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This is the first (and probably the last) Guardian post I will upvote. Eat yourself, go ahead! Eventually the Guardian will realize who ran the slave trade, not

This is the first (and probably the last) Guardian post I will upvote. Eat yourself, go ahead! Eventually the Guardian will realize who ran the slave trade, not report on it, and keep shooting themselves in the proverbial foot.

firstlink 4y ago
> not report on it I wonder who will be getting reparations 200 years from now for this? What form will those reparations take? Will they be perhaps... in-kind?
boppo1 4y ago
Who ran the slave trade?
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Black Africans, unless he's implying that it was run by the Jews. It was not, but White Nationalists don't care about that part.
- wahern 4y ago
  Here's a somewhat decent summary of the history--not the most intelligible or accurate, but it at least hits upon the various facets: https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/ https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/ You won't find any simple narratives or histories in earnest company as 1) there is no simple narrative to be had, and 2) the culture wars makes it incredibly difficult to discuss objectively. To understand how twisted the discourse has become, here's a scholarly paper I stumbled across that seems to claim that the continuance of the Arab and Indian Ocean Slave Trades was beneficial by providing competition with the burgeoning Atlantic Slave Trade: https://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_1631-0438_2002_num_89_336_3992 https://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_1631-0438_2002_num_89_336_39... It's from 2002--culture war debates in academia typically long preceded the explosion in populist debates. Though that paper also has some solid quantitative analysis, and I'm tempted to think the framing was designed to make swallowing the proposed numbers more palatable--the range of estimates of the number of African slaves in the Arab and Indian Ocean Slave Trades is significant and people seem to get quite vitriolic about it, seemingly out of the belief one number or another has the effect of shifting culpability.
- adastra22 4y ago
  I think he is alluding to the fact that the actual slavers operating in Africa were all black Africans. The white slave ships showed up on the west African coast, bought slaves at auction at a vibrant slave market, and shipped them to the Caribbean. They didn’t actually do the enslaving. Whether that is a relevant distinction I leave up to you.
  - Incipient 4y ago
    Buying stolen merchandise, and continuing to keep it once you realise it's stolen, and from whom it's stolen, while definitely not as bad as doing the stealing, is still...fairly morally low.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Also in terms of impact, the money and guns the European slave buyers brought to the table completely changed the slave trade. It went from the sort of low key slave markets that existed everywhere, to arming and bankrolling civil war in the interior of the continent just to produce slaves as spoils of war to be sold at these markets. It completely destroyed inner Africa, creating conditions of warlords and ethnic strife that still exist today.

firstlink 4y ago

> not report on it I wonder who will be getting reparations 200 years from now for this? What form will those reparations take? Will they be perhaps... in-kind?

boppo1 4y ago

Who ran the slave trade?

throwayyy479087 4y ago
Black Africans, unless he's implying that it was run by the Jews. It was not, but White Nationalists don't care about that part.
wahern 4y ago
Here's a somewhat decent summary of the history--not the most intelligible or accurate, but it at least hits upon the various facets: https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/ https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/ You won't find any simple narratives or histories in earnest company as 1) there is no simple narrative to be had, and 2) the culture wars makes it incredibly difficult to discuss objectively. To understand how twisted the discourse has become, here's a scholarly paper I stumbled across that seems to claim that the continuance of the Arab and Indian Ocean Slave Trades was beneficial by providing competition with the burgeoning Atlantic Slave Trade: https://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_1631-0438_2002_num_89_336_3992 https://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_1631-0438_2002_num_89_336_39... It's from 2002--culture war debates in academia typically long preceded the explosion in populist debates. Though that paper also has some solid quantitative analysis, and I'm tempted to think the framing was designed to make swallowing the proposed numbers more palatable--the range of estimates of the number of African slaves in the Arab and Indian Ocean Slave Trades is significant and people seem to get quite vitriolic about it, seemingly out of the belief one number or another has the effect of shifting culpability.
adastra22 4y ago
I think he is alluding to the fact that the actual slavers operating in Africa were all black Africans. The white slave ships showed up on the west African coast, bought slaves at auction at a vibrant slave market, and shipped them to the Caribbean. They didn’t actually do the enslaving. Whether that is a relevant distinction I leave up to you.
- Incipient 4y ago
  Buying stolen merchandise, and continuing to keep it once you realise it's stolen, and from whom it's stolen, while definitely not as bad as doing the stealing, is still...fairly morally low.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Also in terms of impact, the money and guns the European slave buyers brought to the table completely changed the slave trade. It went from the sort of low key slave markets that existed everywhere, to arming and bankrolling civil war in the interior of the continent just to produce slaves as spoils of war to be sold at these markets. It completely destroyed inner Africa, creating conditions of warlords and ethnic strife that still exist today.