Guy White
According to the politically correct theory that the “Darker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice,” minorities are never to blame for any of their troubles, and whites are the source of all things that are wrong with the world.
One of most common myths that people are forced to repeat in the Left’s never-ending quest to humiliate whites at the altar of egalitarianism and multiculturalism is the idea that whites should feel guilty about their legacy of slavery.
Many people correctly cite that all the world’s nations, and especially the Africans, owned slaves. What most people forget is that whites not only abolished slavery in their own societies, but then went around the world forcing everyone else to abandon the practice.
Arabs, who kidnapped and enslaved blacks long before Europeans did, had legalized slavery until the 1980s in two countries – Sudan and Mauritania. Even Egypt had lawful slavery until the 1960s. To this day, the Arabic word for blacks and for slaves is the same – ‘abd’. Blacks themselves engaged in slavery and slave trade. The vast majority of blacks taken to Europe and the New World were not enslaved by whites, but rather by their fellow blacks. Nor can whites be held responsible for black-on-black enslavement, as it began long before whites began buying slaves. Blacks were selling slaves to each other, as well as to the Arabs. Even the hero of Amistad, upon winning his freedom, went back to Africa and became a slave-trader.
Today, Africans claim that slave trade devastated the continent. Were it true, they themselves would be to blame. But the claim is false. Indeed, it was slave trade that built an empire in West Africa.
The only reason slavery ended is the realization by whites that slavery is immoral. If the slave market existed today, we can be sure that blacks participate in slave-ownership and slave trade, as they do when they can – such as forced labor in African gold mines and the kidnapping of children who are turned into child-soldiers for African militias.
Back in the United States, the Human Rights Watch published “No Escape” that described slavery, including rape and other severe abuse, in prisons. The majority of slaves are white and the vast majority of slave-owners are black.
Blacks and others do not feel guilty enslaving people, especially those who belong to other races. Only whites do.
For white people, the legacy of slavery is not starting the practice, but ending it. It should be the source of pride, not guilt.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=3734&cid=1&sid=104
Image: Slavery was abolished thanks to the work of men like the Englishman William Wilberforce. Unfortunately, the humane goal of repatriation to Africa was only partly successful, but Sierra Leone and Liberia were established as homelands for freed slaves. The American Colonization Society was organized by a great humanitarian and philanthropist named Robert Finley in 1816, along with Samuel John Mills, who also founded the American Bible Society, dying at sea after purchasing land for freed blacks in Africa. The ACS gained the support of such famous people as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Randolph and the nephew of George Washington, Bushrod Washington.