La Shawn Barber has a great post today on Ghana's apology for the slave trade in centuries past.
The point that many people in America don't know is that the slave trade wouldn't have been feasible if it weren't for the Africans who captured and sold other Africans to the traders. If you've seen Roots or Amistad, you have an idea about this part of slavery's history. If you haven't seen those shows, nobody else has been rushing to be sure you're informed. Here's some of La Shawn's take on this:
Ho-hum. That black Africans and Arabs were and are still involved in the human chattel trade (and other vile things) is uninteresting to the world. (Also see Sudan’s Slaves.) The white man is the blue-eyed devil, conquering, oppressing, chaining, and killing. He is the one people envy and hate, the one for whom they blame their misery. As brutal and corrupt as African rulers are, I’ll bet somehow the people they brutalize still blame “colonialism.”
Read her whole post. And the comments. As always, she stirs the pot pretty well.
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