[Melas]

Vast difference between being an indentured servant and being a slave. Chief amongst is that being a slave was a hereditary condition, while any offspring of an indentured servant bore no such burden.

[robowombat]

True enough. However in the 18th century when the British plantation frontier was booming in the West indies and the North American the demand was purely for labor. My ancestors were sold to some low country planter in South Carolina. Twelve years was considerably above the life expectancy of a slave in the West Indies. They were lucky they didn't get shipped to Barbados or Jamaica like a lot of other borderers or Welshmen or Scots rebels did. The conditions my ancestors labored in on a plantation were unlikely to be much different than most of the blacks they labored among. They survived and, as black slaves didn't , got released in 12 years. They went to Virginia where the colony still gave free men (interestingly of any color headrights to 100 acres, i think. Of course the headrights lands were marginal lands but one got title after cultivating them for 10 years. My point is blacks continually weep and wail about how hard and bad history has been for them. my comment is , so what, every group has some gripe about history. Certainly the Irish or the Sicilian do. Quit weeping and wailing and using bad experiences that you (editorial you) never had as a pretext for demanding special treatment and protected class status.