Bob Dylan: Stigma of slavery ruined America

Publicity photo provided by Wenner Media LLC shows Bob Dylan on cover of Oct. 2012 issue of Rolling Stone / AP Photo/Wenner Media LLC

(AP) NEW YORK — Bob Dylan says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts the country can get rid of the shame because it was "founded on the backs of slaves."

The veteran musician tells Rolling Stone that in America "people (are) at each other's throats just because they are of a different color," adding, "It will hold any nation back." He also says blacks know that some whites "didn't want to give up slavery."

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Bob Dylan turns 70

The 71-year-old Dylan said, "If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today."

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Aging rock stars

When asked if President Obama was helping to shift a change, Dylan says: "I don't have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change."

The magazine's new issue hits newsstands Friday.

[E_Shemsy_Oser]

Thank you Mr. Dylan for bring up the topic. It is a great issue that should be kept in the minds of America until it is worked out. I have read many comments from my fellow man on this matter. It is so sad to read that most of them prove your point by ranting against your person rather then give a con to your pro on the issue; Things like," Bob go and smoke another joint, or make remarks about your liberal veiw. It is comments like these that show me that you are right, and that America is a foolish, and angry place. This however is not rooted in slavery, this was created before they set foot on African soil. It is rooted in Englands False belife system, and became the very reson that the Queen of England at that time put them out. It is this unruley nature that will be the down fall of this country. It is their false belife that they were some how given the right. it is this false right that makes them live without limits, and it will be this boundless, mindless thinking, or lack thereof that will kill the Earth, and her Precious resoures, and it's people. They think themselves supperior over others because of their barbarck nature to kill: however it is this nature that will finish them, as the world learns more, and more, and at a faster rate. They will soon come to know that we are just pointless. When that day comes, and it will. We will be cut off from the world.

[rwsmith29456]

I say we should get over it.

[humbledpie]

The slave trade in America is composed of more than Africans and may include some of your own ancestors. It is single handedly one of the most eggregious practices in the modern world. To get over slavery is to ignore the means in which you are able to live today. Slavery is still taking place today. Should we tell those held against there will to just get over it?

[Valhalla0907]

The comments are longer than the article!

[sherrytinjax]

Bob, you are partially right. However this country had to be stolen from it's native people first. African Cheiftains sold their own people to the slavetraders. Africans and native americans were held in slavery and murdered in the name of progress and the creation of a democracy. This entire country has been built on lies, theivery and greed and continues to be controlled in that manner. Bob, why don't you get real and talk about the secret societies that have been the real cause of misery, you know about that right? We don't have a chance to redeem ourselves until this greedy machine is stopped and our government is turned back over to the people and there is representation for the masses and not control over the masses. Next time you make a public statement, do something different and tell the whole truth, that seems to be a lost art these days.

[humbledpie]

African participation in slave trade is not as general as you state. Similar to the mourning war, African tribes sold criminals and prisoners of war into the slave trade. They didnt sell their families and friends like it is often depicted. Regardless of race these were people that were criminals in a place that had no formal "jail". Prior to slave trade criminals were killed. Through trade, tribes could build trade relations and secure items they needed to prosper. Like most indian tribes, Africans absorbed men, women and children of other tribes. If Africans knew their initial participation would result in the decimation of there race I dont think they would be so passive. Initial slavery in america consisted of Indians, Africans and Caucasians. Initial trade/demand of Africans was in the hundreds. It wasnt until the egregious demands of cotton, sugar and tobbacco plantations that hundreds of thousands of African slaves were unjustly taken from there lands. Demand rose and a once mutual trade became a uncontrolled exploitive overtaking. Africans were exploited and used as the primary race because they were more resilient to the hardships, disease and labor. Many other races couldnt endure and adapt to the conditions. By selecting one race you can create the divides we still experience today, excuse abuse, mistreatment and no pay by deeming them inferior.

[jones0102]

Bob has a point, but there is a time to bring a historic event to its end. The Race Card only works for as long as we allow it to through some misplaces sense of shame. The last of the men who lived in slavery all died off in the 1940's and the last of any slave owners died off around the same time. We need to learn from our Russian friends that when a specific group brings up something out of their distant past, we should take no responsibility for the acts of the deceased and rather look at attempts to continue such as very rude and against the better interest of the nation as a whole. When we stop appologizing and stop giving special attentions to something more than 150-years dead, then the problem will die away. The mention of slavery and the use of the Race Card must eventually be considered just as rude as the use of the "N-Word". If this nation is to continue to hold together as One Union, then mentions such as Bob's must be considered subversive attempt to continue divisionism.

[E_Shemsy_Oser]

The race card is like American Express. Durrng Slavery the creadit limit was max out, and has yet to be paid. Everyone wants a go life; however those at that time in out cold blooded, and brutal history failed to pay the tab for the buildning of this great country. So the race card will live forever. I find it so funny that the Euro American speaks against the use of this device to benefit is own gain, and that is still to not pay the Bill$. To say lets put the 150 year dead into the past will not make it go away because murder as no Statue of limitations. The world as been watch us make a fool out of America. We tell them how to do right, and we can't seem to make it right for ourselves.

[humbledpie]

"stop giving special attentions to something more than 150-years dead"

Slavery is still taking place today? With children, organs, women, labor. The issue isnt exclusively slavery it is the resonating inferiority placed upon a race that restricts there ability to live equal to there peers. Whether you want to admit it or not we are not One Nation. The fact that you effortlessly dimiss slavery as a pastime shows the ignorance of our citizens that keeps this subject relevant. I %100 agree that we should be one nation, but ignoring the past doesnt do anything but turn a blind eye to a lesson we should instill everyday to ensure we embody this surperior "land of the free" we project. America is a child in the history nations and even though we have resources, we have alot to learn before we truly become one.

[HardCastle12]

Only a liberal would say that white people want blacks in chains. They will never move on from something that happened in the past, because they need division to cast blame and get elected.

[joevandenberg]

dear Bob son-of-Abraham, see Stephen Biko (1946-1977) martyred to apartheid at 30--should So. Africa just go away, now? and, Bob, what's yer take on the int'l. slave trade today? any heroic stance? or do we get a tempest in a teapot spellbinder...c'mon Bob, yer old enough, drop the carney act and BYOB to the table...

[seansarto]

bob dylan ranting about slavery is the same as "Grizzly Man" timothy treadwell ranting about "protecting the bears"...two psychos clutching their childhood ttreadwell clutched his childhood toys..treadwell clutched his stuffed bears while dylan clutches his high school textbooks...dylan is an idiot

[E_Shemsy_Oser]

It would be foolish on your part Sir to cancel BOB out as just an idiot. The issue holds merit. I'm very sure had the shoe be put onto the other foot you would be playing the same as the blacks. Slavery is not a dead issuse because there is no statue of limitation on Murder. Sorry but BOBo coined it right. Slavery ruined America because we can't tell the rest of the Civilized world about Human rights, when we ourselves have never made this matter right.

[philcobeam]

The Institution of revisionist history has created the misnomer of indentured servitude to sweep under the rug, and diminish the fact of white slavery. However, bound whites in early America did, in fact, call themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the white slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called "custom of the country," as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the white slave merchants themselves.

I challenge anyone to study 17th century colonial America, sift through the documents, the jargon, and the statutes on both sides of the Atlantic and one will discover that white slavery was a far more extensive operation than black enslavement. It is when we come to the 18th century that one begins to encounter more "servitude" on the basis of a contract of indenture. But even then, there were kidnappings of Anglo-Saxons who were forced into slavery, as well as convict slavery.

Before the British slavers landed on Africa's western coast to buy slaves from African chiefs, they sold their own white working class people ("the surplus poor" as they were known) from the streets and towns of England, into slavery. Tens of thousands of these white were kidnapped children. In fact the very origination of the word kidnapped is "kid-nabbed," the stealing of white children for enslavement.

According to the English Dictionary of the Underworld, under the heading kidnapper is the following definition: A stealer of human beings, esp. of children; originally for exportation to the plantations of North America.

The center of the trade in child-slaves was in the port cities of Britain and Scotland: White slaves transported to the colonies suffered a staggering loss of life in the 17th and 18th century. During the voyage to America, it was customary to keep the white slaves below deck for the entire nine to twelve week journey. A white slave would be confined to a hole not more than sixteen feet long, chained with 50 other men to a board, with padlocked collars around their necks. The weeks of confinement below deck in the ship's stifling hold often resulted in outbreaks of contagious disease which would sweep through the cargo of white freight chained in the bowels of the ship.

Ships transporting white slaves to America often lost half them to death. According to historian Sharon V. Salinger, "Scattered data reveal that the mortality for (white) servants at certain times equaled that for (black) slaves in the 'middle passage,' and during other periods actually exceeded the death rate for (black) slaves." Salinger reports a death rate of ten to twenty percent over the entire 18th century for black slaves on board ships enroute to America compared with a death rate of 25% for white slaves en route to America.

The chronicle of white slavery in America comprises the dustiest shelf in the darkest corner of suppressed American history, ignored by dusty minds.
There will only be racial understanding when knowledge of historical truths are widespread and all can negotiate from positions of strength and not from fantasies of white working class guilt and the uniqueness of black suffering - all stemming from historical ignorance, and lack of research.

Let it be said, in many cases blacks in slavery had it better than poor whites in the antebellum South. This is why there was such strong resistance to the Confederacy in the poverty-stricken areas of the mountain south, such as Winston County in Alabama and the Beech mountains of North Carolina. Those poor whites could not imagine why any white laborer would want to die for the slave-owning plutocracy that more often than not, gave better care and attention to their black servants than they did to the free white labor they scorned as trash.

To this day, the white ruling class denigrates the white poor and patronizes blacks.

If this seems admirable from the pathological viewpoint of Marxism or cosmopolitan liberalism, the black and Third World beneficiaries of white ruling class esteem ought to consider what sort of friends they actually have.

The Bible declares that the man who does not take care of his own family is worse than an infidel. This also applies to one's country. The man who turns his back on his own country, then steals into another for nefarious means has no love for either.

White, self-hating liberals and greed-head conservatives who claim to care for the civil rights of black and Third World people, have discarded the working class of their own on the garbage heap of history. All one has to do is look around.

[GOP-R--Con-Men]

So you're saying whites enslaved both blacks and whites so everything should be looked at as equal treatment, right?

[bobnjersey]

[So you're saying whites enslaved both blacks and whites so everything should be looked at as equal treatment, right?]
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you might need to re-read his post.

[Mikzy]

Annnnd these comments are proving Bob Dylan right. Immediately when someone mentions race, white people hide their guilt by blaming black people lol. I once foolishly believed that I could be another American. If I were good enough, if I did the right things. But as my mother used to say when I was young, "keep livin". I've discovered that race will ALWAYS be a factor. You can't get passed slavery. As Paul Mooney says, "racism is here to stay because white folks owned us and they will never get over it."

[Mikzy]

The only way to be "equal" with whites is to sell out to them. Something, despite my various hygenks, I was and remain unwilling to do. Slavery did ruin this country, and there will always be a stigma because of it. You can't get passed it. It's in the blood.