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1. Most people in the south didn't owned slaves (and naturally, this means that most whites never owned slaves either, which is a fact that is often overlooked.)
2. Most slave owners were white, but only 26% of all families in all slave states combined actually owned slaves.
3. Free blacks also owned significant number of slaves and the idea that most black slave owners did so to free their family members or as a humanitarian act is not quite the full story.
This is part of what I've been saying in this thread. Whatever we know about slavery its probably half truths, because so much information has been deliberately 'left out' in the more popular teachings of this dark chapter of our history.
My question is why did people felt the need to 'forget' crucial facts about the slave trade and slavery and ignore other facts? What is the aim in such dishonesty?
We should tell the story as it was even if it hurts, not as we wanted it to be.
Keep in mind that the one drop rule did not exist during slavery or during the colonial period. One drop rule was only legally in existence between 1931 and 1967. Not before or after.
The links you posted looked like they utilized or analyzed these matters by lumping mixed race individuals with black race which was NOT a social practice at the time or even in existence.
During slavery, a slave that had white appearance but was known to be mixed was considered to be white race, but race was determined based on your appearance. And mixed race and mulatto and multiracial categories existed during slavery. There was never any one drop rule or notion of such a thing at all back then.
Also many people were able to buy their freedom or even buy whiteness even, depending on the cases.
Many blacks, and ppl of color were free and had been free for generations. A significant portion of descendants of African Americans in the colonial period were never even enslaved at all.
So it's such a multilayered, multinuanced and complex situation when analyzing history which individuals are often not taught.
Last edited by MelismaticEchoes; 01-23-2014 at 04:55 AM..
The question isn't world slavery happening in other parts of the world throughout history, but the larger point is Africans who participated in profitting off the slave trade and deflecting responsibility in order to place blame on European colonists. Unlike other societies participating in slavery throughout different parts of the world, enslaved Africans lost everything and suffered immeasurable losses uncomparable to their counterparts. There is absolutely no amount of dismissive and deflection downplaying certain African tribes and kingdoms larger roles played in the slave trade will never diminish those facts.
The blood is on the hands of European colonies AND African tribes and kingdoms who participated, benefited, and prospered off the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and will never, ever wash off.
And in addition many overlook the Arabs and Muslims and their slave trades since from ancient times which is still going on today. They still call black people "abd" which means "slave". Its the Arabs and Muslims that are the real culprits, other than the African people themselves.
People overlook the role that Africans themselves have played in this situation and matter.
However, we have to consider that Africans were never one unified body or grouping of people. Europeans were enslaving other Europeans on the bases of serfdom and class and religion. Christian Europeans enslaved other Christian Europeans. Because it falls into the Eurocentric construct of "oh the Africans don't respect themselves doing harm to each other". We have to make sure we look at it from a fair manner and lens. The concept of blackness and Africanness are imposed constructs from outside of the very region and landless such factions were imposed upon, and further ensconced upon. So keep that in mind.
Black is a foreign and imposed term on the people and land mass of what is now Africa!
Africa as a concept, like Black does not begin until Roman times. *Before that all peoples on that continent did NOT identify or were not identified as Africans. But the earliest people did live on the continent that we now call Africa. *Proto-Africans if anything. *It is easier not to confuse pre-civilization people from that continent that migrated from modern Africans that evolved from them
African refers to any person from Africa. African indifgenous refers to any population originaly native to Africa. Black refers to any peoples that were imposed a racial sterotype by Europeans and did not apply to all indigenous Africans. Berbers may be a back migration from other parts, but are the ancestries of other people such as Ethiopians (along with indigenous ancestry) Khoisan are not classified as Black, but as Colored. Africa itself is a foreign term imposed such that those born before Roman intrusion were not truly African, etc, etc, etc. I know plenty of Indo-Africans that consider themselves African and not Asian.
In the first part of the documentary between at around 8:15 minutes, Dr.Gates asks Dr. Aka Sua Perbi (I’m just spelling it as it sounded, so I’m sure her name is spelled wrong):
“So, if Africans had not sold other Africans to the Europeans, there wouldn’t had been a slave trade?”
And her response was:
“I think so because the Africans [kingdoms/political systems, etc] were strong enough that if they had said no, perhaps the Europeans themselves would had tried to go inland and that would had been very very difficult."
Then on the second part of the documentary, the guide says (from 3:17 minute):
“Yes, he knew, they knew how bad it was; that was why they didn’t entered their own people, they would trade people from the wars and battles they did all around the country.”
Then from 7:50 minute, Dr. Gates says:
"Almost 20% of all the slaves that came to the New World, came from the Bight of Benin, from this very region. And the slave trade here was run by the kings of Dahomey, run far longer than any other aspect of the slave trade all the way to 1885, so they knew what they were doing…”
Then, on 15:30 the guy talking on behalf of the royal family says:
“I’m glad of what he [San Francisco] did, because he saved the lives of thousands of people. The king would had sacrified all of them [the war prisoners], so he had done a good thing by sending them away from the country [into slavery to the New World].”
What am I trying to say with this?
Lets not sugar coat things or try to minimize anything. When it comes to the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the New world, the blame falls equally on both sides, Africans and Europeans.
The story that has been told to many descendants of the slaves (and also those that descend from families that were neither enslaved nor had anything to do with slavery) is nothing more than a half truth. We need to tell the story exactly as it was.
I also think that in the following video Dr. Gates touches the issue as for why many people try to diminish the role the Africans played in the slave trade, when in fact, if the Africans had never accepted to get into that business, there would had been no slave trade to begin with:
Lets see things as they were and not as how we want for them to had been, even if it hurts. The truth sometimes is not pretty or easy to swallow, but it is the truth and it must be accepted.
No more myths, no more buts, no more ignoring a very important aspect of the history of the world and especially the Western Hemisphere.
Lets accept what happened as it happened, lets forgive all sides, and lets move on.
Slavery will never be erased from the history books and it will always be that shameful chapter in our collective memory, but we can't continue to harbor resentments along racial lines and expect that will be good for all of our societies in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
We have to accept the truth as it was and as messed up as it was, we have to equally forgive both sides, and we have to look forwards towards a brighter and better future, where our children will be able to live side by side with everyone else from our countries and build greater nations based on honesty, goodness, and real human greatness.
We need to create stronger bonds and less divisions. More trust and less resentments. We have to see ourselves as people from these American lands, that where any of our ancestors came from and how they got here is nothing more than a thing of the past. That what matters is the now and the future.
Agreed, however why do ppl overlook the Arabs. They are the real culprits or ppl overlooked that had a mass slave trading import and export of Africans throughout the globe and they bought and sold slaves and captured slaves of all races throughout the globe and they aided the Europeans in their slave trading when Europeans took note from the Arabs massive success.
Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Asians etc have been benefitting, profiting off of enslaving and exploiting the African continent and African peoples since ancient times yet ppl overlook that. That's something that needs to be considered as well too.
Everyone's hands are dirty in these matters.
And this should go to show that Africa was never one land mass of people or a known collective unit or entity.
Yes, European colonists did benefit from the slave trade by seizing the opportunities presented to them by different rival African and Arab tribes competiting for wealth and power against each other. However, slave raids and kidnappings of vulnerable rival Africans increased to gain greater power and wealth through the slave trade to the new world by African and Arab slave raiders, traders, chiefs, and sultans. Just because the perpetrators failed to capitalize off their part in human chattel of innocent enslaved Africans does not absolve them of their complicity in one of the greatest crimes in human history.
Essentially, the practice of dehumanizing enslaved Africans were formed by certain African and Arab slave traders, and the majority if not all of the racist doctrine can be found in Arab Islam slavery system predating Trans-Atlantic slavery by European colonists. White supremacy gained more power towards oppressing enslaved Africans, and later descendants of those enslaved based by African and Arab supremacy. European colonists capitialized off white supremacy by expanding their global partnerships through economic growth of their colonies, controlling resources, and free labor bought from slave merchants in Africa. It all goes back to Africa. European Colonization of certain Africa nations is a small price to pay for Africa and Arab's damaging role in the slave trades.
And while most west African nations aren't racist towards Europe, most west Africans have an inexplicable disdain for Black Americans that have not gone unnoticed by most Black Americans perplexed by this attitude. I mean it's not like Black America sold west Africa to the new world for profit. It's not like Black America hasn't tried to reconnect to their ancestry that was lost to them during the Middle Passage and slavery. And, it's not like Black America taught European to dehumanize them. But those issues are for another thread.
There is no amount of blame shifting will ever change Africa's impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
From what I understand, African societies across the continent and regardless who ruled where, are naturally very classist. Slavery was practiced in many African countries, even before the Europeans arrived there and, as was the case elsewhere on earth, slaves were at the bottom of the barrel and so were their kids and their kids kids and their kids kids kids.
Most black Africans don't descend from slaves, most African Americans do.
Yet, most traditional African Americans are socioeconomically better off than African immigrants struggling to get to the USA. Part of the divide stems from negative stereotypes in the media, despite the fact that there is more success and positivity among AAs than negativity. In addition not all black categorized individuals in the USA of traditional African American colonial ethnic USA descent.
And a significant portion of African Americans descend from peoples that were NEVER slaves or enslaved.
"Myth 5. Before the Civil War, all African Americans were slaves.*
— "In fact, about half a million African Americans were free in 1860 and about four million were slaves. The myth supports the notion that African-American ethnic traditions descend from the slave experience. But most of today’s African-American ethnic traits descend from the literate, civically active free Black communities of antebellum Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Such traditions include the AME church, church-centered neighborhood communities, ethnic self-identity and pride, even the term “African American” and the principles of hypodescent and the earliest one-drop rule. Those traditions were forged by such men as: Paul Cuffee, Prince Hall, Richard Allen, Martin Delaney, and Frederick Douglass, of whom only the latter was ever a slave. Many families of the Black communities of the Northeast had no slave ancestry, descending from colonial African indentured servants before slavery (lifelong hereditary forced labor) was adopted in British North America. In contrast, ethnic traditions in the Lower South, where most slaves were, resembled today’s Latin America, where most free citizens were mixed to some extent, almost everyone (slave or free) was of the same ethnic self-identity, and a single sharp color line did not exist."
No, the stigma largely comes from negative stereotypes of Black Americans. Some African Immigrants tend to view Black Americans as lazy, violent(gangster culture), and ignorant. I'm sad to say it but that's what many of them think.
I hate it when any group of people gets stereotyped. I think it's funny that many think that because when African Americans would settle and form communities abroad, they often prospered and looked at locals in those lands as lazy. In Trinidad, there was an African American community that settled in Trinidad beginning after 1812 and they remained free while other ppl in Trinidad were enslaved etc, and the AA community prospered. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, AAs prosper there while the locals often complain about this success.
In Haiti and DR, AA communities that settled in the island dating back to the 1800s prosper while locals envy the success.
In Puerto Rico and Cuba, AAs that would settle often were better off than the locals.
In Mexico, AAs often sought refuge and were economically better off than many of the locals.
Even in France, AAs living in France are often viewed in a higher light than African immigrants.
This is not even really about race but more so immigrant vs host nation mentality and that cuts across all racial lines.
In addition some of those "blacks" that ppl ASSume are lazy could be of Caribbean, Latino, Arab, European, Asian, continental African and other Afrodiasporic descent, yet they want to pin all the negativity on AAs and those that they ASSume are of the AA paridigm.
AAs have a rich history that many co opt and reject and neglect and overlook and emulate at the same time. The African diaspora in general has a rich history and unique story and common ties and bonds but ppl like to buy into stereotype tropes and boxes and buy into negativity and negative hype and it's sad, pathetic, and disgusting, and that goes for any group of ppl whether the victim or the perpetrator.
Last edited by MelismaticEchoes; 01-23-2014 at 05:53 AM..
Honestly Africans can be very classist and can pick up on your status based on a few words. My guess you are educated and speak well and thus are treated well. Others probably fit the stereotype of urban Blacks and most Africans would have little use for them. Since they're not weighed down by political correctness they may speak their mind.
Yet those Africans are probably struggling or trying to make it in the USA or another host nation. And many urban areas like NYC have blacks that have several generations in the USA that stem from Latin America or the Caribbean etc which is NOT AA, so it seems like these Africans or immigrants are just buying into racist and classist stereotypes that have been perpetuated by media or picked up by observations etc.
Another problem is that ppl use black and African American (AA) interchangeably and simply attach the negative traits of any black person as being African American and perpetuate racist and false narratives of self destruction and attacking AA paradigm when, it's falsely being analyzed from a myopic view or that black categorized person being bashed is NOT AA at all.
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