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Comment by aaronbasssett | Hacker News Reader

Please name one country that never had slavery?

Never is a hard word. Let me explain: In the US the white were masters and the black were slaves. A white was rarely a slave, a black person was likely a slave. And slavery was not abolished that long ago.

In MANY countries people of color X enslaved people of color X. So now - many generations later - no one knows anymore who was slave and who was master. So the term master is insignificant for the individuals in the country and dominantly associated with mastery in something.

So while technically the statement is correct, for the discussion here, many countries are not having an active discussion around slavery because it is no concern in the society because there are not slave-descendants (which are mistreated until today) vs. master-descendants.

1 million or more Europeans were enslaved in Africa: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

And is there a relatively distinct group of their descendants being pulled over by the police today in Morocco, after continuously being excluded from economic progress for a few hundred years? Actually really curious -- one of the "innovations" of US slavery was the slavery of the descendants of slaves -- was that the case in northern Africa? I think not; if you have some evidence otherwise happy to think about it.

> after continuously being excluded from economic progress for a few hundred years? Actually really curious -- one of the "innovations" of US slavery was the slavery of the descendants of slaves -- was that the case in northern Africa? I think not; if you have some evidence otherwise happy to think about it.

No, if you read the article eitland posted (no judgment, I don't know) then you'd see that it was Muslims that was behind this slave trade.

One of their habits (or "innovations" in your terminology) that we don't often talk about was that of literally emasculating (in the literal sense) male captives.

This explains a whole lot of why there isn't a white population like the black in US.

Another explanation is that some where bought out from slavery by relatives in Europe.

You should read up on this.

You'll find that compared to the Arabic slave traders (that the Western slave traders sourced from), Western slave traders were kind of nice (edit: or smart, or less sadistic or something).

Oh, and their slave trade didn't end until much later, if ever. (Ever heard about how facilities for a certain sports event in Qatar were built?)

Why don't we talk about this? Sources are after all plentiful.

Edit: Let me add my guess: it doesn't fit the narrative that white, Christian men are worse than everyone else.

From elsewhere in the comments, a quote by Thomas Sowell: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26496786

Less than 1% of American whites during slavery owned slaves. In fact, the most identifying characteristic of American slave-owners was Judaism. You could just as easily say that Jews were masters and blacks were slaves, although your argument would be equally as incorrect and ignorant. To say that "whites were masters" is just as ignorant as saying "all 1940s Germans were Nazis".

Well, as it was discussed in another thread, in another culture/language it may be totally not about slavery. I mean the word "master", which comes from a common Latin root, in different languages it's evolved into a different meaning. So for Americans, it has an association with slavery (which I'm surprised to learn), but exactly the same word "master" in another language means just "doing good work".

I think this idea that “master” is associated so narrowly in English is ignorance, perhaps even willful. It obviously has broader meaning depending on context, and I would argue that the majority of its use is disassociated entirely with the history of the American slave trade (just think through examples and count them).

It also occurs to me that having these kinds of fights means people are running out of meaningful struggles, like we’re trying to wring out the last 5% and it gets inefficient because it starts doing harm as well. Then you see these hoaxes like Smollett and others and start thinking that the demand for egregious behavior exceeds supply in the US. It can happen, but it’s surprisingly rare given the state of conversation and rhetoric in this country.

For most Americans, until very recently, it only had an association with slavery in very specific contexts. Virtually nobody heard phrases like "git push origin master" or "I'm working towards my Master's degree" and thought "slavery." The blanket association is a product of very recent political activism.

There are a lot of countries 100 years or less old, that were parts of big european empires, unless you want to hold them accountable for what the foreign ruling class did.

Well ... it is societies which have a problem. As a German, my society is very old. As a country we are very young. But we would never think, that nationalism would not be a problem we had in our society.

Accountable implies a lot. But mindful we should be.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26491220.

Sealand

I know someone who might disagree.

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