By Cheri (@CheriWriter) the Non-PC Newsgirl
In Western Countries, especially America, the issue of slavery is still strong and contentious nearly 150 years after the civil war abolished it. Many African-Americans, while not all, are stll very angry about how their ancestors were shackled, shoved beyond capacity into treachorous slave ships, murdered aboard at will and then sold into ownership to Europeans, Americans and Arabs and sent to countries like England, Peru, France and America.
When slaves were first freed in the 19th Century, which in America was after one of the bloodiest wars in Western history, blacks--or Nigers and Negroes as they were called then--had the opportunity to leave their respective repressive lands and go back to Africa. After years of torture, murder, rape and unspeakable horrors, the loss of their identity and demeaing treatment still at hand, such as by stil calling whites Massa (master), they chose to stay despite their treatment and depraved working conditions. Why? It would seem that anyone would want to leave as soon as humanly possible, especially when there was little hope to advance, to become equal and they were not wanted in these land as free men (and women who had even less oppotunity than black men). Yet they never left, evem when they were not truly free under such conditions. Why?
Why not go back to Africa and rejoin their people? Many had much to offer, especially those whose owners weren’t cruel tyrants and educated them and treated them more like paid servants than slaves. Those who were taught to read and write, to speak proper English, French, etc. and who learned mathematics, science and even Western culture had much to offer. They could have shared this invaluable knowledge and helped build more advanced societies in their original lands. They even had a style of living more comfortable than tribal life. More so, they could now help their own people. And yet they still didn’t go back. Why?
To discuss the issue of slavery in America and other countries properly, the why must be answered honestly. Why didn’t blacks go back to their homeland and instead remained in their respective countries where they were once slaves and still suffered from degradation, racism, poverty, lynching and an impossible road to equality?
Unfortunately, the answer comes from Africa itself. It’s a topic few wish to discuss, but a true one none-the-less. Africans were not innocent in slavery. They in fact made it a business for themselves to sell their own people. They did so time after time, often for pieces of mere metal and other technology at the time that they didn't possess, but wanted at any cost. It’s an under-discussed truth, but tribal chiefs played a huge hand in helping capture their fellow Africans, cage them and sell them into bondage on transatlantic-slave ships.
Rival tribes captured people from enemy tribes with whom they were warring with, and there were well-known traffickers who looked forward to the arrival of Western trade ships so they could get more precious metals, mainly to use as weapons, and for greater technology, such as cooking tools, and, above all, for greater power among the tribes, despite knowing the fate of the people sold. Some estimates suggest that between 10 to 28 million Africans were sent to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 A.D. until the early 19th Century. Among those, hundreds of thousands to nearly a million newly-enslaved people were killed before ever reaching their new worlds. While in-transit crossing the mid-Atlantic ocean, the voyage was so harsh and cruel due to barbaric conditions onboard, the slaves died on the ships or were sent overboard alive in efforts to end resistance or as a result of severe oceanic and weather conditions.
The reality of the why is there was no place for Western former slaves to go back to, especially Africa. They couldn't rejoin the very tribes that sold them in the first place and they now spoke other languages. Families that had orginally been dispalced were no longer their families. Added to this was the amount of cross-breeding that changed the color of their Western black skin to looking anywhere from tan to almost white. This of course caused them to stick out as former slaves and as white bastards.
Warring tribes captured men, women and children from other tribes, and when the whites wanted the biggest and strongest tribe members, their leaders gave these people to them for trade. They did not care about those people as we would think they would or as their families certainly did. They cared about the objects they bartered for.
Soon, however, it became apparent the Africans had made a deal with the devil. Whites kept track of their "stock," and when the well of large Africans began to dry up, so to speak, tribal leaders knew whites would eventually come for them. So in a last stitch effot to save themselves after hundreds of years of plundering by the greedy, both by whites and blacks alike, the Africans fought and made a stand for their freedom. Of course they were outgunned, outnumbered and easily captured, but now without trade. What irony.
So the question of why is because former black Western slaves had no where to go and had to make due with where they were and how to survive. In some cases, it was worse than being on the plantation as slaves (for those with the kinder owners of course). Many had no where else to go but back to the plantations to pick cotton, but now for unliveable wages and no homes.
The history of slavery is this country and others is varied, complex and not one-sided. There has been and still is no one answer to fit all. But one thing is clear, you can’t blame one group without sharing that blame with the others. ALL were sick, regardless of their motives. Buying and selling humans is in no way justifiable.
African ancestors collaborated with European and Arab slave traders and should follow Britain and the United States by publicly apologizing for their evil, barbaric part in it. It’s a shameful history on both sides, and the traditional story of slavery only causes stronger racism and less forgiveness, ultimately impeding our ability to learn from it and move forward. When leaders remain silent on all the issues surrounding slavery, history can repeat itself. In 1998, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni in a speech to an audience that included Bill Clinton, said "African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologize it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today."
Write true, write right and write fair!
No comments:
Post a Comment