A Realistic View of Slavery & Slave Trading

White people commonly respond to demands for reparations for slavery and slave trading by pointing out that it was whites who abolished these things.[1] I don’t know whether they notice that this doesn’t get them the credit from their antagonists that they seem to expect; they certainly don’t appear to see why this is.

The reason they get no credit is that black people don’t see the abolition of slavery and slave trading as quite the boon for humanity that white people do. If Africans had wanted slavery and slave trading to be abolished, they could have abolished them themselves very easily, just by ceasing to indulge in them. Instead, they met white attempts at abolition with fierce resistance. This was quite natural. Slavery was their way. As for slave trading, it gave them a good profit, and they saw nothing wrong with it.

No, the reason black people go on about slavery and slave trading is not that they deplore them but that they see that white people deplore them, who might therefore be made to feel so guilty about their forefathers’ involvement as to give black people large amounts of money in restitution.

Indeed, if we set the white record on slavery and slave trading against the black record, it stands out as a shining example. The transatlantic slave trade lasted only a fraction of the time that Africans spent selling each other to Arabs, and the number of slaves bought by whites — perhaps ten or 12 million — was a fraction of the number bought by Arabs. As for the length of time Africans spent selling each other to other Africans, and the numbers involved, these were much greater still. The intra-African slave trade still predominated in the nineteenth century, when a European explorer reported that slave-hunting in Africa went on far more to supply the domestic than the foreign market.[2]

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This is a strongly written piece. I am putting it up because it’s probably largely true and because white people get so much criticism, we need to hear other sides. I could say this about many of the essays I post. ABN