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Comment by enkid | Hacker News Reader

I don't see your point. The quote in question in no way implies slavery didn't exist in Africa at the time, and the fact that slavery did exist in Africa in no way alleviates the immorality of the transatlantic slave trade. (I guess you could make an argument that capturing slaves is morally different from transporting and owning them, but I don't think it is substantially.) The article also doesn't say who ripped them away from Benin. Certainly political systems in existence in Benin at the time were involved. But that doesn't mean the horror or impact to the slaves was lessened. So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia.

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> So, overall, I don't see what the purpose of your comment is unless it's an attempt as European slave trade apologia.

I am not OP but I take issue with this. I feel like this is the whole thing. Why did you feel the need to write “European”. That’s wrong and denigrates entire ethnic groups in a very ignorant way. The poles for example surely you would agree are european but did not participate in the slave trade. But, this is not my main point.

My main point is, the slave trade was a multicultural, multiethnic affair. In different periods of times, different peoples were enslaved by different other peoples.

Just so you don’t mistake my comment, this is not an apologia of slavery. It was a horrible institution worthy of condemnation and I am happy it was ended.

I just find it very annoying when I see this automatic assumption “europeans were slavers”. No, not all of them practiced slave trading, some of them were enslaved as well, the ones that did practice slavery collaborated with non europeans to create the supply chain and there were other non european peoples also actively engaged in the slave trade.

Slavery is not the sin of Europe, it’s the sin of all man kind.

Are you really going off just on the words "European slave trade?". How did the slaves get to Haiti? Who steered the boat? Who profited from their transportation? It's the European slave trade because it was Europeans who bought slaves in Africa and sold them in America. Yes, Africans participated in the slave trade. Yes, Africans did terrible things. No, not all Europeans participated in the slave trade directly. In fact the vast majority didn't. There were also (and terrifying still are) lots of other forms of slavery. I never said anything different from that, neither does the article. The evils of one group of people doesn't lessen the evils of another group of people. We aren't having an argument about morals here, we're having an argument about discourse. If every time you talked about slavery, you had to include all of the sins of all of the individuals involved in that trade, discourse would become so burdensome as to be impossible. The post I was replying was setting this as a standard that must be met without thought about the implications of such a requirement.

The only possible outcome of advocating such a position is that destruction of our ability to discuss the issue at all. The only type of person that would want that outcome is an apologist who simply wants the topic dropped, even when talked about tangentially, such as occurs in this article.

I don’t know if it’s worth replying because you appear to be an ideologue who doesn’t actually want to discuss the subject, you appear to only want to denigrate europeans.

Eh, I’ll give it a try on the off chance you are actually writing in good faith.

Assuming good faith on your part, I believe we have a different understanding of what the standard of discourse should be. While I understand the concern around scope creep, which is valid, I hope you can also see my concern about context.

When discussing a complex subject like slavery, I think it’s counter productive to focus on a niche. Let me give you an example. Would it make sense to talk about world war two focusing only on France for example? Could a meaningful discussion on world war two happen if the discussion was limited to France?

It feels to me the issue is like this. Continuing the analogy with world war two, I don’t think you need to mention absolutely all countries that participated in world war two in order to have a meaningful discussion on the subject. At the same time, I believe it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion on the subject by talking about literally one country.

You appear to be asking us to talk specifically about one country. This to me seems to be actively harmful. I cannot see what good ( unless you count painting european people in an unduly bad light to be good ) can come from ignoring critical context.

My purpose is not to stifle discussion by burdening it with unnecessary context, my purpose is to elevate the standard of discourse by including critical context.

Show me in my comments where I am an ideologue or encourage a specific ideology. Where do I denigrate Europeans? Give me the specific quote of what I wrote. Don't say " you appear to be," give me the actual text and tell me how that is either being an ideologue or denigrating to Europeans.

Btw, I have nothing against modern day Europeans. All of my ancestors came from Europe. I do think a lot ( not all ) of Europeans in the 18th century behaved immorally when it came to their colonies. If you don't think that, you need to study some actual history. (I also think that a lot of Africans, Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders behaved immorally too, but that doesn't seem to offend you for some reason)

The Nation of Islam published The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews which describes this relationship. Naturally, this work is highly critiqued by Jews as being misinformation. So you will have to be the judge yourself as to whether or not it's actually an honest description of what happened.

Introduction:

An accurate accounting of the history of Blacks and Jews from the Columbian era to the Civil War, including the extensive record of Jewish slave trading in the western hemisphere.

This study is structured as a presentation of historical evidence regarding the relationship of one people with another. The facts, as established by highly respected scholars of the Jewish community, are here exposed and linked by as sparse a narrative as is journalistically permitted for review by those interested in the subject..

The subject at hand is a controversial one and should be approached with great sensitivity. Those who would use this material as a basis for the violation of the human rights of another are abusing the knowledge herein. The wise will benefit to see this as an opportunity to develop a more equitable relationship between the families of man.

Given the wrong things I read about both kosher and halal in How To Eat To Live I’ll refrain from holding my breath.

If Spartacus wouldn't have been enslaved there is a good chance that he might have ended up with Slaves on his own at one point or another in his life.

The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article. Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular. This feeds into modern attitudes, especially in the US, of innate racial good or evil and inherited guilt or grievance based on skin color. Teaching the full history of slavery, i.e. it was practiced with all its cruelties by every race of people who ever lived, is a necessary building block to healthy race relations. I think it is important to share this knowledge wherever it is clearly absent.

"The involvement of Africans in the slave trade is conspicuous in its absence from the article."

Because it is completely irrelevant to the article.

"Whenever that fact is obscured, we promote the false perception that slavery is the fault of one race in particular."

This is untrue, and it is ridiculous thing to say. You do yourself no credit, trying to drag racial politics into a situation where they do not add explanatory power.

Racial politics are central to the article because they are central to Haiti's history and development. Discussing racial politics in a wilfully blindered manner has serious harmful side-effects.

Central? Can you point to an example, apart from one of imagery wrt refugees crossing the US border?

You are bringing up the racial in a way that is irrelevant to the political. The Kingdom of Dahomey did not profit from the Republic of Haiti via reparations post-independence. They do not have any relation to the continued immiseration of Haiti, unlike France did.

It sounds like you didn’t read the article. The discussion of slavery is just brief context for the majority of the article, which is about the post-slavery period.

Slavery is a not a major part of the discussion in the article, almost all of which is post-revolutionary times. The word slave only appears in a few paragraphs.

And they were ripped from their homes — referred to in passing without saying by whom.

I feel your comment tries to inject something not relevant to the article.

It’s not really relevant. If you’re worried about attitudes and racial grievance, whitewashing the events that took place in Haiti with whataboutism probably isn’t the way to go. If anything saying “what about Africa” distracts from the fact that slaves were being slaughtered like abused donkeys faster than they could reproduce. That by itself speaks to the horrors of this period.

The reality is that Haiti demonstrated how racism drove policy and actions of the colonial power. French colonial society was different than the US and evolved differently. France was distracted by its own problems and wasn’t able to maintain the dehumanizing regime necessary to maintain the slave system.

The whole thing is gross and disgusting. It’s a scar on society, and was no better in antiquity.

It is sort-of like writing an article about the horrors of totalitarian concentration camps, spending a lot of time on Nazi Germany, meanwhile quickly mentioning the Soviet Union as a country next door, but studiously avoiding any mention of the gulags or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

In that situation, one does not have to be a Nazi whitewasher to be somewhat suspicious about the author's agenda. Not every story can cover every detail, but some omissions are glaring.

By this chain of logic, no article is complete unless it mentions all of the other related topics that it could have mentioned, if it didn't mind being infinitely long. When writing a book about the Holocaust, one could also mention genocide in the USSR, or in Turkey, against the Armenians, or the Italian brutality in Ethiopia, or the mistreatment of Africans under British rule, or the widespread massacres that occurred in the Philippines when it was initially conquered by the USA. One could go on and on, mentioning more and more genocides.

Or one could simply stick to the subject that one is writing about.

The unfortunate souls shipped to the New World as slaves were directly bought from Benin slavers, though, not taken in some kind of hostile pirate-like raid, which is the mental picture that the word "ripped" conjures to mind.

When writing, there is always a question of where the related references stop. There is no clear criterion. But the word "ripped" here indicates a certain unwillingness to address the fact that slavery was, until fairly recently, a rather widespread phenomenon in Africa.

Ignoring this fact does not make European slavery worse and acknowledging it does not make European slavery better. The only thing it would do would be a certain refinement of currently politically popular stereotypes.

History should be told as it was, not as we want it to look like. And slavery existed because it was immensely profitable to all sorts of people, from native kings in Africa to the white (and sometimes Native American) slavers in America.

Only by understanding this can you prevent reemergence of slavery in the future. Arguably, sexual slavery works on a similar background.

>The unfortunate souls shipped to the New World as slaves were directly bought from Benin slavers, though, not taken in some kind of hostile pirate-like raid, which is the mental picture that the word "ripped" conjures to mind.

Agreed.

I estimate that 90% of Americans/Europeans would, if asked "how slaves were caught", would describe some variant of "white people sail to Africa, catch unwary Africans in giant nets, and sail away when the ship is full".

Ironically, that would be fairly close to the reality of the North African Barbary Pirate raids on European shores as far as Iceland, which resulted in more than a million Europeans being enslaved. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

Good point.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the average American SJW/Redditor sincerely believes that slavery has existed in only one country in the world's history: in the United States, involving Africans. The etymology of the word "slav"? Brazil? Haiti? Guadeloupe? North Africans (as you note) enslaving Europeans? Vikings taking thralls? Feudalism? Never heard of 'em.

I do not know a single person who thinks that, but I know a very large number of people who like emphasize that most slave catching was done by Africans. When I lived in North Carolina and Virginia this fact was offered by someone in the group every time the subject came up.

If you had a bit more self awareness you might realize how you look when invent imaginary statistics like “90% of Americans”.

I see the reasoning you have and I mostly agree. Actually, scratch that, let me say I agree entirely. You are right. If an author decides on a particular subject, he should guard against scope creep least he produces a rambling screed that tries to touch on everything but fails at being meaningful even for one idea.

But, to play a bit of devils advocate here. In the case of the USSR, it did paint it’s self as a liberator, claiming left right and centre how they’re freeing the prisoners. But, at the same time, they had their own camps where they were sending their own prisoners. I feel this by it’s self warrants some mention at least in a treatment of the holocaust. We’re not talking about a separate genocide in another time and place. We’re talking about a genocide perpetrated at the same time by a county that was beating it’s chest about stopping a genocide.

Just my two cents. But, yeah, I agree with you on the scope creep issue.

Would you then agree that such an article should include Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine of 1943, or the internment of Japanese-Americans, or the Italian Empire’s massacres in conquered Ethiopia, not to mention all of Japan’s policies in Asia at the time?

It depends on the context.

If you’re looking at the evolution of concentration camps, you’d probably want to also include the evolution from the British camps during the Boer War to the Imperial Germans in Southwest Africa or the Ottoman Turks in Armenia.

The Nazis evolved the tactic into a mass killing factory. The Soviets were more about political oppression; they went about the business of mass murder in other ways.

The Soviets outsourced a lot of the killing to the Siberian nature. A gulag in the taiga didn't even have to have any walls. The snow and the frost in combination with semi-starvation were as reliable killers as a bullet to the head, and cheaper.

Like I said, other ways. The Nazis built a death factory. The Soviets were fans of starvation and Siberia.

Weren’t Soviet gulags a continuation of the tsarist variety?

This article isn't about the horrors of slavery. It's about economic history. It makes reference to slavery in that context without discussing it in detail. A better analogy would be an article about why Israel is an economic success mentioning the concentration camps from Nazi Germany (without much detail) and then not mentioning the gulags of the Soviet Union.

Also not mentioned in this article: - the genocide of the native Americans that allowed Haiti to be a thing in the first place - the continuing oppression of women at the time - the oppression of LGBT+ that was a constant reality of society in a Catholic country

And yet these comments seem to only care about calling out oppression that happened a continent away. Slavery isn't even really that big of an piece of the article. The majority of the article is about what happened after slavery ended in the 1790s.

"Ripped" would infer they were taken by force.

I think "purchased from Benin slave traders" would be more accurate.

Do you think the slaves were willing participants in this exchange?

The article doesn’t care who took them by force.

It's not accurate.

The exact quote from the article is "In fact, many Haitians are descendants of slaves ripped from Benin...". That statement makes me think they were citizens of Benin who were taken into slavery.

But they weren't. They were slaves owned by the Kingdom of Benin and sold to the French.

Benin wasn't a political entity at this point, so the only possible reading is they are talking about the location, not the polity.

OK, but if they were purchased as slaves, they weren't ripped from Benin. They were ripped from somewhere else, and sold in Benin.

Pedantic, but hey, it's important to be precise.

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