My friend and I just got into a great debate about which was "worse." I guess you can define worse/better in the context of quality of living.

I am strongly biased toward apartheid being worse, but I admit that is largely due to living in South Africa for 4 months and seeing what apartheid has done to the country. I mean SA was the only country to write racial segregation into their constitution and legally classify people by racial groups (and then remove them from the country to the "Homelands"), and 24 million blacks were affected there (1980s) in comparison to less than 4 million African Americans at the height of American slavery in the 1860's. But, South Africans did have some rights, and worked for money. But slaves had guaranteed clothes, food, and shelter, which is barely what black South Africans could even hope to afford on their wages.

I'd like some perspective from both sides of this topic, and if anyone could cite some references that would be great. Amazingly, a google for apartheid comparison with American slavery yields virtually no results save for a book written on the subject in 1981 (White Supremacy: A Comparative study of American and South African history by George Marsh Fredrickson).

5/26/2007 4:31:18 AM

rape, murder, beatings, moving mass amounts of people from one country to another, no wages, and no rights all combined trump apartheid in my opinion

some rights>no rights

idk tho, i'm no expert this is just imo

Quote :

"But slaves had guaranteed clothes, food, and shelter, which is barely what black South Africans could even hope to afford on their wages."

take afs241...they got like one set of clothes per year...its not like they got to eat a lot of food...its not like their shelters were great....and they made no money...i'd much rather have lived in SA during the 1980s than be a slave in america in the 1800's

and i may be mistaken but are you comparing food/clothes/shelter of the 1800's to food/clothes/shelter of the 1980's? thats like apples to oranges in my opinion

5/26/2007 4:42:36 AM

Quote :

"But slaves had guaranteed clothes, food, and shelter"

I'm not sure how 'guaranteed' these were. I don't think that US slave conditions were as bad as those on the Caribbean sugar plantations, where slaves could expect to live about a year before dying of disease or abuse. Compare that to the US where the slave population continued to grow after importation was banned in the early 1800's, indicating that, at the least, a minimum of physical needs were being met. Nonetheless, when it came time to distribute resources, the needs slaves would have been at the bottom of the list, after others' wants.

Overall though, this sounds like a pretty silly argument. You're comparing two horrific practices and asking which one was better.

5/26/2007 8:34:33 AM

Well, pretty much every civilization in the world has practiced slavery.

5/26/2007 12:40:53 PM

^^ It's just a discussion. No different than someone asking, "Which is a better way to die, being shot or being set on fire?"

5/26/2007 1:19:28 PM

a better question would have been segregation v. apartheid since those are the most congruous actions.

5/26/2007 1:29:15 PM

Quote :

"Well, pretty much every civilization in the world has practiced slavery."

apparently american slavery was more brutal (at least at the time) than anything going on in europe.

5/26/2007 1:39:32 PM

^

I don't think he was referring to Europe.

5/26/2007 2:07:04 PM

^^ It may have been more brutal than what was happening in Europe (did slavery still exist in 1800's Europe?), but it was not more brutal than what Europeans were doing in other parts of the world (notably the Caribbean sugar plantations). If nothing else, the European's just 'hid' their slavery outside of their countries.

[Edited on May 26, 2007 at 2:34 PM. Reason : ]

5/26/2007 2:28:07 PM

yeah probably. i was just reading about some of this the other day in a book. this was 18th century colonial america

5/26/2007 2:55:47 PM

i don't really know what the point is of arguing about which one was worse.

but at least America got on the ball a lot sooner in terms of fixing things.

5/26/2007 4:30:02 PM

^i agree

during the colonialization of africa in the late 1800's, the only country the US had was liberia and supposedly they were free...when the rest of europe was fighting over land and setting borders...setting borders that did not take into account the different tribes of africa

5/26/2007 4:40:21 PM

South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe were better off under before Mandela and Mugabe took over.

5/26/2007 4:52:35 PM

isnt the more accurate argument between apartheid and jim crow laws?

5/26/2007 10:55:08 PM

you can't say either is worse than the other.

5/26/2007 11:10:29 PM

Quote :

"Well, pretty much every civilization in the world has practiced slavery"

come on ma, all the other kids are doing it. why cant i?

5/27/2007 1:47:19 AM

Quote :

"South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe were better off under before Mandela and Mugabe took over."

you have to be trolling. And Zimbabwa was not Rohedesia, Mozambique was Rhodesia.

5/27/2007 2:03:47 AM

Quote :

" you have to be trolling. And Zimbabwa was not Rohedesia, Mozambique was Rhodesia."

He is right.. don't correct people when you are wrong (and it takes 2 secs to google it to check).

Mozambique was a Portogeuse colony fyi. And they treated blacks worse than either SA or the USA.

5/27/2007 2:33:35 PM

my fault. i was drunk last night.

and he does have to be trolling. Rhodesia was hell on earth as was SA

5/27/2007 2:39:02 PM

You are right; Mugabe is a wonderful leader. I am sorry for trolling.

5/27/2007 7:45:12 PM

seeing as how the Africans have always sold themselves into slavery the answer to this post is: Who gives a shit about them

5/27/2007 7:49:01 PM

Heres an insightful analysis I found on the apartheid, it made me think:
http://www.youtube.com/v/f2b1D5w82yU

[Edited on May 27, 2007 at 10:26 PM. Reason : ]

5/27/2007 10:26:14 PM

Quote :

"seeing as how the Africans have always sold themselves into slavery the answer to this post is: Who gives a shit about them"

i'll bet you live in a trailer and fuck your mom every saturday night.

5/27/2007 11:38:09 PM

^^^^yup, enslaving an entire class of people was awesome.

having aparteid was even awesomer.

5/28/2007 1:07:38 PM

Quote :

"but at least America got on the ball a lot sooner in terms of fixing things."

That's a bit of a mixed statement. On one hand, European powers abolished slavery before the United States did. Yet at the same time, they did this while they were busily colonizing the rest of the world which is in some ways, just as bad as blatant slavery.

5/28/2007 2:03:16 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,484603,00.html

"We want the Chinese to leave and the old colonial rulers to return. They exploited our natural resources too, but at least they took care of us. They built schools, taught us their language and brought us the British civilization."

6/2/2007 5:03:02 PM

God Save the Queen.

6/2/2007 5:58:49 PM

comparing the likeness of Mugabe to Mandela? BRILLIANT!

and

Quote :

"But it is already clear that hardly any other region in the world is deriving as much benefit from the economic boom in the Far East as Africa. It could even make Africa a player -- and a winner -- in the globalization game ... According to the Deutsche Bank study, the countries of Africa and Latin America are the "greatest beneficiaries of China's hunger for raw materials," "

did you even read the whole article?



[Edited on June 4, 2007 at 5:23 PM. Reason : GENIUS ABOUND]

6/4/2007 5:01:31 PM

apartheid is wrong, slavery and jim crow laws were wrong.

R.S.A. and Zimbabwe are worse off now than during apartheid, but that still doesn't make Apartheid right because it wasn't Apartheid that made the countries better off.

6/5/2007 2:06:18 PM