Ending the Slavery Blame Game
By Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York Times
Published: April 22, 2010 | (Excerpts)
 The Slave Market (1867), by Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904): a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. |
THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.
There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.
While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.
For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.
Slavery Secret: Africans sold Africans into Slavery.. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on PBS: "Africans sold other Africans to the Europeans..... There were African middlemen and they'd fight wars with other Africans to enslave them and to sell them to the white man.... Slavery was a huge business for different African kingdoms..... The story that we got when we were kids...it's not how it happened..... Africans sold other Africans to the Europeans." |
How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.
Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.
The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”
African Slavery Historical Perspective: Do Blacks Feel Guilty for Black on Black Slavery? Dr. James David Manning ponders the question of whether or not blacks feel guilty about the slave trade; i.e. about how blacks sold blacks into slavery. He also has suggestions for what whites need to do, in order to wake Africans up to the reality about their primary complicity in ther slave trade. |
To be sure, the African role in the slave trade was greatly reduced after 1807, when abolitionists, first in Britain and then, a year later, in the United States, succeeded in banning the importation of slaves. Meanwhile, slaves continued to be bought and sold within the United States, and slavery as an institution would not be abolished until 1865. But the culpability of American plantation owners neither erases nor supplants that of the African slavers. In recent years, some African leaders have become more comfortable discussing this complicated past than African-Americans tend to be.
In 1999, for instance, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin astonished an all-black congregation in Baltimore by falling to his knees and begging African-Americans’ forgiveness for the “shameful” and “abominable” role Africans played in the trade. Other African leaders, including Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, followed Mr. Kerekou’s bold example.
Our new understanding of the scope of African involvement in the slave trade is not historical guesswork. Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by the historian David Eltis of Emory University, we now know the ports from which more than 450,000 of our African ancestors were shipped out to what is now the United States (the database has records of 12.5 million people shipped to all parts of the New World from 1514 to 1866). About 16 percent of United States slaves came from eastern Nigeria, while 24 percent came from the Congo and Angola.
Through the work of Professors Thornton and Heywood, we also know that the victims of the slave trade were predominantly members of as few as 50 ethnic groups. This data, along with the tracing of blacks’ ancestry through DNA tests, is giving us a fuller understanding of the identities of both the victims and the facilitators of the African slave trade.
For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept. Excuses run the gamut, from “Africans didn’t know how harsh slavery in America was” and “Slavery in Africa was, by comparison, humane” or, in a bizarre version of “The devil made me do it,” “Africans were driven to this only by the unprecedented profits offered by greedy European countries.”
But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts.
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 White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives; From University Of Chicago Press [*Amazon*] |
Did these Africans know how harsh slavery was in the New World? Actually, many elite Africans visited Europe in that era, and they did so on slave ships following the prevailing winds through the New World. For example, when Antonio Manuel, Kongo’s ambassador to the Vatican, went to Europe in 1604, he first stopped in Bahia, Brazil, where he arranged to free a countryman who had been wrongfully enslaved.
African monarchs also sent their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe. And there were thousands of former slaves who returned to settle Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Middle Passage, in other words, was sometimes a two-way street. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to claim that Africans were ignorant or innocent.
Given this remarkably messy history, the problem with reparations may not be so much whether they are a good idea or deciding who would get them; the larger question just might be from whom they would be extracted.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard, is the author of the forthcoming “Faces of America” and “Tradition and the Black Atlantic.”
» » » » [Excerpts: New York Times]
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Africas Black-on-Black Slavery-for-Profit Empire:
The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa
Andrea Muhrrteyn | Compilation of Sources
Islam's Legacy of Racism and Slavery
African and African American's bizarre obsession with the evilness of the 'devil' white man, and their pride and identification with Islam, is rather tragic, and provides perhaps a perspective as to why Ibn Khaldun, an early Muslim thinker, wrote that blacks are the "only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings."
For their victimized squeel about who has been their alleged evil devil white man oppressor and whom has been their Islamic liberators, is not only irrational, but a tragic farce.
African Americans identification with Islam began in the 1930's when Allah appeared to the people of Detroit in the form of a man preaching a message of racial identity, who claimed that Islam was the true religion of black people in America, before they were robbed of it, by the white man. He was known as “Fard,” and was a small-time con-man, whose real name was Wallace Dodd Ford, recently released from San Quentin for drug-dealing. He arrived in Detroit, at the time when racial identity groups were being formed by both African Americans, around Marcus Garvey.
Although Ford was neither African nor Arab, his Nation of Islam street preaching racial theology soon built quite a following. He taught that Africans were the original and only people of the world (divine and uncorrupted), before whites were invented by an evil scientists in a malicious scientific experiment. Islam was the true religion and at some point, a UFO spaceship will be sent by Allah to eliminate the white people from the earth. This teaching of black racial superiority, and white elimination with UFO help, is still Nation of Islam gospel, as it was under his heir Elijah Muhammad, and current Louis Farrakan. Although Farrakan has brought the Nation of Islam closer to Qur'anic teaching stressing the Five Pillars of Islam.
Both Ford and Elijah fathered several children from illegetimate relationships, and disillusioned followers in the process. One of these was Malcolm X, who was subsequently assassinated by the Nation of Islam.
the Nation of Islam however prides itself that it draws African-Americans to Islam out of racial pride, with its 'progressive' association with African liberation; and to persuade the gullible into rejecting Christianity as the “white man’s religion.”
Now, there is terrible and tragic irony to this Islamic African Liberation romanticism…
While Christian missionaries were in Africa, prior to Islam arrival, shortly after the Crucifixion, with serious interest in missionary hospitals and the poor.
Mohammadan Arabs interest in Black Africa was for one purpose only: SLAVERY
Interview with Dr. John Alebeleah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, where he describes the role of Islam and Blacks Leaders in Black Slavery In Africa Interview with Dr. John Alebeleah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, where he describes the role of Islam and Blacks Leaders in Black Slavery In Africa |
For a century before any evil Devil European purchased an African Slave, the Mohammadan Arabs had laid the foundation of slave procurement and trading, usually through Jihad.
According to, Dr. John Alebeleah Azumah, in his book The Legacy of Arab-Islam in AfricaThe success of Mohammed and Islam in deceiving, misinforming, deforming and contorting both history and reality over a period of almost 1400 years has been astounding. That is, until now.
The greatest tragedy about this particular subject is that most of the descendants of African slavery, the black people in the Americas, around the world, as well as among the African blacks, are totally ignorant of the actual facts.
Before we lose the concentration of our listeners, I would like to make the following statement and then prove it.
That the worst and most inhumane and diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted, by the black converts to Mohammadan Islam.
I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures, those of the denial of the facts, and those of political correctness, will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion, that we make.
Slavery was not created by the white races, because it has existed throughout human history and has been practiced by every tribe, civilisation and culture, racial group and religion.
 White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's One Million White Slaves; By Giles Milton [*Amazon*] |
In fact, the very word slavery, has its root in the name slav, from the slavic peoples of Europe who were subjugated,by other Europeans. It is not common knowledge that the Arabic word abd is synonomous with the meaning of slave. For example, Abdullah means literally the slave of Allah. In the language of the Arabs, all black people are called Abeed, plural for slaves.
While much has been written concerned the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, surprising little attention has been paid to the Islamic Slave Trade across the Sahara, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. While the European involvement in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade last for just over three centuries; the Arab involvement in the African Slave Trade, has lasted fourteen centuries. And in some parts of the Mohammadan world is still contininuting to this day.
The birth of Mohammad and his Islam and its conquest, brought about the birth of institutionalized, systematized and religiously sanctioned slave tradeon a massive and global scale.
In fact, the Quran allowed the taking of slaves as booty or reward for wars of aggression against any and all unbelievers (kaffirs), most of the human population. This has led to an enormous number of so-called Holy Wars, Jihad in Arabic. There was and is absolutely nothing Holy about these wars, which are primarily to plunder, slaughter, rape and subjugate and rob other human beings of their wealth, produce, freedom and dignity.
Mohammadan Muslim States and Tribes attacked other Non-Muslim groups to achieve these objectives.
Although Islamic Jurisprudence laid down regulations for the treatment of slaves, however incredible and heinous abuses have occurred throughout the history of Mohammadan Islam.
 White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America; By Don kirkland, Michael Walsh [*Amazon*] |
By the Middle Ages, the Arabic word abd was in general used to denote a black slave. While the word manluk (sp?) referred to a white slave.
Ibn Khaldun, 1332 to 1406, the pre-eminent Islamic Medieval Historian and social thinker wrote: "The negro nations are as a rule submissive to slavery, because they have attributes that are quite similar to dumb animals.
It should also be noted that black slaves were castrated based on the assumption that blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite.
When the Fatimead (sp?) Caliphate came to power in Egypt, the slaughtered all the tens of thousands of black military slaves, and raised an entirely new slave army. Some of these slaves were conscripted into the Army at age 10. From Persia to Egypt to Morrocco, slave armies fro 30,000 to upto 250,000 became common place.
The Islamic Slave Trade took place across the Sahara Dessert, from the coast of the Red Sea, and from East Africa, across the Indian Ocean. The Trans Sahara Trade was conducted along six major slave routes.
Just in the 19th century for which we have more accurate records, 1.2 million slaves were brought across the Sahara Dessert, into the Middle East, as well as for a further 450,000 down the Red Sea and 442,000 from the East African coastal ports. That is a total of two million black slaves just in the 1800's. At least 8 million more were calculated to have died before reaching the Muslim slave markets.
 Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History); By Robert C. Davis [*Amazon*] |
A comparison of the Islamic Slave Trade to the American Slave Trade reveals some extremely interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men; the proportions were reversed in the Islamic Slave Trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims. While the mortality rate of slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African Slave Trade Market was a staggering 80 to 90%. While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work; most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation, as concubines, in harreems and for military service. While many children were born to the slaves in the Americas, the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States today; very few of the slaves that ended up in the Muslim Middle East survived. While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families; most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women, were killed at birth.
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million slaves were transported across the Atlantic; 95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, French and Spanish possessions. Only 5% of the slaves ended up in what we call the United States today.
However a minimum of 28 million Africans, were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since at least 80% of those captured by Muslim Slave Traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arabic Slave Trading into Africa could have been as high as 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the Slave Markets; the total number of African victims of the Trans Sahara and East African Slave Trade could be significantly higher than 114 million people.
What is obscene about this whole subject is the Mohammdan, Muslim and Arab culture of denial, regarding their complicity in the African slave trade; as well as the ignorance of black Muslims, about the reality of their past and present condition.
The statistics that we report about are based on log books based at the African slave ports, ship log books, traveller reports and eye-witness accounts, etc.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the facts and reality of Mohammadan Islams complicity in the African Slave Trade and their inhuman depravity are infinitely more devastating, more staggering and more incomprehensible than all of the nightmare fictions in the world.
In The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, Dr. Azumah provides several examples of Islam's early attitude toward blackness:
 They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America; By Michael A. Hoffman II [*Amazon*] |
The hadith in which an Ethiopian woman laments her racial inferiority to Muhammad, who consoles her by saying, "In Paradise, the whiteness of the Ethiopian will be seen over the stretch of a thousand years."
The Muslim Arab and Persian literature which depicts blacks as "stupid, untruthful, vicious, sexually unbridled, ugly and distorted, excessively merry and easily affected by music and drink."
Nasir al-Din Tusi, the famous Muslim scholar said of blacks: "The ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro."
Ibn Khaldun, an early Muslim thinker, writes that blacks are "only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings."
Classical Islamic law allows a light-skinned Muslim man to marry a black woman, but a black Muslim man is restricted from marrying a light-skinned woman. As the literature of the time put it, "only a whore prefers blacks; the good woman will welcome death rather than being touched by a black man."
Another hadith quotes Muhammad: "Do not bring black into your pedigree."
While Muhammad owned and sold black slaves, including building the pulpit of his Mosque with slave labour; no Christian critic, has ever accused Jesus of being a slave trader. While the New Testament does acknowledge slavery, the Quran offers detailed guidance in the details of the practice, thus endowing it with divine sanction.
The Qur'an encourages sex with slaves in several places, which explains the 2-1 ratio of female to male slaves taken from Africa by Muhammad's descendents. The Muslims were more interested in the sexual servitude of black women than the Europeans, who exported Africans for labor.
In contrast to the millions of Africans exported to the Middle East, whom died castrated, or childless the 400,000 slaves brought to America over the course of 200 years managed to become the most prosperous group of African people on the planet.
These freed African American slaves quality of life is such that, today they complain, and actually demand financial compensation for not having to live in the conditions experienced by most African countries, where life expectancy can be less than 19, what with disease, abject poverty, starvation and kleptocratic Plantation Slave Masters like Robert Mugabe.
Slavery would most certainly exist today in the same form that it did for more than a thousand years in the Arab world were it not for the Western Christian-based nations “imposing their values on Muslim lands” by putting an end to it. It was not Arabs, nor Africans who forcibly suppressed slavery in Zanzibar, but Europeans.
There is not, and never has been, an abolition movement within Islam.
» » » » [Caroline Journal :: News With Views :: Religion of Peace]
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