Slavish Misconceptions
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I once wasted too much time arguing with an idiot.
Well, truth be told, arguing with idiots is always a waste of time, but they possess some savant abilities to drag people into their own discourse dementia. In this instance a Chinese nationalist was arguing with me about everything American. When I trapped him into a rhetorical corner concerning China’s ongoing human rights abuse, he retorted with complaints about America’s age of slavery. Sure bub. Bring up 100 year old news to justify your government’s current crimes. If they return your brain and testicles, try to put them to good use.
Oooops. Sorry, China’s one child per couple policy prohibits the latter, so might as well keep your bobbles in a box on the shelf.
However, being descended from people who in different eras shot red coats to win freedom or owned people outright, the subjects of slavery and freedom resonates with me. Hideous and unforgivable was American slavery, and it is rightly derided in historical context (however, it makes no sense when Jesse Jackson rants as if he were wearing chains). To avoid repeating history, it is wise to study, to find context and perspective on the subject.
Perspective can be damn inconvenient.
Since slaves were business property, slave traders kept rather meticulous ledgers documenting how many black folk they involuntarily shipped to plantations in the new world. Diligent digit-heads at Emory University started the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database to compile all the log books and sales receipts from former peddlers of (in)humanity. Their data dump includes from where unfortunate future farm workers were expropriated, to where they were deposited, and how many didn’t survive the trip (about 12%, but then again with the average voyage lasting 60 days and the inside of a slave ship resembling Calcutta’s darker holes, a few may have opted-out of a life of slavery by opting-out of life altogether).
For my Chinese challenger, the surprise is his misplaced anger at America.
Yes, Americans did buy slaves. About 4% of those sent to the western hemisphere. America pales in comparison to the Caribbean (Dutch, Danes, French, Spanish) and Brazilian (Portuguese) plantation owners. Ninety six percent of harvested and harvesting humans went not to nasty Americans, but to vastly nastier settlers from well established European nations. In fact the Portuguese cut out slave trading middlemen and imported their own strongbacks for mass production of sugar, tobacco and rum … the European party goods of the age (click the chart for a bigger version).
Therefore, I offer a modest proposal. Let’s place blame and action where it belongs. Let’s find every self-righteous great-great-grandchild of American slaves who, despite not even remotely being slaves themselves, carry ancestral chips on their shoulders. Let’s export them to the countries that created massive slave suffering so they can cast shame where it best applies. Send Al Sharpton to Holland, Jesse Jackson to Denmark, and Jeremiah Wright to Portugal. And like the mode of old, let’s assure it is a one way trip.
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If you have polite and articulate comments, please provide them. Rants and flames are discarded.
According to a Thomas Sowell audiobook I recently listened to, there were significant differences between the U.S. and South American treatment of slaves. Slave women were kept & children were raised in the U.S. In South America, only male slaves were imported, and replaced when they were used up. There were no old slaves in South America.