Weren’t Africans responsible for the slave trade?

Jewish scholars, stung by the revelations of heavy Jewish involvement in Black slavery have often sought to escape responsibility by claiming that “Africans sold each other into the slave trade.” And, yes, there is an interesting history surrounding that claim.

But first, those who raise the issue face a serious moral conundrum: Is their argument that the slave trade was OK because “blacks” were involved? If they were lawyers using this reasoning as a murder “defense” it would sound like this: “There have been other murders and murderers, so my client is therefore innocent.” Any attorney who made such a case would be laughed out of even an American courtroom. But it is seen as perfectly plausible in the slave-trade argument.

Second, this argument only exists when Black slavery is the subject, and never in any other historical context. There were whole councils of Jewish Germans called Judenrat who actually worked to fill boxcars heading for concentration camps with their fellow Jews—they even wore special Nazi-like uniforms! Some Jews informed on others in the concentration camps, and at least one Jew is known to have been an executioner. There were AT LEAST 77 NAZI OFFICERS who are known to have been Jews, many thousands more, no doubt, in the enlisted corps. There were even some Jews who negotiated with the Nazi terrorists to save themselves at the expense of other less wealthy Jews (See The Transfer Agreement, by Edwin Black). And yet none of this has created ANY lessening of the responsibility of the Nazis for the Jewish Holocaust. NO ONE ever says that Jews “were responsible” for the Jewish Holocaust. This is only raised in relation to the Black Holocaust—and then only by Jews. We have hereanother racist double standard.

With regard to Black participation in the slave trade, one must look very carefully at the charge. In Africa (Cape Verde to be exact), Portuguese Jewish slave merchants kidnapped and raped African women, forced them to have their children, and then set up these bastards—called “lancados”—as slave traders in the Jewish family business (see Richard A. Lobban’s work on the subject: http://www.saudades.org/jewscapev.html). Deceptive White scholars have called these Jewish “mulatto” slave traders “Africans.” In White history books they are viewed as “Africans”; Blacks view them, rightly, as Portuguese, given their racial and cultural distance from African society and its practiced norms of thousands of years.

The “black” slave-owners in America have similarly been deceptively defined by White pseudo-scholars. At the time of slavery, there was a protected class of “mulattos” whose function was to control the activities of full-blooded African slaves. They were known as house slaves or mammies or overseers or some other “authorized” class of quasi-slave. They were classified as “colored” and were a legally distinct group with a specific role in the slave system. All slave colonies administered by Europeans consciously created this class for their own protection, but in America they were all collapsed into the “Negro” class after emancipation. In other words, they were the brainwashed, domesticated negroes who—by intense training—felt themselves more White than Black!

Many, many other so-called “black” slave owners were near–Whites who “bought” their families out of slavery in places where “free” Blacks were outlawed. On the tax and census rolls of the city or county, these light-skinned Blacks are considered “owners” of their own families! White racist scholars seeking to deceive ignorant Blacks consider the deceptive language of such records to be valid and parrot the term without the slightest challenge.

Also, the term slavery itself has been corrupted to include every labor system, no matter what the nature or severity. In some “slave systems” the slave had full legal rights, could negotiate the terms of his labor, including the time and compensation; some “slaves” could sue in court, could inherit property; some could ultimately take over his master’s business, even marry the master’s daughter. In one so-called slave society, it was believed that “when one gains a slave, he gains a son.” The “slave” had to eat and sleep in the same manner as the master. NONE of this characterized American/New World slavery! And yet they are ALL called “slaves.” The debasement of the slave’s humanity and his commercialization were new ominous elements of cruelty associated with the enslavement of the African and the Indian in European colonies.

The preeminent Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, went to Africa for PBS and asked an African working in a ditch if he were a “slave.” The man matter-of-factly said “yes,” giving Gates a true sense that he had uncovered a modern-day tragedy—until the man stated that he would be paid on Friday.

Prior to the European presence, African “slaves” were being sent to foreign countries in a type of work-exchange system—more akin to apprenticeship than anything else. Given that the shockingly brutal European innovation in slavery was unknown to the societies Europeans historically menaced, the Africans who supplied the White traders were not expecting their workers to be fed into a system of permanent and brutal, irredeemable enslavement.

Every society has its disaffected members, but they are kept by internal means from disrupting the society as a whole. Societies in Africa and the Americas had existed for thousands of years without the wholesale destruction that occurred just a few years after European contact. The European strategy of control was to seek out these disaffected miscreants and artificially elevate them among their own people—despite what the people felt about them. Here in America, they came to be known as “Uncle Toms”—the hated self-hater, usually sporting a résumé of actions honored and rewarded by Whites. In Africa, these types were well funded and supplied with weaponry, becoming agents of European colonization and enslavement. U.S. history is filled with examples of this type of puppetry. Whereas Blacks would have renounced them, Whites call them heroes.

There is also the obvious question of Who Benefited? Clearly, Europeans far and away received ALL of the profits of the slave trade. The slave trade devastated the African continent, weakened it, and made it vulnerable to continued, endless European exploitation.