculture is not the arbiter of anything you might use to achieve actually desirable goals. Building schools, technology education, history lessons and museums, removing institutional barriers, food health and medical care and yes the introduction of modern economic models of all industries and sectors including sustainable farming are.

If a white person calls another white person out on their racism, they're now themselves racist? I guess being a Slav means I'm not white enough for you then. Oh well, I don't care.

Giving a modern assimilated urban Native American youth a goat and plopping him in his pumas and graphic T-shirt into 40 acres of hard scrabble land with some white dudes burnt down house in the distance is just going to force him to buy a plane ticket back to Boston. That land does him NOTHING. A college scholarship on the other hand...

They get the college scholarships and then they come back to the reservation to help. Interesting, no? They don't want to assimilate; and has been stated by others in this thread.

1.) Are you claiming Native Americans have some predisposition to drugs and poverty once they leave the reservation? Those problems are rampant on the reservations themselves and are a symptom of poverty not anything specific to Native Americans themselves. It’s the classic fish out of water story and ALL migrants are subject to it (minorities more so depending on where they go due to racism, not predisposition).

Yes, they have higher propensity off the reservation due to the lack of traditional familial and cultural support networks as well as intervention programmes by the tribal governments. This has led to a substantial Bureau of Indian Affairs presence in cities like Portland to try and expand the intervention programmes into the cities, precisely because the problem has become focused there.

2.) I did not say anyone prefers assimilation, I said that the vast majority ARE assimilated. 78% don't even live on reservations.

Not by choice.

I think its abundantly clear assimilation works better than these crypto fascist pseudo states based on racism and ethnic cleansing you propose for the same reasons they are for black people as was discussed at length earlier in the thread. I, however, am not the source of the reality as it stands today.

Assimilation is genocide, and if that makes me a fascist, Anauê! I am a fascist, so be it. Anauê!

Which doesn't mean they are not going to try regardless if it will only be possible for a short while and end up screwing them in the end. Sustainable agriculture other than what is currently practiced makes sense nearly EVERYWHERE in the long term but also very often in the short term, but how many places are actually doing it? How many places are just going to milk the land for what it’s worth and give the next generation a dried out cracked patch of desert?

But not the Native Americans. Oh no, they have a generational memory and are different from every other human on earth for reasons! They will squeeze blood from a stone and make the desert blossom with their nature power inherited from their ancestors who were in perfect commune with the earth and eschew all the values and expectations of the modern society most of them currently live with and cherish. Local school boards? Local Courts? Labor Day planning committee? BAH! All will be willingly abandoned to live at the whim of ethnically determined tribal leadership and the heavy hand of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. Sorry little Johnny (of course he will receive a proper name that has linguistic and cultural integrity and provide dignity to his unknown to him but surely dignity devoid life up until now), mom and dad need to quite their white man jobs under the white man's yoke and go herd goats "traditionally". I’m not sure if all the white people are gone yet but we will take care of that if not…

And this is the problem with the modern American "conservative", who is a conservative in name only. The hatred of government, the demand for limited intervention, all of which stand against thousands of years of history and all of which actually seek the continued atomisation of society. The simple fact is that you came on this board hoping to troll liberals and progressives but I am not one of those. Over the years I have become a conservative in a profound sense, and that is one of my problems as I am a better person of actions than deeds.

This is your world Dutchess, enjoy. That generational memory has served the Palestinians well surely.

Just like they did against the Crusaders, they'll win in the end, Patroklos. I came to that design despite loving the Jewish people and Israel a long time ago. The Israelis can't effectively disengage and create the separate state they need to survive, and accordingly locked into a death struggle, they are going to fall and their nation is going to crumple down in a few centuries. And the Palestinians will go back to living the way they have always lived. Good or bad, it is bound to happen, and in this particular case, actually, generational memory has served them very well. My world would be much less bloody because people like you would not be imposing free markets and democracy at the point of bayonet. I prefer that to another century, another round of revolutions promoting another ideology that will be bankrupt and replaced with the next in the revolutionary's hard in another century.

"Heavy hand of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service" says it all--you're arguing just because you want to end the reservations, end the government mechanism for dealing with them, and eliminate the distinctions between the people who founded their cultures here and those who transplanted their cultures here. And that is wrong and racist, because these people have a birthright to the land. I am quite prepared to defend that idea: If that makes me also a racist, well, then, I am a racist who seeks to empower people not my own, and what kind of racist is that, really?

I don't have any knowledge as to the doings of site moderation, but given the plethora of actually racism you have thrown out in this thread up to and including advocating ethnic cleansing you are probably in for a rude awakening.

Go ahead and quote all my racism though. Again, cookies are on the line

You have damned yourself with your own words. I don't need to say more. If I get banned over this thread I don't care: I don't desire to associate with you, and one way or another that will stop, so what does it matter?

[Thanas]

I'd like for Patrokles to explain to me (with small words, I have a headache and am slow) why this premise

We should give large areas of land back to Native Americans and expanding tribal sovereignty to include total domestic autonomy from the federal government.

is supposedly a bad one.

[Channel72]

I'd like for Patrokles to explain to me (with small words, I have a headache and am slow) why this premise

We should give large areas of land back to Native Americans and expanding tribal sovereignty to include total domestic autonomy from the federal government.

is supposedly a bad one.

It's a bad idea because the 21st century economy is extremely globalized. Why do you think that a sovereign Native American nation would result in better quality of life and better economic prosperity than US citizenship? Don't make me link to this.

Also, what exactly is the statute of limitations on historical conquests? Should Texas go back to Mexico? Should Mexico go back to the (dwindling) modern Mayan population? Should Sicily go back to the Phoenicians? Considering that all of human history has been a constant flux of migration and conquest (including the pre-Columbian Meso-American civilizations and North American tribes), the idea that the Native Americans still have a moral right to large swathes of US land centuries later seems sort of arbitrary.

[Rogue 9]

Also, what exactly is the statute of limitations on historical conquests? Should Texas go back to Mexico? Should Mexico go back to the (dwindling) modern Mayan population? Should Sicily go back to the Phoenicians? Considering that all of human history has been a constant flux of migration and conquest (including the pre-Columbian Meso-American civilizations and North American tribes), the idea that the Native Americans still have a moral right to large swathes of US land centuries later seems sort of arbitrary.

I believe the point isn't about reversing historical conquest in itself, but in abiding by treaties with the specific tribes that the United States government is legally bound to but violated within years of signing. If that's the principle, and I'm sure I'll be corrected by those making the point if I'm wrong, Texas was ceded to the United States by treaty, and the Spanish never bothered to negotiate with the Mayans for the land. The Roman Empire no longer exists to take Sicily from, etc. If the weight is given to international treaty, the United States' situation with the native tribes is different in that there are violated treaties between parties that both have governmental continuity from when the treaties were made.

[Knife]

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm curious, at what point do those treaties continue when in regards to dwindling tribes we signed them with. Don't attack, this is a clarifying question, not some side reason to 'steal their land'.

A lot of those treaties were signed with a, more or less, stable nation state of peoples. Some of those tribes are decimated now. For example, the Goshute tribe has a reservation some 30 or so miles west of Salt Lake City. At present, there is roughly 20-30 members of that tribe and/or identify as part of the tribe. Now, those 20-30 people have the effects and lands of that treaty; but I guess my question is, if that 20-30 people continue to dwindle to a dozen, two or three, what point to you call the 'nation' you signed a treaty with dead and thereby non binding?

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting question.

One complication is that the tribe often dwindles because they were artificially restricted to a reservation on bad land, and not even on the large plot of bad land that they signed up for. If there's simply no viable economic activity you can possibly engage in on your fifty square miles of rock and sand, then yes, over the course of a few generations, the children will move away to some place with economic prospects, and the tribe will die out.

[Saxtonite]

<redacted - has to edit>

[Saxtonite]

Im Baaaaaaaack!

(Please excuse any weird formatting. I edited this in MS notepad before putting it on the forum, which resulted in a bnch of weird line breaks which I had to remove. That is why some quotes will be out of place or disorganized if I missed any)

More broadly, I was prepared to get involved in this thread, but I don't have the right as a caucasian to fight Saxtonite's battle for him, so whereas I thought I was helping him before I now find myself carrying the entire debate -- which isn't right, as he has his own right to fight his own battles, which is sort of the entire point of the thread.

>__< NO STAY IN THE DEBATE >__<

Saxtonite, as a fellow black man I have to say that you're being ridiculous. Like most black people I'm partial to some aspects of black nationalism, but you're taking things too far and drifted into some bizarre fantasy that has no chance of happening and would only make things worse if it did happen.

Black people have been talking about having their own state since the late 1800s. I don't know how 'fantastic' things are if there were black writers from as far back as before the civil war talking about the need for a black state. And I don't know about how 'worse' things can get than a faux-integration which lies through the teeth about how black people can magically overcome 400 years of being shat on by adopting white american capitali$m to fix everything. Oh, and you have to adopt European family structure (so you can be put in jail for polygamy! You know, something Africans have done historically).

but for all it's flaws it's been pretty successful. Overall black people have succeeded under integration and I honestly feel that the problems we face today can be solved within this system.

The black poor is WORSE OFF now under faux-integration than it was during segregation. How do you explain this. White FELONS are more likely to get hired in situations than black graduates. What's this shit. Please show me how integration and cultural suppression is better. Integration disproportionally resulted in the DESTRUCTION of black schools and firing of black teachers in the 1960s-70s.

There's no need to break apart and form our own nation.

Black America is ALREADY a separate nation. And no, you cannot commit cultural genocide and try to wipe it out or go all NKVD population transfer to destroy it.

Saxtonite, I understand your feelings, but this idea of yours is horrible.

Provide a better one to ressurrect the black man's culture and give him autonomy than a separate state.

Saxtonite, I see, has ignored the evidence I've posted and continued to harp on as if AAVE is descended mostly from African languages, and posted a link to a pop-culture book as his evidence.

Hmmm? There -is- an African influence in Ebonics and that is undeniable. The Creole was de-creolized reuslting in the extra British influence.

A brief survey of advertisements of runaways’ slaves revealed that in some cases Africans were speaking Creole or pidgin learned on the coast of Africa

African cultural and linguistic acculturation into the American culture took several generations. In each generation less and less of the African culture was retained. After about eight generations of country-born Africans, successful Americanization had taken place. But the linguistic exchanges were mutual and reciprocal: the process also brought about the Africanization of the South. Generations of interaction with African speech patterns produced the distinct white southern accent. Edward Kimber, a traveler in the South in 1746, noticed the impact of Black English on white southern speech, writing that “one thing they are very faulty in, with regard to their Children, which is, that when young, they suffer them too much to prowl amongst the young Negroes, which insensibly causes them to imbibe their Manners and broken speech.”[18] In other words, the English of southerners resembled the African version.

The British lower class was AFRICANIZED by the speech of the black slaves..

"To this argument," he states, "I can only point out that many Whites during antebellum slavery and even in modern times are reared during the ontogenetic [developing] period of their language. . .by Black mammies and therefore have adopted many African elements in their speech. Secondly, `White trash' as a population of America's poor are naturally more likely to rub elbows, like it or not, with Blacks and other suppressed minorities in low-paying occupational and low-rent or low-cost housing and school situations than they are going to rub elbows or interact with the more affluent Whites. Therefore, it should not be at all a mystery to any learned and honest individual as to why `White-trash English' sounds somewhat similar to Ebonics. On the surface structure. . . (phonetically and lexically), Ebonics is related to `White-trash English', however, in its deep structure, Ebonics and 'White-trash' English are autonomous languages."

More than just 'blacks learned british speech and were completely de-creolized'

I accept your concession that when you said "naturally" you meant "ideologically desirable, to me."

There is such a thing as Biolinguistics, so it would make sense that Africans can speak African languages a bit better, given the languages were arguably influenced by their genetics and vice-versa. Remember certain linguistic groups have higher levels of dyslexia, and certain writing systems have higher levels of illiteracy, so it would make sense that certain languags would not be as well for the black people.

Also, many Africans believe similarly as well.

An integral part of Bantu culture is the unchanging secret “spirit name,” something that the individual has which is uniquely his or her own from the past and is carried on to the next generation, given to a new baby so that it may remain incarnate. Thus by a strange interweaving of religion and language, the “inner soul” of the speech of a cultural group is preserved. As Munday reported,[41]

Officials now prefer the African to be registered under his spirit-name, owing to its never being changed, but there are two practical disadvantages which weigh against its being used for registration purposes: An African of tribes with which we are concerned is very shy of using it for himself or another, and in some parts, the spirit names are so few in number that the majority of person in one area may share half a dozen. However, as has been said, the spirit name is never changed from the mother’s back to the grave.

The giving of the spirit-name (literally, “of birth” or “of the navel”) is regarded as an event of the greatest importance. Every child born is regarded as the “come back” of some dead person, either of the same or of the opposite sex. The person has to be given the spirit-name of the dead person.

-As late as the 1930s, and to the MODERN DAY, Blacks were named after the day or month that they were born. Which is what their AFRICAN ancestors did.

What, no love for Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee?

Actually, thank you for reminding me of that. Parts of Arkansas, Tennessee and ideally Texas would be part of the new state

Also, you do accept that any government that tried to do this would very quickly have American Civil War Mk II on its hands and this time with the South having more legitimate grievances to complain about, right?

The South complained about their 'way of life' being removed and thought the same thing would happen in civil war I. Too bad the unionists did not grant new black states, oh well.Yes i acknowledge the possibility of bloodshed which might be pretty massive in this sort of situation.

Also, why don't you define "historical claim" for me?

Black people were there in larger numbers and/or for longer than white people, conducted more economic development on the area ("worked the land longer/harder") than white people, and they have a cultural/spiritual tie to the land.

So, white assimilation of black people is evil and bad and stuff but black assimilation of american natives is fine and dandy,

Well it's fine for the black people, not so much for the native americans. However, the black people were also culturally assimilated into native american nations (See black seminoles). Also I did not say (earlier on) black assimilation of native americans was "fine and dandy". I stated a simple fact, nothing about morality.

despite them, you know, having no ethnic or cultural ties at all either?

Africans and native americans ran away together, and africans fought alongside native americans against whites in many cases. There were africans who were 'slaves' of native americans as well

You're being massively hypocritical,

How so?

and if any native american read this I imagine he would feel at least slightly offended by the insinuation that he should give up his culture in favor of yours.

LOL, my family was native american. As in my family tree claims its' lineage from mixed black/native americans in reconstruction era Mississippi. As in, my mother engages in native american rituals in the sense of reconnecting with the past.

If you want Neo Afrika to practice a different religion you'll have to enforce it somehow since most blacks are Christian.

Laicity = secularism. Besides, there is a trend of black people converting to Islam in jail and converting others to Islam while OUT of jail. The population will grow to some percentage. Likely not the entire population but a significant amount of the population. Also, Christianity -can- and IS being Africanized - after all the "jesus" talked about in the bible can be easily be described as being a Black African. And Black Jesus makes more sense than blond hair blue eyed white jesus. There's enough writing to justify such a black jesus.

Also, Lousiana and Haitian Voodoo have become synchronized with Catholicism, so you'd have to purge them too. I don't see that becoming very popular.

Voodoun has its own priesthood. And of course, it's not -that- hard to mention which is 'truly' African. There is such a resurrection even among mainline blacks. History can take one in different directions. Perhaps such a state can even purge Santeria of all (White) influences.

It's funny that you call ethnocentrism "annoying" when you justify founding Neo Afrika almost solely on it. You can say that white people wouldn't suffer any discrimination in Neo Afrika, but how do you plan to keep that from happening when you make non-whiteness the very motto of the state? When you claim that white influence is something to be struggled against? Separate but equal, huh? Will they have to sit in the back of the bus then?

I justify neo afrika on the logic of "self-determination for all ethnic groups" and "Every ethnic group deserves its own state" and whatnot. To be fair, the state would be more "African" or "pro-black" than "Anti-white". Also, you can oppose whiteness and white influence while not hating white people. Whites can be Nagrified or Africanized of "Niggalized" if need be, which can be marrying a black, learning Ebonics of an African language, or something else. I believe I mentioned such in the past of this thread.

I don't see how any referendum on formation of the new state can pass without resorting to violence.
How do you propose to make the state 70% black up from 23%?

We aren't taking the entire states. Just the black majority areas as well as land around the black majority areas, enough to guarantee a black plurality at the least, preferably a black majority. Hence claims on the black belt and the areas around it.

Furthermore one of the fastest growing groups in the aforementioned states are Hispanics which will further lower the percentage of blacks in the region in the future.

The hispanic population would still be outnumbered by black people and the blacks would still have more power and influence in those areas than the hispanic population. Also, the hispanic population is nearly steady immmigration-wise currently.

Detroit still has some of the greatest crime rates in US even though its mayor is black and its police force was majority black for decades now. It doesn't seem self evident that creating ethnically or racially homogenous enclaves will lead to any increase in economic or social well being for the various minorities.

Black ran townships were better off than towns with black and white people in it in the Jim Crow South. Given White people could burn down black competition, well that's unsurprising. Zora Neale Hurston writes about so in some of her novels I believe.

Language and Naming:

The creation of a constructed "African" language for African-Americans may be a goal of the black nationalist movement, but I'm not sure you're being intellectually honest with yourself about how well it's going to work. Practically all constructed languages fail miserably.

The best you can hope for is that this becomes the black equivalent of Esperanto, in which case it'll at least exist for more than one generation... but you'll only be able to communicate in it to people who wanted to speak the black equivalent of Esperanto.

We are not building a new language from scratch. We are using pre-existing Ebonics and Africanizing it. There is a difference. We are starting from a base which already exists, not building from scratch. If we can, we can start from the Geeche speech which is more Africanized than 'mainland' Ebonics. So it is not the same as building a language from scratch.

If a black person has learned to write novels, has learned to write poetry, has learned to write powerful song lyrics, in AAVE or in the Queen's English or somewhere in between, are you to tell him that those novels, poems, and lyrics are "inauthentic" and that his literary talent is now the property of Bantustan, to be used in the language of Bantustan? But if he refuses to write novels, poetry, and lyrics in the new language, then where will Bantustan get that body of art which is so vital to self-expression?

Pre-independence countries had intelligentsia written in the language of the colonizers. I a, sure there were Korean novels written....in Japanese during the era of colonialism. They can be translated back to Korean post-independence. Hence a lot of writings can be translated into Ebonics post-independence/sovereignty. The Scottish enlightenment was pretty Anglicized but I am sure things got translated into Scots and Gaelic as well.

The Haitians made it an official language for a sensible reason: countless thousands of their people already spoke it. You are making up a whole new language to use as an official language, so you have no such reason for doing so.

No, I am re-Africanizing a preexisting language, I am not building it from scratch. Also, there is a simple reason for this: To assert one's blackness and to be unwhitened.

I know why they do it. My point is that by trying to do it in this way, they betray themselves and their cause. When you propose to found a nation, you need a certain amount of solemnity and intellectual competence, you need to be seen having those things, or your people will not trust you. Or should not, at any rate. I argue that when black nationalists start spelling words funny, they risk losing an extra slice of that respect. Sure, it makes them sound cute and they can congratulate themselves on their clever puns. on having invented a word like "overstand." But the puns will age and become bad jokes, and the damage to the cause will not cease.

FLQ published their manifestos in Joual. The Star-Spangled Banner was intentionally making fun of the British by ripping off their tune. The puns and whatnot -have- aged in those cases pretty well. Founding of nations and their independence is a lot more than simple "solemnity and seriousness", there is a significant amount of celebration and happiness.

Also, "overstand" originates from Rastafarian culture, and I don't see people not taking Rastafarians seriously because they use the term 'overstand' or make any other puns. The closest thing to joking I hear is the statements about marijuana, nothing about their vocabulary.

If, in the context of a plausible future America, you declare the Republik of New Afrika, you are not drawing that distinction. And many people both inside and outside your country will rebel against the label you put on your state, and may even devise their own less complimentary labels (such as "Bantustan"). When this happens, you undermine your own cause.

Opponents will resist the formation of the state regardless of the name however. Even it there is such a differentation between Swahili and Ebonics terms for the state, I doubt the popular support will magically increase due to that. And besides, we can always change and re-change names before and after independence.

It is my perception that the culture surrounding the use of AAVE contains less of this kind of formality and rigor. While not every person needs it... if you don't have some people who have that attitude, in the context of a nation where a modified form of AAVE is the official language, you're going to have a serious problem preserving collective literacy and intelligent dialogue within the nation.

I can see this. I know others would appeal to so-called "common sense" and that this "common sense" magically would allow everyone to be 'on tune' and immediatety understand each other. I wouldn't complain too much those sorts of people were all shot by the NKVD XD

Popular support:

As a matter of basic common sense, shouldn't you at least struggle to get an accurate survey on this question, instead of basing it on your own wild imaginings and fantasies? I am not opposed to open discussion, but you seem most reluctant to discuss this openly with me, when I ask you basic factual and practical questions. That does not bode well for the idea as a whole, if I cannot get you to answer the simplest questions about it.

We were discussing mainly if blacks were a nation/ethnic groups and what nations deserve. Not per se the popular support of such. But yes, I would say a survey is useful. But part of this would be soled by the referendum being held. Also, I have answered more complicated questions in this very thread then "basic common sense".

But which would you prefer?

An independent state in some form of union with the surrounding countries.

If your preference is for an independent black state, shouldn't you be ready and willing and able to answer basic, obvious questions about that state?

Given I have been doing so for much of this thread, how would I -not- be doing so?

OK, so what are your conclusions from this thing you have acknowledged? Do you conclude that this will be a problem, or not a problem?

Population Transfer would be a noticeable problem if undergone in an accelerated and forced manner. Ovrcrowding and whatnot until things are stabilized.

My worst-case scenario is that maybe you will find that no one has, that calls for the creation of a "Republik of New Afrika" have been idle boasts and exercises in rhetorical grandstanding from the beginning... in which case, if you wish to have intellectual self-respect, perhaps you should start trying to gather that information. Someone will have to, if it's ever going to work at all.

There were blacks calling for a separate state since before the civil war ("Blake, or the Huts of America" and "Imperium in Imperio"). There were blacks who organized their own townships in the chaos of the civil war and formed resistance groups. The Gullah were basically allowed to develop partially due to the actions of self-liberation during the "secession war". Are you suggesting all these actions to establish self-government was idle rhetoric?

So, what precisely would you say to that young man? He is a prospective citizen of this nation; he has a right to know. You might well be the only representative of this idea that he ever meets, or at least the best-informed one. Hell, he might be the guy who's going to grow up to lead this idea, but first he must be convinced that it is not a fool's errand so that he can put his strength behind it.

I would honestly tell him this: "If the white people expels us, we have the right to take their land in response. If they are nicer to us, we will be nice to him. We have contigencies, but beyond that we will respond to the situation as fit". Yes, this is not thorough and intellectual, but it is a fact.

Might the self-honesty of the poll have been influenced by who wrote it? Might the relevance of the poll's data be affected by when it was written? Have there been any polls on this more recently than the 1970s?

It was a bunch of black nationalists who created the name. There were no polls that I am aware of which are later from the 1970s.

There's hypothesizing, and there's idle fantasy. In your case, you are implicitly presenting yourself as one of the founding members of this proposed new nation. Not a leader, but a founder nonetheless: "I was into Blackbeltia before it was cool," so to speak.If your fantasy is to be non-idle, then you would be wise to think more deeply about this, and to state your starting assumptions clearly. That's good for you, not just other people debating you.

I will explain this then. I am unlikely to be a leader. If I end up as a founder I would likely be thrust into the position due to no one else being better for the job. And honestly, countries are not built in a single day. Someone else can build off of my ideas, just as I built off of Harry Haywood and The "Black Government Conference's" ideas.My assumptions would be this: the central government would be relatively weak and impotent, the US would be in a state of decline, there would be other secession movements -> not just the black nationalists, and there would probably be other complicating affairs such as peak oil and climate change which would make things....less simple.

Can you also tell me how being detached etc would be a worse idea, etc?

But "blacks should run their own businesses" may simply mean "I want black people to be economically successful," not "I want black people to have economic autarky."

Nations trade with other nation. complete autarky is pretty much impossible, you would still trade with other countries.

Settlement:

OK. Now think about the consequences of this. What will happen in majority-white towns or counties or regions within Blackbeltia that would end up surrounded by Blackbeltia, but are not themselves majority-black? Compare and contrast to the Palestinians...

They would be annexed into the black state. There is room for a 10-30/40% non-black population, as long as the black population is a majority or has power. The white population can be Africanized also.

On a larger scale, what effects will there be on the newly reconsolidated black communities, as a consequence of removing most or all of the whites who play a role in those communities? What will the positive effects, and the negative effects be?Please, lay this out, or at least think it through for yourself. I'm here if you need a sounding board.

Positive Effects:
Cultural Homogenity
Lack of an "other" to constantly compare yourselves to (apparently the closest thing to the "acting white" phenomon comes from integrated classrooms, for example)
National 'pride' and comfort/breathing room to discuss your own affairs without a collective fear of foreigners determining your affairs and using such against you.
The ability to do things without worrying about foreign cultural sensitivities.

Negative Effects:
Cultural Homogenity (it works both ways, homogenity can be stifling for many people, while it is comforting for other. The analogy of tradition being a hammock vs a noose comes into mind here)
Economic Dislocation (Temperoary) - for a period of time there would be an economic issue due to the population transfer. However, depending on how the population transfer is handled, a lot of this can be negated by population transfer of blacks from other regions.
Friendships/relationships/etc being 'cut off' due to the population transfer. That would be very nasty, and such a state would make sure not to make such a transfer forced. One of the ways one can be "Africanized" is to associate highly with black individuals or be in a romantic/sexual relationship with an African(s).

However, if you preserve the due-process laws in the new courts you will STILL have problems with cases like the Zimmerman case, where even if you really really think the bastard did it... the evidence stinks and the witnesses are unreliable.Are you prepared to accept that, that if these new courts are genuinely fair then they will not always give you the results you desire? Will you be able to resist questioning the "authenticity" of a court that rules against you?

Perhaps the answer is "yes," but look at yourself hard when you answer the question. Many people of all races have trouble with it.

Re. Zimmerman, personally I would be iffy with convicting him and putting him in jail for the rest of his life, -even- if he did chase someone, follow him and get into a fight with him. But I have no problem with seeing him get the shit sued out of him as civil courts have a noticeably less burden of proof than criminal courts do. The legal system has a LOT of flaws, and yes I know there would be many issues from such a system.

Who cares?

A shitload of people. Remember Trayvon Martin's case?

Nobody has much of a choice regarding where they are born and what language becomes their mother tongue. I didn't "choose" to speak English either. I was just born in the US.

I suspect your ethnic group had a choice though as to which country they could immigrate to however. Mine didn't.

Who gives a shit what happened to your ancestors? Right now we have 21st century problems to deal with, and nobody has time for your misguided, grandiose ideas about creating a separate "black" nation. Why do you care so much about one particular race/ethnic group anyway?

I couldn't care less about supporting Israel or helping out Jewish causes. It's much more interesting to work towards a better future for everyone. I'm sorry if that sounds saccharine or whatever, but it's true.

You're a Jew. You're a member of one of the most priviledged ethnic groups in the U.S. The Federal government gets involved in wars for your behalf. If people criticize you the media calls them an "Anti-semite". You don't have to worry about such due to Jews worldwide sending aid, support and volunteering to support the Zionist state. You can afford to not give a shit because the U.S. government will send you billions of dollars in aid. You can afford to not give a shit because no matter WHAT Israel does the U.S. will support the Zionists in whatever endeavour they do. AIPAC and the ADL will make sure of that.

One question for either Saxtonite or Duchess of Zion: Should other peoples be compensated for slavery? For example should Brazil cede a large portion of its territory to its blacks considering that its slavery lasted longer and was deadlier than slavery in the American South?

Yes, the Brailians shold cede the northwestern regions of their land to the blacks who are a majority there. Such an independent state would support the self-determination of Blacks in Brazil as well as native control of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Also the Mapuche in Chile.

or that matter should the states of North Africa give up say Oran and Benghazi to Spain and Italy to compensate for the Barbary Coast raids which took place into the early 19th Century?

No, they were both white people.

In 1919 Poland was reconstituted as an independent nation and bits and pieces of land carved out of Germany and Russia to make this happen. As a result both nations fumed with anger and revanchism and at the first opportunity formed a pact to take back what they had lost and more violently.

That was partially due to the whims of Stalin. Trotsky if he ran the USSR would likely not accept such a deal.

In fact, Russia already tried this on the very eve of Poland's reconstitution.

The Soviet Union trying to make Poland a Soviet Republic is noticeably different than wiping out Poland as a nation.

So, white american southerners are all guilty for the sins of their ancestors (although slave-owners were a distinct minority) and therefore must collectively atone by getting forcefully relocated.

White southerners engaged in lynchmobs and called black people nigger. They did more than engage in slave ownership. Also up to 1/3rd of the white population of the south owned slaves. And many poorer ones RENTED out slaves.

[Channel72]

You know, a separate "black nation" has already been created: it's called Liberia, and it's basically a shit-hole. The per-capita GDP is like $600, and the average life-expectancy is 57 years.

Whereas, blacks living in the US make an average of $33,460, (a number which has risen steadily since the 70s, even if the recent recession temporarily reversed this trend), and have an average life-expectancy of 74.5 years.

These figures are significantly worse than white Americans, unfortunately, but they're getting better. There's no reason to create a separate nation at this point.

You're a Jew. You're a member of one of the most priviledged ethnic groups in the U.S. The Federal government gets involved in wars for your behalf. If people criticize you the media calls them an "Anti-semite". You don't have to worry about such due to Jews worldwide sending aid, support and volunteering to support the Zionist state. You can afford to not give a shit because the U.S. government will send you billions of dollars in aid. You can afford to not give a shit because no matter WHAT Israel does the U.S. will support the Zionists in whatever endeavour they do. AIPAC and the ADL will make sure of that.

Yeah, it's fantastic. I'm just riding that Hebrew gravy train right into the promise land. Just yesterday Uncle Sam personally wrote me a check for $150,000 so I could buy a gold-encrusted Yamaka.

But seriously, the amount of money the US government invests in Israel is outrageously disproportionate to any kind of actual benefit we're getting out of it. Not only do I "not a give a shit" about sending money to Israel, I actually think we're sending way too much money to Israel, and I think the idea of a "Jewish nation" is pretty stupid and harmful anyway.

[Gandalf]

You know, a separate "black nation" has already been created: it's called Liberia, and it's basically a shit-hole. The per-capita GDP is like $600, and the average life-expectancy is 57 years.

Whereas, blacks living in the US make an average of $33,460, (a number which has risen steadily since the 70s, even if the recent recession temporarily reversed this trend), and have an average life-expectancy of 74.5 years.

Don't Liberia's problems stem from their being a postcolonial state as opposed to any sort of "black nation" stuff?

[General Mung Beans]

You know, a separate "black nation" has already been created: it's called Liberia, and it's basically a shit-hole. The per-capita GDP is like $600, and the average life-expectancy is 57 years.

Whereas, blacks living in the US make an average of $33,460, (a number which has risen steadily since the 70s, even if the recent recession temporarily reversed this trend), and have an average life-expectancy of 74.5 years.

Don't Liberia's problems stem from their being a postcolonial state as opposed to any sort of "black nation" stuff?

Liberia wasn't ever colonized by an European power but the American blacks basically acted as colonizers and lorded over the native Africans.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It's a bad idea because the 21st century economy is extremely globalized. Why do you think that a sovereign Native American nation would result in better quality of life and better economic prosperity than US citizenship? Don't make me link to this.

They're already sovereign. That sovereignty has just been subject to restrictions by treaty, which is called a "protectorate". This is the explicit outcome of the constitutional framework for the management of Indian reservations. I am talking about reducing the level of interference in their operation to allow them to write their constitutions and ignore the United States constitution and to subject non-Indians to their law on their own land.

The globalization canard is just absurd. The function of the European Union has been to empower separatist movements in the modern era of even very small countries, not to create global super-states. This is because sovereignty can be functionally maintained in organisations like the European Union which address a broad range of economic issues without impacting one's cultural distinctiveness. I challenge you and demand you provide evidence to prove that a black state, a hispanic state in the southwest, and several culturally distinct American regions organised as regional states as well as Indian tribes with brought autonomy would be unworkable or impoverished when in an economic and loose political union rather than the tight organisation that presently exists, when we have the continent of Europe complete with quite functional microstates like San Marino, Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg sitting as a counter-example.

Because, as it is right now, it just sounds sort of like you're implying that for racial reasons it would be impossible for Native Americans to actually run one of their reservations as well as Andorra or San Marino. And that does not look good for you.

Also, what exactly is the statute of limitations on historical conquests? Should Texas go back to Mexico? Should Mexico go back to the (dwindling) modern Mayan population?

Actually the Maya are a culturally distinct homogeneous people across several national boundaries with their own active liberation movement in Chiapas, so maybe thy should have the right to vote on independence. Jesus, man, talk about sinking your own argument.

Should Sicily go back to the Phoenicians? Considering that all of human history has been a constant flux of migration and conquest (including the pre-Columbian Meso-American civilizations and North American tribes), the idea that the Native Americans still have a moral right to large swathes of US land centuries later seems sort of arbitrary.

They have a moral right to in particular because they signed treaties for it, and second because they are distinct cultural linguistic blocks and we signed other treaties with the United Nations acknowledging the right of said units to self-determination. The problem is you're looking for a right or wrong answer when in reality acknowledging the interests of living human beings is more important, both in the case of New Afrika and the Great Sioux Reservation. To put it simply, if Saxtonite could convince his people that it was a good idea, they have a strong case for it. Because of the treaties, my point remains that the Native Americans have an even stronger case for a changed relationship with the federal government.

In neither case do I support total independence because I think a radical reorganisation of the United States government into a loose confederation of regions could do the same thing with less likelihood of bloodshed and better outcomes for all involved.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You know, a separate "black nation" has already been created: it's called Liberia, and it's basically a shit-hole. The per-capita GDP is like $600, and the average life-expectancy is 57 years.

Whereas, blacks living in the US make an average of $33,460, (a number which has risen steadily since the 70s, even if the recent recession temporarily reversed this trend), and have an average life-expectancy of 74.5 years.

These figures are significantly worse than white Americans, unfortunately, but they're getting better. There's no reason to create a separate nation at this point.

I am going to ask you a very, very careful question: Do you realise in using Liberia as an example and phrasing things this way, you are implying that it has been proved by history that African Americans are incapable of ruling themselves when they try, and are therefore better off under white rule?

Because that is exactly what you said in this post, even if you tried to cover it up a bit. Why don't you think long and hard about the racism behind your position, because if that wasn't influencing you, then you'd surely realise that all of Africa has severe structural economic problems and that the 1% Afro-American population of Liberia was not going to magically make the nation better (which also would have been incredibly racist).

[Flagg]

Duchess, don't you know it's our responsibility, nay burden, to lift up the mud people?

[Saxtonite]

<double post>

[Saxtonite]

Don't Liberia's problems stem from their being a postcolonial state as opposed to any sort of "black nation" stuff?

Liberia wasn't ever colonized by an European power but the American blacks basically acted as colonizers and lorded over the native Africans.

Correct. The Americo-Liberians accepted Western Culture and Christianity and used it to justify abuse and slavery of native Africans (as in, fucking plantations). Which is why as I mentioned earlier, being a state in Africa made of blacks is not enough, if the country is full of Westernized Uncle Toms with a colonial mentality, it will still be un-African.

Also, the U.S. dicked about Liberia as well (i.e. pressuring the removal of all German doctors which were a lot of the medical people there) during WWII.

These figures are significantly worse than white Americans, unfortunately, but they're getting better. There's no reason to create a separate nation at this point.

A NATION already exists. Reasons for forming a separate state, well other than cultural suppression, drug war bullshit, and leftover prejudices against African ways of doing things and family structures (wonder how hospitals would be reformed to allow say 'play cousins' to be in hospital rooms, some hospitals only allow 'immediate' family members to be there for some situations) would be to ensure your distinct history as an African people.

You're a Jew. What good will your money do you if you get pogromed. What good will increasing economics do for the black man if his cities get burned down and he gets killed due to the Drug War which is pushed against the black man.

But seriously, the amount of money the US government invests in Israel is outrageously disproportionate to any kind of actual benefit we're getting out of it. Not only do I "not a give a shit" about sending money to Israel, I actually think we're sending way too much money to Israel, and I think the idea of a "Jewish nation" is pretty stupid and harmful anyway.

You're privileged enough to not even care and think sending aid to your co-ethnics is a bad idea. I wish black people could be secure enough to say they get too much aid to a sovereign black stats because their culture is intact enough and they have the overwhelming power not to worry about their culture.

. By the way,I am a white woman, just to point it out. I had thought the handle on the board was indicative enough, but oh well.

I thought you were just a Gundam fan :p

then you'd surely realise that all of Africa has severe structural economic problems and that the 1% Afro-American population of Liberia was not going to magically make the nation better (which also would have been incredibly racist).

Also even with that African countries like Accra in Ghana and Nigeria proper is growing at a decent rate, as well as Botswana.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I challenge you and demand you provide evidence to prove that a black state, a hispanic state in the southwest, and several culturally distinct American regions organised as regional states as well as Indian tribes with brought autonomy would be unworkable or impoverished when in an economic and loose political union rather than the tight organisation that presently exists, when we have the continent of Europe complete with quite functional microstates like San Marino, Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg sitting as a counter-example.

I think that's a strawman, Marina.

I don't think (at least, I hope) that anybody in this thread is making the claim that black people or Native Americans or any other ethnic group are inherently incapable of running a functioning microstate. But the issue is a LOT more complicated than you or Saxtonite seem to be giving it credit for, and I also think it's unproductive to immediately jump to claims of racism.

A theoretical black state in the US faces huge practical boundaries that have nothing to do with race. And stating that these boundaries exist is not the same as saying a black state could or shouldn't be possible. The fact is, a lot of primarily black areas in the country are incredibly impoverished, lack infrastructure, etc. Look at parts of Detroit. Or Baltimore. And this is just on a purely economic level: without even getting into social and cultural issues that would make such a transition troublesome. Simply pointing at Luxembourg (which isn't at all an ethnic microstate, by the way) and shouting "RACIST!" at anybody who thinks the issue is more complicated than "give the blacks the land and GO" is pointless.

If we are just giving Native Americans or blacks a chunk of land and telling them they are on their own, how well do you think it will do? All else being equal, they would do fine, I agree. Just as fine as anybody else. But the problem is that all else ISN'T equal. A lot of primarily black areas are inner cities that are dying even with huge infusions of state and federal money. It just simply isn't the same situation as, say, Liechtenstein; West Baltimore isn't a princely state.

It's a false analogy to simply say that just because other small countries exist, then any small country can exist without any problems whatsoever. It's also incredibly disingenuous to say that just because someone points out the potential problems that they are instantly saying that black people or Native Americans aren't capable of running a country. Of course they are. But I would be raising the same points above if the argument here were that Irish-Americans should form their own country, or that Mississippi should secede, or that Honey-Boo-Boo and her white trash Appalachian cousins should form their own state, or anything like that. There is a huge difference between practical concern over the ability to transform these historically impoverished areas into a place that can successfully prosper and saying that (insert race) can't and shan't do it.

(For the record, I've agreed with pretty much everything you have said about the Native Americans in this thread.)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ziggy, it isn't a strawman because there was one point behind it, which I would rather expound upon than follow your tangent, which is neither here nor there. The point is that there is nothing inherent in a small autonomous region that keeps it from being prosperous. If Native Americans were allowed to write their own constitutions and judge whites who commit crimes in their territory under their law, while still freely trading with the US, being party to our foreign agreements, and using our currency, nothing would magically make them worse off. It would, however, let them decide how to proceed in making themselves better, instead of leaving at the whim of culturally destructive, incompetent and uncaring government bureaucrats. And most importantly the example of microstates proves that, they have every chance with enough will, investment, determination and proper planning and execution, of realizing prosperity within their own territory. That is ALL the example shows--and it shows it quite well. The point with Native Americans is that we should give the treaty land back to them because,

1. It will not make them worse off (as autonomous regions in other countries and microstates amply demonstrate);
2. And, two, we signed laws providing for it, so it matters for race relations and the probity of our country to honour those agreements.

The argument is of course even less applicable because we're suggesting creating a large state in the American south for African Americans to essentially divorce the vicious cycle of race relations in the US, so there's plenty of wealth and potential in cities like Atlanta and the associated rural support base for a functional state.

And of course nobody is suggesting ending the United States as such, either, just transforming it into a series of regional governments and autonomous nationalities which collectively would both have small and more responsive government with laws suited to their culture and also would be more correctly aligned with their respective ecoregions so that they can better respond to climate change (an unrelated argument, but one which ties nicely into the ethnolinguistic concepts).

[Channel72]

I am going to ask you a very, very careful question: Do you realise in using Liberia as an example and phrasing things this way, you are implying that it has been proved by history that African Americans are incapable of ruling themselves when they try, and are therefore better off under white rule?

Oh shit, you got me! You're right, I'm actually secretly racist and I hate black people. I was hoping nobody would find out, but I guess you're too clever.

Because that is exactly what you said in this post, even if you tried to cover it up a bit. Why don't you think long and hard about the racism behind your position, because if that wasn't influencing you, then you'd surely realise that all of Africa has severe structural economic problems and that the 1% Afro-American population of Liberia was not going to magically make the nation better (which also would have been incredibly racist).

Oh stop. Various Negroid civilizations have flourished and created stable societies that lasted centuries. The Nubians, to name one, not only created a thriving Sub-Saharan civilization that pre-dated the Greeks and Romans, but they managed to conquer and rule Egypt for a few centuries as well.

The point is that taking a struggling "underclass" or oppressed segment from one society, and just magically giving them their own nation, is not necessarily a recipe for success. It didn't work with Liberia, and it only "worked" (for some small value of "worked") with Israel due to the Western world's bizarre fascination with Abrahamic monotheism. There's no reason to think that having some sort of "ethnic sovereignty" is the solution to racial tensions, especially when we're making progress with integration.

[Channel72]

A NATION already exists.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't counting metaphorical nations that only exist in your head.

Reasons for forming a separate state, well other than cultural suppression, drug war bullshit, and leftover prejudices against African ways of doing things and family structures (wonder how hospitals would be reformed to allow say 'play cousins' to be in hospital rooms, some hospitals only allow 'immediate' family members to be there for some situations) would be to ensure your distinct history as an African people.

Why do you care so much about ensuring your "distinct history"?

You're a Jew. What good will your money do you if you get pogromed. What good will increasing economics do for the black man if his cities get burned down and he gets killed due to the Drug War which is pushed against the black man.

Preparing for the future possibility of large-scale racial oppression is NOT a good justification for slicing out a significant section of a functioning democracy and creating a separate state. Besides, what good will your own state do if it gets invaded one day by some nation of white supremacists, and the US doesn't feel like doing anything about it? A better overall strategy would be to push for integration, so as the decades roll by racial tensions deflate. By creating a separate "race state" you're only exacerbating the problem and ensuring that racial differences continue to divide us long into the future, all in the name of your precious "African distinct history".

Just relax. Your history, and everyone else's, will be preserved forever on Wikipedia.

[Gandalf]

A NATION already exists.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't counting metaphorical nations that only exist in your head.

The Oxford dictionary defines a nation as being "a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory." There has been a black American nation since (presumably) the slaves from various parts of Africa formed a common culture within their horrific context. They weren't really African any more, as a new African-American identity was created.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Oh shit, you got me! You're right, I'm actually secretly racist and I hate black people. I was hoping nobody would find out, but I guess you're too clever.

You are racist, though you may have internalized the idea that your "rightness" lets you ignore the aspirations of others to the point where you don't realize it.

Oh stop. Various Negroid civilizations have flourished and created stable societies that lasted centuries. The Nubians, to name one, not only created a thriving Sub-Saharan civilization that pre-dated the Greeks and Romans, but they managed to conquer and rule Egypt for a few centuries as well.

A white referring to "negroid civilizations" is racist speech in my book, by the way. Straight out of Stormfront in fact, which is kinda funny. I'm well aware of Nubians, and I don't need you to try and educate me on them. The structural problems I was referring to were strictly in regard to the modern economy, a point that Saxtonite understood but not you.

The point is that taking a struggling "underclass" or oppressed segment from one society, and just magically giving them their own nation, is not necessarily a recipe for success. It didn't work with Liberia, and it only "worked" (for some small value of "worked") with Israel due to the Western world's bizarre fascination with Abrahamic monotheism. There's no reason to think that having some sort of "ethnic sovereignty" is the solution to racial tensions, especially when we're making progress with integration.

We aren't making progress with integraiton, and ethnic sovereignty is, as has been amply demonstrated in this thread, a striving of many people. It also ultimately allows people to take ownership of their problems rather than be trapped in a perpetual master-slave cycle as the US has successfully done with African Americans, rendering their independence more or less a joke because a culture has been created with criminalizes them on one hand and makes them dependent on the other, each political party guaranteeing its role in crushing the underclass separately, but together allowing the condition to be indefinitely perpetuated. We're not arguing magic bullets here, but rather fairness and opportunity... Palestinians may be really, really poor if they had an independent country, but I'm sorry to say that doesn't magically defend Israel for all the shit they do to keep them down.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A NATION already exists.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't counting metaphorical nations that only exist in your head.

Well, for reasons Gandalf amply demonstrated, my opinion of your intelligence just got even lower.

Reasons for forming a separate state, well other than cultural suppression, drug war bullshit, and leftover prejudices against African ways of doing things and family structures (wonder how hospitals would be reformed to allow say 'play cousins' to be in hospital rooms, some hospitals only allow 'immediate' family members to be there for some situations) would be to ensure your distinct history as an African people.

Why do you care so much about ensuring your "distinct history"?

It promotes psychological health and social empowerment, just like it does for Native Americans and other indigenous peoples, duh. As we have amply covered in this thread before and you are ignoring in favour of your obnoxious integrationist ideology.

Preparing for the future possibility of large-scale racial oppression is NOT a good justification for slicing out a significant section of a functioning democracy and creating a separate state. Besides, what good will your own state do if it gets invaded one day by some nation of white supremacists, and the US doesn't feel like doing anything about it? A better overall strategy would be to push for integration, so as the decades roll by racial tensions deflate. By creating a separate "race state" you're only exacerbating the problem and ensuring that racial differences continue to divide us long into the future, all in the name of your precious "African distinct history".

Racial tensions don't deflate with integration, in fact, inter-racial violence is unsurprisingly concentrated in areas where there is not a dominant ethnicity.

Just relax. Your history, and everyone else's, will be preserved forever on Wikipedia.

This snide, disgusting comment shows what a morally bankrupt individual you are, willing to destroy the happiness and longings of others for your own perfect ideological vision of the future. Grow up and learn what the world is really about, racist. It isn't about others conforming to your deracinated view of the future in which everyone has "gotten over" race and we no longer care about inequality or difference. It's a place where differences are respected and honoured through government structures representing them.

Interestingly, an article on this subject came out today, which I encourage you to read

It is common enough, and true, to say that what happens in Egypt as it stumbles through its political dawn or dusk — you cannot tell which at this point — matters to all Arabs. With 85 million people, the nation accounts for a quarter of the Arab world. So the Arab Spring is at stake. And yes, Egyptians will do much to define it.

But what is at issue in the Middle East — in Egypt, but also in Turkey, in Iran, and elsewhere — is larger than many of us seem to recognize. It is not just the Arab Spring, full of promise as it remains, that we have to think about when news arrives from Cairo, or Istanbul, or somewhere in the Persian Gulf. The Middle East’s discord matters to all of us.

How so, you ask.

Well, not to get too airy, but what we witness in the Middle East now is going to tell us a lot about what kind of century we have on our hands. It is the turning of history’s wheel. It is what will happen, with variants, wherever there are people who are un-modern and want to become modern — which is to say, people almost everywhere. Becoming modern is the project of our time. And too few of us are ready to accept it as such.

Have you ever wondered why so many non-Western people harbor such visceral dislike of Western nations, and almost always the United States more than any other? The standard answer, never more clearly articulated than after the Sept. 11 attacks, is that these people envy us. “They hate our freedoms,” George W. Bush advised. “They want our stuff,” a columnist wrote (only half in jest, sadly). They aspire to be “just like us,” as an older formulation has it.

Utterances such as these are versions of what the scholars used to call “modernization theory,” an ideological swamp it is best not to wade far into. The thesis is that to modernize one must Westernize. If you want to progress, you have to progress the way we Westerners progressed, because we invented “progress” and “the modern” and other such things.

Modernization theory was a Cold War construct, and it held for a time. Postwar Japan is a noted example, which is why Japan today is so wrenchingly confused as to what it is and what it is supposed to do. Some of Europe’s former colonies, achieving independence in the Cold War decades, tried it on, too — usually to no brilliant result.

Two problems now linger. One is that too many Westerners, especially those who determine foreign policies, still accept this rubbish as a given. The other is that Westernized elites in emerging countries — Egypt and Turkey are glow-in-the-dark examples, but there are numerous others — buy into the same thinking, and so are unwilling to accept the aspirations of their own majorities.

Here is the rub, the task, the thing that needs to be grasped: Modernization has to be separated from Westernization if it is going to occur constructively from here on out. Making the two equivalent is a 500-year-old habit among Westerners, begun when Vasco da Gama landed in India in 1498. My candidate for the greatest distinction of our time is that people will be able to become modern while keeping their own cultures, traditions, histories, values and so on.

Can we explain the fate of Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi in any other context? A year ago the secularized elite despised the army and all the gore and repression it stood for. These same people now embrace the army because it removed from office a properly elected president who happens to be Islamic. This week the Army gave them what they apparently wanted: a new cabinet of 34, with not one member of an Islamic party in it.

In the end, one does not worry much about the emerging nations. They have the force of history at their backs. Modernizing without Westernizing is what the concept of Islamic democracy is all about, for instance. It is a search for institutions that are built by, and reflect, the people who are going to live by them. “Inevitable” is not too strong a term for this process, hard and long and full of reversals as it will prove to be.

Other examples, in different shapes and forms: The Chinese have started down the road, Communist Party rule notwithstanding; the Indians have a good chance at it (although some are caving to the West’s neoliberal enticements). Latin Americans have signaled — some more loudly than others — that the long-borne yoke and the model and the influence of the norteamericanos are becoming things of the past.

No, the worry lies in places such as (but not only) Washington. It is not at all clear in many Western capitals that a certain kind of power — an ideological or even psychological power, greater than any military — is going to be surrendered. What is at issue is the dominance of the West, of course — dominance as opposed to the equality of the “non-West.” Think not that anyone in the White House fails to understand this.

The American case seems especially discouraging. What we call the American century began in 1898, when the U.S. dismembered (yes, literally) the Filipino resistance to the Spanish empire. They were aspiring democrats, as they made plain, but not democrats the way most Americans liked their democrats. Little has changed in a century and some.

Some years ago I sat in Tehran and had tea with a 30-ish Iranian. She wore the obligatory scarf, but she was no friend of the clerics. The interesting thing was she had no impulse to dump over the side all that had happened in post-Shah Iran. Iran was simply becoming Iran, she told me, and this would take a long time. And then something memorable: “We want to be modern, but we want to be modern Iranians.”

She remains a friend. She gave me the key to much that has happened in the many years since we met. She showed me the river that runs beneath our world and time.

Saxtonite wants to be a member of a prosperous Afrikan society. Most people around the world want to be prosperous Brasilians, prosperous Indians, prosperous Iranians, prosperous Thais. You lose.

[Channel72]

A white referring to "negroid civilizations" is racist speech in my book, by the way. Straight out of Stormfront in fact, which is kinda funny. I'm well aware of Nubians, and I don't need you to try and educate me on them. The structural problems I was referring to were strictly in regard to the modern economy, a point that Saxtonite understood but not you.

Is there anything which isn't racist to you? Please email me a list of terms which you find personally offensive (preferably in CSV format), so I know what to avoid when responding to you. And while you're at it, please email the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and tell them that they need to stop using the term "Negroid" because it's racist.

We aren't making progress with integraiton, and ethnic sovereignty is, as has been amply demonstrated in this thread, a striving of many people. It also ultimately allows people to take ownership of their problems rather than be trapped in a perpetual master-slave cycle as the US has successfully done with African Americans, rendering their independence more or less a joke because a culture has been created with criminalizes them on one hand and makes them dependent on the other, each political party guaranteeing its role in crushing the underclass separately, but together allowing the condition to be indefinitely perpetuated. We're not arguing magic bullets here, but rather fairness and opportunity... Palestinians may be really, really poor if they had an independent country, but I'm sorry to say that doesn't magically defend Israel for all the shit they do to keep them down.

Of course we're making progress with integration. The numbers prove it. African Americans are far more prosperous today, in terms of income, education and social mobility, then they were only 30 years ago. End of story. Yes, there's still major problems (war on drugs, etc.), but you've yet to demonstrate that bifurcating the nation (instead of continuing a policy of social integration) is the way to go, other than to mumble something about "self-expression" and "psychological health".

A NATION already exists.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't counting metaphorical nations that only exist in your head.

Well, for reasons Gandalf amply demonstrated, my opinion of your intelligence just got even lower.

Gandalf's reasons are boring semantic bullshit. The most common definition of "nation" implies some sort of national sovereignty or governmental structure. Any other usage is mostly metaphorical or colloquial (like the Nation of Islam).

It promotes psychological health and social empowerment, just like it does for Native Americans and other indigenous peoples, duh. As we have amply covered in this thread before and you are ignoring in favour of your obnoxious integrationist ideology.

Please explain why integration doesn't promote psychological health and social empowerment. Black social mobility and "empowerment" has increased tremendously since the 60s, to the point where we literally have a half-black President. Are you that impatient that you can't wait another few fucking decades for blacks to reach economic parity with whites? You'd rather throw all that progress away and create a bunch of bullshit race states?

Racial tensions don't deflate with integration, in fact, inter-racial violence is unsurprisingly concentrated in areas where there is not a dominant ethnicity.

So I guess you're saying that George Wallace had the right idea. I guess we just gotta keep everyone separated (but equal), right?

This snide, disgusting comment shows what a morally bankrupt individual you are, willing to destroy the happiness and longings of others for your own perfect ideological vision of the future. Grow up and learn what the world is really about, racist. It isn't about others conforming to your deracinated view of the future in which everyone has "gotten over" race and we no longer care about inequality or difference. It's a place where differences are respected and honoured through government structures representing them.

I can't believe someone who thinks we should divide the United States into a bunch of sovereign "race states" is actually lecturing me on "the real world". News flash, honey: all of human history has been plagued by tribal tensions exacerbated by the psychological identification on an individual level with a certain race, ethnicity, tribe or religion. The tension doesn't even have to be cross-racial (see Rwanda, Ireland, et. al). What the fuck makes you think that if we divided up the world into a bunch of separate "race states" that there wouldn't be escalated international tensions and wars? What gives you the idea that we'd have some sort of "separate-but-equal" Utopia where all the world's races were divided by national boundaries, and yet everyone just respects each other and gets along. Yeah, that will ever happen. (And God help the poor children born of interracial unions!)

Here's the truth about the REAL WORLD(TM): the only hope for humanity to overcome the hard-wired tribalistic tendencies that encourage an us-versus-them mentality (often centered around easily-identifiable physical characteristics such as race) is to bring up an entire generation with a "post-racial" mentality. The United States has been attempting this (half-heartedly, often), and while you may want to pretend otherwise, we're actually making progress. If you think people have the same attitude about race today as they did in the 60s, then how come interracial marriage is now at an all time high (almost 15% of all married couples in the US were interracial in 2008), compared to less than 2% in the 70s. Face it, American society is (slowly) getting over racism. In a few decades, racism will be relegated to a few hilarious jokes from stand-up comedians about Jews walking into bars (and possibly purchasing said bars).

Seriously, dividing up the world into separate nations based on racial lines is literally one of the most insidious, harmful ideas I've ever heard someone present with a straight face. And the fact that you present it with an air of intellectualism is really quite disturbing.

Saxtonite wants to be a member of a prosperous Afrikan society. Most people around the world want to be prosperous Brasilians, prosperous Indians, prosperous Iranians, prosperous Thais. You lose.

Now you're just conflating racial identity with national identity. Also, please prove that "most people" want to be prosperous members of a certain nation or race, versus merely prosperous, happy people in general.

[Simon_Jester]

A NATION already exists.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't counting metaphorical nations that only exist in your head.

The argument can easily be translated to not use the word "nation" at all:

"A people/culture/ethnicity already exists, one which has distinct characteristics, and which is set apart from all others by history. The events and forces that created this separation are powerful, and as far as we can see, they cannot be undone. As long as they exist, it is impossible for this minority to coexist in this country as anything other than a permanent underclass. Therefore, let us create a new country for the minority, so they can live and prosper in peace."

What do you think of that argument, if we abstract it out so it can refer to just any widely dispersed, disadvantaged ethnic minority?

Interestingly, an article on this subject came out today, which I encourage you to read

Two problems now linger. One is that too many Westerners, especially those who determine foreign policies, still accept this rubbish as a given. The other is that Westernized elites in emerging countries — Egypt and Turkey are glow-in-the-dark examples, but there are numerous others — buy into the same thinking, and so are unwilling to accept the aspirations of their own majorities.

Here is the rub, the task, the thing that needs to be grasped: Modernization has to be separated from Westernization if it is going to occur constructively from here on out. Making the two equivalent is a 500-year-old habit among Westerners, begun when Vasco da Gama landed in India in 1498. My candidate for the greatest distinction of our time is that people will be able to become modern while keeping their own cultures, traditions, histories, values and so on.

Can we explain the fate of Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi in any other context? A year ago the secularized elite despised the army and all the gore and repression it stood for. These same people now embrace the army because it removed from office a properly elected president who happens to be Islamic. This week the Army gave them what they apparently wanted: a new cabinet of 34, with not one member of an Islamic party in it.

In the end, one does not worry much about the emerging nations. They have the force of history at their backs. Modernizing without Westernizing is what the concept of Islamic democracy is all about, for instance. It is a search for institutions that are built by, and reflect, the people who are going to live by them. “Inevitable” is not too strong a term for this process, hard and long and full of reversals as it will prove to be.

This is interesting, and I snip it from the rest of the text, because I think it misses a point.

When we look at other societies that try to modernize, including the West, we see bloody conflicts springing up from clashes between old and new values and ways of life. In China there was a civil war and the madness of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward before China found a 'characteristically Chinese' way that actually let it move forward.

IF we posit that characteristically Chinese government is ruled by techno/bureaucrats who respond to popular demand by shifting policies, severely punishing the corrupt and the sources of troubles, and outwardly banning popular discussion while inwardly engaging in such discussion to figure out how the future should look... well. Traditional Chinese government (a la the Qing dynasty) hit modernity like a log hitting a buzzsaw. The resulting attempt at a Westernized government failed catastrophically, leading to further economic and military weakness and exploitation. THEN a revolutionary but incompetent technocrat seized power, followed by a string of competent technocrats.

A similar process took place in Japan- the 'old way' of the warrior-aristocratic ethos spread to a mass concept of a 'warrior nation.' This led to disastrous bloodshed in World War Two when that nation found itself fighting a total war against a vastly more powerful and hostile coalition, in a confrontation from which it could not back down.

And before you accuse me of being one of these "modernization is Westernization" people, let me point out that exactly the same thing happened in the West: mass dislocation and death was part of the modernizing process, as old ways of living clashed with new realities. In the West, much of this occurred by simple demographic movement: huge numbers of rural farmers being dislocated by things like land enclosure, and forced off their farms into squalid, mortality-sink cities to work under hideous conditions in the mines and mills.

At the same time, the political customs of premodern Europe led to even more of this chaos: the customs and strategic habits of relatively limited "cabinet wars" fought from 1648 on caused disastrous consequences when new forces of social change were on the march (1789). And even more so when industrial technology caused the scale of destructive forces in a cabinet war to spiral out of control. The conflict over affairs in the Balkans that led to World War One was little different in initial scale from crises like Frederick the Great's seizure of Silesia. The governments responded in much the same way as they had before, allowing for relatively minor differences. But with all parties to the conflict having vastly more strength and force than before, the result was new and disastrous and killed many millions.
_____________________

Anyway. The practical upshot of all this is that we should expect modernization, by any process, to be messy and chaotic. Shifting alliances between different factions in society are the norm, not the aberration.

Looking at, say, Egypt, the real challenge of their movement toward Islamic democracy is how to create a system where the words "Islamic" and "democracy" are weighted equally. Morsi was Islamic but antidemocratic. Therefore, just as last year the people of Egypt overthrew rule by the army by allying with the theocrats, this year they are forced to overthrow the theocrats by allying with the army. Perhaps they would be well content to live in a state with many characteristically Islamic traits and structures- but they are clearly not content to live in a society where democracy is sidelined or made irrelevant. The obvious example hanging before them of how NOT to do it would be Iran (where the clerics have more or less total control), or Taliban-era Afghanistan if we want to take an extreme failure mode.

If we want to look at countries trying to modernize on their own terms, we must first realize that this process ALWAYS involves the nation going through violent convulsions, and adopting certain customs and ideologies that are very alien to the way the nation used to be. These ideas need not be Western, but they do need to be functional.

Some years ago I sat in Tehran and had tea with a 30-ish Iranian. She wore the obligatory scarf, but she was no friend of the clerics. The interesting thing was she had no impulse to dump over the side all that had happened in post-Shah Iran. Iran was simply becoming Iran, she told me, and this would take a long time. And then something memorable: “We want to be modern, but we want to be modern Iranians.”

She remains a friend. She gave me the key to much that has happened in the many years since we met. She showed me the river that runs beneath our world and time.

Saxtonite wants to be a member of a prosperous Afrikan society. Most people around the world want to be prosperous Brasilians, prosperous Indians, prosperous Iranians, prosperous Thais. You lose.

And where this ties back into African-American nationalism is that I wonder how Saxtonite sees his proposed nation changing, as it goes from impoverished minority to successful separatist state. Who are the winners and losers, aside from the obvious answer of "whites living in the land that becomes Blackbeltia?"

Perhaps, of course, American blacks have already suffered most of the necessary bleeding and confusion.