The best way to forget history is to rewrite it. And in the rewriting, to carefully delete references to any historical events or circumstances we find uncomfortable. Thus, American history books are totally silent on the matter of these white slaves, mostly of European stock with a great number of Irish, but also English and Scottish, who were kidnapped or otherwise forcibly deported to the US as slave labor. In fact, an examination of available documentation indicates that white slavery in the Americas was a much more extensive operation than was black slavery, and the numbers may be severely under-estimated.[1] Michael Hoffman wrote, “Negro slavery was efficiently established in colonial America because Black slaves were governed, organized and controlled by the structures and organization that were first used to enslave and control Whites. Black slaves were late-comers fitted into a system already developed.”
American history texts make reference to what is called indentured servitude, as a kind of “benignly paternalistic system whereby colonial immigrants spent a few years working off their passage and went on to better things”. The myth is that overseas passage was expensive and British and European civilians willingly signed indentures requiring them to work for a few years to pay off the cost of their passage, after which time they would be given land and their freedom to pursue a glorious future in the New World. But it was no such thing. There may indeed have been a few such indentured persons fitting this description, but they were a minuscule minority with their conditions not better than that suffered by all slaves. In fact, their indentures most often amounted to a life sentence at hard labor, and with a life that would be preciously short when we look at the hideous mortality rates. There are documented records of white convicts asking to be hanged in Britain rather than sent to the gulag that was America.
American Buddhist Net 