“Africans sold their own people as slaves”

Wed 22 Sep 2010 by abagond https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/

“Africans sold their own people as slaves” is a stock argument White
Americans use when the subject of slavery comes up.

First, simply as an argument of fact it fails:

Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies,
just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries.
They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during
the Holocaust.

And it overlooks a few other things:

Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because
Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.
The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or
anyone else ever did in the history of slavery. Countries were destroyed and millions died. Over
12 million were sold in less than 400 years, something so huge that it changed the genetic map
of the world.
The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was
not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados
and America was much more cruel.

As a moral argument it fails too:

It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the
same sort of evil done by others. Whites sold slaves, but Africans and Arab traders did too!

Which, morally speaking, is at the same level as an eight-year-old saying,
“He did it too!” when caught doing something bad. We do not accept this
argument from eight-year-olds, nor from bank robbers or wife beaters.
“Africans did it too!” is no better.

But it is as a derailing argument that it comes into its own:

Its main purpose is to draw attention away from what whites did by turning
the tables.That part of their past makes White Americans uncomfortable.
But instead of facing up to it, they have built up defences against it:

Africans sold their own people as slaves.
Africans are still selling slaves.
Arab traders sold slaves too.
Slavery goes back thousands of years.
All races have practised slavery.
Whites stopped slavery.
My family never owned slaves.
That was Ancient History.
You are living in the past.
Get over it!
It was the times.
Slavery did not make economic sense.
Whites got to where they are by their own hard work
Blacks are better off in America than in Africa
Africans were savages.

And on and on.

Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being
white and how whites are better than everyone else, particularly blacks. But it is a huge
lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present –
squarely and honestly.

See also:

Share this:
StumbleUpon
Digg
Reddit

Posted in stuff 231 Comments

3 bloggers like this post.

231 Responses

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 21:44:21 Thaddeus

Let’s take these points one at a time:

1) Africa was not a country.
Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did.

Sure, no doubt. And yet it was a sin for white people to sell folks who weren’t “their people”.

If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as
slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it? And if it’s
not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.Secondly, both Europeans
and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into
slavery on both continents. see Barbado'ed
Barbado'ed: Scotland's Sugar Slaves

connect the simple dots Oliver Cromwell victims the Scots Shakespear owned Slaves so well hidden in
Highschool consider the source every thing IS Political white Wash that shit...

Video Info By: mill Category: Educational Length: 49:09 Resolution: 480 x 272 Filesize: 280 MB Language: English Viewed: 2084 times
The west coast of Barbados is known as a favourite winter destination for British tourists, ranging from the upmarket
Sandy Lane resort to the all-drinks-included package holiday crowd arriving by economy class. Many will come from
Scotland, but few will realise that just fourteen miles away on the rocky east side of the island live a community of
McCluskies, Sinclairs and Baileys who are not, as might be expected, black Bajans bearing the family names given
by slave owners centuries ago, but poor whites eking out a subsistence existence. Known as the Redlegs, they are
the direct descendants of the Scots transported to Barbados by Cromwell after the Civil War. Scottish author and broadcaster Chris Dolan went to meet them to discover why they are still here 350 years later, what they know
about their roots, and what their prospects are today when they are the poorest community on the island. Chris
speaks to leading historians in Barbados and Scotland about how their ancestors were treated when they first
arrived. Was their plight as severe as that of the black slaves from Africa? Nearly two centuries after emancipation,
this Redleg community has yet to find a role on the island, where it is damned by association with the days of
slavery, even though many of its forbears were victims themselves. In recent years, it has begun to come out of
its racial isolation; could there yet be a hopeful future for this lost Scottish tribe?
Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it.
But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

“Most”? Source, please. Slavery was VERY common throughout sub-saharan Africa, as it was in every single
human civilization before the industrial revolution. Those few African peoples who DIDN’T have slaves mostly
didn’t have cities or agriculture. The San peoples spring to mind.

The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever
did in the history of slavery.

Actually, no. More slaves died enroute to slave ports than got shipped. The proper way to argue this is to say
that without European buyers, the massive AFRICAN chattel slave trade simply would not have existed.

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its
other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade.

This is a bit of a red herring as “racism”, in the strict sense, only came about halfway through the slave trade’s existence. It’s also a bit of a nit to pick. African’s didn’t have a concept of race, but they most CERTAINLY had
the concept of the degraded Other and the sense that they could do just as they pleased with the degraded other.
I don’t think that slaves sacrificed by the King of Dahomé got any moral or emotional sustenance from the fact
that the guy doing the killing saw them as impure scum, but not as a different subspecies.

It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort
of evil done by others.

But isn’t that what this whole attempt to recover African slavery as somehow “not as bad” as other forms
of slavery is PRECISELY doing, Abagond?
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 21:54:01 Mira

Nice post, I just have to note something about this:

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that.
Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America
was much more cruel.

I am not sure if slavery being more cruel is a consequence of this type of slavery being racist. What I’m
saying is, other reasons for slavery (ethnic difference, religious difference, seeing enslaved as barbarians, etc.)
are no better (or worse) than race as a reason for slavery.

So if this type of slavery was more cruel it wasn’t because the oppressors used (invented, in fact) race as a
reason behind it. Using any other reason (ethnic difference, religion, etc.) would be the same.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:26:16 Natasha W

“If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it?
And if it’s not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.”

Did I miss something or did abagond state that slavery on the continent of Africa wasn’t bad/awful/etc?

“Secondly, both Europeans and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into slavery on both continents.”

I read that as meaning they weren’t selling their those of their own ethnic groups. Of course, since there was no “African” or even
“Ghanaian/Angolan/Senegalese” at the time, they weren’t selling their “own”.
Either way, you’re right that criminals (even of the same ethnic group) were sold as well.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:28:36 Natasha W

To Thad

To the topic: I’d just tell the person to look up the origin
of the word slave, if they want to play the tit-for-tat game.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:30:16 Victoria

It was fairly common for Africans to keep other Africans (as in prisoners of war) as slaves, but this was nothing like the slavery that took place in the US,
Caribbean, West Indies, South America. Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end. Many slaves ended up marrying
into the families they served. What’s important to note here is that slaves maintained their humanity and were not “born into” slavery. The child of a slave
was born free.

So flash over to the British, Americans, French and Portuguese coming to buy slaves. The slavery Africans know of has not included vicious brutality and
dehumanization. The captives have the same idea of slavery and believe they’re going to be treated the same way they’ve treated their slaves. They will
serve their time, and then they’ll get on with their lives. They believe they will go wherever they’re going, and they’ll work and live there. But that is not
what happens, as we know.

This information is something I’ve heard in my Black literature class, my African-American literature class, and I’ve recently read it again in a book called Jubilee:
The Emergence of African-American Culture by Howard Dodson, Amiri Baraka, Gail Lumet Buckley, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Annette Gordon-Reed.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:02:14 Claude

I don’t think what Abagond is saying that it is a sin for one race or people to sell folks who weren’t
“their people” and not for another.
I think he is saying that the white argument is always that, if Africans sold each other to the whites,
then the slave trade in America was justified.

But the outcome of that operation, which scale and magnitude has gone unsurpassed, has had a profound effect on 38 million people in America.
Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremecy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans
and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.

Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ”
Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.”

Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know how
that story goes. Slavery ended in 1865. The oldest man alive is 114 ears old. He was born in 1896. Only a mere 31 years before that man was born
were black people still “legally” considered slaves. I bet his memory is ful of amazingly shocking things.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:32:31 Witchsistah

But the outcome of that operation, which scale and magnitude has gone unsurpassed, has had a profound effect on 38 million people in America.
Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremecy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans
and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.

Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ”
Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.” (and don’t forget
“the ones I serially rape and then call sluts and wh*res afterward even if she was only 11 or 12 at the time and I was 30 or 40″)

Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know
how that story goes.

THIS. Interesting how many
wish to obfuscate this.
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:45:12 Hathor

I think the retort to “Africans sold their own people as slaves!” is that “Africans didn’t write slavery into the US Constitution.”
on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:48:44 Ankhesen

@ Claude.

Word. Also, black people are over 50 million in America. And in 2008 the oldest man in the world recorded up until then died @ age 137.
So when white people whine about slavery being over a hundred years ago, it’s really annoying.

*sigh* ’tis why I developed fashion tips.
on Sat 2 Oct 2010 at 01:27:10 Aiyo

Great post Abagond

Nobody seems to ever mention how hard Africans fought to get white slave traders of their land, but who had the guns?

As for the whole slavery was such a long time a go. puh-leezeee. Slavery was about 400 year give or take (depending
where you lived and when your town/ country started acting right) Afro Americans/Carribean/Latinos have only been out
of slavery for 100+ years not even half the time.

It may seem so long ago becasue how far we have come but it is really not.
on Sat 2 Oct 2010 at 02:17:50 BlackButterfly

Excellent Post.

“Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being white and how whites are better than everyone else,
particularly blacks. But it is a huge lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present – squarely and honestly.”

Truth!

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/

Ken Rogers of Washougal, Washington was enjoying a visit with family in Kennewick and looking forward to some fishing when his slumber was rudely disturbed on the night of July 13, 2003.

Rogers, a 54-year-old regional sales manager for Georgia-Pacific, was sleeping under the stars when a large dog suddenly vaulted over a wooden fence and sank its teeth into his left arm. Shocked and disoriented in the darkness, and not wearing his eyeglasses, Rogers struggled desperately to free himself from the dog, to no avail.

A voice from the other side of the fence informed Rogers that the dog was the property of the Kennewick Police Department's K-9 Unit. “Stop fighting the dog and I will release him,” yelled Officer Bradley Kohn. Rogers, understandably, wasn't content to wait, and started punching the police dog -- later identified as “Deke” -- in the head.

Officer Kohn, along with Officer Ryan Bonnalie, tore down part of the fence. The two of them, along with Deputy Jeff Quackenbush, “entered the backyard and subdued Rogers,” as the excessively decorous language of a legal appeal filed by the officers describes the incident.

The TriCity Herald offers a more descriptive account: “Deke latched onto [Rogers] and in the struggle bit him several times on the hand, back, neck and face while three officers beat him.” Syndicated legal affairs columnist Jack Kilpatrick, citing an official report, offers another layer of relevant detail: “Officers Kohn and Bonnalie and Deputy Quackenbush struck Mr. Rogers with fists, knees and a flashlight, while Deke continued to bite and hold Mr. Rogers until Mr. Rogers was subdued and handcuffed.”

An even more candid description of the episode would be this: Ken was sleeping peacefully when he suffered a potentially lethal dog attack, and then was severely beaten by three armed men after they had vandalized his host's property.

Supposedly, all of this was justified because the police were hot on the trail of a criminal suspect. One would presume that they were seeking a burglar, a rapist, or some other practitioner of criminal violence. One would be mistaken: The police officers who beat Ken Rogers had been summoned as backup by Sgt. Richard Dopke after he had spotted someone riding a mini-moped without a helmet or turning on the lights.

After Dopke turned on his siren and running lights and gave chase, the “suspect” (whose behavior was foolish, but difficult to characterize as criminal) pulled into a nearby garage and shut the door. A man and two women at the residence, which was about a block away from the yard where Rogers was sleeping, claimed that the mysterious mini-moped rider named “Troy” had run half-naked through their backyard. Dopke later claimed that he didn't find the story convincing, but he called for backup and a K-9 Unit just the same.

The story gets even uglier from here.

Overkill is always the first option: Sure, they're heavily armed and already outnumber the protester, by why shouldn't the riot police let their attack dog
have a little fun, too?

As it happens, Gary Hilliard, a Corrections Officer (jail guard) for Benton County, was the man who sent Officer Dopke off in
pursuit of the mysterious moped man. And, it should not surprise us to learn, it was Hilliard who had actually been operating
the vehicle illegally. Making matters all the nastier is the fact that roughly two years after this episode,
Hilliard was fired from his job and served a three-month jail term “for having sexually explicit pictures of children on a personal computer,” reported the TriCity Herald.

I'm on record expressing misgivings about the way evidence is collected from computer hard drives in child pornography cases.
I will point out that Hilliard's subsequent record does cast his actions on the night of July 13 in an interesting light.

Just as it was overkill for the police to beat someone suspected of a minor traffic infraction, Hilliard's actions in lying to the police and sending them after
a fictitious fugitive could be seen as the product of a bad conscience.

This makes me wonder if Hilliard was returning from an illicit assignation of some kind when he provoked the interest of Officer Dopke. In any case, Hilliard misdirected
the police, and an innocent man was mauled by a police dog and severely beaten by several officers as a result. Despite having to empty his bank account to pay for three months of physical therapy following the beating, Ken Rogers would most likely have let the matter go had the Kennewick Police Department displayed minimal decency and professionalism by contacting him, asking after his health, and expressing its regrets. So Rogers sued the Kennewick Police Department for more than $2.35 million, complaining that he had been subject to illegal arrest, unreasonable search and seizure, and other violations of his individual rights.

On May 1, a US District Court jury upheld Rogers' claims, awarding him and
his wife Mary Lou more than $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

En route to that verdict, the Kennewick city government made a ridiculously low settlement offer, called into question the extent of Rogers' injuries (subtly accusing him of fraud because he wasn't visibly disabled and continued to enjoy outdoor activities), and filed a petition to the US Supreme Court (.pdf) breathtaking in its assertions of official police impunity.

The petition was filed following a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last August that found Rogers had been subject to unlawful search and seizure. Seeking to overturn that ruling, attorneys for the Kennewick police claimed that Deke the police dog -- not Officer Kohn, the dog's handler -- was responsible for the injury to Rogers.

Don't blame me -- it's the dog's fault: Heroic Military
Police use dogs to threaten helpless Abu Ghraib detainees.

dogabughraib Kohn claims to have released Deke after the dog's leash had become entangled “on the hitch of a boat trailer” in a driveway near the yard where Rogers was sleeping. Deke then vaulted the fence sua sponte and latched on to Rogers's left arm. Because Kohn did not specifically order this assault, the police petition claimed, he did not intentionally “seize anyone in the fenced backyard,” and thus there was no violation of
rights protected by the Fourth Amendment.

According to the petition, “there can be no constitutional violation for a wrongful seizure where there is no intent to seize.” Even if there were true regarding the attack by a trained police dog who was trained to
act like (in the words of Diehl Lettig, Rogers' attorney) a “heat-seeking missile,” the fact remains that Rogers was swarmed, beaten, and handcuffed by three police officers.

This is an intentional “seizure” by any rational definition. In fact, one of the federal District Court rulings cited in the police petition, Cardona v Connolly, actually vindicates Rogers' complaint. That ruling held, in relevant part, that a “Fourth Amendment seizure” can be said to take place “only when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.” Surely the liberal use of “fists, knees and a flashlight” by police against a prone individual being mauled by a police dog until the victim is “subdued” and handcuffed would qualify as “governmental termination of freedom” through “intentional” means. Nonetheless, the petition for US Supreme Court review filed on behalf of the officers insisted that their actions were covered by the principle of “qualified immunity,” which is described as “an important constitutional protection for our public servants.”

"Qualified immunity," reduced to its essence.

“Government officials performing discretionary functions are entitled to qualified immunity, shielding them from civil damages liability as long as their actions could reasonably have been thought consistent with the rights they are alleged to have violated,” insists the Kennewick police brief.

What this means, from that perspective, is that the police had an open-ended and unqualified right to beat and detain Rogers unless
he can (quoting again from the brief) “demonstrate that the police officers, by their conduct, violated a clearly established constitutional right....” Furthermore, it wouldn't do, insisted the police petition, for Rogers to demonstrate the violation of “a generalized right, such as the right to be free from illegal searches or seizures or the right generally to be free from the excessive use
of force.”

In this specific case, the police argued that unless Rogers, could prove that Officer Kohn intended for Deke to attack him specifically,
he had no legal recourse. On this construction, the mauling, beating, handcuffing, and general mistreatment Rogers endured was
all legal and appropriate, since those who inflicted it on him were clothed in “qualified immunity.”

Fortunately, this matter ended up being put before a jury of sensible people who detected in that argument the distinctive aroma
of something very much like the sort of residue Deke deposits at the end of his canine digestive cycle.

A significant and relevant post-script to this matter:

Three of those implicated in this incident – Officers Dopke and Bonnalie, and Deke – were retired form the force between 2003 and 2006. Officer Bonnalie, who helped vandalize the fence and had a hands-on role in beating Rogers, was fired in 2005 after an off-duty road rage incident in which he
threatened a 63-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer by shoving a handgun into his chest.

A parting thought...
Several people whose opinions I highly esteem and whose friendship I cherish have advised me to "balance" my reporting on the police. They have a sound point; I don't want to become monomaniacal on the subject of police corruption. I am searching for suitably inspiring stories about good police officers and and willing to run them when given the chance. And I am always receptive to news tips about stories of that kind (or any other, for that matter).
Please be sure to visit The Right Source.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 21:44:21

Thaddeus

Let’s take these points one at a time:

1) Africa was not a country.
Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did.

Sure, no doubt. And yet it was a sin for white people to sell folks who weren’t “their people”.

If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as
slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it? And if it’s
not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.Secondly, both Europeans
and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into
slavery on both continents. see Barbado'ed

Barbado'ed: Scotland's Sugar Slaves

connect the simple dots Oliver Cromwell victims the Scots Shakespear owned Slaves so well hidden in
Highschool consider the source every thing IS Political white Wash that shit...

Video Info By: mill Category: Educational Length: 49:09 Resolution: 480 x 272 Filesize: 280 MB Language: English Viewed: 2084 times

The west coast of Barbados is known as a favourite winter destination for British tourists, ranging from the upmarket
Sandy Lane resort to the all-drinks-included package holiday crowd arriving by economy class. Many will come from
Scotland, but few will realise that just fourteen miles away on the rocky east side of the island live a community of
McCluskies, Sinclairs and Baileys who are not, as might be expected, black Bajans bearing the family names given
by slave owners centuries ago, but poor whites eking out a subsistence existence. Known as the Redlegs, they are
the direct descendants of the Scots transported to Barbados by Cromwell after the Civil War. Scottish author and broadcaster Chris Dolan went to meet them to discover why they are still here 350 years later, what they know
about their roots, and what their prospects are today when they are the poorest community on the island. Chris
speaks to leading historians in Barbados and Scotland about how their ancestors were treated when they first
arrived. Was their plight as severe as that of the black slaves from Africa? Nearly two centuries after emancipation,
this Redleg community has yet to find a role on the island, where it is damned by association with the days of
slavery, even though many of its forbears were victims themselves. In recent years, it has begun to come out of
its racial isolation; could there yet be a hopeful future for this lost Scottish tribe?

Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it.
But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

“Most”? Source, please. Slavery was VERY common throughout sub-saharan Africa, as it was in every single
human civilization before the industrial revolution. Those few African peoples who DIDN’T have slaves mostly
didn’t have cities or agriculture. The San peoples spring to mind.

The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever
did in the history of slavery.

Actually, no. More slaves died enroute to slave ports than got shipped. The proper way to argue this is to say
that without European buyers, the massive AFRICAN chattel slave trade simply would not have existed.

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its
other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade.

This is a bit of a red herring as “racism”, in the strict sense, only came about halfway through the slave trade’s existence. It’s also a bit of a nit to pick. African’s didn’t have a concept of race, but they most CERTAINLY had
the concept of the degraded Other and the sense that they could do just as they pleased with the degraded other.
I don’t think that slaves sacrificed by the King of Dahomé got any moral or emotional sustenance from the fact
that the guy doing the killing saw them as impure scum, but not as a different subspecies.

It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort
of evil done by others.

But isn’t that what this whole attempt to recover African slavery as somehow “not as bad” as other forms
of slavery is PRECISELY doing, Abagond?

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 21:54:01

Mira

Nice post, I just have to note something about this:

The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that.
Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America
was much more cruel.

I am not sure if slavery being more cruel is a consequence of this type of slavery being racist. What I’m
saying is, other reasons for slavery (ethnic difference, religious difference, seeing enslaved as barbarians, etc.)
are no better (or worse) than race as a reason for slavery.

So if this type of slavery was more cruel it wasn’t because the oppressors used (invented, in fact) race as a
reason behind it. Using any other reason (ethnic difference, religion, etc.) would be the same.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:26:16

Natasha W

“If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it?
And if it’s not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.”

Did I miss something or did abagond state that slavery on the continent of Africa wasn’t bad/awful/etc?

“Secondly, both Europeans and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into slavery on both continents.”

I read that as meaning they weren’t selling their those of their own ethnic groups. Of course, since there was no “African” or even
“Ghanaian/Angolan/Senegalese” at the time, they weren’t selling their “own”.
Either way, you’re right that criminals (even of the same ethnic group) were sold as well.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:28:36

To Thad

To the topic: I’d just tell the person to look up the origin
of the word slave, if they want to play the tit-for-tat game.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 22:30:16

Victoria

It was fairly common for Africans to keep other Africans (as in prisoners of war) as slaves, but this was nothing like the slavery that took place in the US,
Caribbean, West Indies, South America. Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end. Many slaves ended up marrying
into the families they served. What’s important to note here is that slaves maintained their humanity and were not “born into” slavery. The child of a slave
was born free.

So flash over to the British, Americans, French and Portuguese coming to buy slaves. The slavery Africans know of has not included vicious brutality and
dehumanization. The captives have the same idea of slavery and believe they’re going to be treated the same way they’ve treated their slaves. They will
serve their time, and then they’ll get on with their lives. They believe they will go wherever they’re going, and they’ll work and live there. But that is not
what happens, as we know.

This information is something I’ve heard in my Black literature class, my African-American literature class, and I’ve recently read it again in a book called Jubilee:
The Emergence of African-American Culture by Howard Dodson, Amiri Baraka, Gail Lumet Buckley, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Annette Gordon-Reed.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:02:14

Claude

I don’t think what Abagond is saying that it is a sin for one race or people to sell folks who weren’t
“their people” and not for another.
I think he is saying that the white argument is always that, if Africans sold each other to the whites,
then the slave trade in America was justified.

But the outcome of that operation, which scale and magnitude has gone unsurpassed, has had a profound effect on 38 million people in America.
Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremecy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans
and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.

Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know how
that story goes. Slavery ended in 1865. The oldest man alive is 114 ears old. He was born in 1896. Only a mere 31 years before that man was born
were black people still “legally” considered slaves. I bet his memory is ful of amazingly shocking things.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:32:31

Witchsistah

Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ”
Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.” (and don’t forget
“the ones I serially rape and then call sluts and wh*res afterward even if she was only 11 or 12 at the time and I was 30 or 40″)

Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know
how that story goes.

THIS. Interesting how many
wish to obfuscate this.

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:45:12

Hathor

I think the retort to “Africans sold their own people as slaves!” is that “Africans didn’t write slavery into the US Constitution.”

on Fri 1 Oct 2010 at 23:48:44

Ankhesen

@ Claude.

Word. Also, black people are over 50 million in America. And in 2008 the oldest man in the world recorded up until then died @ age 137.
So when white people whine about slavery being over a hundred years ago, it’s really annoying.

*sigh* ’tis why I developed fashion tips.

on Sat 2 Oct 2010 at 01:27:10

Aiyo

Great post Abagond

Nobody seems to ever mention how hard Africans fought to get white slave traders of their land, but who had the guns?

As for the whole slavery was such a long time a go. puh-leezeee. Slavery was about 400 year give or take (depending
where you lived and when your town/ country started acting right) Afro Americans/Carribean/Latinos have only been out
of slavery for 100+ years not even half the time.

It may seem so long ago becasue how far we have come but it is really not.

on Sat 2 Oct 2010 at 02:17:50

BlackButterfly

Excellent Post.

“Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being white and how whites are better than everyone else,
particularly blacks. But it is a huge lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present – squarely and honestly.”

Truth!

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/

IfWallsCouldTalk

Who cares what you think.

If God exists then why do men have nipples? - Yahoo! Answers

The African Community in London

Revoking the Bull Inter Caetera of May 4, 1493

PAINTINGS

ANTHROPOMORPHICIAZATION OF TECHNO-POTPOURRI

King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille

The African Community in London

The practice of importing Negroe servants into these kingdoms is said to be already a grievance that requires a remedy, and yet it is every day encouraged, insomuch as the number in the metropolis only, is supposed to be near 20,000~Letter to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' October 1746

“Africans sold their own people as slaves”

231 Responses

Quotations:

Friday, May 25, 2007 Dog and Man in Washington http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/05/dog-and-man-in-washington.html

Genocide

Past genocides committed against Native Americans

Quotations:

Overview:

Christopher Columbus:

Additional books on this topic:

The practice of importing Negroe servants into these kingdoms is said to be already a grievance that
requires a remedy, and yet it is every day encouraged, insomuch as the number in the metropolis only,
is supposed to be near 20,000~Letter to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' October 1746

Friday, May 25, 2007 Dog and Man in Washington
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/05/dog-and-man-in-washington.html