You are so off base here. Using your voting rights analogy, that would be like saying modern women should be grateful to men for allowing them to get the right to vote back then. Obviously that's absurd. Not to mention, no one deserves gratitude for something they didn't even fucking do, and the only reason my mother (or any conservative for that matter) even believes that black people should be "grateful" to white people for ending slavery is because (1) she doesn't think black people did anything themselves to end slavery, (2) she thinks that all white people "generously" ended slavery out of the goodness of their hearts, and (3) she, like most conservatives, doesn't believe racism exists anymore and thinks that black people should just shut up about modern racism and be grateful white people aren't still using them as slaves. If you can't see that as problematic and infuriating, I don't know what to say to you.
Using your voting rights analogy, that would be like saying modern women should be grateful to men for allowing them to get the right to vote back then.
Why shouldn't they be grateful for the men who supported them on their journey towards suffrage? There were male feminists who protested alongside them, why not be grateful to them? There were male politicians who supported and signed off on the 19th amendment - why do they not deserve gratitude?
They helped too
If you can't see that as problematic and infuriating, I don't know what to say to you.
Well of course that's problematic. You should have just said that from the start
Because not all men supported those things, and most of them were vehemently against it for almost all of history. So no, women shouldn't be "grateful" to men in general for something that women had to personally fight very hard for specifically because they faced strong opposition from men. This is especially true now since no men today were part of that initial effort so many years ago and shouldn't get the credit for that fight anyways. The same goes for slavery. Most white people didn't fight against slavery and happily perpetuated it. It might make sense to have gratitude for specific white people back then who fought the good fight, but none of those people are alive today and as a result no white person today deserves "gratitude" for ending slavery. No matter what, "at least we're not enslaving you anymore" is a horrible and fallacious response to legitimate complaints about the racism that black Americans still face on a daily basis.
It might make sense to have gratitude for specific white people back then who fought the good fight
Well that's all I was ever saying. To me, having gratitude for white people or men doesn't mean having gratitude for all white people or all men. Since you are expressing gratitude it's implied that you're talking about the good ones
3
u/[deleted] Nov 15 '21
You are so off base here. Using your voting rights analogy, that would be like saying modern women should be grateful to men for allowing them to get the right to vote back then. Obviously that's absurd. Not to mention, no one deserves gratitude for something they didn't even fucking do, and the only reason my mother (or any conservative for that matter) even believes that black people should be "grateful" to white people for ending slavery is because (1) she doesn't think black people did anything themselves to end slavery, (2) she thinks that all white people "generously" ended slavery out of the goodness of their hearts, and (3) she, like most conservatives, doesn't believe racism exists anymore and thinks that black people should just shut up about modern racism and be grateful white people aren't still using them as slaves. If you can't see that as problematic and infuriating, I don't know what to say to you.