MookyToomplik
15615
485
17
Jun 22, 2026 5:03 PM
MookyToomplik
15615
485
17
aeroldoth
Bu...but surely VOTING will end our oppression, exploitation, suffering and murder!1111 /s
SOLARvsFACISM
Legislators voted for civil rights because regular Americans watched the nightly news and saw police beat innocent people for peacefully protesting.
McPuffinStuff
https://imgur.com/QAH5lyx.jpg
CookieDave
Freedom? You askin' me about freedom?
You're askin' me about freedom?
I'll be honest with you
I know a whole lot more about what freedom isn't than about what it is
'Cause I've never been free
I can only share my vision with you
Of the future, about what freedom is, uh
The way I see it, uh, freedom is, is the right to grow, is the right to blossom
Uh, freedom is, is, is the right to be yourself
To be who you are, to be who you wanna be
To do what you wanna do
Gippo53
TChallaVanDam
She was a badass. Black Panther that was arrested with 20 or so others for alleged plots to bomb government buildings (IIRC), granted permission to represent herself in court and won, even though she was a high school dropout. Continued her activism but eventually, unfortunately, her life took a dark turn into a pretty bad drug addiction. But she eventually turned that around too.
TyrCarter
Nothing also every got done by shitposting on the internet so get to work
Whitebeardthepirate
yeah this exactly. i've mentioned this to political friends of mine following the situation, about the mass amount of memes. every one of them had the same response: "what's Imgur?"
YeahFineSure
While true, the moral appeal is still important. It can land with individuals in the oppressing class, weakening them from within, and can bring in outside allies.
dohcohv
Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777, they weren't forced to. Other states banned slavery later, before the civil war.
JetrelPixelArt
Yeah. The whole civil war happened literally because the Abolitionist movement was getting so strong that they felt like if they didn't secede and fight, pro-abolition sentiment would destroy the "right to own slaves" from within the existing slave states.
People forget that it and Jim Crow were a culture war with guns where they killed a lot of white abolitionists, and that the whole idea behind secession was to give them a legal firewall to do "ideological cleaning".
JetrelPixelArt
I.e. create a sort of "Iron Curtain" behind which, since they were their own country, they could make "spreading anti-slavery sentiment" a capital offense, and just purge all the people who petitioned for it - at least the outspoken "preachers" of it.
They were losing the culture war so badly that they felt no words could win it - only using violence to silence the other side. The Klan was huge on this during the civil rights era. We forget about all their white victims.
Whitebeardthepirate
"yeh....but.....the other side has guns. we can't do anything about that" - too many in the us now
CallMeCourierSix
Haven't heard that one, ever. Statistically, Dems own more guns than Republikkkans. I have many, and I'm a tree-hugging commie liberal socialist.
Whitebeardthepirate
i hear it all the time here on Imgur. "let's mob up and get em!" Imgur: "yeah the other side has the army. you want to get massacred, you go ahead and do it" "have you see the drones and cops they have? you do it first" "yeah I'm not risking my safety"
CallMeCourierSix
See, now you're changing your statement. "The other side has the army."
No, they don't. The RICH have the military. And if we get too uppity for their liking, they'll attack their own citizens.
MissySassy
Truer words have never been said
Questionablysensible
The British Empire banned slavery and bought out the slaves to free them because the British people eventually recognised the horrific wrong they were doing and pressured their government. So while rare it does happen.
MundySeme
Even though this is true it does not discredit the OP.
The oppressors in this situation are the slave owning British Parliament. While the oppressed are both black slaves and the common British people together. I assure you that the wealthy British wanted to keep their slaves and the British people too poor to own slaves in the first place were tired of being treated as second class citizens by the wealthy slave owning elite.
Questionablysensible
Some of the wealthy did, but enough of them did not, and rhe electorate out enough pressure on to make it possible for the government to take on the cost of freeing the slaves.
Of course, if you define everyone except those who didnt want to end slavery as "not an oppressor" then the statement is a tautology.
spookyu
It's worth noting though, the events of the Zong massacre and court case over "insurance fraud" (the enslaved people were insured, insurer didn't want to pay after the captain slaughtered a bunch of them) is was what precipitated the movement for abolition, it finally got enough attention after. A lot of people ignored the horrors until rich people didn't get paid, then it finally got attention. Doesn't devalue the end result of course, and the life story of Olaudah Equiano is absolutely wild.
FunkedUp
The history professor with the facial hair that keeps showing up on my feed says they did it fo somehow hurt the French
MissySassy
Don't be so easily fooled. Great Britain has admitted it is "institutionally racist", and it still remains so to this day.
YeahFineSure
One could argue that it wasn't the cries of the oppressed that fueled the changes, but the sway of sympathetic people in power.
Questionablysensible
The sympathetic people in power were sympathetic for moral reasons. Daniel O'Connell was offered everything he ever wanted for Ireland if he dropped his opposition to slavery but rejected it on moral grounds and was supported by the majority of his electorate.
YeahFineSure
Absolutely. My point, looking back at the original quote, is that the oppressed are typically powerless and need sympathetic powerful allies to drive change.
Questionablysensible
Agree with what you said, but the original quote is "by appealing to the moral sense of the people who are oppressing them." I was just pointing out that its not entirely that grim. Close, but not entirely
YeahFineSure
Yep, that works if "oppressors" is seen broadly rather than narrowly.
Sherpafish
While this is true, British law still allowed transportation of slaves, so they were still monetarily profiting from the slave trade: Morally dark grey, if that.
dohcohv
They also interfered with other countries transporting slaves. In the 1800s they were patrolling Africa, capturing slave ships, freeing the captives and burning the ships. Many, many British sailors died enforcing this and to tropical diseases. Did they stop the slave trade? No. No single action stopped the slave trade. They only stopped 150,000 slaves and only captured or sunk 1500 ships. That's still something, especially for the people on those ships.
BuiltonSin
In the 1800s they also heavily supported the south in the US civil war. Men can be fickle bastards
dohcohv
I wouldn't say staying neutral and not recognizing the south heavily supporting them.
There were British merchants selling weapons to the south, but they also sold to the north. That's pretty much staying neutral.
dohcohv
The UK did build ships for the Confederacy and not the Union. Why was that? The Union had shipyards and a massive shipbuilding industry, the Confederacy didn't.
If you want to see the UKs neutrality in shipbuilding, look at the south American naval arms race where Armstrong built ships for both Chile and Brazil, Argentina bought ships from the US.
alienstomper
"Bought out the slaves to free them" is a really whitewashed way to say that they paid slavers for losing their 'property'
Iftheyredeadtheyrejusthookers
So whitewashed that the practice was done by basically every nation that abolished slavery. Please tell Peru, Paraguay, Haiti, Columbia etc that compensated emancipation is a white only thing.
alienstomper
Its colombia, and haiti didnt 'choose' to. They had the option of being invaded by a power that had spent 50 years at war with the capacity and desire for another 50, or pay a sum so large it didnt get actually paid off until after ww2 AFTER france so graciously agreed to reduce the debt from 150 million francs to 60 million.
2074red2074
"Hey slaves, we can pay millions to get all of you free, right here right now, or we can spend ten or twenty years arguing, debating, and possibly fighting a rebellion to demand your freedom without compensation. Which would you prefer, we pay the slaveowners and everyone walks away, or you endure over a decade of literal torture and murder but they are hurt financially?"
alienstomper
Or how about just free them and tell the slavers "sorry but that was a person consider your monetary loss a lesson in not being a monster"?
2074red2074
Governments don't "just" do anything. You've got 15% of people wanting to do that, 40% of people supporting a buyout, and 45% of people still supporting slavery. Should those 15% of people hold out and refuse to vote yes on a buyout, condemning slaves to another decade of actively being raped, tortured, and murdered until they can get enough support for a blanket ban without compensation, or should they take what they can get and free the slaves immediately with compensation? In fact, why 1/2
2074red2074
even do that? Why not hold out for another thirty years, condemning an entire GENERATION of slaves to rape, torture, and murder, so that they can convince the parliament to end slavery AND retroactively charge all slave owners with crimes? Why don't you want to put the owners in prison? You don't think people who practiced slavery deserved prison? 2/2
Questionablysensible
The British State took on a massive cost to free the slaves because their citizens came to find abhorrent thabks to a lot of hard work. Its problematic that slave owners made bank, but I was trying to point out that there is some hope
alienstomper
They didnt "take on massive cost". They were the most powerful country of the area controlling the largest share of land and people. And the amount they spent rewarding slavers for owning people pales in comparison to the fortune they made from letting slavers own people.
Questionablysensible
The British paid £20 million, which was 40% of the national budget in 1833 and wasnt paid off until 2015. By any measure that's a massive cost to the state.
alienstomper
Thats a lot of money, sure, like £6 billion today, i think. But still pocket change to the wealth accrued through slavery, AND a testament to the fact reparations are possible... but only for white people