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any history buffs know about slavery???

laFiera

Senior member
I'm not too strong on my history, and I was listening to an argument about slavery the other day; somebody was blaming the slavery on the 'white man,' but somebody busted out that if the african's hadn't sold their own black people, the white man wouldn't have had the chance to buy them.....i thought that was an interesting point, but how much validity is there to that????
txs
 
an interesting point made by Dave Chappelle.... he blames the telephone not being invented earlier. He said black people didn't know what they were selling the other black people into. If they had phones they could have called back and at least said something like "don't send anymore! I don't like it."
 


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<< African tribes sold their prisoners of war to slave traders...nuf said >>


no, i'd like to hear from the defense about this case...
>>



What defense? It happened and its a fact...just like what Mr Jimmy the Greek said that he thinks Blacks are better in sports because they were bred for larger mor physical specimens..breeding the big males and the big females...(kinda like breeding cattle) horrid but true.

I don't think all slaves came from selling POW's though. I'd like to know a percentage, but I don't think anybody kept any records.
 
yes African tribes sold prisoners of war into slavery and sometimes other people as well, but they were often duped and didn't have any knowledge of what they were doing
 


<<

<<

<< African tribes sold their prisoners of war to slave traders...nuf said >>


no, i'd like to hear from the defense about this case...
>>



What defense? It happened and its a fact...just like what Mr Jimmy the Greek said that he thinks Blacks are better in sports because they were bred for larger mor physical specimens..breeding the big males and the big females...(kinda like breeding cattle) horrid but true.

I don't think all slaves came from selling POW's though. I'd like to know a percentage, but I don't think anybody kept any records.
>>


don't hurt me, i'm delicate!
 
It started out as blacks selling their POWs to slave traders, but they weren't slaves forever, so it was assumed that they would be freed at some point. After a while though, whites stopped buying them and just started stealing them.
 
interestingly enough, african slave traders would also kidnap white children in Europe to be sold. That is what happened during the Children's Crusade.
 


<< stealing them? what... you mean like chickens? >>



Well, if you think the only thing that can be stolen is chickens, then yes, like chickens. Never heard of kidnapping?
 
"Why is there more interest in what happened 150 years ago, than what is happening NOW in the Sudan? Could it be because it is mostly Christians that are being sold into slavery?"

Yeah, this stuff bugs me like hell. I'm so saddened and disgusted that people who want to continually make known and speak out loud about past slavery cannot be activist in the case of Sudan. Don't get me wrong: I'm an advocate of history being thought as it is, but the purpose of history is also so it does not repeat itself. Thus, what is history lesson if it is happening amidst us but no one speaks or does anything? Do we just care to add tragedy to human history as a collection?

At another forum someone posted about this but even the so-called liberals who were quick to speak of oppression of Blacks were the last to post on this subject. Only about 2 responses came. At another instance, the same happened. It is so sad and despicable. 🙁 It seems to me human nature always displays the same results at the end: self-interest.
 
to get back to the original question:

Slavery can be blamed on the white man very convincingly, BUT:

There were black slave owners (of black slaves) in the US.

There were black slave owners/traders of black slaves in Africa, who sold them to white merchants, usually to work indigo/rice in S. Carolina, (especially) sugar in Jamaica/Barbados/etc, and less frequently tobacco in the chesapeake. Like everybody said, started from POWs, then a frickin' cottage industry sprung up to support it.

In North Africa, there were blacks who owned white slaves (captured in the mediterranean, including some americans), and they also owned black slaves.

IMHO this doesn't mean that it's okay for whitey to own slaves because the Africans did it too. Though I remain thoroughly convinced that morality is just the handmaiden of circumstance, so those who needed slaves found it to be morally just fine, while those who didn't often thought it awful.

If you're interested in the debate, read Thomas Jefferson's letters on the state of virginia about slavery (i'd find the link but i'm a lazy asche) or "The Wolf By the Ears."

FYI, Jefferson has been accused of being a flaming hypocritical racist because he made babies with Sally Hemmings while thinking Blacks inferior.

First, Sally Hemmings wasn't black, and second, a jefferson (there were twenty four i think in three counties) made babies with Hemmings; not necessarily Thomas. Very unlikely it was our third president, in fact.

Okay, this is tangential now, so pay no attention 🙂

hope it helped
 
"i thought that was an interesting point, but how much validity is there to that????"

It is an extremely valid point. Before the white man came, it was common for blacks to own other blacks as slaves. They would acquire these slaves either as the spoils of war, debt, or as punishment to the slave for whatever crime he may have committed. When the white man came, these slaves were sold to him. When some tribes realized there was profit to be made from selling slave to the white man, they began kidnapping members of other tribes or inducing wars to gain more slaves to sell.

This whole period was a very dark time for the world and, sadly, slavery has not been completely wiped off the face of the earth. It still exists in the Sudan (black Muslims enslaving black Christians) and in Mali.

One of the things that is lost in the blaming of the white man for slavery is that it was whites who led the movement to free slaves. Whites worked with blacks to abolish it in Europe followed by whites working with blacks to free slaves in America. More Americans died in the Civil War than any other war to free slaves. No, the Civil War wasn't exclusively fought over slavery but it was one of the issues and the result was that slaves were freed. Also, a U.S. President was assassinated over the decision to free slaves.

It is also forgotten that thousands of whites worked with blacks during the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.

Basically, you can't paint "whitey" with the same broad brush. Yes, in the past, wrong was done. But, that can be said for any group of people. All you can do is learn from the past and vow not to let it happen again. And, I think, for the most part we have learned from our past and are moving forward. Could things be better? Absolutely. And you know what, things have continually gotten better in terms of race relations IMHO.
 
<<Whites worked with blacks to abolish it in Europe>>

It was not as economical to have slaves in the european farm system, slavery was/is about making money
 
An important thing to note is that slavery in the US became entirely race-based and was also hereditary, meaning that slave's children were also slaves. This was different from the way it was in other parts of the world. Jefferson, for all his talk about freedom, didn't even free all of his slaves at death (like some people). He only freed ~5, all of whom were his blood relatives.
 
"It was not as economical to have slaves in the european farm system, slavery was/is about making money."

That said, I don't think you can ignore the fact that there were those out there who saw slavery as abhorrent and worked hard to see it abolished.
 
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