black_robin's Journal

"Slavery has been a pervasive evil around the world for thousands of years but confusing morality with causation—and seeking a localization of evil—has led to the history of slavery being stood on its head throughout our educational system, as well as in the media and by the intelligentsia in general.

Thus slavery has been depicted as if it were a peculiarity of white people against black people in the United States, or in Western societies.

No one dreams of demanding reparations from North Africans for all the Europeans brought there as slaves by Barbary Coast pirates, even though these European slaves greatly outnumbered the African slaves brought to the United States and to the thirteen colonies from which it was form

Because the West has not been immune to the evils, errors and shortcomings of the human race around the world, the intelligentsia have been able to document these failings in a way that makes them look like peculiarities of “our society.”

In the case of slavery, what was peculiar about the West was that it was the first civilization to turn against slavery, beginning in the eighteenth century, and that it destroyed slavery around the world, beginning in the nineteenth century, not only within its own societies but also in non-Western societies it controlled, influenced or threatened.

Yet there is virtually no interest among today’s intelligentsia in how a worldwide phenomenon like slavery was ended after thousands of years, for it did not simply die out of its own accord, but was forcibly suppressed by the West in campaigns around the world that lasted for more than a century, often over the bitter opposition of Africans, Asians and others who wanted slavery preserved.

But that story seldom makes it through the filters. What is highlighted is that the West had slavery, as if that was peculiar to the West. What is also highlighted is that black people were enslaved by white people in the West.

But, even in the West, white people were enslaved by other white people for centuries before the first African was brought to the Western Hemisphere in chains. The very fact that these Africans were called “slaves” reflected the fact that a white group which had been enslaved for centuries before were Slavs—since the word for slave was derived from the name for Slavs, not only in English but in other European languages and in Arabic.

Distinguished historian Daniel Boorstin pointed out, “Now for the first time in Western history, the status of slave coincided with a difference of race.

“By and large, for most of history, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Africans enslaved other Africans and Asians enslaved other Asians. As the mass enslavement of Europeans became a less viable option, the mass purchase of Africans enslaved by other Africans was resorted to. Racism grew out of this situation but racism cannot explain slavery, which preceded it by centuries.

Yet the impression left by many among the intelligentsia is that racism explains white people enslaving black people. It is an impression too much in keeping with the prevailing vision to be scrutinized closely—and leaving out the rest of the story of slavery around the world makes the prevailing vision seem plausible.”

Thomas Sowell, "Intellectuals & Society," 2010