printFor the Atlantic slave trade, contemporary Americans and Britons have been expiating at every opportunity. But as historian Jeremy Black points out in The Slave Trade, Europeans also brought about the demise of this despicable practice in Africa.
Having made the obligatory pilgrimage to Ghana, Barack told Anderson Cooper—the “journalist” noted for introducing the country to the practice of tea bagging—that “slavery is a terrible part of the United States’ history and should be taught in a way that connects that past cruelty to current events, such as the genocide in Darfur.”
What a change that makes, doesn’t it?
Does our overlord seek to repetitively rub in the never-changing theme of the white man’s burden, the theme WASPs welcome like wimps? Or is he open to teaching Americans about the robust slave trade conducted by Arabs across the Sahara Desert? Or across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to markets in the Middle East. How about the vibrant, indigenous slave trade conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa?
I suggest that Africa’s own Little Lord Fauntleroy read the words of a brother who’s seldom seen on the idiot’s lantern, and whose works are not distributed widely across the racial tyranny that is America: Keith B. Richburg.
Wrote Richburg in Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa:
“I feel for [Africa’s] suffering, I empathize with her pain, and now, from afar, I still recoil in horror whenever I see yet another television picture of another tribal slaughter, another refugee crisis. But most of all I think: Thank God my ancestors got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God that I am an American.”
Repeat after Richburg, Mr. president.
Update (July 14): Myron, I had objected to the use of “slavery” with reference to the West. Alistair addressed the so-called plight of women in the West. The Third World is a different matter (or is it what remains of the Second World that you decried?). There, statutes may declare slavery illegal, but tradition sees nothing wrong with forms of it. Guess what wins out?
It’s heartbreaking what’s happening in Africa (I have first hand experience living here). There is this feint glimmer of hope because the people around me are starting to question their governments, but I just know that this kind of “insolence” will not go unpunished by the machete wielding, Hyena-taming barbarians that rule this continent.
Steeped in academia, I know the modus operandi of the day is to discount everything the Founders did because of Slave Trade. But if that’s the case, then the President nor anyone else has an argument to make on the basis of natural rights because such arguments and such principles laid down in our country’s founding were the force that ended Slave Trade. In addition, as one thinks about the way American history is presented these days, one would never believe that there were any abolitionists in America. People need to take a good hard look at the history of the Quakers in America. [And the Evangelicals]
In 1600, slavery was ubiquitous – most whites were owned by whites, Orientals by Orientals, and blacks by blacks – although there were cross-racial components. For example, Moors conducted raids to capture and enslave Europeans. Afterwards, the enlightenment took place which freed many European and American white “indentured servants” and “serfs”. Liberals like Jefferson were uncomfortable with their own hypocrisy but did not resolve the problem while others abolished the institution in England, Northern US, Mexico. The struggle against American slavery involved both whites and blacks – with 500,000 whites dying in a civil war. Slavery still persists today generally by non-whites against non-whites. (I’ve been told that in Arabic, obed means slave and black – but that is politically incorrect to point out!).
Nevertheless, I am sure Obama prefers an Farrakhanish-Afrocentric pseudo-history whereby all slavery consisted of whites capturing blacks and enslaving them until blacks liberated themselves on their own. As for the misery of Africa – like Hutus vs. Tutsis, mass starvation, poverty, AIDS, mass rapes, and corruption – the politically correct answer is that is all due to Zionist colonialism. (if you gave that as the answer, you can be the # 1 student at Princeton).
[The Enlightenment: western. Christianity: western. The men and the movements behind these philosophies abolished slavery.]
When Cassius Clay, AKA Mohammad Ali, returned from Nigeria (I think it was) after winning the world champion fight against Sonny Liston, his first comment was- “I’m glad my grandfather got on that boat.”
I really don’t see the point of Mr. Obama’s remarks about keeping the past alive. Slavery is still common in the world, Mostly committed by Black Muslims in Africa against Black Christians of other tribes. White slavery in Europe and the US is flourishing today [Legally? Where?]. Why not let the dead past fade away and stop the slavery of the present?
Notice, as always, it is whites that must forever beg and grovel for forgiveness for the sins of the ancestors. Whites must acknowledge their Original Sin, from which they can never redeem themselves; even the election of our mixed-race Messiah cannot entirely wipe the stain of sin from the white man’s heart.
Coming back down to planet Earth, why would one go to Africa to wail and moan about slavery of blacks in the 16th-19th century? The folks in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa aren’t the descendants of slaves, but the descendants of people who sold their fellow Africans to the white man. Africa is also the continent home to few of the remaining countries where the enslavement of blacks is still legal, such as in Sudan and Mauritania (both Muslim countries).
Barack Obama is free to go around in ash and sack cloth weeping over things that happened 150 years ago, but he should stop dragging the rest of us into it. One doesn’t see the Mongols, Turks, or Mayans always running themselves or their culture and heritage down over the innocent blood split by their ancestors, so why should I? The idea of perpetual white guilt over things that happened hundreds of years ago is one of the most odious forms of collectivism out there.
When I said White Slavery was flourishing, I was not referring to legal slavery, but underground. I have numerous copies of news articles in a folder that I collected over time as research for a story. Chuck Norris in his column on WND has written more than one article on the subject.
See his article from 3-5-07, Buying for sex trade http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=40463 Most of the women are captured, trained as prostitutes and put into houses all over Europe and the US. Many times the women from Europe are brought in through the border with other illegals but some women are taken within the US. The actress Dayrl Hanna describes her escape from being captured. The world wide numbers are very large.
[This is not slavery. It’s an outlawed criminal enterprise which western law fights. It’s not instructive to mix it with the legal possession of people.]
At the risk of seeming a dolt, just what is the connection between slavery in the U.S. and the “genocide in Darfur?”
Or is the Big O merely interested in having history taught as if there were a connection?
[Why does that quote (not to mention every word that spills from the man’s mouth) make me so uneasy?]
Depending on period and country, serfdom in European corporative states had not enough in common with slavery to justify a general comparison, let alone identification. The enslavery of European Christians by Muslims in North Africa is much more topical and apropos in this particular context. New findings suggest that the number was not just a couple of thousands but well over a million and that very likely more white Christian slaves were taken from Europe to Africa than black African slaves to America.
As for the sex trade, Eastern European women, many of whom become the victims of this criminal practice, usually have a good education. It is not very credible that they really believed in tales of jobs as waitresses or other honorable career prospects. Greed, the wish to make a “fast buck”, and an underestimation of the dangers involved certainly played a part. I do not intend to relativise anything the sex trade does, but grown up women have a certain responsibility regarding their own choices.
To Alistair:
Many of those sex slaves are children enslaved against their will – often in Thailand, Cambodia, etc. And even if someone agrees to pull a trick for a hit of crack, that shouldn’t force them into lifetime slavery – there should be a “Chapter 11” for people to not be enslaved permanently.
The reason that the western Christian enlightenment came to end slavery was the moral realization that people are not property but endowed with inalienable rights. Arguments of “inferiority” (stupid to smart, blacks to whites, Jews to Nazis, individuals to the “Proletariat”…) are not valid justification to destroy the rights of individuals to themselves.
Myron Pauli’s remarks reminded me of the story of John Newton, slave trader and author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton