Posted on 03/06/2003 1:51:45 PM PST by Earl B.
Federal Museum Denies Slavery in Africa Was 'Dehumanizing'
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
March 06, 2003
Washington (CNSNews.com) - The Smithsonian's African American history museum in Washington, D.C., states that while instances of slavery can be found throughout human history, the practice of slavery did not become "dehumanizing" until white Europeans came along and took slaves to the Americas.
The museum's West Africa exhibit, which opened Feb. 3 and continues through the end of August, includes the following statement at the entrance of the exhibit.
"Slavery had existed in Africa as it had in other parts of the world, for centuries, but it was not based on race and it did not result in dehumanization and death, as did transatlantic slavery," the exhibit's statement declares.
It also explains that, "Because the economies of Africa did not depend on slave labor, the number of enslaved people was small until European traders arrived."
Julia Hotton, curator of the West Africa exhibit titled Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas, believes the European transatlantic slave trade was much more violent than the African slave system.
When asked to explain why, as the museum exhibit states, African slavery was not "dehumanizing," Hotton suggested it would be wise not "to concentrate on that particular phrase," but added that "it was a different slave system," in Africa.
[Slavery in Africa] just wasn't as violent and as perpetual as it was here," Hotton explained.
When pressed again on the issue of slavery in Africa, Hotton backpedaled.
"I am sure it was... I am sure it was dehumanizing. We are now talking about a matter of degree. That is very difficult," Hotton said.
"I don't know how absolute that is because I can't guarantee that somewhere along the way a slave somewhere did not die because of mistreatment," Hotton added.
Brad Phillips, the president of the Persecution Project Foundation, a Christian ministry aiding the current victims of strife in Africa, said the Smithsonian exhibit's message was one of "hypocrisy and inconsistency."
Phillips, who has personally witnessed the effects of modern day slavery in Sudan during his more than 60 trips there, told CNSNews.com all slavery is "dehumanizing."
"Slavery is slavery is slavery is slavery ... when you have little children, little girls that are being abducted or sold by their parents for economic reasons, being sold as sexual slaves in Burma and Thailand, it's all dehumanizing. Let's just be consistent; let's apply the same same standards," Phillips said.
'Different Levels of Hell'
Professor Robert Engs, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, also criticized the Smithsonian's views about the history of slavery in Africa.
"It's like comparing different levels of hell," said Engs regarding whether the transatlantic slave trade was worse than Africa's domestic slave trade.
But Professor Cheikh Babou, an African Studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes race-based slavery was much worse than other types of slavery and agrees with the Smithsonian's view that African slavery was not "dehumanizing."
"I think that the type of slavery we saw in West Africa and other areas of Africa, where people were connected to their culture and environment, where they were not considered outside of the human purview, was different from what we saw later," Babou told CNSNews.com.
According to Babou, many African slaves were treated like family members.
"A domestic slave, a slave that was pretty much incorporated into family, was like an adopted child in the family. They were not a commodity, they were not dehumanized," Babou explained.
Phillips disagreed, insisting that Africa's domestic slave trade was and still is dehumanizing.
"Slavery is a cultural system. It has been going on [since]...Moses," Phillips said.
"Of course, [slavery in Africa] was dehumanizing, of course, people were denied their God-given rights, people were treated as sub-humans, they were treated as animals," he added.
Phillips said modern day slavery in Africa frequently results in "having your hands and feet cut off, sexual slavery, chattel slavery, being forcibly evicted from your home, having your wives taken, your children being taken by force for slavery."
Phillips pointed to the existence of slavery in Sudan as evidence of a double standard among academics and political leaders.
"Where is the outrage? The same people that want reparations for American slavery -- where is their outrage for Africans who are being slaughtered today?" Phillips asked.
The Smithsonian is already being criticized for its portrayal of America at the Museum of American History.
The series of Smithsonian museums receive approximately two-thirds of their funding from the federal government and the rest from corporate and private donations.
The U.S. National Park Service is also under fire for presenting a video at the Lincoln Memorial that many visitors believe implies Abraham Lincoln would have supported abortion and homosexual "rights," as well as the modern feminist agenda. However, the Park Service is seeking to modify the content of the video, following several reports by CNSNews.com.
E-mail a news tip to Marc Morano.
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Sheesh.
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Black Slavery is Alive by Walter Williams (January 4, 2001) Article website address:
Summary: Black slaves are still available -- just not in the United States. To make a purchase, you'd have to travel to the Sudan as Gerald Williams, Harvard University pre-med student, did in October 2000.
Black slaves are still available -- just not in the United States. To make a purchase, you'd have to travel to the Sudan as Gerald Williams, Harvard University pre-med student, did in October 2000. Slavery in the Sudan is in part a result of a 15-year war by the Muslim north against the black Christian and animist south. Arab militias, armed by the Khartoum government, raid villages, mostly those of the Dinka tribe. They shoot the men and enslave the women and children. Women and children are kept as personal property or they're taken north and auctioned off. In Sudanese slave markets, a woman or child can be purchased for $90. An Anti-Slavery International investigator interviewed Abuk Thuc Akwar, a 13-year-old girl who, along with 24 other children, was captured by the militia, marched north and given to a farmer.
The investigator reported, "Throughout the day she worked in his sorghum fields and at night in his bed. During the march, she was raped and called a black donkey." The girl managed to escape with the help of the master's jealous wife.
Williams visited the Sudan as part of an eight-person delegation sponsored by Christian Solidarity International (CSI). CSI, as well as the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), have a stopgap mission of buying, at a cost of $85 each, Christian African women and children whom Muslims capture and enslave.
AASG's purchase emancipates them. Williams' tales of Muslim atrocities are horrific. Six-year-old Mawien Ahir Bol failed to clean a goat pen to his master's satisfaction. The penalty: His index finger was cut off. Yak Kenyang Adieu's punishment for being too sick to tend to his master's goats was the loss of all fingers on his right hand.
Williams' trip freed, through purchase, these two boys and 20 other slaves. Should you be interested in learning more about slavery, the American Anti-Slavery Group's web site is anti-slavery.com .
Chattel slavery also exists in the former French colony of Mauritania, where it was officially outlawed in 1980. The U.S. State Department estimated that as of 1994 there were 90,000 blacks living as property of Berbers. The Berbers use their slaves for labor, sex and breeding. They're also exchanged for camels, trucks, guns or money. Slave offspring become the property of the master. According to a 1990 Human Rights Watch report, routine Mauritanian slave punishments include beatings, denial of food and prolonged exposure to the sun, with hands and feet tied together.
Serious infringement of the master's rule can mean prolonged horrible tortures such as the "insect treatment" -- where the slave is bound head and foot, and insects placed in his ears and other body orifices -- and "burning coals," where the slave is bound and buried with hot coals placed on parts of his body. American Anti-Slavery Group says, "Most distressing is the silence of the American media whose reports counted for so much in the battle to end apartheid in South Africa." Only recently, and thankfully so, have mainstream black organizations such as the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP taken a stand against chattel slavery in Mauritania and Sudan.
At one time Minister Louis Farakhan simply denied that his brother Muslims could perpetrate such an injustice, but now he's quietly accepted the evidence. Jesse Jackson remains silent. Slavery is not the only African injustice that goes practically ignored.
There's the frequent outbreaks of genocide in Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and the Congo. In fact, it's fairly safe to say that most of today's most flagrant human rights abuses occur in Africa. But unfortunately they get little attention -- maybe it's because Africans instead of Europeans are the perpetrators; Europeans are held accountable to civilized standards of behavior, while Africans aren't.
About the Author: Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
That tells it all right there -- Anti white racist to the core.
The overland slave caravans that crossed the Sahara were far, far more deadly than the slave ships of the Atlantic.
However, gladiators were also slaves (in the sense that they were the personal property of others) ... and that certainly was not a humane system! Except perhaps for the few that managed to win their freedom.
No. Depends on the time and place. While it is true that life for some Roman slaves was not bad, for others it was nasty, brutal, and short. Slaves that worked agriculture had it pretty lousy - they were kept in a half starved state so that they would be too weak to run away or fight back. Homosexual assault was common. They slept in conditions that would make a dog kennel look good. And for the galley slaves and the slaves sent to the mines - life expectancy was short and while they lived life was nasty.
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