Regrettably, slavery has always been with us. Basically all cultures throughout human history have been involved in slavery. Yet Westerners today tend to think it ONLY happened in Western countries and was perpetrated by whites on non-whites.
Slavery is wrong, but telling lies about it is wrong as well. Like most topics being discussed in the West today, we are being sold a bill of goods along with plenty of self-loathing and political correctness. Indeed, the whole point of things like Critical Race Theory is to convince us that racism is purely the result and domain of white people, and only whites are the ones that need to grovel in remorse and make continuous apologies for all this.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, whites were involved in enslaving non-whites, but every other colour combination is also a reality – even today. Thus non-whites have enslaved whites and other non-whites. Plenty of fact-based discussions on these matters exist.
The Black American economist and intellectual Thomas Sowell for example has written often on this. See a recent article that I wrote on him and the issue of slavery here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/06/05/sowell-on-slavery/
Many others can be appealed to in this regard. A few days ago I discussed a recent book by Konstantin Kisin – a writer who left Russia and now lives in Britain. The book is this: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to theWest (Constable, 2022). My piece is found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/09/05/an-immigrant-speaking-sense-on-immigration/
I want to utilise this book once more, since he devotes an entire chapter to this topic. Chapter 3 is titled, “Stop Feeling Guilty About Race, Whiteness and Slavery.” It is well worth quoting from. And I should emphasise at the outset that he does NOT make any apologies for slavery – he condemns it. But he seeks to bring some moral and mental clarity to the issue and refute the reverse racism and identity politics we see being pushed throughout the West.
He begins by stating that his paternal great-grandfather was a slave. He then says this:
He wasn’t black or involved in the transatlantic slave trade. He was a white, communist immigrant from Poland. This combination of facts either offends people, gets misconstrued as a provocation or acts as a conversation stopper. Sometimes all three – I don’t get invited to a lot of dinner parties these days! Many react by shaking their head, some respond by scoffing, while countless others simply walk away, unable to discuss the matter further. As if their brains had been tasered.
Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re victims of bad thinking – especially when it comes to the scope and scale of slavery, which has become one of the biggest hot-button issues of our time. To some extent, I understand this impassioned rush to judgement. After all, the subject is a highly emotive and contentious one. There’s no doubt that human trafficking is one of the most shameful episodes of the world’s past – and present. According to the United Nations, there are 40 million people estimated to be trapped in modern slavery across the globe, whether that’s men who are forced to work in factories, women traded as sex objects or minors trapped in child labour.
Geographically, the breadth of the problem is vast and spreads across the planet. A 2018 report suggests that India is home to the largest number of slaves globally, with 8 million people of all ages, followed by China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Iran (1.29 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000). In case you hadn’t noticed, none of these places is big on white privilege. (pp. 49-50)
He speaks more to his own family’s past history with slavery. And he reminds us that Soviet slavery – the gulags – was just as bad as the Nazi concentration camps, but far more extensive. While the Nazis had over 1,000 concentration camps, the Communists had over 30,000 in Siberia and the Russian Far East.
Kisin goes on to offer a few hard truths about the reality of slavery throughout human history:
The politically incorrect truth is that in every corner of the world, from the earliest human societies up until the present day, slavery has been a universal, abominable phenomenon. It has been conducted by people of every race against every other race, as well as their own. Yet, whenever we talk about slavery in the West, we inevitably think of the transatlantic slavetrade in which millions of Africans were transported to the colonies against their will. The horrors of this deadly journey and the brutality, humiliation and barbarism of their subsequent existence are undisputed.
Even I, an adopted Brit whose ancestors had no involvement in buying, selling and exploiting innocent people, feel a measure of shame. But it’s only one part of the bigger backstory. The trans-Saharan slave trade, in which Muslim traders sold sub-Saharan Africans into North Africa and the Middle East, was far worse. According to Orlando Patterson, a black Jamaican-American sociologist whose many books include Slavery and Social Death, these traders took more slaves out of Africa than the Europeans. He also says that the mortality rate for this trade was worse and that it only declined ‘toward the end of the nineteenth century under direct pressure by European colonial powers’.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. Slavery had been prevalent in Africa for centuries before the arrival of the European traders. Let me repeat that: slavery had been prevalent in Africa for centuries before the arrival of the European traders. None of this excuses or justifies British, American, Spanish, Portuguese or any other slavery, but it proves that the phenomenon is not unique to Europe or the West.
And, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t all about white supremacy. Not by a long shot. During the Barbary slave trade, for example, Christian fishermen and coastal dwellers of seventeenth-century Europe lived in constant fear of being kidnapped by Muslim pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa…. (pp. 54-55)
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the Westby Kisin, Konstantin (Author)
He examines this in more detail, and then discusses other cases of historical revisionism. He notes that everything we hear today is how bad us whities are and always have been. For example, “nothing is ever said of William Wilberforce: the straight, white guy from Britain who campaigned for the abolishment of the slave trade before anyone else. He was successful and, in a pioneering move, Britain declared all slave trading illegal in 1807, one of the first countries to do so.” (p. 56)
And consider the American Civil War (1861-1865) in which “hundreds of thousands of white Americans fought … in part to liberate African-Americans from slavery.” (p. 57). He continues: “Yet, while all these acts of emancipation are often downplayed, critics of Western society’s figureheads say nothing of Mansa Musa, the Muslim ruler of Africa’s Mali Empire in the fourteenth century, who made a fortune from owning 12,000 slaves.” (p. 57)
And then there is the issue of reparations which are now constantly being demanded by Western leftists. A few hard questions need to be asked about such a scheme:
[Who] would decide this stuff? Who would determine how much people should get? And would the taxpayer fund it? The overwhelming majority of black African slaves were captured and sold by black Africans – does this mean black people should pay other black people reparations? If we go down this glib road, which would presumably be a dead end, do we also give British people reparations for the Barbary slave trade? Do we expect Muslims and Africans to foot the bill? The narrative is circular, and thus maddening because there is no conclusion. It is almost Manichean, that is, spoken of as if it could be separated into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This type of thinking is vain and typically masochistic of the Western liberal, who loves to jerk themselves off in metaphysical, unresolvable and eternal conflict. So what is the answer to the question of slavery and the modern West? It will not be simple – not least because the race hustle has become lucrative in recent years. But it must be done – even though some people are clearly out to sabotage progress…. (pp. 58-59)
Finally, a lengthy quote of his closing words in this chapter:
None of this suggests racism doesn’t exist. Nor does it imply that historical slavery wasn’t wrong or that modern slavery isn’t real. But they are not issues about which we need to feel endlessly guilty. Yes, slavery should continue to be condemned by all of us, and the history of it should be taught in our schools. Not politically, but factually. In full and frank detail. By doing so, we can remember the evils we are capable of when we decide that some human beings are more valuable than others. But, on top of that, we can no more hold modern American truckers responsible for slavery than we can hold today’s Russian factory workers responsible for the gulags or twenty-first-century Mongol sales reps for the massacres of Genghis Khan.
I know this chapter has been difficult reading for some, so let me offer a simple thought experiment that may assuage any feelings of guilt. Imagine (as if you need to) that thirty to forty years from now vegans get their way and our attitude to farming and eating animals changes. Imagine that the progressive nations of the world – including the US, Britain and Western Europe – are first to ban meat, and that eventually even the idea of killing an animal for food is regarded as one of the most disgusting acts a human can commit, as bad as enslaving a fellow human being. Imagine that the Western powers then spend endless trillions to encourage and force other nations to end the meat trade and cease the enslavement and murder of animals. Would it be reasonable, in this situation, to chastise endlessly these nations for their past meat-eating as the root of all evil? Or would we conclude that these are the most progressive people in the history of humanity?
You, dear reader, are no more responsible for slavery than German millennials are for the Holocaust. Understand how it works? To suggest, as some overpaid politicians now do, that Western people today are somehow tainted by the enslavement of Africans by some of their ancestors, is an idea so extraordinarily backward that even the Old Testament – not exactly a hippie manifesto at the best of times – prohibits it.
The fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, states: ‘Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.’ Progressive stuff, if you ignore the ‘putting to death’ bit. But, in all seriousness, it’s worth reminding ourselves of today as there are so many people who want to divide us. Let’s unshackle ourselves, and each other, from the past. Otherwise, we’re simply being subjugated by a new kind of captor – a political one. (pp. 62-63)
If you have not yet gotten hold of a copy of this book, you really should. It offers a lot of common sense to the leftist mantras we are daily being bombarded with.
“brains had been tasered.”
He sure can write then!
Quite right Tim.
“brains had been tasered.” correct, but where is not explained. In compulsory government schools.
by Thomas Sowell:
Slavery is one of the oldest and most universal of all human institutions. Slavery has existed among peoples around the world, as far back as recorded history goes— and archaeological explorations suggest that it existed before human beings learned to write. No one knows when slavery began. It is the idea of freedom for the great masses of ordinary people that is relatively new, as history is measured— and this idea is by no means universally accepted around the world, even today.
The very word “slave” derives from the word for Slav, not only in the English language but also in some other European languages and in Arabic. That is because so many Slavs were enslaved for centuries before the first African was brought to the Western Hemisphere in bondage. More than a million Europeans from various countries were enslaved and taken to North Africa’s Barbary Coast alone from 1500 to 1800. That is more than the number of Africans brought in bondage to the United States and to the 13 American colonies from which it was formed. Nor was the Barbary Coast unique in having European slaves, who were common in the Ottoman Empire, as well as in Europe itself in earlier centuries. Slavery was equally common among Asians who enslaved other Asians, as Polynesians enslaved other Polynesians and as the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Much of the white population of seventeenth-century colonial America— more than half in colonies south of New England— arrived as indentured servants, sometimes having contracted individually to work a specified number of years for those who had paid their passage across the Atlantic, and more often having indentured themselves to the owners of the ships that brought them to America, so that the captains of these ships then auctioned them off after reaching land, much as slaves were auctioned.
People were enslaved where the cost of enslaving them was less. For centuries that usually meant that Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Asians enslaved other Asians, Africans enslaved other Africans, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Only in relatively recent centuries, as local sources of supply of slaves dried up with the consolidation of nation-states, and as growing wealth enabled people to be enslaved at greater distances and transported far away, did Africa become the principal source of supply of slaves for Europeans who transported them across the Atlantic.
I am new to the site and really like the content and, thus far, cordial and intelligent discord.
To the more knowledgeable than I, how does this author jibe with Yuri Besminev/ Tom Shuman in his Love Letter to America. My Amazon account has mysteriously been locked a couple of times for months then years when I try to order this book, I still don’t have a copy. Shuman’s, that is.
Thanks Putt. I have not read Yuri’s book but am familiar with him, as in this video:
“brains had been tasered.”
He sure can write then!
Quite right Tim.
“brains had been tasered.” correct, but where is not explained. In compulsory government schools.
by Thomas Sowell:
Slavery is one of the oldest and most universal of all human institutions. Slavery has existed among peoples around the world, as far back as recorded history goes— and archaeological explorations suggest that it existed before human beings learned to write. No one knows when slavery began. It is the idea of freedom for the great masses of ordinary people that is relatively new, as history is measured— and this idea is by no means universally accepted around the world, even today.
The very word “slave” derives from the word for Slav, not only in the English language but also in some other European languages and in Arabic. That is because so many Slavs were enslaved for centuries before the first African was brought to the Western Hemisphere in bondage. More than a million Europeans from various countries were enslaved and taken to North Africa’s Barbary Coast alone from 1500 to 1800. That is more than the number of Africans brought in bondage to the United States and to the 13 American colonies from which it was formed. Nor was the Barbary Coast unique in having European slaves, who were common in the Ottoman Empire, as well as in Europe itself in earlier centuries. Slavery was equally common among Asians who enslaved other Asians, as Polynesians enslaved other Polynesians and as the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Much of the white population of seventeenth-century colonial America— more than half in colonies south of New England— arrived as indentured servants, sometimes having contracted individually to work a specified number of years for those who had paid their passage across the Atlantic, and more often having indentured themselves to the owners of the ships that brought them to America, so that the captains of these ships then auctioned them off after reaching land, much as slaves were auctioned.
People were enslaved where the cost of enslaving them was less. For centuries that usually meant that Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Asians enslaved other Asians, Africans enslaved other Africans, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Only in relatively recent centuries, as local sources of supply of slaves dried up with the consolidation of nation-states, and as growing wealth enabled people to be enslaved at greater distances and transported far away, did Africa become the principal source of supply of slaves for Europeans who transported them across the Atlantic.
I am new to the site and really like the content and, thus far, cordial and intelligent discord.
To the more knowledgeable than I, how does this author jibe with Yuri Besminev/ Tom Shuman in his Love Letter to America. My Amazon account has mysteriously been locked a couple of times for months then years when I try to order this book, I still don’t have a copy. Shuman’s, that is.
Thanks Putt. I have not read Yuri’s book but am familiar with him, as in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
So they would be on the same page in most respects.