Slavery Question: Please Help.

Electron1(Myself)

[electron1]

Hello Everyone,

I am having a discussion with an extremely liberal friend of mine, and he made the claim that only Christian white societies have ever been involved in slavery. I know this isn't true, but for the life of me, can't come up with any counter examples.

Can anybody here assist me in finding counter examples, and resources to back them up?

thanks.

[Maria S]

Bruce Bartlett September 10, 2001
Reparations for Africa?
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/printbb20010910.shtml
Explains how Africans sold to Arabs and other Africans.

[Holly_P]

Get new friends

That would be cruel. His friend is only 6 years old.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

and he made the claim that only Christian white societies have ever been involved in slavery

Ah, excuse me ... the Jews ... Moses ... Egypt ... the Jews were slaves long before there was a Christianity.

Romans were rather fond of the practice, too ...

[Bonaparte]

Tell your friend to read the Old Testament with a concordance in hand. Slaves as far as the eye can see and no "white Christian societies."

BTW, there were a great many blacks who were not only slave holders but loyal confederates in the Old South.

[mlmr]

I recommend that you and your friend read Thomas Sowell's Cultures trilogy to get a global and historical perspective on slavery.

[peter the great]

The only one that I could add would be Liberia, which was a country formed of former American Slaves.

[narby]

There's even a big hollywood movie about Roman slavery. I can't think of the name. The story about the Roman gladiator that started a revolution.

For that matter, the movie "Gladiator" that was just out. Rent it for your friend and ask him to point out the Christians who owned the slave Gladiators.

[Bonaparte]

The ancient Chinese emperors are another bunch who owned an amazing number of slaves. Slaves built the Great Wall.

[John Valentine]

Maybe you could offer to trade him for a Dodge or other fine automobile in Saudi Arabia...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1014912/posts

[CLRGuy]

Hope I can help here.
Take a look at this reference

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=slave

Look at the bottom explaining the heuristics of the word Slave.

Also remind your friend that until the Enlightenement slavery was a pretty common practice around the world. The thought that a man owned himself and his property was a radical idea in 1750.

As others have said here, whereever the enlightenment has not reached slavery is still widely practiced.

Cheers!

[My2Cents]

Tell him it was primarily the Democrat Party that promoted and encouraged the expansion of slavery.

[Sloth]

Your friend is a drooling moron. Christianity has only been around for about 1975 years.

[Steve Eisenberg]

I am having a discussion with an extremely liberal friend of mine Get new friends.

I hope this wasn't serious. Politics isn't everything. Besides that we sure won't get any converts if we act this way.

Getting off of my high horse onto the issue, the phrase to describe slavery prior to 1700 is that it was a "human universal." The only place it wasn't found was in some harsh climates, like the artic and the worst deserts, into which the losing sides in primitive warfare were sometimes pushed. What then hapenned? A bunch of British white Protestant men came up with the idea that slavery was wrong -- not just wrong in when it was our own people being enslaved, but wrong in general. Their ideas thankfully have swept over almost all the world.

[My2Cents]

Tell him it was the white Christian societies that were the first to END slavery.

[dwd1]

Assuming you are going to exclude the Egyptians, the Africans who had slaves and still have indentured servants, the Ancient Romans where slavery was practiced quite often, The Spartans who repressed and profited from the persons they oppressed in nearby provinces....

Slavery has traditionally been the result of one people conquering another... The men were usually killed, the women were forced into nude line dancing and the children were sold into or forced into slavery....

What is different about slavery in America that made it so bad was the low level of emancipation...

Indentured servants in India where they had such a strict cast system and passed the debt to the landowner through many generationns is another form...

[Restorer]

The BBC(!) estimates that about 12 million Africans were hauled across the Atlantic by Christians and about 17 million hauled across the Sahara by Moslems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1523100.stm

Interesting side note: Most of the male Africans enslaved by Moslems were castrated for service as eunuchs. Most of the female Africans served as household labor. Few were allowed to have children. Thus they left a lot less impact on the genome of the Middle East than on that of the Western hemisphere.

[goodnesswins]

Lots of good resources cited here.....here's something for your "friend"...there ARE still SLAVES in America today, also.....they are the Black Democrats.....continuing to do the bidding of their PLANTATION owners.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There were slaves in China. American (North South and Central) Indians had slaves. Romans had slaves. Norse had slaves. Indians (from India) had slaves. And so on.

In fact slavery has been an accepted part of every culture since pretty much time began.

The idea that slavery is wrong on the other hand is actually a Christian idea. It springs from the teaching that all men are brothers and if it is wrong to enslave your brother (normal tribal teaching. It was only outsiders who were enslaved usually) then it is wrong to enslave anyone.

Prior to that philosophy taking hold there was no teaching that slavery was wrong. Nobody wanted to be a slave. But slavery as an institution was not questioned much if at all.

[John Valentine]

I recommend that you and your friend read Thomas Sowell's Cultures trilogy to get a global and historical perspective on slavery.

Absolutely.

These three books should be required reading in every high school in the United States.

Then we would have far fewer stupid comments like white people created slavery or are the only people to engage in it. And when someone does pop up with such inanity and ignorance, they could be immediately slapped down with panache, not put on hold for internet research.

[Nitro]

Link that says no slaves were used in construction of the Great Wall.

Site your source.