De Jure 1781 To 1865

Recently a black dancing monkey tried to get out of paying taxes because it was racist to expect the descendants of slaves to owe taxes because of the 400 years that black people had been subjected to slavery in America.

Mr Howard, the United States of America only had the institution of slavery from June 21, 1788 to December 18, 1865.  76 and a half years, or so.

But we should also count the period under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union from March 1, 1781; bringing us to 84-3/4 years.  Slavery has been over in the US for 159 years, almost twice as long as we had it.  No living person was such a slave, no living person owned such a slave.

Prior to that, slavery in the 13 American colonies was English.  1585 at the earliest, 196 years of British slavery plus 85ish years of US is... 281 years.  We're 119 short of 400 here.

Prior to THAT, slavery in the Americas was...  the indigenous people had slavery when Columbus showed up, but you're blaming Europeans for the problem so I guess we'll blame Spain.

If we go from when Columbus showed up to the 13th Amendment, we're still short of 400 by 27 years.  And Columbus didn't start right in on taking slaves.  It was right behind him, but that makes us even shorter from 400.

However, I think it's very important for anyone who wants to blame America for slavery to remember a couple of time periods and dates.

April 12, 1861 to May 26, 1865 is an important time period.

This is the American Civil War.  A war damn near literally about the issue of "will there still be slavery in the United States?"  There's a bit of nuance, but it was a war about slavery.

Mr Howard, make note that the side opposed to slavery won that war and gifted your ancestors freedom.

365,000, predominantly white, predominantly men, died to to free your ancestors.

December 18, 1865 is the day that slavery is banned by Constitutional Amendment in the USA.  You probably didn't know that date after getting Juneteenth shoved at you.

But all of that is a round about way of saying, "The war is over, our side won, you're free now and free citizens of the USA pay their taxes regardless of our ancestry, ethnicity and creed."

Also of note: Being a descendant of slaves is not a unique to African-Americans in the US and CS experience.  Plenty of us white people are descended of slaves.  Particularly Italian immigrants to the US, because we're the folks the Romans enslaved and had shitty prospects in Italy because of the stigma of having once been Rome's slaves.  Look it up.

Then being prejudiced against is also not unique to being black in America.  Chinese, Irish and Italians were subject to everything black people went through right up to living memory.

Maybe it's time to stop feeling sorry for yourselves and making excuses.

It's definitely time for you to stop rewarding the people who insist you're not as good as me.  I call them race-baiters and they've got you convinced they're on your side.

They're not.

If it weren't for them, we'd be past all the past and we'd all be better off.

Perhaps your tax burden would be far smaller, Mr Howard.

PS:  Mr Howard, while you spew that racism and bigotry are keeping you down and causing you to owe a million in taxes...  At the highest tax rate that means you owe taxes on nearly three million dollars in income.  My lily white ass doesn't make that much in my entire working life.  Must be all that white privilege I'm doing.