Zone1 my black ancestors sold slaves to white slavers but I blame the white slavers.

[irosie91]

yeah? so ? your article demonstrates the difficulties
of living under two DISPARATE legal codes

 

[IM2]

Which were shipped by BLACK slave traders before the white Euros started doing it.

Incorrect.

 

[IM2]

Blacks were the biggest slave traders in the world.

Incorrect. I find this to be rather hilarious.

Blacks did not make slavery legal in America.

And blacks were the first to end slavery in colonies.

So really this thread is just an exercise in white fragility.

Because we aren't denying Africas role, it's just that Africas role in the slave trade is not what these extremists want to make it out to be. Maybe the argument would have some merit if there were records of Africans pulling up to Europe in boats full of slaves then selling them. But all records indicate that Africans provided whites with prisoners captured in wars, some of them whites started to get slaves. They provided guns in return for slaves, and they were the ones coming to Africa to get them.

Whites made agreements with other whites for labor in return for passage. They could have done the same to Africans but chose not to. And this is where these attempts for white absolution begins falling apart.

 

[Bezukhov]

The African tribal chiefs weren't Christians.

So what? They sold their own people into slavery and there would have been no black slaves in the new world with out that action.

If only those White Christians had listened to Jesus... "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" . "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"

But maybe you can convince me that it was Moral, Good and Jesus Approved that White Christians bought those slaves.

 

[Pellinore]

Yep, slavery has been practiced by all kinds of people all over the world throughout history. No reasonable, knowledgeable person can deny that. That said, not every system of slavery is the same.

African slaves at the time were often debtors or criminals, who could work off their debt or crime and earn their own freedom; others were captives of neighboring tribes or kingdoms, and could then be sold as spoils or ransomed back to their home society. The effects of most African slavery was that they lost their social standing and their self-determination to choose their own work or leave for another land. Many were sent to farm or mine, but others could become government officials or administrators, and they were often fed and treated very well. Some African slaves even owned slaves themselves.

Americans practiced a system called chattel slavery, which is not the same. Chattel slavery, unlike African slavery, is for life, and often multi-generational. Chattel slaves were treated as property, completely stripped of their humanity and possessing no rights. They were packed like cordwood in the holds of ships, suffering in squalor and disease so the survivors could be worked to the bone on another continent, with no chance of earning their freedom or ever seeing their family or homeland ever again. Each of these attitudes would have likely horrified Africans of the time, if they were aware of the worst aspects of chattel slavery—which, of course, the Europeans weren't about to broadcast.

Same general category; very, very different systems.

 

[IM2]

RetiredGySgt said:
So what? They sold their own people into slavery and there would have been no black slaves in the new world with out that action.

No, they really didn't. Africa has different nations just like Europe. A Frenchman selling a German into slavery would be 2 different nationalities. A Nigerian selling a Ugandan are 2 differrent nationalities. Again this is where the Africans sold other Africans argument fails. There would have been no black slaves on this continent using your claim if europeans had said, "Hell no, that's wrong, we ain't buying people from you."

But that's not what they did because they are the ones who decided to buy war captives and criminals to sell as slaves.

 

[IM2]

Yep, slavery has been practiced by all kinds of people all over the world throughout history. No reasonable, knowledgeable person can deny that. That said, not every system of slavery is the same.

African slaves at the time were often debtors or criminals, who could work off their debt or crime and earn their own freedom; others were captives of neighboring tribes or kingdoms, and could then be sold as spoils or ransomed back to their home society. The effects of most African slavery was that they lost their social standing and their self-determination to choose their own work or leave for another land. Many were sent to farm or mine, but others could become government officials or administrators, and they were often fed and treated very well. Some African slaves even owned slaves themselves.

Americans practiced a system called chattel slavery, which is not the same. Chattel slavery, unlike African slavery, is for life, and often multi-generational. Chattel slaves were treated as property, completely stripped of their humanity and possessing no rights. They were packed like cordwood in the holds of ships, suffering in squalor and disease so the survivors could be worked to the bone on another continent, with no chance of earning their freedom or ever seeing their family or homeland ever again. Each of these attitudes would have likely horrified Africans of the time, if they were aware of the worst aspects of chattel slavery—which, of course, the Europeans weren't about to broadcast.

Same general category; very, very different systems.

Thank you. Many Africans did fight not only when they found out what was goin on, but from the very start.

 

[IM2]

That's why American blacks should go whine to those African tribes about the fucking reparations they THINK they're owed.

Go bother the people who actually caught, and sold, the fucking slaves.

Whites weren't forced to buy slaves.

So we'll bother the American government that implemented slavery,jim crow, restrictive coventants, convict leasing, black codes, slave breeding, contract selling, redlining, lynching, white terrorism, discrimination in housing, business loans, and refused equal pay.

Africans didn't do these things. And these are the things YOU and other racists purposefully choose to ignore to try blaming blacks for slavery in America.

 

[IM2]

Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade​

Very often I see comments by people who argue that Africans sold each other into slavery. To speak of the slave trade solely as Africans selling each other t is a gross oversimplification of what was a complex historical event. This also seems to be an attempt to shift the burden of the slave trade on the victims of that very trade.


By Dwayne Wong (Omowale), Contributor

There are many misconceptions about African history and nowhere is this more true than the topic of the slave trade. Very often I see comments by people who argue that Africans sold each other into slavery. There is some element of truth to this, but to speak of the slave trade solely as Africans selling each other t is a gross oversimplification of what was a complex historical event. This also seems to be an attempt to shift the burden of the slave trade on the victims of that very trade. In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney mentions how the white author of a book on the slave trade admitted that he was encouraged by other scholars to blame the slave trade solely on the Africans. This narrative helps to lessen European guilt by making Africans seem just as or even more guilty of being involved in the slave trade. This piece is not an attempt to ignore the African role in the slave trade or to absolve those that were involved, but to to provide a more complete picture of the African involvement in slave trade.

In the first place, the Portuguese initiated what eventually became the Trans-Atlantic slave trade mainly through slave raids along the coasts of Africa. The first of these raids came in 1444 and was led by Lançarote de Freitas. The problem with raiding for slaves was that it was extremely dangerous. For instance, the slave trader Nuno Tristão was killed during an ambush. Slave raiding proved to be an extremely dangerous way to obtain slaves, but buying slaves was much safer and took less effort on the part of the Europeans. Therefore, the first phase of the slave trade began not with a trade, but with a series of raids. This point is especially important because although the slave trade was on some levels based on a partnership between European buyers and African traders, the slave trade did not begin as such.

Moreover, the partnership between the traders and buyers was an uneasy one. The European slave traders often betrayed those who supplied them with slaves. A famous case of this was the African slave trader Daaga who was tricked and captured by slave traders. He was taken to Trinidad where he would eventually lead a mutiny. Another example is given by Anne Bailey in her book African Voices in the Atlantic Slave Trade. She mentions the story of Chief Ndorkutsu who had been providing captives to the European traders. Eventually some of the Ndorkutsu's own relatives were tricked into boarding a slave ship and then taken as slaves to Cuba. In some cases, such as that of Madam Tinubu in Nigeria and Afonso of the Kongo Kingdom, those Africans that initially gave African captives to the Europeans came to resist the slave trade. Tinubu had a change of heart when she realized how inhumanely the slaves were treated. Afonso was almost assassinated by the Portuguese after he demanded an end to the slave trade in his kingdom.

Typically wars in West Africa were relatively short affairs that left a small number of causalities. The introduction of European weapons made these wars more drawn out and destructive affairs. Moreover, the only way Africans could acquire these firearms was through the trade of slaves. A king of Dahomey once requested that Europeans establish a firearms factory in his nation, but this request went ignored. Firearms became necessary for African nations to defend themselves both from African rivals as well as from European intrusion, but the only way to acquire these weapons was through the slave trade. This situation only benefited the competing European powers that were able to play Africans against each other.

Some Africans did play a role in the slave trade and the trade could not have been as large as it was without cooperation from Africans. With that being said, I think many people who have not properly studied the slave trade have a tendency to overstate how involved Africans were in a misguided attempt to shift the blame of the slave trade on Africans.

Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Very often I see comments by people who argue that Africans sold each other into slavery. To speak of the slave trade solely as Africans selling each other t is a gross oversimplification of what was a complex historical event. This also seems to be an attempt to shift the burden of the slave...

www.huffpost.com

And this is what the OP and others here have done on this subject. Things did not happen as the OP describes.

 

[IM2]

Yes, Africans Did Sell Africans Into Slavery​

A beloved talking point that ignores how White people reshaped slavery in Africa​

“Blacks sold Blacks into slavery.”

This smug proclamation is often used by people who wish to silence discussions of slavery and sooth White fragility. On the surface, it is a easy phrase to repeat. It seeks to derail any White responsibility for slavery and put Black people in the driver seat of causing their own suffering. After all, the slaves wouldn’t have ended up on those ships if not for the African hunters who pulled them out of the jungle, right?

This phrase is sexy. It requires the person saying it to learn very little about historical context and simply know that Africans did take part in the slave trade. Wrapped in a bow, it is the perfect zinger in their mind to shut other people up. While there is truth behind the statement, it broadly ignores context and role of White people in the Atlantic slave trade.

“Africans Were Part of the Slave Trade…”

Slavery did exist in Africa before the arrival of White Europeans; as it did in many parts of the world. In truth, the practice of taking someone’s freedom and making them work for you with little to no pay or benefits is a simple idea. It is not as if White Europeans thought it up. However, White Europeans did craft a system that spanned continents and created an international economic system built on it. This new system of enslavement changed Africa, as observed by historian Marcus Rediker in his book The Slave Ship: A Human History: “The number of slaves held and the importance of slavery as an institution in African societies expanded with the Atlantic slave trade.”

Slavery looked different in Africa before the arrival of White Europeans, and we have historical records to prove it. As author Adaboi Tricia Nwaubani recalled in an article about her great-grandfather, an African slave trader:

“Long before Europeans arrived, Igbos enslaved other Igbos as punishment for crimes, for the payment of debts, and as prisoners of war. The practice differed from slavery in the Americas: slaves were permitted to move freely in their communities and to own property, but they were also sometimes sacrificed in religious ceremonies or buried alive with their masters to serve them in the next life. When the transatlantic trade began, in the fifteenth century, the demand for slaves spiked. Igbo traders began kidnapping people from distant villages.”

Nwaubani’s story is essential because it highlights a part of history that is rarely discussed within the narrative Sof “Blacks sold Blacks”. It shows that the Igbo people responded to the changes in the economic system (the selling/purchasing of humans). What Nwaubani’s narrative does not do is say that life was more humane prior to European arrival. Slavery within itself is a traumatic experience. However, as Nwaubani notes, prior to the arrival of the Europeans, slavery was focused on personal disputes, war, and punishment. The Europeans turned it into a formal system that relied on supply and demand.

When someone utters the phrase “Blacks sold Blacks into slavery”, it is a scripted response. Rarely, do the people who use it know the specifics surrounding that experience of Africans selling other Africans. They only know that the phrase feels good to say because it blames Black people for their slavery experience. It removes responsibility for the legacies of slavery from White ancestors, hoping to preserve the flags, monuments, and revisionist history that is soothing to White fragility.



So again, we see that the OP's simplistic claim is not so simple. Things simply did not happen as he wants to describe.

 

[IM2]

Next time someone says, “But Africans sold themselves into slavery!”, send this article to them​

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following except from pages 47-50 of Overturning the Culture of Violence, written by Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and printed by Burning Spear Publications, debunks the cynical and anti-black argument that “Africans enslaved themselves.” This argument points to the presence of Africans who collaborated with the European slave masters and “sold” Africans to them in order to shift the responsibility for the slave trade off the shoulders of the European colonial slavemaster and onto the backs of the colonized and enslaved African.

Today, as the voice of the enslaved African community asserts itself in the world and lifts up the demand for reparations, the blame-shifting “African collaborator” argument can be seen gaining traction in universities and bourgeois historical publications, not as an historical argument but as a political defense against the legitimacy of the reparations demand.

Most Africans resisted enslavement with all of their energy. Rebellions on slave ships were common. According to one source, “Many deaths on slave journeys across the Atlantic derived from violence, brawls, and above all, rebellions. There was probably at least one insurrection every eight to ten journeys.”

For example, Africans successfully rebelled in 1532 aboard the Portueguese slave ship the Misericordia. The 109 Africans on board “rose and murdered all the crew except for the pilot and two seaman. Those survivors escaped in a longboat. But the Misericordia was never heard of again.”

Next time someone says, "But Africans sold themselves into slavery!", send this article to them

The statement that “Africans enslaved their own people” is a statement of imperialism’s historic need to mobilize public opinion against African people.

uhurusolidarity.org

Things just did not happen as the OP wants to claim.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Next time someone says, “But Africans sold themselves into slavery!”, send this article to them​

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following except from pages 47-50 of Overturning the Culture of Violence, written by Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and printed by Burning Spear Publications, debunks the cynical and anti-black argument that “Africans enslaved themselves.” This argument points to the presence of Africans who collaborated with the European slave masters and “sold” Africans to them in order to shift the responsibility for the slave trade off the shoulders of the European colonial slavemaster and onto the backs of the colonized and enslaved African.

Today, as the voice of the enslaved African community asserts itself in the world and lifts up the demand for reparations, the blame-shifting “African collaborator” argument can be seen gaining traction in universities and bourgeois historical publications, not as an historical argument but as a political defense against the legitimacy of the reparations demand.

Most Africans resisted enslavement with all of their energy. Rebellions on slave ships were common. According to one source, “Many deaths on slave journeys across the Atlantic derived from violence, brawls, and above all, rebellions. There was probably at least one insurrection every eight to ten journeys.”

For example, Africans successfully rebelled in 1532 aboard the Portueguese slave ship the Misericordia. The 109 Africans on board “rose and murdered all the crew except for the pilot and two seaman. Those survivors escaped in a longboat. But the Misericordia was never heard of again.”

Next time someone says, "But Africans sold themselves into slavery!", send this article to them

The statement that “Africans enslaved their own people” is a statement of imperialism’s historic need to mobilize public opinion against African people.

uhurusolidarity.org

Things just did not happen as the OP wants to claim.

Note who the author is. Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and the book is published by Burning Spear Publications a black nationalist propaganda mill. This isn’t even revisionist history, it’s pure propaganda.

 

[candycorn]

This is a valiant effort to minimize the history of shipping slaves from Africa to North America.

Oh, c'mon...it wasn't valiant at all.

Its a lame attempt at justification for owning people and cry "victimization". It's the trademark of all Trump supporters.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Note who the author is. Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and the book is published by Burning Spear Publications a black nationalist propaganda mill. This isn’t even revisionist history, it’s pure propaganda.

At least he stuck to the thread premise AND provided Links.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Oh, c'mon...it wasn't valiant at all.

Its a lame attempt at justification for owning people and cry "victimization". It's the trademark of all Trump supporters.

Liar I never justified slavery or those that practiced it.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Next time someone says, “But Africans sold themselves into slavery!”, send this article to them​

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following except from pages 47-50 of Overturning the Culture of Violence, written by Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and printed by Burning Spear Publications, debunks the cynical and anti-black argument that “Africans enslaved themselves.” This argument points to the presence of Africans who collaborated with the European slave masters and “sold” Africans to them in order to shift the responsibility for the slave trade off the shoulders of the European colonial slavemaster and onto the backs of the colonized and enslaved African.

Today, as the voice of the enslaved African community asserts itself in the world and lifts up the demand for reparations, the blame-shifting “African collaborator” argument can be seen gaining traction in universities and bourgeois historical publications, not as an historical argument but as a political defense against the legitimacy of the reparations demand.

Most Africans resisted enslavement with all of their energy. Rebellions on slave ships were common. According to one source, “Many deaths on slave journeys across the Atlantic derived from violence, brawls, and above all, rebellions. There was probably at least one insurrection every eight to ten journeys.”

For example, Africans successfully rebelled in 1532 aboard the Portueguese slave ship the Misericordia. The 109 Africans on board “rose and murdered all the crew except for the pilot and two seaman. Those survivors escaped in a longboat. But the Misericordia was never heard of again.”

Next time someone says, "But Africans sold themselves into slavery!", send this article to them

The statement that “Africans enslaved their own people” is a statement of imperialism’s historic need to mobilize public opinion against African people.

uhurusolidarity.org

Things just did not happen as the OP wants to claim.

Thanks IM2 for sticking to thread premise and providing links.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Liar I never justified slavery or those that practiced it.

I see surada disagrees perhaps someone can post a quote of me defending slavery?

 

[cnm]

No but they did SELL all the black slaves to the ship owners.

It's almost as though Africa was a country.

 

[CremeBrulee]

I think this argument is wrong. The fact that Africans sent other Africans to the New World to be enslaved is besides the point. If we look at the numbers, it's pretty inconsequential as to who was sent where by whom. Overall, something like 400,000 (fewer if you consider what is today the U.S.) people were sent to North America. That is pretty insignificant compared to the 12 million plus overall sent to the West. What is more important is that those 400,00 were turned into a population of millions of slaves.

 

[IM2]

Note who the author is. Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and the book is published by Burning Spear Publications a black nationalist propaganda mill. This isn’t even revisionist history, it’s pure propaganda.

So? Actually its factual. I 've read about the ship insurrections. Now what the hell makes you discredit Africans recounts but taking the accouts by whites as the gospel truth? Why can't it be that the european version be propaganda? After all what we have learned in this country from white sources has not been entirely true. There are a whole lot of things stuff in what people like you try discrediting that turn out to be true. What was written in that article was true.

You see son, the problem you have in your denial is that Africans are not denying the sales, but what they are doing is going into detail on how things develped. Those like you want to believe that Africans were just running around capturing slaves and selling them to the whites. But things were not that simple and no amount of denial or disingenuous threads by whites who have not studied this changes that.