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...

[SunkenCiv]

thanks neverdem.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2029044/posts

http://www.trinicenter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1154

[hosepipe]

Socialism is slavery even serfdom to the government..
Any socialist bleeding themselves over slavery protests too much..
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"How do you tell a Socialist:- It's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an Anti-Socialist someone who understands Marx and Lenin" -Ronald Reagan

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ, and thank you for that engaging excerpt!