And white boy, if the shit you pricks have done is called civilized, then civilized doesn't exist.
Your little history lesson seems to omit the part where African tribesmen were slaughtering each other and selling captured enemy tribesmen as slaves.
Tell us how “civilized” Africa was back then.
No, it doesn't.
ALL Rise!
This mornings lesson
The 400 Year African War.
(2nd edition)
Prior to European
colonialism, it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different states or nations with different languages and customs. There have been numerous kingdoms and dynasties during the history of the continent. Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop wrote that the ancient name of Africa was Alkebulan. According to Diop, this is what the continent was called by its inhabitants such as the Moors, Nubians, Carthaginians, and Ethiopians. The name Africa itself is said to have come from the Greeks and Romans. I write this so that we understand how distorted the European tale about Africa has been. Africa was not some barren land where everybody ran around in loincloths. We learn about the great accomplishments of Egypt, but Egypt is in Africa. When Europeans arrived Alkebulan existed of nations containing cities with universities, businesses, economies and governments. The comment that Africans sold each other into slavery is disingenuous because these nations did not consider themselves Africans, they were citizens in their specific kingdoms. No different than the British, French, Spanish, Germans and Norwegians.
The Schomburg Center for the Research of Black Culture has excellent information about the African slave trade that provides a stark contrast between what happened and what some use as an excuse to discount the experiences of blacks in America. The web site is named,
“The Abolition of the Slave Trade-African Resistance.” From the introduction, information contained in this collection debunks the race pimped tales presented by some in America today.
“Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were multifaceted and covered four continents over four centuries. Still, they have often been underestimated, overlooked, or forgotten. African resistance was reported in European sources only when it concerned attacks on slave ships and company barracoons, but acts of resistance also took place far from the coast and thus escaped the slavers’ attention. To discover them, oral history, archaeology, and autobiographies and biographies of African victims of the slave trade have to be probed. Taken together, these various sources offer a detailed image of the varied strategies Africans used to defend themselves from and mount attacks against the slave trade.
The Africans’ resistance continued in the Americas. They ran away, established maroon communities, used sabotage, conspired, and rose against those who held them in captivity. Freed people petitioned the authorities, led information campaigns, and worked actively to abolish the slave trade and slavery.
In Europe, black abolitionists launched or participated in civic movements to end the deportation and enslavement of Africans. They too delivered speeches, provided information, wrote newspaper articles and books. Using violent as well as nonviolent means, Africans in Africa, the Americas, and Europe were constantly involved in the fight against the slave trade and slavery.”
The tale of Africa’s role in the slave trade as told by a segment of white society is incomplete and inaccurate. This has been done on purpose. It was not so simple as blacks capturing each other and selling them to whites. Europeans did not just waltz into Africa and overwhelm a bunch of backward, naked, dumb savages. They were in a fight for 400 years. Many Europeans entered Africa and Africa ended up being their final resting place.
“Some leaders actively worked against the transatlantic slave trade. One of the most famous was Abdel Kader Kane, the Muslim leader of the Futa Toro region in northern Senegal. Kane had succeeded in peopling his kingdom by retaking by force his people who had been kidnapped and by forbidding slave caravans from passing through his territory. After the French took three children from Futa, Kane sent a letter to the governor:
We are warning you that all those who will come to our land to trade [in slaves] will be killed and massacred if you do not send our children back. Would not somebody who was very hungry abstain from eating if he had to eat something cooked with his blood? We absolutely do not want you to buy Muslims under any circumstances. I repeat that if your intention is to always buy Muslims you should stay home and not come to our country anymore. Because all those who will come can be assured that they will lose their life.”5
We are told stories about the shackles and chains, but we are not told the complete story of why they were needed. It is just “you sold your own into balls and chains.” But the truth is a little different.
“As the slave trade expanded, resistance to it grew as well, and the need for shackles, guns, ropes, chains, iron balls, and whips tells an eloquent story of continuous and violent struggle from the hinterland to the high seas. As one slave trader remarked:
For the security and safekeeping of the slaves on board or on shore in the African barracoons, chains, leg irons, handcuffs, and strong houses are used. I would remark that this also is one of the forcible necessities resorted to for the preservation of the order, and as recourse against the dangerous consequences of this traffic.”
“Wherever possible, such as in Saint-Louis and Gorée (Senegal), James (Gambia), and Bance (Sierra Leone), the Europeans' barracoons were located on islands, which made escapes and attacks more difficult. In some areas, as soon as local people approached the boats, the crew is ordered to take up arms, the cannons are aimed, and the fuses are lighted . . . One must, without any hesitation, shoot at them and not spare them. The loss of the vessel and the life of the crew are at stake.”
“The heavily fortified forts and barracoons attest to the Europeans' distrust and apprehension. They had to protect themselves, as Jean-Baptiste Durand of the Compagnie du Sénégal explained, from the foreign vessels and from the Negroes living in the country."
“These precautions notwithstanding, in the eighteenth century, Fort Saint-Joseph on the Senegal River was attacked and all commerce was interrupted for six years. Several conspiracies and actual revolts by captives erupted on Gorée Island and resulted in the death of the governor and several soldiers. In addition, the crews of quite a few slave ships were killed on the River Gambia; in Sierra Leone, people sacked the captives' quarters of the infamous trader John Ormond. Similar incidents occurred in other parts of the African coast. Written records document how Africans on shore attacked more than a hundred ships.
Some Western slavers maintained occult centers in their barracoons, staffed by men they paid to work on the captives, sometimes with medicinal plants. The objective was to kill any spirit of rebellion, to tame the detainees, and make them accept their fate. The existence of these centers shows the extent of the precautions taken by slavers to prevent rebellions on land and during the Middle Passage: shackles and guns controlled the body, while the spirit was broken.
But revolts on slave ships, although extremely difficult to organize and conduct, were numerous. About 420 revolts have been documented in slavers' papers, and they do not represent the totality. It is estimated that 100,000 Africans died in uprisings on the coast or during the Middle Passage. The fear of revolts resulted in additional costs for the slavers: larger crews, heavy weapons, and barricades. About 18 percent of the costs of the Middle Passage were incurred due to measures to thwart uprisings, and the captives who rose up saved, according to estimates, one million Africans from deportation by driving up the slavers' expenses.”
Everywhere you turn, your excuse for ****** fails. The fact is, whites bought the slaves. The fact is whites made the enslabement of blacks legal in America. Whites did not have to buy the slaves nor did slavery have to be madelegal in this country.
America could have avoided the problems created by slavery but instead there were a series of choices made by those in power to create divisions to maintain that power. They used race to get it done. In 1970, Ebony magazine published an article by Lerone Bennett titled “The Road Not Taken”. It is taken from a book Bennett wrote called, “The Shaping of Black America”. This is a remarkably interesting article detailing how America made decisions that created the racism and racial division that exists still today in our country. The race card was invented by whites in America during the colonial period long before the American revolution. Whites, specifically wealthy elites invented this card, to maintain power and control. Slaves landed on these shores beginning in the colonial era and despite the finest tales from the far right of the republican party, Democrats did not begin the slave trade in America.
“The race problem in America was a deliberate invention of men who systematically separated blacks and whites in order to make money”
Lerone Bennett
billofrightsinstitute.org
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