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As an aside, I think something many people don't realize is that slaves were not free Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved by westerners. These individuals

As an aside, I think something many people don't realize is that slaves were not free Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved by westerners. These individuals were enslaved in Africa, often at birth, and then sold by Africans. These individuals were doomed to enslavement for their entire life, one way or the other. Even the article hints towards this fallacy by implying they had only been enslaved for 5 years total. Slavery to this day still continues in Africa and especially west Africa. Niger was the first West African nation to create a law penalizing slavery [1]. That happened in... 2003. Unsurprisingly there is also still slavery in Niger. So yes, I do think "just" 5 years of slavery, sometime from the 19th century, is an extremely apt phrasing. Conditions for these slaves are illustrated in the 'Mani v. Niger' entry in that wiki entry. A man purchased a '5th wife' (he's allowed 4 under local Islamic law, and then the 5th is a slave) for $400. She was 12 years old and endured a decade of physical and sexual abuse bearing 4 children before he married and then 'freed' her. But since now she was his wife, he had the right to demand she not be able to leave his house. This made it all the way to their supreme court, where they ruled in favor of the 'husband' - though he was charged with bigamy which carries a 6 month sentence. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Niger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Niger

mainthread 9y ago
Another thing that many people do not realize is that not all systems of servitude are the same. [1] In the New World, all African slaves were treated as property and dehumanized. Slave masters sought to erase the slave's identity, to destroy the family, and to sow division in order to exert and maintain control. This form of servitude is called "chattel slavery", and was written into law in the United States. There were many different forms of slavery practiced in African societies during the 1500-1800s. Commonly, slaves were given rights and were treated like indentured servants. Slaves could own property. They could marry and start families. Some slaves were treated brutally, but it is a tragic oversimplification of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to suggest that all Africans sold to European traders were "doomed to enslavement". [2] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Slavery_in_Africa_and_the_New_World_contrasted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Slavery_i...
- indubitable 9y ago
  Even to this day in African slavery is almost entirely heritable, I'm using 'almost' completely as a weasel word - to my knowledge it is 100% heritable and is certainly a major cause of the perpetuation of slavery in Africa today. In your links there you'll find numerous contradictions. The second wiki leads with, "In general, slavery in Africa was not heritable – that is, the children of slaves were free – while in the Americas, children of slave mothers were considered born into slavery.". That is followed near immediately with the quote, "The slaves which are thus brought from the interior may be divided into two distinct classes – first, such as were slaves from their birth, having been born of enslaved mothers; secondly, such as were born free, but who afterwards, by whatever means, became slaves. Those of the first description are by far the most numerous....". Similarly the first link tries to downplay chattel slavery at one claiming that "Precise evidence on slavery or the political and economic institutions of slavery before contact with the Arab or Atlantic slave trade is not available." And almost immediately following, "Chattel slavery had been legal and widespread throughout North Africa when the region was controlled by the Roman Empire (47 BC – ca. 500 AD). ... Chattel slavery persisted after the fall of the Roman empire in the largely Christian communities of the region. After the Islamic expansion into most of the region, the practices continued and eventually, the chattel form of slavery spread to major societies on the southern end of the Sahara (such as Mali, Songhai, and Ghana)." Wiki does not tend to deal with issues that are contemporary, or involve social issues. And I think this is probably an instance of that. I think instinctively some want to demonize our actions so much as possible even if only as a sort of self flagellation. And so appealing a spin on the myth of a noble savage would certainly do as much. In reality we utilized, incentivized, and adopted an inhumane system, but it was not our direct creation in this case. And while we have learned from the past and moved on, these systems of inhumane exploitation which existed before us continue to exist without us.
ergothus 9y ago
> As an aside, I think something many people don't realize is that slaves were not free Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved by westerners. I often see such comments on any post about the US practice of slavery. I have yet to understand a good reason for them. Academic curiosity? No, because I doubt anyone thinks the US invented slavery. Even when we think (as i do) the US took an existing immoral practice and (as a nation) made it worse, these comments don't try to address any such distinctions. This means the comments come across as 'US slavery wasn't that bad because it just maintained an existing evil'. In addition to lacking support for the conclusion, no reason is given for why that would be relevant at all to the discussion at hand. Here we're discussing the fate of a ship that was used in violation of even the immoral laws of the time purely prove it could be done. In what way does whether the victims were already slaves or not matter at all to the topic? Adding "as an aside" to admit the comments aren't directly relevant is the same as using 'on average' to claim that racist/sexist statements aren't so because it allows the comments to not apply to any given individual - it seems like an excuse to be able to spread the idea without having to justify it. Assuming your reasons are not to downplay the US actions, what ARE your reasons? Does knowing how your comments come across change your likelihood of repeating this sort of interjection? I'm not interested in silencing any facts, but timing and context matter. If you are introducing these concepts, the onus of justification falls upon you.
- indubitable 9y ago
  Providing facts should never require justification. Everybody is free to have their own opinion, everybody is not free to have their own facts. Regardless of the above, I'll indulge you because this is a topic I find particularly interesting - and there is also a moral. It seems many people in society are starting to view things as caricaturizations of reality. There are the good guys, and there are the bad guys. And the person I was responding to, I suspect, likely viewed the transatlantic slave trade through this lens based on his apparently significant offense as somebody daring to use the word 'just' in reference to a time frame of slavery. I think this is surprisingly dangerous. The reason for this is that in reality things are not caricaturizations, but changes that might not seem so severe to many. For instance back on the slave trade I hope you'll indulge a few more of those condemnable facts. In the entire transatlantic slave trade about 12.5 million slaves were bought from Africa, with 10.7 million surviving the voyage. Of the 10.7 million 388,000, or about 3.6% [1], ended up in what would be the United States. Many people in the US seem to think that slavery ended, more or less, after the Civil War. That's obviously quite a poorly informed view, but it's built upon this caricaturization of slavery. In reality today there are more slaves than ever before in history with an estimated 45.8 million people enslaved worldwide [2]. That includes an estimated 57,700 slaves even within the United States. Rather than judge people and events, I try to understand them - try to put myself in their shoes and see how things played out. And in this case, it's not hard to see. Slavery was likely a story of apathy and cognitive dissonance. In the US about 1.4% of free Americans owned slaves, about 8% of families. [4]. Obviously more owned slaves in states where slavery was legal, but I'm considering the entire population as slavery was a rich man's game - and getting involved in the business was little more than a carriage ride away. Similar to today how California's ratio of entrepreneurs cannot be considered in isolation as the lucrative opportunities there draw in people from across the entire country. And those that did choose to own slaves likely convinced themselves it was morally fine since they were buying people who were already enslaved. In Africa at the time slaves were even subject to things including human sacrifice. [5] Just in West Africa there were events including the regular sacrifice of hundreds of slaves and on rare occasion even thousands at once. The cognitive dissonance there is not really hard to see. And this behavior of cognitive dissonance and apathy continues to this day. Do you really care about slavery? I imagine we'd all like to think so, but reality paints a less favorable picture. What if the president started implicitly condoning slavery for his own benefit? You might think you'd care, but that has already happened very recently. Malaysia is one of the worst places for modern slavery. You can see from the aforementioned link [2] that about 0.4% of their population is a slave. That's one out of every 250 people for 129k slaves in a country of 30million people. In 2015 Obama chose to remove Malaysia from a list of the worst human traffickers. He did this just so he could squeeze them into a trade agreement he wanted to pass (the TPP). This was the same year that more than numerous mass graves and trafficking camps were discovered in Malaysia. [3] A few media outlets ran the story, but for the most part people showed they couldn't really care less. And so it almost certainly was during slavery as well. What if I told you a list of companies or products that are still generated using slavery? Like chocolate? West Africa supplies about 69% of the world's cocoa. [6]. And unsurprisingly, slavery and even child slavery, is involved in its production. Companies funding the practice include Mars, Nestle, Hershey, and others. Will you now stop buying their products? Probably not. Think about that for a minute. A sweet treat is more important to you ("you" in this case is rhetorical, as even if you in particular would/will give up the companies - few would) than taking a stand against not only slavery, but child slavery. Slavery is incredibly offensive until it provides something we want, or when doing something about it might cause you some inconvenience. It's quite phenomenal isn't it? This disconnect between what we think we think, and what we actually seem willing to do based on that? The point of this all is that I think if people were more aware of reality, and understood that the line between good and evil is far closer than any of us would like to admit, that we'd be much more inclined to concern ourselves with actual events and happenings - instead of taking faux offense at somebody using the word 'just' in a way you find offensive. [1] - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro... [2] - https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migrant-mass-graves-police-reveal-139-sites-some-with-multiple-corpses https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migra... [4] - http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_productio...

mainthread 9y ago

Another thing that many people do not realize is that not all systems of servitude are the same. [1] In the New World, all African slaves were treated as property and dehumanized. Slave masters sought to erase the slave's identity, to destroy the family, and to sow division in order to exert and maintain control. This form of servitude is called "chattel slavery", and was written into law in the United States. There were many different forms of slavery practiced in African societies during the 1500-1800s. Commonly, slaves were given rights and were treated like indentured servants. Slaves could own property. They could marry and start families. Some slaves were treated brutally, but it is a tragic oversimplification of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to suggest that all Africans sold to European traders were "doomed to enslavement". [2] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Slavery_in_Africa_and_the_New_World_contrasted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Slavery_i...

indubitable 9y ago
Even to this day in African slavery is almost entirely heritable, I'm using 'almost' completely as a weasel word - to my knowledge it is 100% heritable and is certainly a major cause of the perpetuation of slavery in Africa today. In your links there you'll find numerous contradictions. The second wiki leads with, "In general, slavery in Africa was not heritable – that is, the children of slaves were free – while in the Americas, children of slave mothers were considered born into slavery.". That is followed near immediately with the quote, "The slaves which are thus brought from the interior may be divided into two distinct classes – first, such as were slaves from their birth, having been born of enslaved mothers; secondly, such as were born free, but who afterwards, by whatever means, became slaves. Those of the first description are by far the most numerous....". Similarly the first link tries to downplay chattel slavery at one claiming that "Precise evidence on slavery or the political and economic institutions of slavery before contact with the Arab or Atlantic slave trade is not available." And almost immediately following, "Chattel slavery had been legal and widespread throughout North Africa when the region was controlled by the Roman Empire (47 BC – ca. 500 AD). ... Chattel slavery persisted after the fall of the Roman empire in the largely Christian communities of the region. After the Islamic expansion into most of the region, the practices continued and eventually, the chattel form of slavery spread to major societies on the southern end of the Sahara (such as Mali, Songhai, and Ghana)." Wiki does not tend to deal with issues that are contemporary, or involve social issues. And I think this is probably an instance of that. I think instinctively some want to demonize our actions so much as possible even if only as a sort of self flagellation. And so appealing a spin on the myth of a noble savage would certainly do as much. In reality we utilized, incentivized, and adopted an inhumane system, but it was not our direct creation in this case. And while we have learned from the past and moved on, these systems of inhumane exploitation which existed before us continue to exist without us.

ergothus 9y ago

> As an aside, I think something many people don't realize is that slaves were not free Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved by westerners. I often see such comments on any post about the US practice of slavery. I have yet to understand a good reason for them. Academic curiosity? No, because I doubt anyone thinks the US invented slavery. Even when we think (as i do) the US took an existing immoral practice and (as a nation) made it worse, these comments don't try to address any such distinctions. This means the comments come across as 'US slavery wasn't that bad because it just maintained an existing evil'. In addition to lacking support for the conclusion, no reason is given for why that would be relevant at all to the discussion at hand. Here we're discussing the fate of a ship that was used in violation of even the immoral laws of the time purely prove it could be done. In what way does whether the victims were already slaves or not matter at all to the topic? Adding "as an aside" to admit the comments aren't directly relevant is the same as using 'on average' to claim that racist/sexist statements aren't so because it allows the comments to not apply to any given individual - it seems like an excuse to be able to spread the idea without having to justify it. Assuming your reasons are not to downplay the US actions, what ARE your reasons? Does knowing how your comments come across change your likelihood of repeating this sort of interjection? I'm not interested in silencing any facts, but timing and context matter. If you are introducing these concepts, the onus of justification falls upon you.

indubitable 9y ago
Providing facts should never require justification. Everybody is free to have their own opinion, everybody is not free to have their own facts. Regardless of the above, I'll indulge you because this is a topic I find particularly interesting - and there is also a moral. It seems many people in society are starting to view things as caricaturizations of reality. There are the good guys, and there are the bad guys. And the person I was responding to, I suspect, likely viewed the transatlantic slave trade through this lens based on his apparently significant offense as somebody daring to use the word 'just' in reference to a time frame of slavery. I think this is surprisingly dangerous. The reason for this is that in reality things are not caricaturizations, but changes that might not seem so severe to many. For instance back on the slave trade I hope you'll indulge a few more of those condemnable facts. In the entire transatlantic slave trade about 12.5 million slaves were bought from Africa, with 10.7 million surviving the voyage. Of the 10.7 million 388,000, or about 3.6% [1], ended up in what would be the United States. Many people in the US seem to think that slavery ended, more or less, after the Civil War. That's obviously quite a poorly informed view, but it's built upon this caricaturization of slavery. In reality today there are more slaves than ever before in history with an estimated 45.8 million people enslaved worldwide [2]. That includes an estimated 57,700 slaves even within the United States. Rather than judge people and events, I try to understand them - try to put myself in their shoes and see how things played out. And in this case, it's not hard to see. Slavery was likely a story of apathy and cognitive dissonance. In the US about 1.4% of free Americans owned slaves, about 8% of families. [4]. Obviously more owned slaves in states where slavery was legal, but I'm considering the entire population as slavery was a rich man's game - and getting involved in the business was little more than a carriage ride away. Similar to today how California's ratio of entrepreneurs cannot be considered in isolation as the lucrative opportunities there draw in people from across the entire country. And those that did choose to own slaves likely convinced themselves it was morally fine since they were buying people who were already enslaved. In Africa at the time slaves were even subject to things including human sacrifice. [5] Just in West Africa there were events including the regular sacrifice of hundreds of slaves and on rare occasion even thousands at once. The cognitive dissonance there is not really hard to see. And this behavior of cognitive dissonance and apathy continues to this day. Do you really care about slavery? I imagine we'd all like to think so, but reality paints a less favorable picture. What if the president started implicitly condoning slavery for his own benefit? You might think you'd care, but that has already happened very recently. Malaysia is one of the worst places for modern slavery. You can see from the aforementioned link [2] that about 0.4% of their population is a slave. That's one out of every 250 people for 129k slaves in a country of 30million people. In 2015 Obama chose to remove Malaysia from a list of the worst human traffickers. He did this just so he could squeeze them into a trade agreement he wanted to pass (the TPP). This was the same year that more than numerous mass graves and trafficking camps were discovered in Malaysia. [3] A few media outlets ran the story, but for the most part people showed they couldn't really care less. And so it almost certainly was during slavery as well. What if I told you a list of companies or products that are still generated using slavery? Like chocolate? West Africa supplies about 69% of the world's cocoa. [6]. And unsurprisingly, slavery and even child slavery, is involved in its production. Companies funding the practice include Mars, Nestle, Hershey, and others. Will you now stop buying their products? Probably not. Think about that for a minute. A sweet treat is more important to you ("you" in this case is rhetorical, as even if you in particular would/will give up the companies - few would) than taking a stand against not only slavery, but child slavery. Slavery is incredibly offensive until it provides something we want, or when doing something about it might cause you some inconvenience. It's quite phenomenal isn't it? This disconnect between what we think we think, and what we actually seem willing to do based on that? The point of this all is that I think if people were more aware of reality, and understood that the line between good and evil is far closer than any of us would like to admit, that we'd be much more inclined to concern ourselves with actual events and happenings - instead of taking faux offense at somebody using the word 'just' in a way you find offensive. [1] - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro... [2] - https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migrant-mass-graves-police-reveal-139-sites-some-with-multiple-corpses https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migra... [4] - http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_productio...