The DeWolf Family Burden
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For much of his life, Thomas Norman DeWolf successfully avoided the thorny issues of race, inequality and white privilege.
When blacks rioted in Los Angeles in the ‘60s, he left a troubled public school for an all-white private one. He graduated from a Christian college and moved to Bend, Ore., a town that is “95 percent white.”
{snip}
“Everyone has secrets,” says DeWolf in his powerful new memoir, Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History.The DeWolfs had a big one: From 1769 to 1820, the clan’s fathers, sons and grandsons trafficked in human beings. They sailed ships filled with rum and guns from Bristol to West Africa, where they purchased African captives on the coast. The captives were then shipped to plantations that the DeWolfs owned in Cuba or were sold at auction in such ports as Havana and Charleston, S.C.
The family owned 47 ships and transported 10,000 Africans into New World slavery. That represented about 60 percent of all slave voyages from Bristol.
When the United States outlawed the practice in 1808, the DeWolfs broke the law and shipped slaves from Africa to Cuba.
Business was good. With money from the trade and privateering, the DeWolfs opened a bank, an insurance company and a rum distillery on the Bristol waterfront. By one account, a quarter of the town’s residents did business directly with the family. In 1812, the DeWolfs owned more ships than the U.S. Navy.
They weren’t alone. As scholars have shown, Rhode Islanders, many of them in Newport and Providence, financed more than 1,000 slave voyages and transported more than 100,000 Africans across the terrible Middle Passage.
FOR YEARS THE story of the North’s involvement in the trade has been ignored, played down or forgotten, a victim of what one historian calls “Northern amnesia.”
DeWolf’s book, published last month by Beacon Press, is part of a growing effort to recover that past.
Much of the book chronicles the making of Katrina Browne’s documentary film, the similarly titled Traces of the Trade, a Story from the Deep North.
{snip}
The film, which has been shown in Rhode Island several times, won national attention last month when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
{snip}
Gathering in 2001, the DeWolf descendants, dubbed “The Family of Ten,” watch from the sloping lawn of Linden Place, a mansion built by George DeWolf with money made from the slave trade and his Cuban plantation, Arca de Noe, or Noah’s Ark.
They examine slave shackles from the estate of Capt. James DeWolf, a U.S. senator charged with murdering a slave. And they pore over passages from family letters, including one dated July 4, 1795: “. . . bought nine prime slaves, one woman and eight men. Paid for them tobacco, rum, hats, bread, mackerel. . . .”
The emerging picture bears little resemblance to the romanticized family portrait that the cousins grew up with. The DeWolfs, they were told, were “upright Yankees” and leading citizens—ministers and bishops, philanthropists and professors, artists and architects.
{snip}
Dain Perry, a financial planner from Boston, imagines a sign on a local street announcing, “You are entering Bristol, the historic center of U.S. slave trading.” Another cousin finds it “chilling” that her ancestors beat and whipped people.
THE GROUP grapples with another burden, too.
Browne asks them to read an article on white privilege, defined by author Peggy McIntosh as “an invisible packet of unearned assets,” a weightless knapsack jammed with “special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
{snip}
“This is heavier than I expected,” [DeWolf] says. “The impact of race is so much greater than I ever realized. . . . If I were black, I think I’d be angry—not only at what took place over the past few hundred years, but at white people who don’t have a clue what’s going on today.”
Before they leave for Africa, the group hears from Keith Stokes, a black historian and executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. “Race relations are difficult to talk about,” he warns. But don’t forget, he adds: 11.5 million Africans came to the New World as slaves. They worked in New England ports and on Southern plantations.
{snip}
IN GHANA, things begin to unravel.
Reeling from oppressive heat and pointed questions, the cousins bicker. Tempers fray.
At first, their collective guilt is assuaged by two professors at the University of Ghana. Every civilization practiced slavery, they say. And African chiefs sold slaves to the European traders. But the trade, they add, was driven by European demand.
{snip}
In Bristol, the cousins had been nearly invisible. But in Ghana they arrive during Panafest, a huge celebration of African independence and culture. Some of their efforts to reach out were rebuffed.
{snip}
At one point the family tours the dank rooms of two of Africa’s largest slave forts. At Cape Coast Castle, they crowd into a dungeon for a scene in Browne’s film. Suddenly, the camera lights fail and the room turns black, suffocating, airless.
DeWolf can see nothing as he sits inside a space that once held up to 200 men.
{snip}
DeWolf, of course, is not a slave. For a moment, he feels terror. But then he realizes he can never know the real horror of the place, or comprehend the loss and despair felt by millions of African men, women and children ripped from their homes.
{snip}
“I feel worse, more alone than I have ever felt in my life. Yet I am only scratching the surface of the scar.”
IN CUBA, the group visits abandoned slave quarters and former sugar mills. “You should not feel the weight of history,” counsels Natalia Bolivar, an Afro-Cuban scholar. “You’re not living in the Inquisition.”
{snip}
The DeWolfs, they learn, gave their plantations optimistic names: New Hope, Good Hope, Mount Hope. The slaves did not share in that optimism. In 1821, two ran away from one of the plantations. After they were caught, they were placed in heavy irons for four days and given “twenty-four lashes on the naked bottom. . . .”
When the trip ends, the family meets for a final time in Bristol to answer some tough questions. What do they owe society? What should they do? Can racism be erased?
{snip}
The book and film come at a time when both race and gender have surfaced in the presidential campaign. DeWolf tackles both in his book, along with religious intolerance.
Although the book serves as a behind-the-scenes look at the film, it also offers something the film does not: a long deep look at one man’s interior journey. Mildly interested in the trip at first, DeWolf charts his every discomfort as he confronts harsh truths about his family, America and himself. At one point, he holds his head in his hands.
{snip}
Seven years later, the cousins are part of an effort to reach a racial conciliation through public discussions and education. DeWolf is convinced that four things must happen first: awareness of the issue, an apology, some kind of reparations, and forgiveness from the harmed party. Legislators in New Jersey, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia have apologized or expressed “profound regret” for their role in slavery and the slave trade. Rhode Island should too, says DeWolf.
{snip}
Email Paul Davis at pdavis@projo.com.
(Posted on February 5, 2008)
Comments
GOOD!!! Let these idiots be the recipients of all the minority punishment imaginable. Let them forever be chastised, hounded and humiliated for their insane groveling. And, let it be a lesson to any aspiring idiots out there who feel the need to beg forgiveness for something they didn’t do.
Posted by P Norman at 6:34 PM on February 5
I’m sick to death of hearing about white privilege. This guilt mogering has got to stop. If he feels so guilty then he should give away every material possession he owns and work for food and water for the descendants that his ancestors supposedly wronged. As for me : STOP LAYING YOUR GUILTY FEELINGS AT MY FEET!!!
Posted by at 7:08 PM on February 5
So, divest yourselves of your ill-begotten money, DeWolfs.
Isn’t that a lot simpler than wallowing in guilt?
But it’s a lot more expensive and frightening, isn’t it? Simpler by far to wallow in guilt and then tell the rest of us to pay “reparations.”
Look how holy the DeWolfs are—wallowing in guilt, smiting their breasts, tearing their designer clothes, coming up with schemes to make the rest of us pay reparations, wow, such noble souls!
Posted by Forlorn Artist Who Ain't Buying It at 7:09 PM on February 5
If you do the math on this, it does not add up. They are claiming that 11 MILLION slaves were brought to the New World. The population at the time of the civil war is reputed to be 31,443,321 in America. I do not believe for a minute that 11 MILLION slaves were brought to the new world. Anybody help me here?????
Posted by Crazy Math at 7:10 PM on February 5
They got it backwards; the real benefactors of bringing slaves to North America are the slaves’ descendants. Otherwise, they would be back in the “mother continent” slitting each others throats.
And the real victims? All the whites of North America.
Posted by William Hendershot at 7:14 PM on February 5
“I know how to dress, talk, act and use the body language of the ruling class and the powers that be,” says Elizabeth Sturges Llerena, a New York artist and teacher. “I don’t get stopped, watched, harassed or beaten by the police. I am on the inside track instantly.”
No, blacks take of the watching, harassing and beating (and don’t forget raping) for you. These are all a bunch of airhead writers, artists and kooks playing to the radical chic establishment to get their films produced and writing published. The DeWolf’s should be more ashamed that they permanently saddled the U.S. with a black population rather than the slavetrading per se.
No reparations without repatriation!
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 7:27 PM on February 5
Thomas DeWolf-what a coward!
He’s kept himself closed off from the world. He has no right to bring this up now after ‘much of his life’ is over so everyone else has to deal with the backlash.
He ‘avoided issues of slavery, inequality, white privelege’; chose a private school upon riots; lived in an Oregon(assummingly liberal)town with a 95% white population; and now I guess he figures he out to try to make a little more money.(Everybody feels like their story should be told.)
Posted by GAonMYmind at 7:44 PM on February 5
Why should whites feel guilty for being ‘priviliged’ in our own lands? In Japan they have Japanese Privilege and in the black community blacks treat eachother better than they do whites and other non-blacks. Why do whites accept these double standards?
Posted by at 7:50 PM on February 5
It didn’t surprise me to read in this article that “nearly all the cousins are Ivy League graduates.” Nothing like the Ivy League for teaching White people to hate their own kind and feel guilty about every material advantage they’ve got, no matter how obviously self-earned.
Here’s a message for these poor, misguided DeWolfs: IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT! YOU WEREN’T EVEN THOUGHT OF YET! Why in God’s name do you feel you have to make up anything to people to whom you’ve done nothing, from whom you’ve taken nothing? No, don’t try to tell me that “unearned advantage” is passed down the generations like an old family heirloom. In most cases, people make their own advantages — or either fritter away what was given them, or make bad choices in life which keep them from achieving what they want. For ANYONE — although it’s usually we Whites who want to take all the sins of the world onto our shoulders — to say, “You’ve failed because my great-great-grandfather owned your great-great-grandfather as a slave, and therefore I apologize humbly to you and will try earnestly to make amends,” is fatuous nonsense. People fail (or succeed) because they’re human and there are no guarantees. Groups of people succeed (or fail) because of various cultural traits.
Forget all the white guilt and get on with your lives.
Posted by Wayne Engle at 8:09 PM on February 5
Slavery was a profound evil. But that man did nothing wrong, and it means nothing for him to make public gestures of opposition to the institution of slavery.
Those who practiced slavery could never have foreseen the ramifications of that institution.
Posted by John R. Kennedy at 8:21 PM on February 5
“From 1769 to 1820, the clan’s fathers, sons and grandsons trafficked in human beings. The family owned 47 ships and transported 10,000 Africans into New World slavery. That represented about 60 percent of all slave voyages from Bristol. In 1812, the DeWolfs owned more ships than the U.S. Navy.”
“The DeWolfs gave their plantations optimistic names: New Hope, Good Hope, Mount Hope.”
Most interesting. However, while I am opposed to the notion of inherited guilt, if they really feel the need to apologize, it should be to us — for the terrible crime their ancestors inflicted upon us in order to feed their craving for profits.
(Not much different from what’s going on today, only now they’re bringing in “illegal aliens” not slaves.) We are still paying today, in every way, for their “sins”. We are the ones entitled to the apology.
As for the African blacks, those optimistic names were well justified and prophetic. As many posters here have pointed out before, the best thing that ever happened to them was when their ancestor got on that slave ship and left Africa behind.
Posted by browser at 8:40 PM on February 5
Here is what it all comes down to, so let’s keep it “real:”
“‘This is heavier than I expected,’ [DeWolf] says. ‘The impact of race is so much greater than I ever realized… . If I were black, I think I’d be angry—not only at what took place over the past few hundred years, but at white people who don’t have a clue what’s going on today.’
Comrade DeWolf, we have to live and deal with them. Unlike you, and your economically privileged, not “white privileged” family, we do not have the luxury of decrying imagined past “sins,” for socially accepted enjoyed ones now. We don’t live in mansions or defunct plantations. We don’t own banks or rum companies.
So why should we suffer at the expense of the blacks that you “think” should be angry: “ at white people who don’t have a clue?”
Your worthless and parasitical family brought these economic “tools” of yours into our midst. You still live off of that legacy in luxury. You think we should bear a brunt of anger, directed not at us, but at you and your family that covers you because you are “white,” and think diffusing your complicity through what was once your people, absolves you?
To hell with that!
He and his family’s admissions of guilt, tells me that his slanders against the white race as a whole, only prove that they should be offered up as fair game to the blacks. What happens to every willingly DeWolf grovel monger, is what happens.
Who cares about them, if they cared about us they never would have brought blacks here in the first place. Now, to cover their double edged crimes, they imply we have done the same?
Toss them into Detroit, and let nature “take its course!”
Posted by John PM at 8:51 PM on February 5
What a horrible example of White guilt! For someone who never owned or much less met a slave to put himself through such wallowing in guilt for something he never personally had any dealings with strikes me as pathetic and silly. If he wants to help slaves he should either donate his traveling money to an agency who helps the war torn Darfur region where the slave trade is alive and well. Maybe that would assuage some of his missplaced guilt.
Posted by Spartan24 at 9:02 PM on February 5
Don’t forget white slavery.
Posted by at 9:16 PM on February 5
Every victim of a black criminal now knows whom to sue for compensatory damages.
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 9:24 PM on February 5
Even the word pathetic seems too benign to describe this fool’s image of himself, his family, and his race. I say send DeWolf and his family on the next slave ship to Africa.
Posted by GetBackJack at 9:29 PM on February 5
Well, if the 20th and 21st century generations of DeWolfs are so distraught at discovering their forbearers were slave traffickers and owners, let them assume guilt for the forbearer’s dubious business interests even though they themselves are guilty of nothing by virtue of their not yet having been born, AND turn over all their present day assets including livelihoods, business and property to the poor hard-done-by parasitical Afro-American slave descendants who should have, long since, been rounded up and shipped back to Liberia and Sierra Leone without further ado.
In fact, it is not too late to do that even today.
Maybe our Hispanic comrades wouldn’t mind chipping in with regards to such a potential and even profitable venture.
Just a thought!
Posted by A Swain at 9:59 PM on February 5
I wonder if ancestors of slaves would go back to Africa if we would send them enough money to live on monthly for 100 years each. What sum would it take to like like an African King? Plenty of alcohol and women and they would be 100% happy. We could be rid of a whole lot of them. Yeah, I know the 100 years thing gets some but it sounds good to blacks….
Posted by Sendemback at 10:20 PM on February 5
“Slavery was a profound evil. But that man did nothing wrong, and it means nothing for him to make public gestures of opposition to the institution of slavery.
Those who practiced slavery could never have foreseen the ramifications of that institution.”
Posted by John R. Kennedy at 8:21 PM on February 5
The ‘ramifications’ as you put it, is a politically manufactured ploy to suit a specific ideology, Communism (Marxism) geared at whites and thus should not be happening at all.
Slavery has been practised since the dawn of humanity and is not, strictly speaking, wrong at all. What was and is wrong, however, is the mistreatment of slaves and the withholding of their basic human rights.
It’s inherent in Man’s nature to overpower and subjugate other tribes/races who are unable to defend themselves, this more so being the case as opposed to whether they are considered inferior which is often the premise put forward.
Since all of mankind has been guilty of the practice at some point during his evolution, let all be subjected to politically correct orchestrated collective self-loathing and mortification for the wrongs of ancestors regardless of the fact that many present-day generations will actually be innocent of any such involvement.
Let all non-white races also be compelled to join in this global fest of self-flagellation so that we can all experience the joys of individual group guilt-tripping AND emotional and financial BLACKmail, toboot. For example, Afro-Americans could hold the present-day African descendants of their ancestors responsible for the selling of their kind to the Europeans, whose African ancestors were also busy selling them to the Arabs for a thousand years or more before the first white man ever set foot anywhere near the heart of the dark continent,, in the first place.
Nigeria, is floating in oil these days. To get this new reparations bandwagon rolling, they could start with their Nigerian bruthas! Why not?
If you can’t beat’em, join’em! That way, every man and his genetic kin can at least benefit from all this BLACKmail largesse.
Posted by A Swain at 11:03 PM on February 5
“Why should whites feel guilty for being ‘priviliged’ in our own lands? In Japan they have Japanese Privilege and in the black community blacks treat eachother better than they do whites and other non-blacks.”
Where I work we had a lady technician from Japan visit our factory. She showed particular deference to a black woman who works at our plant. Even the far off Japanese know to treat blacks better than everyone else.
“I do not believe for a minute that 11 MILLION slaves were brought to the new world. Anybody help me here?????”
I think it would be more accurate to figure this out scientifically by taking the current population, birth and death records, what we know, and working back from there. Anyone know the breeding patterns of the cockroach?
Posted by LHathaway at 11:04 PM on February 5
Just think about it. If Barack Obama had not been brought here to America as a slave he would never have been dumped by his dad so he could go poke another white woman at Harvard, would never have been raised with white values, and would probably be back home in Kenya slitting Kikuyu and Kalenjin throats.
Posted by Big Bill at 11:16 PM on February 5
It is Mr. DeWolf who doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on!
First of all, my ancestors didn’t have anything to do with slavery, as they came here long after it ended. This is true of most white peoples families here in the USA, I feel. Mr. DeWolf and his family, by his own admission, have lived a life of white privilege, separated from the rest of us in 95% white communities, and educated at Ivy League schools. Does he know what it is like to be the victim of endless black violence,crime and trouble-making? Surely not. He would be spreading a different message if this were the case.
And let’s not forget that the DeWolf family ended this trade in the 1820’s! After almost 200 years, reparations are out of the question. If he feels reparations are due, then let it come out of his pocket. Let him move to Camden, Detroit or Philadelphia or New Haven and see if he still feels that blacks should have reparations!!!
Posted by multi culti no more at 11:25 PM on February 5
This loser was on C-Span2, how pathetic.
Posted by rdg at 11:49 PM on February 5
Oh wow!
After reading this article, I checked the family tree and realized that I am a direct descendant of THAT Charles DeWolf, and related to Thomas Norman DeWolf. I had no idea I came from such a powerful family. I guess I’m one of the black sheep of the family as I don’t feel guilty at all, and I’m not exactly receiving much privilege right now. I might have to contact my cousin Thomas and see if he can share some of his book money or some of that family slave wealth he inherited. It’s my family too.
Thanks AmRen you made my week!
Posted by Kurt DeWolf at 12:20 AM on February 6
These idiots saddled us with the blacks and now a descendent is sorry about black slavery. He should be apologizing to us for all the whites that got raped, murdered, and maimed by the blacks!!!
Posted by realist at 12:30 AM on February 6
To put all of this in perspective , less than 8% of the Atlantic slave trade came to what is now the United States , and yet we are supposed to assume 100% of the guilt .Especially the South . When we say ,”New World Slavery,” it also includes Central and South America and the Caribbean. Ostensibly the most oppressive form of the institution was the Portugese variety in Brazil . There were many uprisings there usually with the slaves asking for a bigger piece of the pie ; their own land to raise their own crops , better quarters , and more time with their families , not for their freedom (which by the way was granted to them in the late 1880s I believe, and no civil war was required there to end slavery there ).Colonies were expected to be profitable . Britain and I assume other European powers tried to fill the labor void with indentured servants but it just didn’t work . There just weren’t enough takers so they turned to slavery . It was just a different world then and we should not be so judgemental , especially on ourselves .
Posted by at 12:51 AM on February 6
Just wondering, If there are reparations for slavery, will the descendents of black slave owners be required to write themselves a check?
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 1:56 AM on February 6
At first, their collective guilt is assuaged by two professors at the University of Ghana. Every civilization practiced slavery, they say. And African chiefs sold slaves to the European traders.
————
You should not feel the weight of history,” counsels Natalia Bolivar, an Afro-Cuban scholar. “You’re not living in the Inquisition.”
Seems that the Ghanaians and Cubans have common sense utterly lacking in those self-hating clueless De Wolfs.
Posted by EW at 4:34 AM on February 6
Yet another self loathing, white-guilt ridden moron. Too funny Mr DeWolf, please give the blacks all your money, wife and daugther. idiot!
Posted by Jim at 4:37 AM on February 6
Does Mr. DeWolf ever consider that we whites ended slavery, yet it is still practiced in Africa today? Furthermore, his family did what was legal at the time. Even when they shipped slaves to Cuba from Africa, he was not shipping slaves into the USA,where this was outlawed.
Posted by multi culti no more at 8:35 AM on February 6
I wonder if this narcissistic baby-boomer is also willing to help us Gen Xers, considering it was his generation that held on to what they had with self-centered ferocity, went from being hippies to yuppies and left my generation overeducated and underemployed for years, making us the first generation to do economically worse than our parents.
Posted by Gay Conservative at 9:02 AM on February 6
It’s about time that the true history of the North’s association with slavery was told. For 150 years, it has been the South that has carried the burden (thanks to revisionist history books and the MSM) of slavery.
Do I think that the DeWolf family owes anything to today’s blacks? Absolutely not. Just as I do not believe that any white person in this country, rich or poor, owes anyting to any black person in this country. After all, billions have been stolen from our wages for the past 45 years to give blacks a boost up and a chance at a better life. And they’ve taken everything that has been given to them and demanded more. Apologies mean nothing to blacks - they want money. And as we have all seen in the past 45 years, the billions already spent has not been enough. Any amount of reparations, should it happen, will not be enough.
However, should the DeWolf family decide to divest themselves of their so-called ill-gotten gains, then so be it. But would anyone believe that they will do so. No, but they will surely try to tell the rest of us.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 10:04 AM on February 6
Crazy Math wrote:
“If you do the math on this, it does not add up. They are claiming that 11 MILLION slaves were brought to the New World. The population at the time of the civil war is reputed to be 31,443,321 in America. I do not believe for a minute that 11 MILLION slaves were brought to the new world. Anybody help me here?????”
I’ll try. By “New World” they mean ALL of the Americas - North, South, and the Caribbean islands. A little known fact, conveniently obscured by cunning liberals and cynical black academics, is that less than 5% of African slaves were landed in North America. The rest went to South America (35% alone to Brazil) and the West Indies. Where, by the way, their treatment was significantly harsher than anything experienced by black slaves in North America.
Posted by Francis at 10:33 AM on February 6
““This is heavier than I expected,” [DeWolf] says. “The impact of race is so much greater than I ever realized… . If I were black, I think I’d be angry—not only at what took place over the past few hundred years, but at white people who don’t have a clue what’s going on today.””
I tell you what, Mr. DeWolf. Why don’t you and your descended-from-slave-traders kin all go and hang yourselves. Then you can count yourself “atoned”, and leave in peace the rest of us, who - quite sensibly - don’t give a damn about your foolish little crusade.
Posted by CSinAL at 11:45 AM on February 6
The DeWolfs should feel guilty about all the misery they brought to the white people that wanted to make the US a great place to live in.
Posted by at 11:52 AM on February 6
“Where I work we had a lady technician from Japan visit our factory. She showed particular deference to a black woman who works at our plant.”
Posted by LHathaway at 11:04 PM on February 5
From the gist of your account, I take it you mean ‘indifference’.
Posted by A Swain at 11:55 AM on February 6
Not that many people care, but slavery was legal during the time in question!
Posted by FRANK at 2:27 PM on February 6
Interesting coming from a man who fled when blacks starting moving into his neighborhood.
“Do ask I say not as I do”.
Posted by Dennis at 2:43 PM on February 6
I loved the author’s sweeping generalization that white people don’t have a clue what is going on. It sounds like he has formed his own racist thoughts.
Posted by Dennis at 3:05 PM on February 6
Don’t forget white slavery.
Several villiages in coastal Ireland were totally depopulated by Arab slave raiders and the inhabitants were sent to the Barbary coast in northern Africa. The women were sold as sex slaves, male children castrated and used as eunuchs and the men were used as oarsmen on boats where they died relatively quickly. I think I would much rather be a plantation slave.
Posted by Spartan24 at 3:15 PM on February 6
The DeWolfs are insincere.
A true showing of guilt would be for the DeWolf to pledge all their sinning slavery money to help send anyone back to Africa who wants to go.
Other than sending the blacks back to Africa, there is really nothing to be done by DeWolfs. If it was a sin to bring Africans here in the first place, it must be a virute to help them get back home.
If DeWolf offers his money to get them home, then he is truly atoning for some supposed inherited racial quilt.
But other than that, he’s just another example of an idiot who will see racial ruin at the hands of foreigners in his own land.
Posted by doing the math at 3:48 PM on February 6
There’s no way 11 million slaves were brought to this country. At it’s peak in 1860, there were an estimated 3.9 million TOTAL. (The population of the US at that time was 38.5 million.)
Posted by becca at 4:48 PM on February 6
Crazy Math, I can help.
By the best research, 12 million Africans were sold by Black tribal leaders for trinkets and cloth. Africans had been raiding and slaving each other for centuries.
Hispanic slavers, Portuges and Spanish, bought these slaves and shipped them to the plantations, silver mines and haciendas of Central and South America and the Carribean islands (sugar plantations). They did this because the Hispanics killed off numerous natives and had no “cheap labor”, for jobs hispanics didn’t wouldn’t do. (African slaves also had great family values, too).
Of the 12 million slaves purchased from Black African slavers over the entire time of the global, multi-national and multi-cultural slave trade, 11.5 ended up in these Hispanic areas.
ONLY 500,000 slaves were sent to WHITE North America during the entire time of the slave trade. Let me repeat that again….1/2 million to White America while 11.5 bought and enslaved by Hispanics in Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Hispanola, etc.
I have a nice library which contains books that has informed me of this.
Posted by LOGIC at 4:50 PM on February 6
The De Wolf family is using this to sell books and make money. If they feel so guilty, then why not give away their money to blacks? You won’t see that happening. Also, blacks here today have benefited enormously from slavery. Their ancestors may have suffered but blacks today are a million times better off among whites in the US than they ever would be back in africa and they know it. That is why you never see blacks wanting to go back to africa despite all their moaning about slavery.
Posted by KC at 9:31 PM on February 6
“Katrina Browne’s documentary film”
Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolf, and the rest of their ilk, parading their own moral superiority, but staying insulated from the racial violence her one-sided propaganda encourages against whites, is welcome to give all her OWN assets to blacks. But leave the rest of us out of it. No better, they should give their assets to us working whites WHO HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE LEGACY OF THEIR ANCESTORS ACTIONS IN OUR MIDST!
Other white leftists can join her in giving away all their assets too. And the Democrat Party (the party of the slave owners and the Jim Crow South) should likewise give all its assets away to blacks as part of reparations.
Posted by at 9:47 PM on February 6
“At first, their collective guilt is assuaged by two professors at the University of Ghana. Every civilization practiced slavery, they say. And African chiefs sold slaves to the European traders. But the trade, they add, was driven by European demand.”
First, the SELLERS are always the most responsible party. (The reason why drug pushers are sentenced harsher than drug buyers.) And MOST of the loss of life was in the capture and force marches to the coast from the interior of Africa, all carried out by the black African slavers. The mortality rate on the cross Atlantic voyage on the other hand was about the same between the crew and the slave cargo.
Second, they left out mention about a far LARGER slave trade, that was going on centuries BEFORE the Atlantic slave trade (and continues today) and involved millions MORE black Africans (14 million) than the Atlantic slave trade: The Trans-Sahara Islamic slave trade. (No “European” demand involved there. Indeed, millions of Europeans were also enslaved by Muslim slave traders.) The North African Muslim slave trade was particularly brutal: High mortality rate in the forced marches across the Sahara. The practice of castrating all black male slaves and killing babies born to black female slaves.
And third, what is this assumed business about “collective” guilt? That is the ESSENCE of “racism”. Do blacks have “collective” guilt for their genocide of the Bushmen? Or the one million whites who are victims of violence at their hands each year in the U.S. today (12 times the reverse)?
Here’s some REAL history about the African slave trade that the (Marxist) hate-whitey crowd hopes you never read:
1.) “The Slave Trade” by Hugh Thomas
2.) “The Penguin Atlas of African History” by Colin McEvedy
3.) “Slavery in the Arab World” by Murray Gordon
4.) “White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves” by Giles Milton
5.) “Christian slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800” by Robert C. Davis
6.) “Race and Slavery in the Middle East” by Bernard Lewis
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html
7.) “Time On the Cross” by (1993 Nobel Laureate) Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman
8.) “Race and Culture-A World View” by Thomas Sowell
9.) “The Black Book of Communism-Crimes/Terror/Repression” by Couctois, Werth, Panne, Paczkowski, Bartosek, Margolin
10.) “The Atlantic Slave Trade-The Full Story” by Dr Sheldon M. Stern (former historian at John F Kennedy Library and Museum from 77 to 99) Article in “Academic Questions” Summer Vol 18 No 3, the official publication of the National Association of Scholars
11.) Islamic Slavery, Rape, and Genocide:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=16027ED9-FFFE-4E3C-B9B6-30E0F0D980FC
Some comments: I included #9 since it is Marxists who are trying to rewrite/distort history and inflame racial hatred of whites (in order to try to exploit blacks as a battering ram to help them destroy this most prosperous and free society and replace it with a Marxist totalitarian regime) and to try to induce a bogus “collective guilt” (the very essence of Nazi-like racism) among whites (in order to break down psychologically any resistance to the Left’s agenda). The irony is that Communism enslaved over one third of humanity for the better part of the past century, involving orders of magnitude more victims than the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery=no freedom of movement, no right to the fruits of your labor, no free choices in life, and every aspect of your life at the whim and mercy of your Master: This is the very definition of communism. Furthermore no movement in the history of mankind has murdered more people than Marxism: 100 million human beings wiped out the past century thanks to Marxists.
Some quotes from these sources:
#1: “These captives (slaves) were usually procured by barter with African monarchs or merchants… The goods exchanged for slaves were textiles, copper or iron bars, … and vast numbers of miscellaneous objects… Hundreds of thousands of Africans participated in the trade but especially the kings in Ashanti, Dahomey, Benin, Loango, Congo, and Angola. Mozambique and Madagascar also contributed… to the European boats. Slavery in Africa resulted from captivity in war, from kidnappings or raids on neighbors or … after crimes”
#2: Referring to why Europeans stayed off shore and had no control at all over what went on inland of Africa: “…which they couldn’t because fevers killed them off too fast…” “There was a single reason for this: malaria. If 10 Europeans landed in West Africa it was pretty well certain that 6 of them would be dead.. before the year was out. And inland, mortality was even fiercer….West Africa was known as the White Man’s Grave” “With such powerful reasons as this for not stepping ashore it is no wonder that the Europeans kept contact with Africa to a minimum. The Africans brought them commodities-slaves…-to the coast, the Europeans traded as much as they could from their ships”
As a side note, other interesting topics: “The Negoes’ original homeland was the forest and bush country of West Africa. The rest of sub-Sahara Africa was divided between the Pygmies and the Bushmen” “The Bushmen are … yellow rather than brown or black” “As the Bantu advanced the Pygmies & Bushmen retreated, the Pygmies into the depths of their forests, the Bushmen to the south. There was no chance of these stone age food gatherers successfully resisting the Bantu….The Bantu, with their …iron weapons and their warrior castes, were like the conquistadors in the New World… The Bushmen were pushed off most of their range..”
#7: Regarding slavery as practiced in the U.S. South: “The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation… destroyed the black family is a myth.” “Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family” “The material conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers” “Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income was expropriated…but the rate was lower than generally presumed” “Over the course of his lifetime the typical slave field hand received about 90% of the income he produced”
Posted by at 10:06 PM on February 6
“At first, their collective guilt is assuaged by two professors at the University of Ghana. Every civilization practiced slavery, they say. And African chiefs sold slaves to the European traders. But the trade, they add, was driven by European demand.”
Change this to the trade was driven by African supply.
Posted by mf at 10:33 PM on February 6
What gullible fools! This only proves how very well, how effectively, those “Ivy-league educations” have worked in brainwashing these impressionable DeWolfe descendents who (despite all their “White Privilege” and money) obviously cannot think for themselves.
This family was never an asset to America. They were a liability to us back then, importing all those dangerous black slaves for their personal profit; and they are still a liability to us now, implying that we all should help them expiate their burden of “guilt”. This family is bad news. We’d be better off without them. I move that we deport THEM back to Africa, if they really think something should be done. And leave the rest of us alone!
Posted by voter at 12:02 AM on February 7
The indentured servitude of Whites in Colonial America was
often just slavery under another name. Because they were under
contract and not valuable possessions, they were often given the
hardest work. The owners wanted to get their money’s worth and
Blacks were valuable possessions who could be sold. Many did not
live out their contract. Many were not released agreed upon. And
for many, it was completely involuntary-thus the press gangs and
“spirits” of England. Many were “spirited” away. Read all about
it in “They Were White and They Were Slaves”-available from finer
White Booksellers.
Posted by Freyr at 12:29 AM on February 7
Before leaving for Africa, the group hears from Keith Stokes, a black historian and executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce.
“Race relations are difficult to talk about,” he warns. But don’t forget, he adds: 11.5 million Africans came to the New World as slaves. They worked in New England ports and on Southern plantations. “This is the foundation of the creation of North America.”
That is such a sly misrepresentation of the truth! He makes it sound like all 11.5 million of them came to what is now the USA — or even to North America. The unskeptical eye will not catch that. But the fact is that only a very small percentage of them did.
.
Oh, yes… and there again is that inevitable assertion that “blacks built America”. Sure they did!
When the United States outlawed the practice in 1808, the DeWolfs broke the law and shipped slaves from Africa to Cuba.
Mentioning this is also dishonest. Broke what law? When it became illegal to import blacks into the USA, it was NOT illegal to ship them to another country. Yes, the DeWoolf’s were playing a slick game, but it was not illegal.
Posted by ghw at 2:28 AM on February 7
Go to www.witnessingwhiteness.com to see how self abasing some Whites are. Read the author’s introduction, and it’s clear that this pretty, blonde, blue-eyed young teacher had an abusive Black boyfriend. He ceaselessly ragged on her about her privileged existence, and she ate it up, going home to cry and returning for more. She has apparently chosen to spend the rest of her life atoning for her inherited sins.
Posted by at 2:52 AM on February 7
To 10:06 PM
A lot of words but little substance. Your analogy between dug dealing and the barter of African captives is inapt.
In the case of illegal drug selling it’s the seller who controls the market and has all the capital. In the case of the Atlantic Triangular Trade(Europe to West Africa with muskets, cannon, trinkets and worthless trade goods, then West Africa to the Americas, then after off-loading the captives, then back to Europe…)it was the buyer who had all the capital and who controlled the market.
You fail to point out that the vast majority of the captives were war captives—in wars fueled by the buyers and capital owners with the constant infusion of cannon and muskets. Note that Africans did not travel to Europe with ships laden with captives for the European market. It was the buyers who flocked into West Africa to make their barters.
In all of this it is the buyers who bore almost full moral responsibility for their conduct. Here’s why.
If some mother who is destitute sells her child for a certain sum of money, without questioning what plans the buyer has for her child then if that child is subsequently abused, enslaved or murdered—it is the BUYER who bears full moral responsibility for what has happened to the child. The mother can always plead ignorance or sheer economic destitution. For after all, the purchaser of the child could just as easily raised the child in the most sumptious conditions imaginable: a life of wealth and privilege. In this instance, the mother would have no basis for claiming any responsibility for the happy condition the child found itself in.
The child, course, when fully cognizant of what his/her mother did would fully appreciate that it was his/her mother’s ignorance or economic situtation that caused the sale.
Thus in the case of the descendants of the African captives enslaved in the Americas, the moral problem lies mainly with those nations who took in their ancestors only to subject them to lives of extreme hardship, alienation, human degradation and harsh cruelty.
Posted by OCCAM at 12:26 PM on February 7
“[W]hite privilege, defined by author Peggy McIntosh as “an invisible packet of unearned assets,” a weightless knapsack jammed with “special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
Our old friend Peggy McIntosh — subject of a verbal roasting here at AmRen a couple of months back over her “invisible knapsack of white skin privilege” hallucinations — strikes again!
I’d also like to point out that while previous generations of DeWolfs were sitting around in their overstuffed leather club chairs counting their dubloons, the ancestors of THIS “Guilty White Male” were still back in Europe — either hitched to a plow in some soggy field, or being WORKED TO DEATH in the hideous factories of the Industrial Revolution.
Either way, my white predecessors probably got LESS to eat and had LESS security in their lives than the black slaves on a US plantation. I’m also certain my people, on average, died younger and suffered higher infant-mortality rates (up to 30% in my own family!) than did slaves on the plantations of the Confederacy.
So, Mr. DeWolf, while you’re apologizing for bad behavior by the ruling class in centuries past, you can write a nice big “reparations” check for ME, too!
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 2:26 PM on February 7
From the original article;
“Seven years later, the cousins are part of an effort to reach a racial conciliation through public discussions and education. DeWolf is convinced that four things must happen first: awareness of the issue, an apology, some kind of reparations, and forgiveness from the harmed party.”
There’s that damn word “reparations” again. If the DeWolf family feels the need for reparations, they can pay it themselves. The “benefits” of slave labor have not only been eroded by the cost to society of the ancestors of those slaves, they have been erased and overtaken by those same costs.
We as a society benefited marginally from cheap slave labor. The DeWolf family benefited directly. It is they who need to ask forgiveness, not me and mine.
While they’re at it they can ask White America to forgive them for bringing this mess to our humble shores. They have a lot to be ashamed about. Their shame should be about the after effects of the freed slaves and their ancestors and should only concern the ramifications of slavery to White America, not to the Africans they brought here.
Posted by White and proud at 3:38 PM on February 7
And African chiefs sold slaves to the European traders. But the trade, they add, was driven by European demand.”
Change this to the trade was driven by African supply.
Posted by mf
And the trade was also driven by African DEMAND (for European goods, which they were incapable of producing for themselves). The apologists conveniently forget that barter is always a two-way street.
Posted by browser at 4:48 PM on February 7
“this pretty, blonde, blue-eyed young teacher had an abusive Black boyfriend. He ceaselessly ragged on her about her privileged existence, and she ate it up, going home to cry and returning for more. She has apparently chosen to spend the rest of her life atoning for her inherited sins.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
That’s OK with me. This sick masochist can atone all she wants. Just don’t drag me into it!
Oh, and while she’s at it, if she really wants a masochistic thrill, she can also atone to us for the incalculable problems and cost that her greedy ancestors caused all the rest of us by “bringing this mess to our shores” (as someone above said so well!).
Posted by browser at 5:04 PM on February 7
I forgot to explain why the Hispanic slavers “needed” 11.5 million slaves while we white “needed” only 1/2 million during this 3 and 1/2 centuries of slaving (1500 to 1860).
The Hispanics killed theirs with brutal labour and filthy food. We whites treated “our slaves” far better and they actually REPRODUCED and had children since RARELY did the white “slave” owner break a family up. But the Hispanics did.
If blacks have a problem concering the “legacy of slaver”, they need to take it up with the Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians, etc. Not us whites. We were the nicest guys in the entire slave trace. Heck, check out the Arabs and Asians and how they treated Africans. More like dogs, while we whites treated them FAR FAR better than any other race.
Posted by LOGIC at 5:17 PM on February 7
Black slaves on southern plantations often had more to eat, were better clothed and had better living conditions than poor whites up north during the industrial revolution, where child labor was common. Conditions were so bad among poor whites during this time,due to the rampant spread of diseased like TB, that the average life expectancy dipped to 17!!!! Lower than that of slaves or people who lived in ancient rome.
Posted by at 9:49 PM on February 7
Wonder if DeWolf’s ancestors are the ones who paid and furnished the ships to bring these god-forsaken Africans to our shores? Then his groveling is all a put on, if that is the case, to make “Whites” feel even more guilty…..I never have and never will feel any sort of guilt OR compassion for any other race, period. They have have beaten it all out of me, with their incessant whining and their RACISM towards Whites, period.
Posted by at 9:51 PM on February 7
OCCAM at 12:26 PM on February 7
Dear OCCAM:
You are DESPERATE to avoid facing the culpability of blacks in the slave trade. Same pattern always: Whatever contortions it takes, blacks are always pure as the driven snow and whites the pure evil devils.
The fact is that the black African slave trade was going on for millennia before any whites showed up off the coast of Africa. Those black Africans knew DAMN well that they were selling other blacks to be used as slaves. How ABSURD the idea that black African slavers thought their captives were being sold for the purpose of being feted guests of some sort! Those captives were not “sold into slavery” by the way: They ALREADY WERE SLAVES, from the moment they were kidnapped and captured by their black African captors! And the black African slavers weren’t selling for nothing. The slave trade was driven by BLACK AFRICAN demand for metal and cloth goods that the Europeans had and that the black Africans WANTED. And the only thing the black Africans had to trade with was what they always had, the captives from their incessant inter-tribal warfare, that had ALWAYS been a way of life in Africa, long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. (In your mind, no matter WHAT blacks do, it’s the white devil that made them do it.) Without the black African slavers selling slaves THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO SLAVE TRADE! During that pre-colonial period Europeans dared not go ashore into tropical sub-Sahara Africa. Nor were they in any position to militarily defeat powerful African tribes that controlled the interior of Africa. The Europeans anchored off the coast of Africa, stuck on their small wooden boats, were miniscule in number. As such it was the black African slave trading chieftains who called all the shots and were the ones TOTALLY in a position of power. The Europeans had no power over them whatsoever.
The real irony is that those Europeans who purchased war captives from the black African slavers actually SAVED THE LIVES of those captives: It was the normal practice for black African tribes to ritualistically sacrifice war captives they could not sell. And when the British navy started cracking down on the Atlantic slave trade there resumed MASS SLAUGHTERS of war captives by black Africans who could no longer find buyers for their captives.
You’re in a state of denial, OCCAM, like many hate-whitey blacks. Blacks aren’t the angels you imagine them to be. They have committed as much evil in the world as any other race. From the genocide of the Bushmen and the stealing of their lands, to their operation of the African slave trade, to the over one million non-black victims of violence at the hands of black street terrorists every year in the U.S. today (12 times the reverse).
Let go of the hate, OCCAM.
Posted by at 10:01 PM on February 7
I was absolutely stunned when I heard that Hillary Clinton actually
spoke out against the white (mostly female)slave trade going on in modern times. Can anyone confirm if this is true, or was she misquoted out of context?
Posted by at 10:27 PM on February 7
“Thus in the case of the descendants of the African captives enslaved in the Americas, the moral problem lies mainly with those nations who took in their ancestors only to subject them to lives of extreme hardship, alienation, human degradation and harsh cruelty.”
The parties involved in the slave trade are long dead.There is no moral problem with the slave trade as far as I am concerned. It was ended long ago. But speaking of morals problem, well, we don’t see any mention of the beligerent behavior of many blacks in the USA today, do we? And our ruined urban areas speak for themselves. Where is the discussion of moral issues concerning that, hmm? If there is such a moral problem, why then did our white ancestors outlaw slavery, when it was practiced in Africa and other countries until fairly recently, and still continues in Africa today. Do a search on this topic and you will see.
Posted by multi culti no more at 11:13 PM on February 7
Say somebody wants to buy my baby daughter for sex and I let
them. Who is more despicable? Obviously the seller. Occam thinks
differently. Occam is a fool. Now, obviously both a despicable,
but Occam as usual wants to prove Whites are the most evil so as
usual, he has to be shown to have made a fool of himself.
Posted by Freyr at 11:23 PM on February 7
If blacks have a problem concering the “legacy of slaver”, they need to take it up with the Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians, etc. Not us whites. We were the nicest guys in the entire slave trace.- Posted by LOGIC
Thank you, Logic. That makes me think of the “Amistad”, the Spanish slave ship headed for Cuba that was taken over by the slaves in 1839, and then sailed north to Connecticut. It was a monumental case, tried in Hartford, I believe, which ruled that they be set free and allowed to settle here. There was a big celebration just a few years ago, and a movie was made by Stephen Spielberg. The significant thing that I want to point out is that they were sailing north to New England, not south to Venezuela or Brazil, nor west to Mexico (then already an independent country which could have received them). Those Africans on the ship obviously knew better. They came to where they would get the best treatment. And they got it.
http://www.amistadamerica.org/
Heck, check out the Arabs and Asians and how they treated Africans. More like dogs, while we whites treated them FAR FAR better than any other race.
There was a post I made here, several months ago, quoting an article from the NY Times in the 1800s. It spoke of the large number of black slaves held by the Turks, and aside from the males who were all eunuchs, it observed that despite the many female concubines in wealthy households, one hardly ever saw a mulatto. It gave the reason for this quite simply: infanticide.
It also mentioned that in times of economic hardship when households with large numbers of slaves could not support them all, the black ones were given their “freedom”— ie. turned out into the streets to starve or beg.
Posted by ghw at 2:07 AM on February 8
OCCAM:
Since MOST of the loss of life (estimated at 50%) was in the capture process and forced marches to the African coast, all perpetrated by black African slavers, it is THEY, the black AFRICAN SLAVE TRADERS, who bear MOST of the guilt.
Your inane analogy to a desperate poor mother giving up her baby for adoption to what she thinks is a loving family does not speak well of your abilities at coherent thought.
The black African slaver Chieftains weren’t any more desperate than the European buyers. They were driven by pure GREED for the manufactured goods the Europeans had in their possession. The Europeans did not trade for slaves anywhere else in the world, only Africa, because ONLY the Africans offered slaves for trade. If they had offered spices the Europeans didn’t have, that is what would have been traded. The AFRICANS made the decision that they were going to deal in human beings, because that was part of their AFRICAN culture. Slavery was an African cultural import to the Americas.
And your statement that the European buyers controlled the “capital” shows you weren’t even thinking when you typed that: There was no “capital” involved. It was a barter of goods for goods.
Well, it is pointless to try to engage with your muddled thought processes. One can engage in rational discussion with someone who is likewise engaging in honest rational discussion. But black bigotry against whites, like Nazi bigotry against Jews, is emotion based and immune to thoughtful argument.
Posted by at 11:27 PM on February 8
Blacks in the U.S. just try to use the slavery thing from the dead past as a way to con gullible whites today who are stupid enough to accept guilt for something they had nothing to do with.
But the dirty little secret is that if black Americans were given the magical power to revise history and erase the Atlantic slave trade from ever happening (meaning NO blacks in America today), NONE of them would erase it.
There are NO American blacks who would trade places with blacks living in Africa. There is NO flow of blacks fleeing “racist oppressive” America migrating to mother Africa.
Posted by at 12:37 AM on February 9
It was a monumental case, tried in Hartford, I believe, which ruled that they be set free and allowed to settle here.
I mis-spoke, slightly, in saying they were allowed to settle here. Actually, they lived in Connecticut for a few years, until a public subscription was taken up for them and a ship chartered to bring them back to their homes and families in Africa (Sierra Leone), where they were eventually returned in 1842.
Sierra Leone had been founded just after the American Revolution (1787) as a home for American blacks who had fought on the British side, and also as a resettlement place for London’s “poor blacks” who had been growing in number and were becoming a burden on charity.
The other country of Liberia was founded shortly after (1822) by Americans as a home for America’s freed blacks. Interestingly, there was no notion at the time, even from the most committed abolitionists, of having freed blacks remain permanently in America or in England. The idea was to repatriate them to Africa.
Also very interestingly, upon arrival there, the leader of the Amistad group, allegedly the son of a local chief, who had been captured by warriors of a rival chief and traded to Spanish slavers on the coast, learned from fellow tribesmen that his home had been ravaged by war and his family wiped out. So, as it turned out, it was very lucky for him that he had been taken off to Cuba, where he had escaped that same fate.
Amistad was a sensational case, drawing ex-Pres. John Quincy Adams out of a 30 year retirement, in his mid-70’s, to defend the fugitive slaves and argue for their freedom. It was also an international case, as Cuba was then a Spanish possession, and the Spanish government was demanding the return of the slaves, the ship, and the valuable cargo which it carried. It was also an unprecedented and shaky case. The law and all international treaties supported Spain’s position, as did Pres. Martin van Buren and the Secretary of State, and the US government. Against them were aligned a determined group of wealthy abolitionists from New York and Connecticut who — just as today — deftly got around the law by examining minutiae and finding technical loopholes.
It seems quite a miracle that the ship, under slave control and wandering northward from Cuba, ended up - of all places — in Connecticut. Was that a mere accident, or did they have some clear idea of where they were heading? Certainly, if they had wound up in Venezuela, or even in Florida, their fate would have been quite different.
Posted by ghw at 1:50 AM on February 9
Freyr,
Consult the log books of the slave traders and you will see that the vast majority of captives derived from the internecine wars fueled by the arms flows into West Africa. See “A Slaver’s Log” by Theo Conaut—a slaver for 20 years on the West African coast—as direct witness to the trade.
Certainly, the kings and others who bartered away their captives had no idea of what the fate of their captives might be.
My argument that the ultimate moral responsibility of the captives lay with the slave shippers—heavily capitalized in Europe and the Americas—and those who purchased the captives is borne out by the fact that there are many known instances—evidenced in paintings—of captives taken to Europe to serve as pages or exotic adornments to European royalty. Compared to their kinsfolk taken to the Americas such a life was certainly one of relative comfort and freedom.
Again, if a young mother on secretly giving birth anonymously leaves her newly born child in a public park in the dead of night and some person stumbles on the infant the next morning, takes the child home then murders it. Who would be guilty of murder? The mother, the killer of the child, or both?
Posted by OCCAM at 1:43 PM on February 11
“Consult the log books of the slave traders and you will see that the vast majority of captives derived from the internecine wars fueled by the arms flows into West Africa.” OCCAM
Even so, there wasn’t an “arms flow into West Africa” without a equal demand. Nobody forced anybody to buy those arms. What did they want them for?
Posted by at 5:33 PM on February 12
Some of my ancestors had plantations in Kentucky and owned slaves. The descendants of the family owned slaves also took the family surname.
Some blacks are clamoring for reparations from the descendants of slave owners. As a descendant of slave owners I encourage other slave owning family descendants to band together and clamor for reparations to us for our families’ loss of “slave property” or the return of that property!
Posted by at 2:35 PM on February 13
“Again, if a young mother on secretly giving birth anonymously leaves her newly born child in a public park…”
Posted by OCCAM at 1:43 PM on February 11
OCCAM: You’ve got to be kidding. What an insane analogy. A better anology would be someone, motivated by materialistic greed, kidnapping SOMEONE ELSE’S child (after killing quite a number of people in the process) and then SELLING that child to ANYONE willing to buy it.
“derived from the internecine wars fueled by the arms flows “
What are you saying OCCAM, that blacks should never be entrusted with guns, that they just go off killing other people with them, rather than using them for things like hunting for food?
Just for your information, there was incessant inter-tribal warfare in Africa long before any white men anchored off the coast of Africa. And it continues long after they left. Just because someone trades for guns, that does not FORCE them to go to war with those guns. It was AFRICANS and AFRICANS alone responsible FOR THEIR OWN WARS, as much as you want to racially scapegoat whites.
You build rhetorical constructs that have no relationship to reality. But I guess you enjoy it so you can nurse your racial hatred of the white boogeyman . Easier than facing the truths about your own race.
Posted by at 9:24 PM on February 13
Just for your information, there was incessant inter-tribal warfare in Africa long before any white men anchored off the coast of Africa. And it continues long after they left.
Exactly. Just look at Africa TODAY.
Just because someone trades for guns, that does not FORCE them to go to war with those guns.
That’ would be like arguing that if someone arrived selling rum and whiskey, that FORCED the natives to become alcoholics.
Or if someone arrived with a cargo of knitting needles, that FORCED them all to take up knitting!!!!
Good heavens! — that logic could go on forever.
Posted by browser at 2:43 AM on February 14
Browser,
If you check the numbers throughout history you will see that Europeans have been much more warlike and destructive of each other’s societies than has ever happened in Africa. It’s only recently that Europeans stopped fighing each other once they experienced the horrific events of WWII. The break-up of Yugoslavia brought back memories though —like an ex-alcoholic taking an “for-old-times-sake” drink.
I mean there is virtual lexicon for the names of all those European wars: 100 Year war, 7 Year war, War of Jenkins’s Ear, English Civil War, etc. And,of course, you can go all the way back to the Vandals( “vandalism”. rings a bell?) and Caesar.
Posted by OCCAM at 3:57 PM on February 15
OCCAM:
That’s probably because the non-white world doesn’t have the access to advanced weaponry. There was a study recently by some liberal globalist outfit that stated that the genocide/mass murder body count in Africa would be in the hundreds of millions if not billions if black Africa would have had Europe’s advanced war weapons.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 9:44 PM on February 15
Stone age societies of the types formed by blacks never become populous or advanced enough to engage in Western-style warfare. As always, Occam is simply changing the subject.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 12:06 AM on February 16