Sunday, March 09, 2014

 

Slavery Was Bad Everywhere

The Atlantic Slave Trade, which supplied South America, the Caribbean and North America with black slaves from Africa who had been captured and sold by other black Africans along the African west coast, the slave coast, for about 400 years was evil. However, it was no worse nor better than any other slave trade which existed in slightly varying forms all across the World from the time humans started living in clans a few hundred thousand years ago to the mid-19th Century when very religious people stopped it (I agree with director Steve McQueen that there are still slaves in the World, many in Africa, still). There was during that period nearly as booming a business in slaves on different African coasts--Europeans enslaved by Muslims in North Africa and black Africans enslaved by Muslims along the East Coast of Africa. Wherever slavery existed, it was evil. I'm glad it's been stopped (or slowed). Progress is possible. But there was nothing about the owning of slaves in America which stands out as a greater evil than the owning of slaves anywhere else. And the people who pretend that America was worse than any other slave owning country are ignorant of history. Pig ignorant.

I won't even get into the ethical morass of judging people long ago by contemporary mores. It's moral onanism as far as I'm concerned. 

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