HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.: Ending the Slavery Blame-Game ("90 percent...were enslaved by Africans")

NY Times ^ | April 23, 2010 | HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.

[neverdem]

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such...

--snip--

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders...

[RobbyS]

Surprisng that it comes from him. but he failed to mention the Arab/Turkish role in the slave trade, or that the Arabs had literally consumed their slaves in labor etc. Not many Arab-Africans running around.

[RobbyS]

It would have been a good idea back in the 1860, to break up the old plantation s and give them to freed slaves and poor whites. But too late now.

[krb]

To be sure, the African role in the slave trade was greatly reduced after 1807, when abolitionists, first in Britain and then, a year later, in the United States, succeeded in banning the importation of slaves.

To be fair he should point out that the ability for the abolitionists to succeed in 1808 was written into the Constitution by the founders in 1789.

[gwilhelm56]

While listening to one WHINE about slavery,reparations, etc... I had had enough.. I said in front of everyone (sitting at a truck stop)
“Tell you what... If you can prove that one of my ancestors owned one of YOUR ancestors, I will personally buy you a ONE WAY BOAT TICKET ..BACK to AFRICA.. until then ..STFU!”

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.umass.edu/afroam/

W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African American Studies

http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/dubois/?page_id=860

W.E.B. Du Bois Library
UMass Amherst
154 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003

1951 Indictment, trial, and acquittal of subversive activities charges brought against him by the Justice Department; marries Shirley Graham.
1951-1959 Extensive speaking, writing, and international travel; wins Lenin Peace Prize in 1958.
1961 Becomes member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Invited to Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah to edit the Encyclopedia Africana.
1963 Becomes citizen of Ghana. Dies on August 27th and is buried with a state funeral in Accra.

SEE TOP RIGHT HAND SIDE - Search for photos. Try Ghana, China, NAACP etc...

[BIGLOOK]

Gates is a brilliant misHistorian.

Too bad he never delved into the history of Arabs enslaving Europeans in greater numbers than their trade in Africa ever produced.

[Apercu]

Alex Haley, author of “Roots” was purported to have said that every black American should get down on his knees , thank God, and kiss the ground for their ancestors being brought to the U.S. as slaves.

[Psalm 144]

Actually it was done with many of the plantations.

One of the early wasted efforts.

[Fred Nerks]

[bjcintennessee]

No one ever mentions the fact that many free blacks owned black slaves before the civil war. Wonder how they would work that into their formulas for who would get reparations.

[Sivad]

My sentiments to the tee.

I have always believed that every human who walks
the earth is simultaneously the decendent of slaves
and slave holders. It is the story of man. The
thing which distinguishes the past several hundred
years from previous history is the evolution of the
ability to document human interactions.

Western Europeans involved themselves in African
slave trade fairly recently in historic terms so
documentation is much more extensive than it was,
say, a thousand years ago. And, if you combine
that with the Western European (read American)
relatively developed sense of guilt one can
understand how we got to where we are today.

[Brad from Tennessee]

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

[Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. He maintains that it is “ridiculous” to think that only blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. He argues, “It can't be real as a subject if you have to look like the subject to be an expert in the subject,”[5] adding, “It's as ridiculous as if someone said I couldn't appreciate Shakespeare because I'm not Anglo-Saxon. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a black mouth or a white mouth.”]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates

[RobbyS]

It was done mainly by Sherman. Finding his army encumbered by tens of thousands of escaped slaves, he took plantations on the Georgia-South Carolina coast, and gave them to the slaves. But most of the slaves were unprovided for, and in truth many northerners were indifferent. , because they expected the blacks to die out without the institution of slavery to sustain them. The history of Reconstruction was largely a record of the progressive abandonment of blacks by the Yankees, because they were not about to restart the Civil War to prevent the majority whites from taking control again in their own country. Their main interest was keeping the blacks from migrating north and west.

[kalee]

placemarker

[skookum55]

In the aftermath of tribal conflicts, Black Africans were enslaved (or eaten) by black Africans, who later sold the (the ones enslaved, not the ones eaten) to western European and Arab slave traders. Those slaves sold to western Europeans were rather fortunate.

I do not endorse or justify slavery, but those slaves who ended up in the New World were far more likely to survive and have their offspring survive than those whose servitude occurred in Africa or the Middle East. This is demonstrated by proportion of blacks in the current population of the New World -- 13% in the US (with a current, albeit illegitimate black president), and several nations that are predominantly black and governed by blacks. Note the relative paucity of blacks in Saudi Arabia. And, the offspring of those black slaves kept in Africa (those not cannibalized) were at a far greater risk of dying prematurely from brutal intertribal conflicts and enslavements that continue to this day.

US liberals obviously do not object to slavery -- they go out of their way to endorse and support the modern day African black-on-black slave trade by sweeping it under the rug. Similar to the way the go out of their way to enslave poor blacks in the US through the welfare system that fosters black-on-black crime.

I know of nothing more racist than a moder day liberal.

[MarineBrat]

As a northern white Republican I demand payment from the Democrats for my ancestors who were killed saving blacks from Democrat sponsored slavery in the Civil War.

[Right Wing Assault]

Has Gates gone Uncle Tom, Oreo, etc. to make up for his racist stupidity with Officer Crowley, or is he just telling the truth?

[castlegreyskull]

The day reparations start getting distributing, will be the day I take myself to another country.

[bert]

Which means that when Eddie Murphy came to America to find a queen, the royal ancestors of the princess he found were enslaved by his royal ancestor

[castlegreyskull]

Obama said that reparations would not be given directly under the name reparations.

I think things like this student loan, and this health care are forms of reparations in his mind. They will be designed to put minorities first.