[QUOTE]Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said recently he opposes paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves, has a family history deeply entwined in the issue: Two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners, U.S. census records show.
Of course they did.
by Anonymous | reply 1 | July 8, 2019 11:19 PM |
When reached for comment, Mitch McConnell replied "And I still would if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!"
by Anonymous | reply 2 | July 8, 2019 11:26 PM |
r2 wins!
by Anonymous | reply 3 | July 8, 2019 11:46 PM |
[QUOTE]Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) brushed off a question about an NBC News report that his great-great-grandfathers owned slaves, saying it puts him in the same camp as former President Barack Obama.
[QUOTE]McConnell appeared to smile as a reporter asked him during a weekly press conference if he knew that his family once owned slaves, and if it changed his position on reparations for African Americans.
[QUOTE]"You know I found myself once again in the same position as President Obama, we both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slave holders," McConnell told reporters.
by Anonymous | reply 4 | July 9, 2019 8:06 PM |
Yes, McConnell is JUST like Obama....
by Anonymous | reply 5 | July 9, 2019 8:11 PM |
Why can't the Republicans keep Obama's name out of their mouths, even for the most random, non-Obama related subhects?
Is it some kind of brain-addling cestode? Will this be the new Discovery Channel series?
by Anonymous | reply 6 | July 9, 2019 9:47 PM |
Why is this news? Probably most white people who lived here before 1850 owned slaves. What matters is that he chooses to be a SHIT today, not his ancestors.
by Anonymous | reply 7 | July 9, 2019 9:48 PM |
This is the definition of a "water is wet" post.
by Anonymous | reply 8 | July 9, 2019 9:50 PM |
[QUOTE]Probably most white people who lived here before 1850 owned slaves.
Nonsense. Very few white people owned slaves.
by Anonymous | reply 9 | July 10, 2019 12:55 AM |
Who really cares? We need to worry about more important things like when will the dark roots fad be over?
by Anonymous | reply 10 | July 10, 2019 1:27 AM |
He STILL owns slaves.
It's not like Donald Trump's white trash army of suckers think for themselves.
by Anonymous | reply 11 | July 10, 2019 4:21 AM |
Shocking!
by Anonymous | reply 12 | July 10, 2019 4:36 AM |
Sorry - but I am shocked. He looks like poor white trash who would sell his mother for power and prestige. I wouldn't get a sense of him having any ancestors with any amount of wealth.
He's still trash though.
by Anonymous | reply 13 | July 10, 2019 4:53 AM |
[quote]r7 Why is this news? Probably most white people who lived here before 1850 owned slaves.
What are you talking about? Slaves were expensive to buy. Most whites aren't the descendents of thriving plantation owners ... we're trash!
by Anonymous | reply 14 | July 10, 2019 4:58 AM |
"Probably most white people who lived here before 1850 owned slaves. "
Where is your "here"? Kentucky? The United States?
Because even in slave states, the majority of white people didn't own slaves. Poor whites didn't, middle-class whites rarely did, women or children rarely did. Most slaves were officially the property of white male heads of households, and white male heads of households have never been the majority of the population, even if there are STILL people who think they're the only part of the population that matters. And that's just the slave states, there were probably more people living in free states than slave states.
Now as to being descended from those assholes... they did spread their DNA around. In terms of percentages of the population, there could well be more descendants of slave owners than there ever were slave owners.
by Anonymous | reply 15 | July 10, 2019 5:10 AM |
Duh.
by Anonymous | reply 16 | July 10, 2019 5:19 AM |
Why did no one check whether Obama was descended from Luo slave traders?
by Anonymous | reply 17 | July 10, 2019 5:31 AM |
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if McConnell still owns slaves. It's not uncommon for wealthy Chinese to do so, and his wife's family probably has several.
by Anonymous | reply 18 | July 10, 2019 5:34 AM |
Black people who descended from slave owners were the result of rape - - is that really a can of worms conservatives want to open?
by Anonymous | reply 19 | July 10, 2019 5:35 AM |
Is being a descendant of slave owners supposed to inform us of his character?
by Anonymous | reply 20 | July 10, 2019 5:49 AM |
Obama is half white.
by Anonymous | reply 21 | July 10, 2019 5:55 AM |
r20, No, but the fact that he has never expressed any regret about his family's history of slave-owning does.
by Anonymous | reply 22 | July 10, 2019 5:59 AM |
I despise the man, but making an issue of something his great-great-grandfathers did is a real stretch for me.
I have no idea what my great-great-grandfathers were up to, but whatever it was I'll be damned if anyone can make me feel guilty about it.
by Anonymous | reply 23 | July 10, 2019 6:10 AM |
From his looks I would have thought it was his grandfather who owned slaves.
by Anonymous | reply 24 | July 10, 2019 7:27 AM |
R23, it's not that he's directly responsible for what his ancestors did -- of course he's not.
It's that he has done nothing to denounce their conduct or show any humanity ever since.
by Anonymous | reply 25 | July 10, 2019 7:34 AM |
[quote]Black people who descended from slave owners were the result of rape
You need to read an Obama biography. He’s black, but his slave owning ancestors were on his white mother’s side, and no, she didn’t rape her black African husband.
by Anonymous | reply 26 | July 10, 2019 8:02 AM |
Well there's a bolt outta the blue !
by Anonymous | reply 27 | July 10, 2019 8:11 AM |
Back then, families needed help, slave owners were common in the south. It was nothing unusual.
by Anonymous | reply 28 | July 10, 2019 8:41 AM |
Why won't that evil chinless turkey necked sack of shit just die already!
by Anonymous | reply 29 | July 10, 2019 10:11 AM |
R14 You say that 'Slaves were expensive to buy'.
How expensive were they?
by Anonymous | reply 30 | July 10, 2019 10:18 AM |
Couldn't have been that expensive if Blacks, Hispanics and First Nations were also able to purchase slaves.
by Anonymous | reply 31 | July 10, 2019 10:21 AM |
Most of the blacks who were listed as slave owners were freedmen who had purchased their family members. They represented .5% of slaves. There weren't large black owned plantations with a few hundred slaves. IF the freedmen purchased a family member and freed them, they would still be classified as slaves unless taken to a free state. The price of slaves has been listed as the equivalent of $40,000 in today's money. It was estimated that only 3% of white people in the entire country owned 95% of the slaves prior to the Civil War. The average in slave holding states was around 20% of families owning slaves. AS usual in the US, the wealthy minority convinced the lower classes to fight for the privileges of the upperclass. The election of 2016 proves this continues today.
by Anonymous | reply 32 | July 10, 2019 1:58 PM |
He’s a disgusting creep
by Anonymous | reply 33 | July 10, 2019 1:59 PM |
"You say that 'Slaves were expensive to buy'. How expensive were they? "
I vaguely recall an adult woman being sold for between $500 and $1000, and a strong adult male could cost thousands, in an era when a dollar was worth about a hundred times what it is now. So yes, poor and middle-class people couldn't afford slaves, at least not healthy adult slaves.
But those prices were for the middle of the 19th century, I wonder if slaves were cheaper back when the cross-Atlantic slave trade was at its height. It was largely shut down in the early 19th century if I'm not mistaken, and not by the US.
by Anonymous | reply 34 | July 10, 2019 3:06 PM |
Most women needed help...cleaning up coal dust was a fulltime job, then the children needed tending. Even when my mom was young, they hired a wash woman. Could people afford a slave family or did they hire housemaids and field hands? Most men were listed as farmers in the census...people needed help. The thought of moving west with no workers to help you, seems ridiculous.
by Anonymous | reply 35 | July 10, 2019 3:23 PM |
R35, if you bought a female slave to sweep up the coal dust and mind the teething baby, she'd cost the family hundreds of dollars, while a hired girl who did the same thing would cost you a bit of pocket change and whatever you fed her.
But if you bred the hired girl, you wouldn't own the children, and couldn't sell them at a profit.
by Anonymous | reply 36 | July 10, 2019 3:47 PM |
I had heard that my ancestors owned a family of slaves in Tennessee. Supposedly when they were free, they stayed with my family. I wonder if that is suppose to be a sweet story...so that we would not feel so bad about it? What's true? It was 170 years ago, so who knows?
by Anonymous | reply 37 | July 10, 2019 4:10 PM |
R37 - don't kid yourself. They stayed with the family for a couple of potential reasons:
1) They had no money or way to go somewhere else 2) There were laws enacted regarding vagrancy - effectively forcing black people to work for white people or be arrested. Forced into sharecropping or housework.
Sweetness had nothing to do with it. They were essentially economic slaves still. Their choices were very limited, if any at all.
by Anonymous | reply 38 | July 10, 2019 5:27 PM |
So when is some sassy news person going to tell Mitch he probably has some Black relatives out here somewhere.
Everybody knows, massa be creepin.
by Anonymous | reply 39 | July 10, 2019 5:40 PM |
R34 "A woman being sold for between $500 and $1000"?
I don't believe this.
by Anonymous | reply 40 | July 10, 2019 7:14 PM |
We didn't have slaves, we had the Irish.
by Anonymous | reply 41 | July 10, 2019 7:56 PM |
Things were hard for the Irish.
by Anonymous | reply 42 | July 10, 2019 8:08 PM |
I don't remember the details, but I do recall learning in my Civil War US History class that a slave cost the equivalent of several horses, so obviously slaves were very expensive (most people didn't own horses either).
According to the website at the link below, the average price for a slave in 1850 was $400, in a period where the annual per capita income was about $110.
by Anonymous | reply 43 | July 10, 2019 8:29 PM |
And some slaves were worth $0. A slave who eats but produces nothing but excreta is a liability.
by Anonymous | reply 45 | July 10, 2019 10:17 PM |
[quote]r35 Most women needed help...cleaning up coal dust was a fulltime job, then the children needed tending. Even when my mom was young, they hired a wash woman.
Hiring a washer woman is very different from OWNING A SLAVE, you idiot.
The slave trade wasn't invented in order to get a little domestic help.
by Anonymous | reply 46 | July 11, 2019 12:18 AM |
I treated my washer woman like a slave— especially after I caught her rummaging through my coin purse.
by Anonymous | reply 47 | July 11, 2019 9:55 PM |
Looks like Beto and his rich wife are also descendants of slaveowners.
by Anonymous | reply 48 | July 15, 2019 1:40 AM |
I want him to die. So he can be with his ancestors.
by Anonymous | reply 49 | July 15, 2019 1:43 AM |
Probably, percentage-wise, there are now living in the U.S. many more black descendants of slave owners than white.
by Anonymous | reply 50 | July 15, 2019 1:57 AM |
I'd like some stats on that r50.
by Anonymous | reply 51 | July 15, 2019 2:00 AM |
Then he should pay for all the reparations!
by Anonymous | reply 52 | July 15, 2019 2:04 AM |
Wow. Racist person comes from a long line of racists? Shocking.
by Anonymous | reply 53 | July 15, 2019 2:06 AM |
R51, unless the entire population of this country underwent DNA testing, there’s no way to know. If there’s anything we know, it’s that the advent of cheap DNA testing has led to very many surprises among those trying to map out their family trees.
by Anonymous | reply 54 | July 15, 2019 3:07 AM |
The majority of black people in the U.S. have some European ancestry.
Where did that come from?
Not from people who had no association with slaves.
by Anonymous | reply 55 | July 15, 2019 3:23 AM |
Recall African Americans have resided in what is now the U.S. since the 1600s, far longer than most ethnic groups, so they've had a long time to blend with the population, so to speak.
by Anonymous | reply 56 | July 15, 2019 3:40 AM |
He has my heart as his slave now!
by Anonymous | reply 57 | July 15, 2019 3:40 AM |
I wonder how they would react if they knew their great great great great grandson was a friend of Dorothy.
by Anonymous | reply 58 | July 15, 2019 3:48 AM |
Beto says ME TOO ME TOO !
Beto O’Rourke Shares Essay Revealing He’s Descended from Slave Owners
by Anonymous | reply 59 | July 15, 2019 6:55 AM |
Everyone in Kentucky knows McConnell is a racist and not your run of the mill rich Republican asshole racist but full on Klan level racist.
by Anonymous | reply 60 | July 15, 2019 11:35 AM |
Why’d he marry a Chinese American woman?
by Anonymous | reply 61 | July 22, 2019 4:40 PM |
Ummmm in other news, water is wet. ALL of our families owned slaves in the olden days. Dumbass.
by Anonymous | reply 62 | July 22, 2019 4:44 PM |
I hate McConnell more than I do Trump (which is saying a lot), but I won't judge him for terrible shit his ancestors did. My father was a fucking monster. Sex offender. Creep of the highest order. I am nothing like him and will not take on any of the shitty things he did. That was his life. Not mine.
Because I don't believe in hypocrisy, I have to give the turtle a pass on this.
by Anonymous | reply 63 | July 22, 2019 7:21 PM |
Mitch has the type of face that you just want to punch repeatedly.
by Anonymous | reply 64 | July 30, 2019 2:41 PM |