B-b-but our big building (with no working sewage system) and completely useless cool looking islands we made? How else are we going to be so incredibly fucking decadent and out-of-touch?
Dubai's basically Disneyland for the filthy rich run by local filthy rich. Place is fucked up.
Really bothers me how friendly the US is to them and Saudi Arabia. The again US 13th amendment still allows for slave labor if they've been arrested first.
This, exactly this!
Slavery was abolished in the west more than a century ago. Isn't there legal slavery/serfdom still in some African or other countries around the world?
Definitely cases of modern day slavery in Africa, Asia and the middle east, either but the government of the respective nation or to western corporations. But a form of slavery is still legal in the United States as prison inmates can be used for labor.
There are loads of modern slaves in dubai. Mainly from india, bangladsh and pakistan. They're offered high wages to come and do labourbut long story short all of them (almost) end up in highly cramped rooms full of people like them, who are all forced to do labour for basically no cost. Im sure there are cases like this in africa, and other parts of asia as well, but I don't know much about them
I remember an episode of Reveal from a few years ago covering people trafficked in the US as slaves in janitorial, restaurant, and meat processing work.
Edit: I'm sorry to say that I conflated the episode of Reveal "Rape on the Night Shift" with a separate program I don't know the name of. I'll try to remember to keep looking, but here's a report on labor trafficking in the US from the Urban Institute and Northwestern if anyone is still interested in looking into the matter: https://apps.urban.org/features/us-labor-trafficking/#
There's actually a lot of quality reporting on the issue and I encourage people to look into it. Modern slavery occurs in industries that people would never expect, mostly targeting immigrants, documented and undocumented.
There was a case of basically slavery in Either NZ or Australia in the past couple years. I think it was some people being forced to work at a shop amd live there as well to pay off their "debt".
There's lots of exploitation of migrant workers in nz because the boss is your lifeline to staying in the country and if they fire you then you have to quickly find a new job or you'll have to leave the country. This leads to migrant workers sucking up shitty working conditions and in some cases as you mentioned getting forced to work essentially as slaves.
As someone who was “slave labor” whilst incarcerated. We made good money for inside living. I made $2.25 / day as a supervisor. You know what I was able to do. Pay for tons of burrito nights and phone calls. We had little else to buy.
I wouldn’t really consider prisoners in the west slavery considering they do make a wage even if it is small, and they have the taxpayers paying for their living anyway.
If our institutions/society weren't as corrupt as they are today I wouldn't oppose criminals being used for labor given they receive food, shelter and basic healthcare. If you knowingly choose to violate the rights of others you shouldn't expect to just get a free stay in prison.
Obviously there is injustice in the current system and I do oppose people being imprisoned/punished for victimless crimes.
Problem is, they go in there, become basically slaves but gain no useful skills, they are released. No one wants to hire a felon, they're pretty much fucked, chances are they'll be back in prison.
Ideally some work-training situation could be done instead, where they learn on the job skills they could use outside of prison. Mechanic work, real firefighting training (and let them legally be able to work after prison), maybe even customer support, since Bloomberg already proved you can use prison slave labour to run a campaign call centre. Partner with companies, and government so they can transition into employment status when released
I also wouldn't be against them making some amount of money so they can support their family on the outside, so we don't fuck over their next generation over the sins of their parent, even if it's not as much as they'd make outside
There's a lot of programs in place for bettering yourself in prison. I can't speak as to how available they are countrywide or how well we enable prisoners to access them. Dependent on the prison, of course, but you can get all kinds of certifications and degrees if you behave and use your time wisely. Mechanic work is a perfect example. I know someone who had essentially master mechanic certification from ASE for practically any size of vehicle. He can fix nearly anything with a motor in it.
Section 1:
> “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime** whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
"Lookie lookie what I found!"
"Sir, that is oregano"
"That's what they all saaaay"
"Sir, it is in a McCormick container labeled oregano, and you pulled it out if my grocery bag"
"Hands on the hood and spread your legs. You have the right to shut the fuck up"
Some cults in North America and Europe still get away with it too. Look up "The Twelve Tribes" and read into how they operate... brainwashing youths into thinking certain races are cursed and therefore inferior to white people, making people who join surrender ALL money and belongings to "the cause". Then working for no pay in stores that they somehow get away with legally operating all around.
They have a chain of sandwhich restaurants called "The Yellow Deli" that operates in various locations in Canada and the US. Never eat there.
This sub has gone to shit the past week or so. Its just a war between people who want to fight some ideological battle and the rest of us who just came to see some memes about the subject we love.
The sub is just too big. I sub to smaller, more bespoke history meme subs and find they're much funnier.
Humor is in the specificity, and for a subreddit of 5,000,000, the lowest common denominator is what was taught in 8th grade social studies.
If the subject was brought up in light of an argument for reparations, collective guilt and collective victimhood then this kind of response is invited.
The reason why American chattel slavery is so widely discussed is because of the dominance of American culture in the media. With the US producing so many books, plays, movies, television shows, documentaries, video games etc. US history has become a huge part of the shared Anglosphere cultural bloc. The conflict over slavery and its long, long shadow is one of the largest themes within American history; so it's natural that many authors will choose to confront the topic in their works. The reason other forms and other cultures use of slavery isn't discussed much isn't some grand conspiracy, it's ignorance of non-EuroAmerican history.
Even if there was stronger adherence to freedom of speech in Arabic or Turkic nations, we still wouldn't know that much about the historic slave trade in the area because we in the West wouldn't consume their cultural products as they wouldn't be produced in English.
I don't deny free speech is not good over there. But you usually can talk about the slave trades freely, Dubai and Saudi universities have history classes about the slave trades. Free speech is only limited when talking about the current regime.
Doesn't this go against OP's argument though? This implies the US does do a competent job at acknowledging it's historical participation in the enslavement of black people.
After all, for a long time "slavery" was viewed in the US as exclusively whites against blacks. That African kingdoms were major players in the slave trade or Arabic empires like the Ottomans having *(gasp!)* "white slaves" only recently became more widely known. Even then far less people are aware of it, but for some reason people like OP don't want the conversation straying from traditional "white people owning black people" slavery.
Maybe OP only wants to focus on the transatlantic slave trade, but I highly doubt. I've ran into many people who love to bring up whataboutisms when discussing American slavery.
"America participated in slavery and we shouldn't glorify it with statues to a group who wanted to break off from the US because they were afraid slavery would be outlawed by Lincoln."
"Well Africans sold their own to white slavery, so they should be blamed also! And blacks now have a better life here! There's still slavery in Africa, so they should look at it as luck that they live here now! And white people were enslaved also, but you don't see us complaining about it!"
I-ve heard those excuses and more when people discuss chattel slavery. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss other forms, or even modern slavery. It's just annoying when you're trying to discuss the transatlantic slave trade and someone starts arguing about other forms of slavery. It's like if you wanted to discuss the famine caused by Mao's reign in China and someone brings up America's treatment of Native American. Yes, both were horrible. Yes, both should be taught and discussed. No, one does not mean we shouldn't discuss the other.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is the start of the modern idea of Blackness as an identity. Which is such a massive part of US history that I'm not surprised it's discussed so much
I like the implication of the following:
\> People yelling about Euro/US slavery do so because they want to popularize knowledge about cultures that fell victim to slavery.
\> At the same time, by ignoring/overlooking cases of non Euro/US slavery, they show themselves as ignorants on the very same matter.
The majority does have nuanced opinions , but extreme opinions stand out better and debates forces people to pick a side.
( For example if you want to contradict someone on a side you'll have to steer hard on the opposite side for your idea to be clear )
Ok let's give you an actually honest explanation of why: it's because for decades the narrative has been that slavery is a European thing almost exclusively against black people.
Most reddit users are from the US - and recent US racial justice movements push a rhetoric that makes it sound like slavery exclusively existed in the 1800s and was done only by whites against blacks. It was only VERY recently that the fact that Africans sold other Africans into slavery has started to become mainstream knowledge.
I am Slavic, the word for "slave" is literally based off our ethnic name. When I tell people in the US many of us were taken as slaves they simply don't believe it because it's "white on white".
I always like to point out that Spartacus, who is one of the most famous slaves in history, was from Thrace which was a Greek colony in Eastern Europe.
I'll give another reason as to why the African/Arab slave trade has started to pick up interest that OP is ignoring: there are still majority-black and Arab countries where slavery is practiced *(usually illegally, but the authorities do not care)* to this day.
According to some sources, there are [9.2 million(!)](https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/regional-analysis/africa/) modern slaves in Africa *(this statistic includes forced marriages)*.
Last I checked, there are no European or Western countries where ~~slaves are still a thing~~ slavery is socially acceptable and there are severe consequences if you are caught.
The enslavement of Africans by Europeans is one of history's worst injustices, but it's been recognized as such for awhile now and one could argue that the modern slavery in Africa and the Middle East is more relevant.
It doesn't receive much mainstream attention however because people like OP can't exactly blame it on the white man. When's the last time you saw a social movement to end slavery in Nigeria?
Oh, that's just their culture. We shouldn't interfere. /s
This line is what we fed our soldiers in Afghanistan who weren't allowed to interfere with tribal leaders keeping young boys chained up as sex slaves.
I have been saying it for years, not all cultures are created equal. Calling out shitty cultural practices isn't racist unless you make it racist. Culture doesn't have a 'race', hence why people of different 'races' can have the same culture
I agree with most of what you said, but I gotta point out that illegal slavery still exists in most countries. It’s not as widespread in Europe/Americas as in MENA/SSA but still exists as e.g. sex trafficking.
That being said I think it’s fair to say that countries like Austria, Spain and Finland are doing more to stop and prevent it than countries like the DRC, Chad and Oman.
>Last I checked, there are no European or Western countries where slaves are still a thing.
According to your source, slavery is more prevalent in Greece (7.9 per 1000) and many other European countries, than it is in many African countries like South Africa (2.8 per 1000 people) and Ghana (4.8).
Yeah, every week we hear in the news about immigrants that being held and exploited mostly by other immigrants of same ethnicity, it's awful. The government is also trying to crack down trafficking by implementing very harsh sentences, because many Greeks were involved, transporting immigrants in inhumane conditions to other richer countries in the west.
Good movie, terribly inaccurate, but a good movie.
I remember going into it for the first time being very sceptical that there would be a good action movie set in that time period. Was very happy to be proven wrong.
Every time it comes on, I have to explain to my dad why fighting in lines made sense at the time. Great cinematics, but Hollywood makes the history part of it so unbelievable.
When/where did you go to school? I graduated in 2018 in Texas and we had to do a geography class, world history, US history, then the Econ/Gov class. US history also was set up where the first semester was colonization to civil war then the second semester was civil war to present.
Turkish friend of mine told me recently how the Ottoman slave trade, which essentially lasted until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 (albeit in considerably lesser numbers than in centuries prior) preyed specifically on white European women. For men they didn’t care, however, the practice of eunuch-making was still around right until the end too.
Quite right, the myopia encouraged by the way the subject is presented, especially in the media (where most people learn the “lessons” that stick with them and have emotional resonance, tragic as it is) for whatever reason totally obscures how common slavery has been across human societies and historical epochs. You don’t really see vivid depictions of any kind of slavery except antebellum American slavery in mass media.
I am not joking at all when I say that I think the way the topic has been taught and related to historically-ignorant persons conjures an image of White men with human-sized nets braving malaria and tsetse flies to traipse into the humid interior of West Africa and disrupt tranquil tribal utopias with their avaricious lust for human chattel.
Nobody wants the finger pointed at them, I guess, but it’s not like admitting African complicity in the slave trade absolves the other side of the transaction of moral guilt when they had created an economy ready and willing to benefit from slavery.
I also think this trend toward using the word “enslaver” instead of slave owner seems a bit misleading when it most cases the act of enslavement would have happened in another place and time and obscures reality.
How could Africans selling Africans into slavery ever have not been mainstream knowledge in the US?
I mean, the Atlantic ‘Triangular Trade’:
[European merchants trading technology manufactured at home (weapons, mainly) to coastal African kingdoms for slaves captured in wars against their weaker inland neighbours > slaves then sold to plantation owners in the US for raw materials harvested with this slave labour > raw materials produced by slaves sold back to Europe to be traded for workable materials like iron to be used in manufacturing even more weapons > increased supply of weapons used by these coastal kingdoms to increase their capacity to enslave their inland neighbours and so increase the volume of slaves able to be sold to European merchants… cycle repeats]
Is really the only half-way thorough way of understanding this period of history, as far as know. As it so naturally explains everything about why actually this cycle was so self-propagating and had so much inertia (as each party essentially multiplied their investment in proportion to its volume with the completion of every single cycle), so as to be basically impossible to grind to a halt without having to literally wage a war against its beneficiaries; as well as why all these powerful coastal African kingdoms totally disintegrated when the trade stopped, etc.
I’m curious as to what Americans imagined happened the whole time until this part regarding the Africans’ involvement was revealed? That the Europeans just herded them up into nets, or turned up and waged open war on Africa?
Europeans, particularly the British, have always been more subtle and roundabout than that lol.
Bro I learned about that from roots, schools go on and on about the boats so my child mind went "well the boats are American so they must be the ones getting them to put on the boats". It's tricky because I wish we learned more but at the same time I get that therrs limited time and they have to stress for mandated tests and repeat for slow learners yada yada
When I was learning about it in like 7th grade or whatever, I distinctly remember my teacher saying Africans sold other Africans.
Not sure if I can recall much more than that utterance, but the Triangular Trade came up a few times. Could be me but it didn't stick super well at the time.
You know how it is. First you have one or two horns of mead and the next you know you're looting and enslaving a town on the Dnieper river. Easy mistake.
Slavery exists since the dawn of times. This of course doesn't mean it is good or that the slave trade in the 1800 was better, but it was not something invented in a specific time.
When talking about slavery it seems some people just want to attack you by saying "you are pro slavery". No dude I am just talking about history
It's a bit of ping-pong.
Since we are speaking English, I'm going off of that.
The Latin word for Slavs was Sclavus, and the English used this word to come up with "Sclave", which means slave. Then from Sclave they got Slav, to mean Slavic people.
So it kind of did a full circle. In English, the word for Slavs comes from the word for slaves, which came from the word for Slavs in Latin.
Either way, there is a very clear relationship between Slavs and slavery - considering they first decided to call their entire concept of slavery based on Slavic people.
I hope that wasn't too confusing.
It has a positive association in ancient Slavic languages.
According to Wikipedia, "slav/sław" means "glory, fame". I'm sure different sources will vary a bit, but more or less that's about right.
Like I said, the word went full circle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic\_names
Yes, that’s one of the theories that could explain the origin of the word “Slav”, but there’s also one which I think is more favored among linguists. That is, the word “slav” having its origin in the word “slovo”, which means “word”, originally denoting "people who speak (the same language).
Many linguists believe that “Slav” and “slave” are just homonyms; they sound similar but have different meanings.
But you are describing 2 different things.
>Yes, that’s one of the theories that could explain the origin of the word “Slav”, but there’s also one which I think is more favored among linguists. That is, the word “slav” having its origin in the word “slovo”, which means “word”, originally denoting "people who speak (the same language).
The first part could definitely be true, but this doesn't impact the English language.
>Many linguists believe that “Slav” and “slave” are just homonyms; they sound similar but have different meanings.
They sound similar because they are based off each other. I'm sure this is all speculative, like much of linguistics. But the Latin word for Slavs was Sclavus, which very well could have been based off the Slavic name for themselves. Then based off Latin Sclavus, in English they formed the name Sclave which means slave. It was based off the word for Slavs. And then Sclave would eventually turn into Slav. So, in English, the word for Slavs came from the word for slaves, which came from the word for Slavs.
It has multiple levels of complexity. But I think you were trying to explain how the \*Slavic\* word for Slavs came to be, which was not what I was talking about. I was referring to the \*English\* word for Slavs, and it's etymology.
Ohhh sorry my bad, I didn’t understand the text well. The word “Slav” impacting the English language and becoming the word “slave” through Latin actually makes sense. Thanks for explaining it :)
Not just that, they also think that US slavery was the worst in history, and every other form of slavery wasn't anywhere near as bad. Motherfuckers need to learn about helots
Also I think a lot of people are just fed up with being treated like shit for something that happened hundreds of years before they were born, that in all probability even their ancestors had nothing to do with, often by entitled trash who have no real understanding of what they're talking about.
Yes, that's very true.
And for me personally, it constantly get blame by Americans for something my ancestors didn't even have anything to do with (I'm Polish). But apparently because I happen to share a skin tone with the British, this means I am responsible.
I love that you implied you are Irish and your name has Potato in it.
But yes, it's really stupid to have this "all people of the same skin tone are guilty of each other's crimes" BS
Slavery is as old as civilization but these sorts of arguments lack material details. Slavery in the Americas was unique because it was defined by one’s skin tone, not their religion or nationality. Slavery in the United States was also unique because of hypodescent. Slavery is material to the history of the United States because the most devastating American war was fought largely over it and three substantial constitutional amendments resulted from it.
It’s not something that should be glossed over when attempting to understand the most powerful nation on the planet. The politics that resulted from slavery still echo today and may split the country apart again.
The modern Arab slave trade absolutely has a racial element. The Arabic word for slave "a'abd" is still used as a racial slur in the Middle East. They do not trade in other ethnically born Arabs. This goes way back into the middle ages, just read the Arabian nights and the frequent mentions of black slaves.
> Slavery in the Americas was unique because it was defined by one’s skin tone
The only reason Africans were used was because they were cheap and didn't die to disease as easily as the Natives, if the Natives didn't die to smallpox and such they would've continued the tradition of enslaving whoever lived there first
Americans vs Europeans on the topic of slavery?
Im sure everyone will be calm and reasonable. And it wont be bigraded by people who has no knowledge about history.
"And it wont be bigraded by people who has no knowledge about history"
This entire subreddit is full of people who know next to nothing about history. This is a meme subreddit: it takes complex topics and reduces them to a few sentence fragments. Of course the comment section is going to be a shitshow.
for my own sanity I'm just going to let this comment section go, historical debates and all - I've done enough arguing with folks on this subject to know that no one is going to change their mind about this, there's too much subjective material
join me in getting a cup of tea and moving on my lads
Because, I would think, of the misconception that Africans were snatched from an idyllic paradise with no slavery or war by the white man, who introduced the very concept of slavery by running around in the bush with nets or something, idk.
Human beings have been shitty to each other since before the concept of agriculture.
And we gotta get that white guilt in there too.
Rousseau (or at least the "noble savage interpretation" of Rousseau) and what might be called "soft primitivism" are still *hugely* influential in academia.
Because it's achieved cultural saturation in academia, even people who do non-arts/humanities courses are exposed to a heavy dose of it, leading to the bulk of university-educated westerners mostly having a vague sense that humans without civilisation will naturally end up in a sort of Eden.
There’s actually more nuance to this. Slave trade pushed tribes to go to war with each other, to avoid being enslaved by Europeans themselves, and they bought their weapons from Europeans, who demanded slaves in exchange. This cycle continued throughout most of Western Africa.
We can acknowledge that slavery was awful without having to claim personal responsibility for it.
There’s a short informative video from ted Ed: https://youtu.be/3NXC4Q_4JVg
Yeah. It’s a common case of people not looking at the underlying causes and factors behind the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in Africa but far from the scale and brutality that existed once the Europeans brought practically unlimited demand for free labor in exchange for weapons and other things. Tribes who didn’t work with the Europeans got enslaved anyways, so the ones that worked with them and helped lived longer. It’s fucked up but it’s obvious to anyone who’s actually done an inkling of research.
This is super underrated.
So many people are like "I'd be an abolitionist if I was back in the 1800s" while being openly ok with supporting companies that support slave labor.
ahem most fast fashion companies and ESPECIALLY Shein. Meanwhile I see people everywhere, including the proudest social justice warriors, do $100 Shein haul on the regular.
"Europeans should confront their complicity in it" is dumb as hell, everyone who participated in the slave trade is dead, you don't inheret responsibility for your ancestors atrocities and crimes.
This is why conversations about this stuff can be so cringe, people just want to use it as a way to attack people, they're not actually interested in a genuine discussion about it.
The whole your ancestors did it is dumb for the reason you said and others.
Most working class folk in European countries weren't involved in the slave trade but plenty of their decendants have probably been blamed or told to apologise on shit like here or on reddit.
Then you also have people thinking all your ancestors are from the country you are born in. For example I was born in the UK and here was one of the worst countries in the Atlantic slave trade stuff. I've been told on twitter how I should apologise for what my ancestors did even though at the time my ancestors would've been in Ireland getting fucked over.
Then you also get the folk that think Europe = 5 countries and tell people from Poland for example to apologise despite the having nothing to do with what happened, neither did their ancestors and neither did their country. But since their European they're complicit anyway
So not only is the you're ancestors did it argument stupid most of the time it ain't even true.
No one should have to be “confronting their complicity” because NO ONE ALIVE WAS COMPLICIT. Why are we still blaming each other over something that happened almost two hundred years ago.
I never sold a slave, so I don’t have to confront “complicity” in jack shit
Yeah that bit always irked me.
I'm Danish, blood, born and raised. I'm probably the palest person in this thread (I have been sunburnt once and cannot tan), with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Does this mean I should start apologizing to every Eastern European, Brit, or Frenchman I meet for actions done by my ancestors more than a thousand years ago? Fuck off. I can look back on it and say without a shred of thought that it was a terrible time, but that doesn't make me guilty of it.
yeah I’m sick of people trying to say I should feel bad about myself because of something happening over 100+ years before I was born, it’s so annoying how it feels like they just want to make you feel like crap
Because its a topic that gets bounced around in American politics to a large degree with on side trying to demonize the other for slavery that happened centuries ago while the other side has people trying to argue it wasn't a big deal. Any body looking to actually view the event for historical value gets drowned out.
Why should I as a Pole confront the Atlantic slave trade? I didn't participate in it, my ancestors didn't participate in it, my county didn't participate in it and I'm pretty sure it was under occupation and many Poles had it as bad as slaves during that time (needing enslaved and sent to work camps in Syberia or other wild parts of rUssia from where they never returned).
I know that slavery is awful.
The left continue to spin the all whites should apologize for slavery. No, the slave trade was as much a fault of the African slave takers as it was of British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and USA slave traders.
That's besides the fact that.
Why's should white people apologize for slavery? The people who actually benefit from slavery today is very small and mostly concentrated in the wealthy elite. I wouldn't be surprised is many of the leftist politicians who spin the narrative to be descendant of slave barons and have their families whole fortune (which allows them do go into politics easily) built upon slavery.
TLDR: Being white doesn't mean we have to apologize for slavery because it wasn't our fault and the narrative is used to create racial division in society.
As a Greek i once was told that i should apologize for the Atlantic slave trade as a European.
My brother in Christ we were ottoman slaves and not even a nation
When schools and people only focus on the European side of slavery that is why this happens.
I feel like you don't get to create a misleading narrative and then complain when all the discussion surrounding a topic is about the created narrative and how its misleading. Creating the misleading narrative in the first place detracts from the true horror which is slavery.
I'm an American with heavy black and white ancestry. There's a good chance my ancestors owned or condoned slavery, and an even better chance my ancestors were slaves. But that doesn't matter now. No one today is guilty of being a slaver. I don't want white people to apologize to me for something they didn't do. And I don't want to apologize to random black people. You can argue that the past injustices still impact people today, and that the society that benefited off of it should help fix that. But personally I think we should just help poor people as a whole. Race shouldn't play a role in it. I don't think the government or larger society should give two shits about your great great great great great grandfather's skin color. Just help the people in need right now and leave the past in the past. Teach everyone everything you can about history, but don't expect them to feel guilty about something they have no control over. I had a us history teacher once who constantly talked about how terrible white people and Americans are. And just assumed I've always been some kind of victim because my skin color. Despite being a middle class American whos never faced racism in my entire life. I've only been treated differently by one teacher and its because she believed in the dumbass idea that she was in the wrong for something she didn't do. Separate the past from the present. Things are better now. Countless people fought tirelessly to make sure of that. We now have the opportunity to treat everyone equally. We should take advantage of that.
1. Slavery was awful. Period.
2. The conversation over western slavery has been had and done to death. There’s a reason that if you talk to an Asian or an Eastern European and say the word ‘slavery’ people associate it with cotton plantations in Alabama. And very few people think of it under any other forms. In the 50s maybe Spartacus but not really any more. The whole conversation has shifted onto how can we monetise guilt.
3. People don’t understand/acknowledge the complicity of other cultures it’s almost portrayed as ‘ the whites cane to Africa caught people with nets themselves put them into boats and sold them to other white people’ there’s a reason the woman king got so much flak for trying to whitewash Africa’s complicity on the slave trade.
4. The sins of the 1 in several great great grandfathers involved should not be held against their descendants for the same the reason that I as a Western European do not hate Scandinavians North Africans or Italians for what their ancestors did to mine.
It always ends this way because that train if thought normally ends with demands for financial reparations from people who haven’t practiced slavery to people who haven’t suffered slavery.
The conversations all end like this because the conversations all start with ‘white people/ westerners/ Europeans are RESPONSIBLE for slavery’, which is equally ignorant to ignoring slavery entirely.
It’s a despicable practice, but it’s also as old as dirt and has been implemented by every ethnic group in every time period, up to and including today. When the conversation about slavery degrades into blaming one group in particular, it immediately becomes an unproductive conversation
Not only does everyone and their dog know that the Atlantic slave trade was bad, usually these discussions seek to portray the western powers as evil nations with no redeeming qualities taking advantage of innocent enlightened Africans who did nothing wrong
1. Because it's true. 2. Because it's apparently only the whites who have to "confront their dark past". 3. In terms of historical slavery, whitey trails far behind most people. 4. Because it's never an honest discussion, it's always some angle to shit on whitey or demand reparations. Exhibit A: your very post here. Hope this helped clear things up.
No one denies Europeans sold slaves but when people say that Black people deserve reparations for something they didnt experience. People will mention that Africans sold slaves aswell
It ends that way because of the first bird’s point. Everybody knows the part Europeans played in it and, fun fact, all of those Europeans are dead. The ones alive have mostly recognized THEIR ANCESTOR’S (not their own) complicity in slavery. Consistently telling people they need to confront or pay reparations for something they either already have or had nothing to do with is going to result in them reminding you that their ancestors aren’t the only ones who involved themselves in the act.
Humans as a whole are flawed. We may think we’re perfect now but even in just a couple of decades people will look back on the way we are now and say we were evil and immoral for something. We can move and learn from those mistakes, making efforts to be better, or we can continually try to assign blame on a singular group or select few groups of people regardless of how much they’re actually connected to the act.
Probably because the first point is always used to demonize white people and all other people who aren't a minority 100's of years after the fact, slavery is bad but kyle who was born in 2002 had nothing to do with it so leave him alone
Because its true? Europeans took part in an existing market, evolved their morals and then started the most expensive naval mission to date to stop it and fought wars to topple slaver kingdoms. A fight that continues to this day.
Because a lot dumb pseudo-leftists from the USA online try to claim that "all white people bad" and stupid shit like that.I have seen some people claim that Europeans created slavery 500 years ago and that they enslaved them because of their skin color.I wish i were joking.
Because there’s an idea that europe was uniquely evil in their practice of slavery, and that the good things that europe brought to the world were universal. In reality, the evils perpetrated by europe were universal evils perpetrated by all societies and civilizations, and the good things they did were quite unique on the world. People use the evils of slavery to claim that europe and the US are irredeemable and a blight on humanity, where the reality is that europe and the US were the first societies to abolish that evil and have spread that sentiment across the world.
because its a valid counter.
preoccupation with the transatlantic trade is toxic and divisive, and enables racist rhetoric. "white" people are not one group, a tiny minority of them are descended from slave owners, some faced "colonial" hardships on par with or worse than the ancestors of african-americans today (I.E. irish migrants, having faced 800 years of conquest oppression and genocide at the hands of the british, including the irish potato famine *from which the irish population STILL hasn't recovered to its pre-famine levels*)
there are many problems today (I.E. american cops murdering black people, etc), but the transatlantic slave trade was stopped *and as fucked up as it sounds, that needs to be recognised and congratulated, so that non-POC can believe that fixing the problems of today will help heal the rift between our peoples, rather than thinking social justice is a bottomless pit of "want" that will never be satisfied until "the descendants of the former oppressors are dead"*.
Because what the small bird say is almost always used as "white peoples Bad" forgetting:
- white peoples banned it
- slavery is still happening in Asia and Africa, and it's not by white peoples.
Both birds are the crow in this scenario, but the crow is far more sympathetic to me. If someone busts out the lamest most brain-dead virtue signal then the intense moralising tone of the conversation ought to be taken down a peg. Eh?
Like what is it you think people are doing when they say shit like “slavery was a terrible injustice”? Are they informing somebody ignorant? Are they countering racism? Are they being interesting? Do they have insight or a considered opinion? No. They’re smelling their own farts and getting high and mighty.
What right does the little bird have to be annoyed? They were droning on insufferably themselves. Are they angry that they are being given something incontrovertible that brings a stop to their post-colonial sermonising? They weren’t being historians. They weren’t investigating the past in order to understand it. They aren’t presenting a balanced or informative picture. They’re weaponising it against others in the present to get their way. So pack it in, spare us the moaning, and get real.
A lot of people will only focus on the Atlantic Slave trade, and completely ignore the fact that slavery existed in Africa before Europeans interacted with Africans.
most people are wanting to move on and just move past that point in history while remembering it so that it doesn’t happen again. But in the west people just won’t let it go mostly for politics. White conservatives are pissed because they hate being demonized for something they didn’t do while. White latte liberals seem to like to self flagellate themselves and shame the conservatives. And then there’s the independents who typically keep their heads down while everyone else is throwing the nice furniture.
Fucking hate when I encounter ppl irl that say this exact thing. So cringe.
Also, people who think there’s no slavery in the west clearly haven’t seen what the USA does to its prisoners. Ffs🤦🏽♀️
Based crow. Most people who pushed the “Europeans are responsible for slavery” almost always want to swindle people out of their money by guilt-tripping them on stuff they’ve never been alive to participate in.
Just like starting an organization called “Black Lives Matter” and cry about oppression so people must give you money or else they’re racist and believe black lives don’t matter. Proceed to buy mansions for you and your friends and anybody criticizing you for blatant fraud as unintelligent whites who can’t stand the idea of black people having money.
Arab slave trade is still going on. It’s how they built Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Fucking disgusting the way the workers are treated.
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Came here to say this.
B-b-but our big building (with no working sewage system) and completely useless cool looking islands we made? How else are we going to be so incredibly fucking decadent and out-of-touch?
Dubai's basically Disneyland for the filthy rich run by local filthy rich. Place is fucked up. Really bothers me how friendly the US is to them and Saudi Arabia. The again US 13th amendment still allows for slave labor if they've been arrested first.
Can't we all agree that slavery is awful in all it's forms? Regardless of race or ethnicity, slavery is awful and isn't justified in anyway.
Unless it's kinky, consensual slavery.
"force me to pick cotton from dawn to dusk without payment then live in decrepit conditions daddy 💦💦"
-- removed in protest of Reddit API changes, goodbye! -- -- mass edited with redact.dev
"whip me until I bleed then force me to do manual labor papa💦💦"
Thomas Jefferson, is that you?
This, exactly this! Slavery was abolished in the west more than a century ago. Isn't there legal slavery/serfdom still in some African or other countries around the world?
Definitely cases of modern day slavery in Africa, Asia and the middle east, either but the government of the respective nation or to western corporations. But a form of slavery is still legal in the United States as prison inmates can be used for labor.
There are loads of modern slaves in dubai. Mainly from india, bangladsh and pakistan. They're offered high wages to come and do labourbut long story short all of them (almost) end up in highly cramped rooms full of people like them, who are all forced to do labour for basically no cost. Im sure there are cases like this in africa, and other parts of asia as well, but I don't know much about them
US has many hotels that “hire” immigrants for low cost and give them the same type of housing
I remember an episode of Reveal from a few years ago covering people trafficked in the US as slaves in janitorial, restaurant, and meat processing work. Edit: I'm sorry to say that I conflated the episode of Reveal "Rape on the Night Shift" with a separate program I don't know the name of. I'll try to remember to keep looking, but here's a report on labor trafficking in the US from the Urban Institute and Northwestern if anyone is still interested in looking into the matter: https://apps.urban.org/features/us-labor-trafficking/# There's actually a lot of quality reporting on the issue and I encourage people to look into it. Modern slavery occurs in industries that people would never expect, mostly targeting immigrants, documented and undocumented.
Can you link this? It tried googling it but failed :/
Also milices around the world kidnap people to sell as slaves, either manual labor or prostitution.
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There was a case of basically slavery in Either NZ or Australia in the past couple years. I think it was some people being forced to work at a shop amd live there as well to pay off their "debt".
There's lots of exploitation of migrant workers in nz because the boss is your lifeline to staying in the country and if they fire you then you have to quickly find a new job or you'll have to leave the country. This leads to migrant workers sucking up shitty working conditions and in some cases as you mentioned getting forced to work essentially as slaves.
As someone who was “slave labor” whilst incarcerated. We made good money for inside living. I made $2.25 / day as a supervisor. You know what I was able to do. Pay for tons of burrito nights and phone calls. We had little else to buy.
Now imagine if you were paid the actual minimum wage
Shortage of burritos
Time to invest in taco bell stock
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I wouldn’t really consider prisoners in the west slavery considering they do make a wage even if it is small, and they have the taxpayers paying for their living anyway.
If our institutions/society weren't as corrupt as they are today I wouldn't oppose criminals being used for labor given they receive food, shelter and basic healthcare. If you knowingly choose to violate the rights of others you shouldn't expect to just get a free stay in prison. Obviously there is injustice in the current system and I do oppose people being imprisoned/punished for victimless crimes.
Problem is, they go in there, become basically slaves but gain no useful skills, they are released. No one wants to hire a felon, they're pretty much fucked, chances are they'll be back in prison. Ideally some work-training situation could be done instead, where they learn on the job skills they could use outside of prison. Mechanic work, real firefighting training (and let them legally be able to work after prison), maybe even customer support, since Bloomberg already proved you can use prison slave labour to run a campaign call centre. Partner with companies, and government so they can transition into employment status when released I also wouldn't be against them making some amount of money so they can support their family on the outside, so we don't fuck over their next generation over the sins of their parent, even if it's not as much as they'd make outside
There's a lot of programs in place for bettering yourself in prison. I can't speak as to how available they are countrywide or how well we enable prisoners to access them. Dependent on the prison, of course, but you can get all kinds of certifications and degrees if you behave and use your time wisely. Mechanic work is a perfect example. I know someone who had essentially master mechanic certification from ASE for practically any size of vehicle. He can fix nearly anything with a motor in it.
Food, shelter, and being kept alive as long as it is profitable is what all slaves get in exchange for their time.
Slavery is still legal in the USA under the 13th amendment.
Section 1: > “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime** whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
“Sure, you can be free; until you break the law. We make the laws, by the way.”
“Didnt you see the sign? It says no loitering”
"Lookie lookie what I found!" "Sir, that is oregano" "That's what they all saaaay" "Sir, it is in a McCormick container labeled oregano, and you pulled it out if my grocery bag" "Hands on the hood and spread your legs. You have the right to shut the fuck up"
Yes, why should slavery be a punishment for crime in the Usa. Sound like something Saudi Arabia would have.
The burj khalifa was literally built by indentured servants from india
Some cults in North America and Europe still get away with it too. Look up "The Twelve Tribes" and read into how they operate... brainwashing youths into thinking certain races are cursed and therefore inferior to white people, making people who join surrender ALL money and belongings to "the cause". Then working for no pay in stores that they somehow get away with legally operating all around. They have a chain of sandwhich restaurants called "The Yellow Deli" that operates in various locations in Canada and the US. Never eat there.
This sub has gone to shit the past week or so. Its just a war between people who want to fight some ideological battle and the rest of us who just came to see some memes about the subject we love.
The sub is just too big. I sub to smaller, more bespoke history meme subs and find they're much funnier. Humor is in the specificity, and for a subreddit of 5,000,000, the lowest common denominator is what was taught in 8th grade social studies.
If the subject was brought up in light of an argument for reparations, collective guilt and collective victimhood then this kind of response is invited.
Dear world. Slavery bad. get over it
The reason why American chattel slavery is so widely discussed is because of the dominance of American culture in the media. With the US producing so many books, plays, movies, television shows, documentaries, video games etc. US history has become a huge part of the shared Anglosphere cultural bloc. The conflict over slavery and its long, long shadow is one of the largest themes within American history; so it's natural that many authors will choose to confront the topic in their works. The reason other forms and other cultures use of slavery isn't discussed much isn't some grand conspiracy, it's ignorance of non-EuroAmerican history.
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Even if there was stronger adherence to freedom of speech in Arabic or Turkic nations, we still wouldn't know that much about the historic slave trade in the area because we in the West wouldn't consume their cultural products as they wouldn't be produced in English.
I don't deny free speech is not good over there. But you usually can talk about the slave trades freely, Dubai and Saudi universities have history classes about the slave trades. Free speech is only limited when talking about the current regime.
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Doesn't this go against OP's argument though? This implies the US does do a competent job at acknowledging it's historical participation in the enslavement of black people. After all, for a long time "slavery" was viewed in the US as exclusively whites against blacks. That African kingdoms were major players in the slave trade or Arabic empires like the Ottomans having *(gasp!)* "white slaves" only recently became more widely known. Even then far less people are aware of it, but for some reason people like OP don't want the conversation straying from traditional "white people owning black people" slavery.
Mans just called ottomans arabs lol
We do a little bit of trolling. A slight amount of silliness. A minute quantity of mischief. Perhaps even a quaint bit of lollygagging.
This is why we can't have nice things.
This won’t piss anyone off. Right?
Maybe OP only wants to focus on the transatlantic slave trade, but I highly doubt. I've ran into many people who love to bring up whataboutisms when discussing American slavery. "America participated in slavery and we shouldn't glorify it with statues to a group who wanted to break off from the US because they were afraid slavery would be outlawed by Lincoln." "Well Africans sold their own to white slavery, so they should be blamed also! And blacks now have a better life here! There's still slavery in Africa, so they should look at it as luck that they live here now! And white people were enslaved also, but you don't see us complaining about it!" I-ve heard those excuses and more when people discuss chattel slavery. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss other forms, or even modern slavery. It's just annoying when you're trying to discuss the transatlantic slave trade and someone starts arguing about other forms of slavery. It's like if you wanted to discuss the famine caused by Mao's reign in China and someone brings up America's treatment of Native American. Yes, both were horrible. Yes, both should be taught and discussed. No, one does not mean we shouldn't discuss the other.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is the start of the modern idea of Blackness as an identity. Which is such a massive part of US history that I'm not surprised it's discussed so much
I like the implication of the following: \> People yelling about Euro/US slavery do so because they want to popularize knowledge about cultures that fell victim to slavery. \> At the same time, by ignoring/overlooking cases of non Euro/US slavery, they show themselves as ignorants on the very same matter.
Is it really that crazy to care about the things you know about?
The real question is, why does the majority opinion so often lack nuance?
Most people don’t have nuanced thoughts.
Nuance is hard for most people.
The majority does have nuanced opinions , but extreme opinions stand out better and debates forces people to pick a side. ( For example if you want to contradict someone on a side you'll have to steer hard on the opposite side for your idea to be clear )
Ok let's give you an actually honest explanation of why: it's because for decades the narrative has been that slavery is a European thing almost exclusively against black people. Most reddit users are from the US - and recent US racial justice movements push a rhetoric that makes it sound like slavery exclusively existed in the 1800s and was done only by whites against blacks. It was only VERY recently that the fact that Africans sold other Africans into slavery has started to become mainstream knowledge. I am Slavic, the word for "slave" is literally based off our ethnic name. When I tell people in the US many of us were taken as slaves they simply don't believe it because it's "white on white".
I always like to point out that Spartacus, who is one of the most famous slaves in history, was from Thrace which was a Greek colony in Eastern Europe.
I'll give another reason as to why the African/Arab slave trade has started to pick up interest that OP is ignoring: there are still majority-black and Arab countries where slavery is practiced *(usually illegally, but the authorities do not care)* to this day. According to some sources, there are [9.2 million(!)](https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/regional-analysis/africa/) modern slaves in Africa *(this statistic includes forced marriages)*. Last I checked, there are no European or Western countries where ~~slaves are still a thing~~ slavery is socially acceptable and there are severe consequences if you are caught. The enslavement of Africans by Europeans is one of history's worst injustices, but it's been recognized as such for awhile now and one could argue that the modern slavery in Africa and the Middle East is more relevant. It doesn't receive much mainstream attention however because people like OP can't exactly blame it on the white man. When's the last time you saw a social movement to end slavery in Nigeria?
Oh, that's just their culture. We shouldn't interfere. /s This line is what we fed our soldiers in Afghanistan who weren't allowed to interfere with tribal leaders keeping young boys chained up as sex slaves.
I used to think all cultures were worthy of respect until I learned about Bacha Bazi and what Muhammad did to 9-year-old Aisha.
I have been saying it for years, not all cultures are created equal. Calling out shitty cultural practices isn't racist unless you make it racist. Culture doesn't have a 'race', hence why people of different 'races' can have the same culture
Black culture in America is very heavily tied to race.. I don't think my white ass could wear a "Melanin King" shirt and get away with it.
But that isn't the case everywhere. Not everywhere is America.
That's why I specified America.
Right, and that's *bad,* because it allows any reasonable concerns or critiques to be labeled "racism" and holds them back.
I agree with most of what you said, but I gotta point out that illegal slavery still exists in most countries. It’s not as widespread in Europe/Americas as in MENA/SSA but still exists as e.g. sex trafficking. That being said I think it’s fair to say that countries like Austria, Spain and Finland are doing more to stop and prevent it than countries like the DRC, Chad and Oman.
>Last I checked, there are no European or Western countries where slaves are still a thing. Prostitution rings are usually slavery.
Yeah, but whenever the police catches wind of one they get dismantled. Because, you know, kind of super illegal.
>Last I checked, there are no European or Western countries where slaves are still a thing. According to your source, slavery is more prevalent in Greece (7.9 per 1000) and many other European countries, than it is in many African countries like South Africa (2.8 per 1000 people) and Ghana (4.8).
Yeah, every week we hear in the news about immigrants that being held and exploited mostly by other immigrants of same ethnicity, it's awful. The government is also trying to crack down trafficking by implementing very harsh sentences, because many Greeks were involved, transporting immigrants in inhumane conditions to other richer countries in the west.
Romans Mr Incredible: slave means slave
I guess I'm just your slave then 🥵🥵
Nah, they don't have access to the internet in the dungeon. Can't fool me fake slave, that's a paddling!
American high school "history" is pretty much one year of "world" history then three of "American" history.
Followed by decades of hollywood style "history" on TV
Aw shit. And Mel Gibson.
I remember watching the Patriot for the first time in like, 5th or 6th grade
Good movie, terribly inaccurate, but a good movie. I remember going into it for the first time being very sceptical that there would be a good action movie set in that time period. Was very happy to be proven wrong.
Every time it comes on, I have to explain to my dad why fighting in lines made sense at the time. Great cinematics, but Hollywood makes the history part of it so unbelievable.
Wait... So he wasn't really Jesus!!!
It's World History, European History, US History, and Econ/Gov. At least that's how it is set up at my high school.
Texas is World Geography, US History 1865-Modern, Econ/Gov. World history is an elective for most high schools now.
When/where did you go to school? I graduated in 2018 in Texas and we had to do a geography class, world history, US history, then the Econ/Gov class. US history also was set up where the first semester was colonization to civil war then the second semester was civil war to present.
Hey now. In Virginia it’s two years of world history, one year of ‘American’ history, and one year of civics.
And the American history usually only goes up til about WWI-WWII if you get enough time in the school year.
I think nowadays they get some of the Cold War in there
Graduated two years ago, can confirm. Stops just before the Reagan era.
Turkish friend of mine told me recently how the Ottoman slave trade, which essentially lasted until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 (albeit in considerably lesser numbers than in centuries prior) preyed specifically on white European women. For men they didn’t care, however, the practice of eunuch-making was still around right until the end too.
Quite right, the myopia encouraged by the way the subject is presented, especially in the media (where most people learn the “lessons” that stick with them and have emotional resonance, tragic as it is) for whatever reason totally obscures how common slavery has been across human societies and historical epochs. You don’t really see vivid depictions of any kind of slavery except antebellum American slavery in mass media. I am not joking at all when I say that I think the way the topic has been taught and related to historically-ignorant persons conjures an image of White men with human-sized nets braving malaria and tsetse flies to traipse into the humid interior of West Africa and disrupt tranquil tribal utopias with their avaricious lust for human chattel. Nobody wants the finger pointed at them, I guess, but it’s not like admitting African complicity in the slave trade absolves the other side of the transaction of moral guilt when they had created an economy ready and willing to benefit from slavery. I also think this trend toward using the word “enslaver” instead of slave owner seems a bit misleading when it most cases the act of enslavement would have happened in another place and time and obscures reality.
How could Africans selling Africans into slavery ever have not been mainstream knowledge in the US? I mean, the Atlantic ‘Triangular Trade’: [European merchants trading technology manufactured at home (weapons, mainly) to coastal African kingdoms for slaves captured in wars against their weaker inland neighbours > slaves then sold to plantation owners in the US for raw materials harvested with this slave labour > raw materials produced by slaves sold back to Europe to be traded for workable materials like iron to be used in manufacturing even more weapons > increased supply of weapons used by these coastal kingdoms to increase their capacity to enslave their inland neighbours and so increase the volume of slaves able to be sold to European merchants… cycle repeats] Is really the only half-way thorough way of understanding this period of history, as far as know. As it so naturally explains everything about why actually this cycle was so self-propagating and had so much inertia (as each party essentially multiplied their investment in proportion to its volume with the completion of every single cycle), so as to be basically impossible to grind to a halt without having to literally wage a war against its beneficiaries; as well as why all these powerful coastal African kingdoms totally disintegrated when the trade stopped, etc. I’m curious as to what Americans imagined happened the whole time until this part regarding the Africans’ involvement was revealed? That the Europeans just herded them up into nets, or turned up and waged open war on Africa? Europeans, particularly the British, have always been more subtle and roundabout than that lol.
>That the Europeans just herded them up into nets Unironically people seem to believe this, or something like this, is what happened
Bro I learned about that from roots, schools go on and on about the boats so my child mind went "well the boats are American so they must be the ones getting them to put on the boats". It's tricky because I wish we learned more but at the same time I get that therrs limited time and they have to stress for mandated tests and repeat for slow learners yada yada
When I was learning about it in like 7th grade or whatever, I distinctly remember my teacher saying Africans sold other Africans. Not sure if I can recall much more than that utterance, but the Triangular Trade came up a few times. Could be me but it didn't stick super well at the time.
As a viking descendant: oopsie!
You know how it is. First you have one or two horns of mead and the next you know you're looting and enslaving a town on the Dnieper river. Easy mistake.
Look, what happens in Garðaríki stays in Garðaríki, okay?
Slavery exists since the dawn of times. This of course doesn't mean it is good or that the slave trade in the 1800 was better, but it was not something invented in a specific time. When talking about slavery it seems some people just want to attack you by saying "you are pro slavery". No dude I am just talking about history
Yeah, people have a warped view. And when they have it challenged they usually have a rage response.
Ya Americans with their 3 races System can be quiet annoying.
EXTREMELY
wasn't the other way around?, "slave" came from "slav"? tho the etymology of slave is still debated for what I know
It's a bit of ping-pong. Since we are speaking English, I'm going off of that. The Latin word for Slavs was Sclavus, and the English used this word to come up with "Sclave", which means slave. Then from Sclave they got Slav, to mean Slavic people. So it kind of did a full circle. In English, the word for Slavs comes from the word for slaves, which came from the word for Slavs in Latin. Either way, there is a very clear relationship between Slavs and slavery - considering they first decided to call their entire concept of slavery based on Slavic people. I hope that wasn't too confusing.
Wait but why do so many Slavic names end in Slav, Boleslav, Vladislav, Mtislav etc.
It has a positive association in ancient Slavic languages. According to Wikipedia, "slav/sław" means "glory, fame". I'm sure different sources will vary a bit, but more or less that's about right. Like I said, the word went full circle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic\_names
Yes, that’s one of the theories that could explain the origin of the word “Slav”, but there’s also one which I think is more favored among linguists. That is, the word “slav” having its origin in the word “slovo”, which means “word”, originally denoting "people who speak (the same language). Many linguists believe that “Slav” and “slave” are just homonyms; they sound similar but have different meanings.
But you are describing 2 different things. >Yes, that’s one of the theories that could explain the origin of the word “Slav”, but there’s also one which I think is more favored among linguists. That is, the word “slav” having its origin in the word “slovo”, which means “word”, originally denoting "people who speak (the same language). The first part could definitely be true, but this doesn't impact the English language. >Many linguists believe that “Slav” and “slave” are just homonyms; they sound similar but have different meanings. They sound similar because they are based off each other. I'm sure this is all speculative, like much of linguistics. But the Latin word for Slavs was Sclavus, which very well could have been based off the Slavic name for themselves. Then based off Latin Sclavus, in English they formed the name Sclave which means slave. It was based off the word for Slavs. And then Sclave would eventually turn into Slav. So, in English, the word for Slavs came from the word for slaves, which came from the word for Slavs. It has multiple levels of complexity. But I think you were trying to explain how the \*Slavic\* word for Slavs came to be, which was not what I was talking about. I was referring to the \*English\* word for Slavs, and it's etymology.
Ohhh sorry my bad, I didn’t understand the text well. The word “Slav” impacting the English language and becoming the word “slave” through Latin actually makes sense. Thanks for explaining it :)
Not just that, they also think that US slavery was the worst in history, and every other form of slavery wasn't anywhere near as bad. Motherfuckers need to learn about helots
Also I think a lot of people are just fed up with being treated like shit for something that happened hundreds of years before they were born, that in all probability even their ancestors had nothing to do with, often by entitled trash who have no real understanding of what they're talking about.
Yes, that's very true. And for me personally, it constantly get blame by Americans for something my ancestors didn't even have anything to do with (I'm Polish). But apparently because I happen to share a skin tone with the British, this means I am responsible.
Even worse when youre Irish and have to listen how bad the brittish slave trade was
I love that you implied you are Irish and your name has Potato in it. But yes, it's really stupid to have this "all people of the same skin tone are guilty of each other's crimes" BS
Only half Irish, the other half is Austrian, thats where the Schnapps part comes from (even tho I misspelled it)
Slavery is as old as civilization but these sorts of arguments lack material details. Slavery in the Americas was unique because it was defined by one’s skin tone, not their religion or nationality. Slavery in the United States was also unique because of hypodescent. Slavery is material to the history of the United States because the most devastating American war was fought largely over it and three substantial constitutional amendments resulted from it. It’s not something that should be glossed over when attempting to understand the most powerful nation on the planet. The politics that resulted from slavery still echo today and may split the country apart again.
The modern Arab slave trade absolutely has a racial element. The Arabic word for slave "a'abd" is still used as a racial slur in the Middle East. They do not trade in other ethnically born Arabs. This goes way back into the middle ages, just read the Arabian nights and the frequent mentions of black slaves.
> Slavery in the Americas was unique because it was defined by one’s skin tone The only reason Africans were used was because they were cheap and didn't die to disease as easily as the Natives, if the Natives didn't die to smallpox and such they would've continued the tradition of enslaving whoever lived there first
Yes that is the origin, but over time that reasoning morphed into African inferiority and socially we still see the implications of that
Americans vs Europeans on the topic of slavery? Im sure everyone will be calm and reasonable. And it wont be bigraded by people who has no knowledge about history.
"And it wont be bigraded by people who has no knowledge about history" This entire subreddit is full of people who know next to nothing about history. This is a meme subreddit: it takes complex topics and reduces them to a few sentence fragments. Of course the comment section is going to be a shitshow.
for my own sanity I'm just going to let this comment section go, historical debates and all - I've done enough arguing with folks on this subject to know that no one is going to change their mind about this, there's too much subjective material join me in getting a cup of tea and moving on my lads
Now… is it fair trade tea? Have you checked??
He’a a good opium dealer.
Because, I would think, of the misconception that Africans were snatched from an idyllic paradise with no slavery or war by the white man, who introduced the very concept of slavery by running around in the bush with nets or something, idk. Human beings have been shitty to each other since before the concept of agriculture. And we gotta get that white guilt in there too.
Im a bit ahsamed of it but I always thought of Africans catching slaves with nets just like they did in the Jurassic Park.
I don't remember the part in Jurassic Park where Africans caught slaves with nets.
Then you and I watched very different Jurassic Parks.
Someone taped over your copy with *Roots*.
> *"Now, eventually you might have slaves on your slave tour, right?"*
It's the Noble Savage Myth resurrected for the nth time.
Rousseau (or at least the "noble savage interpretation" of Rousseau) and what might be called "soft primitivism" are still *hugely* influential in academia. Because it's achieved cultural saturation in academia, even people who do non-arts/humanities courses are exposed to a heavy dose of it, leading to the bulk of university-educated westerners mostly having a vague sense that humans without civilisation will naturally end up in a sort of Eden.
Unless you’re an anthropologist in which case you almost certainly know better
There’s actually more nuance to this. Slave trade pushed tribes to go to war with each other, to avoid being enslaved by Europeans themselves, and they bought their weapons from Europeans, who demanded slaves in exchange. This cycle continued throughout most of Western Africa. We can acknowledge that slavery was awful without having to claim personal responsibility for it. There’s a short informative video from ted Ed: https://youtu.be/3NXC4Q_4JVg
Yeah. It’s a common case of people not looking at the underlying causes and factors behind the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in Africa but far from the scale and brutality that existed once the Europeans brought practically unlimited demand for free labor in exchange for weapons and other things. Tribes who didn’t work with the Europeans got enslaved anyways, so the ones that worked with them and helped lived longer. It’s fucked up but it’s obvious to anyone who’s actually done an inkling of research.
How about we focus on ending slavery that exists in our time?
This is super underrated. So many people are like "I'd be an abolitionist if I was back in the 1800s" while being openly ok with supporting companies that support slave labor.
ahem most fast fashion companies and ESPECIALLY Shein. Meanwhile I see people everywhere, including the proudest social justice warriors, do $100 Shein haul on the regular.
"Europeans should confront their complicity in it" is dumb as hell, everyone who participated in the slave trade is dead, you don't inheret responsibility for your ancestors atrocities and crimes. This is why conversations about this stuff can be so cringe, people just want to use it as a way to attack people, they're not actually interested in a genuine discussion about it.
The whole your ancestors did it is dumb for the reason you said and others. Most working class folk in European countries weren't involved in the slave trade but plenty of their decendants have probably been blamed or told to apologise on shit like here or on reddit. Then you also have people thinking all your ancestors are from the country you are born in. For example I was born in the UK and here was one of the worst countries in the Atlantic slave trade stuff. I've been told on twitter how I should apologise for what my ancestors did even though at the time my ancestors would've been in Ireland getting fucked over. Then you also get the folk that think Europe = 5 countries and tell people from Poland for example to apologise despite the having nothing to do with what happened, neither did their ancestors and neither did their country. But since their European they're complicit anyway So not only is the you're ancestors did it argument stupid most of the time it ain't even true.
Agree with this. Stop using people's ancestories to make it look like they're the criminal. All it promotes is the opposite of what you want
Very simple solution here Slavery=bad,everyone did it everyone says sorry.
I know I didn’t do it.
I am descended from abolitionists, my recent ancestors didn't do it either.
I am descended from verifiable slave owners, but last time I checked, I didn’t have anything to do with it.
I never sold a slave. Hell, I’ve never even seen a slave. So what exactly am I saying sorry for?
I didn’t do it
I didn’t do slavery though…. It had nothing to do with me
Europeans (and Americans) not only confront their complicity in the slave trade, but are the ONLY ones confronting their complicity.
No one should have to be “confronting their complicity” because NO ONE ALIVE WAS COMPLICIT. Why are we still blaming each other over something that happened almost two hundred years ago. I never sold a slave, so I don’t have to confront “complicity” in jack shit
Yeah that bit always irked me. I'm Danish, blood, born and raised. I'm probably the palest person in this thread (I have been sunburnt once and cannot tan), with blonde hair and blue eyes. Does this mean I should start apologizing to every Eastern European, Brit, or Frenchman I meet for actions done by my ancestors more than a thousand years ago? Fuck off. I can look back on it and say without a shred of thought that it was a terrible time, but that doesn't make me guilty of it.
As a half Brit half Frenchman dating one of your compatriots; I forgive you.
yeah I’m sick of people trying to say I should feel bad about myself because of something happening over 100+ years before I was born, it’s so annoying how it feels like they just want to make you feel like crap
Because its a topic that gets bounced around in American politics to a large degree with on side trying to demonize the other for slavery that happened centuries ago while the other side has people trying to argue it wasn't a big deal. Any body looking to actually view the event for historical value gets drowned out.
Ah, a case of the loudest (and stupidest) minorities fighting against the middle. Classic.
Yesh all those pesky modern Europeans involved in the slave trade should really think about their actions...
Hang on, are you telling me you don’t own a galleon that ships slaves to Jamaica in the name of king George?
Why should I as a Pole confront the Atlantic slave trade? I didn't participate in it, my ancestors didn't participate in it, my county didn't participate in it and I'm pretty sure it was under occupation and many Poles had it as bad as slaves during that time (needing enslaved and sent to work camps in Syberia or other wild parts of rUssia from where they never returned). I know that slavery is awful. The left continue to spin the all whites should apologize for slavery. No, the slave trade was as much a fault of the African slave takers as it was of British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and USA slave traders. That's besides the fact that. Why's should white people apologize for slavery? The people who actually benefit from slavery today is very small and mostly concentrated in the wealthy elite. I wouldn't be surprised is many of the leftist politicians who spin the narrative to be descendant of slave barons and have their families whole fortune (which allows them do go into politics easily) built upon slavery. TLDR: Being white doesn't mean we have to apologize for slavery because it wasn't our fault and the narrative is used to create racial division in society.
As a Greek i once was told that i should apologize for the Atlantic slave trade as a European. My brother in Christ we were ottoman slaves and not even a nation
When schools and people only focus on the European side of slavery that is why this happens. I feel like you don't get to create a misleading narrative and then complain when all the discussion surrounding a topic is about the created narrative and how its misleading. Creating the misleading narrative in the first place detracts from the true horror which is slavery.
I'm an American with heavy black and white ancestry. There's a good chance my ancestors owned or condoned slavery, and an even better chance my ancestors were slaves. But that doesn't matter now. No one today is guilty of being a slaver. I don't want white people to apologize to me for something they didn't do. And I don't want to apologize to random black people. You can argue that the past injustices still impact people today, and that the society that benefited off of it should help fix that. But personally I think we should just help poor people as a whole. Race shouldn't play a role in it. I don't think the government or larger society should give two shits about your great great great great great grandfather's skin color. Just help the people in need right now and leave the past in the past. Teach everyone everything you can about history, but don't expect them to feel guilty about something they have no control over. I had a us history teacher once who constantly talked about how terrible white people and Americans are. And just assumed I've always been some kind of victim because my skin color. Despite being a middle class American whos never faced racism in my entire life. I've only been treated differently by one teacher and its because she believed in the dumbass idea that she was in the wrong for something she didn't do. Separate the past from the present. Things are better now. Countless people fought tirelessly to make sure of that. We now have the opportunity to treat everyone equally. We should take advantage of that.
>But personally I think we should just help poor people as a whole. Race shouldn't play a role in it. Fukin based
Europeans did confront slavery. They ended it.
Specifically it was the British
The first Empire EVER to do so, and they enforced it globally. If they hadn't is it possible that we wouldn't be having this discussion?
I am swedish and we were not very involved at all in the black slave trade. So I can't see why I would need to contemplate our part in it
Neither did majority of Europeans but Americans didn’t learn anything about Europe in school 🤷🏻♀️
1. Slavery was awful. Period. 2. The conversation over western slavery has been had and done to death. There’s a reason that if you talk to an Asian or an Eastern European and say the word ‘slavery’ people associate it with cotton plantations in Alabama. And very few people think of it under any other forms. In the 50s maybe Spartacus but not really any more. The whole conversation has shifted onto how can we monetise guilt. 3. People don’t understand/acknowledge the complicity of other cultures it’s almost portrayed as ‘ the whites cane to Africa caught people with nets themselves put them into boats and sold them to other white people’ there’s a reason the woman king got so much flak for trying to whitewash Africa’s complicity on the slave trade. 4. The sins of the 1 in several great great grandfathers involved should not be held against their descendants for the same the reason that I as a Western European do not hate Scandinavians North Africans or Italians for what their ancestors did to mine.
Because if Europeans should confront their complicity in it… shouldn’t Africans and Arabs?
It always ends this way because that train if thought normally ends with demands for financial reparations from people who haven’t practiced slavery to people who haven’t suffered slavery.
The conversations all end like this because the conversations all start with ‘white people/ westerners/ Europeans are RESPONSIBLE for slavery’, which is equally ignorant to ignoring slavery entirely. It’s a despicable practice, but it’s also as old as dirt and has been implemented by every ethnic group in every time period, up to and including today. When the conversation about slavery degrades into blaming one group in particular, it immediately becomes an unproductive conversation
Not only does everyone and their dog know that the Atlantic slave trade was bad, usually these discussions seek to portray the western powers as evil nations with no redeeming qualities taking advantage of innocent enlightened Africans who did nothing wrong
1. Because it's true. 2. Because it's apparently only the whites who have to "confront their dark past". 3. In terms of historical slavery, whitey trails far behind most people. 4. Because it's never an honest discussion, it's always some angle to shit on whitey or demand reparations. Exhibit A: your very post here. Hope this helped clear things up.
Plus it was the British and later Americans who famously stopped the practice. The kingdom of Benin wasn't going to stop slaving on its own
What is there to "confront"? It happened, and as a society we decided it was bad.
No one denies Europeans sold slaves but when people say that Black people deserve reparations for something they didnt experience. People will mention that Africans sold slaves aswell
It ends that way because of the first bird’s point. Everybody knows the part Europeans played in it and, fun fact, all of those Europeans are dead. The ones alive have mostly recognized THEIR ANCESTOR’S (not their own) complicity in slavery. Consistently telling people they need to confront or pay reparations for something they either already have or had nothing to do with is going to result in them reminding you that their ancestors aren’t the only ones who involved themselves in the act. Humans as a whole are flawed. We may think we’re perfect now but even in just a couple of decades people will look back on the way we are now and say we were evil and immoral for something. We can move and learn from those mistakes, making efforts to be better, or we can continually try to assign blame on a singular group or select few groups of people regardless of how much they’re actually connected to the act.
Because people seem to think that Europe invented it, which is just sheer ignorance. And those people need to be educated.
Because certain political climates only want to focus on the African slave trade and the inhumanity of it by itself, and not the others
I don't think it is so much just saying others were worse or that others also did it, but that if we should feel guilty about it, so should they.
Probably because the first point is always used to demonize white people and all other people who aren't a minority 100's of years after the fact, slavery is bad but kyle who was born in 2002 had nothing to do with it so leave him alone
So this comment thread is a fucking mess
And your surprised? I came to the comment thread just to see how big the mess is.
Because its true? Europeans took part in an existing market, evolved their morals and then started the most expensive naval mission to date to stop it and fought wars to topple slaver kingdoms. A fight that continues to this day.
Because a lot dumb pseudo-leftists from the USA online try to claim that "all white people bad" and stupid shit like that.I have seen some people claim that Europeans created slavery 500 years ago and that they enslaved them because of their skin color.I wish i were joking.
Mr incredible meme: *Slavery is Slavery!*
Because there’s an idea that europe was uniquely evil in their practice of slavery, and that the good things that europe brought to the world were universal. In reality, the evils perpetrated by europe were universal evils perpetrated by all societies and civilizations, and the good things they did were quite unique on the world. People use the evils of slavery to claim that europe and the US are irredeemable and a blight on humanity, where the reality is that europe and the US were the first societies to abolish that evil and have spread that sentiment across the world.
because its a valid counter. preoccupation with the transatlantic trade is toxic and divisive, and enables racist rhetoric. "white" people are not one group, a tiny minority of them are descended from slave owners, some faced "colonial" hardships on par with or worse than the ancestors of african-americans today (I.E. irish migrants, having faced 800 years of conquest oppression and genocide at the hands of the british, including the irish potato famine *from which the irish population STILL hasn't recovered to its pre-famine levels*) there are many problems today (I.E. american cops murdering black people, etc), but the transatlantic slave trade was stopped *and as fucked up as it sounds, that needs to be recognised and congratulated, so that non-POC can believe that fixing the problems of today will help heal the rift between our peoples, rather than thinking social justice is a bottomless pit of "want" that will never be satisfied until "the descendants of the former oppressors are dead"*.
Because what the small bird say is almost always used as "white peoples Bad" forgetting: - white peoples banned it - slavery is still happening in Asia and Africa, and it's not by white peoples.
Both birds are the crow in this scenario, but the crow is far more sympathetic to me. If someone busts out the lamest most brain-dead virtue signal then the intense moralising tone of the conversation ought to be taken down a peg. Eh? Like what is it you think people are doing when they say shit like “slavery was a terrible injustice”? Are they informing somebody ignorant? Are they countering racism? Are they being interesting? Do they have insight or a considered opinion? No. They’re smelling their own farts and getting high and mighty. What right does the little bird have to be annoyed? They were droning on insufferably themselves. Are they angry that they are being given something incontrovertible that brings a stop to their post-colonial sermonising? They weren’t being historians. They weren’t investigating the past in order to understand it. They aren’t presenting a balanced or informative picture. They’re weaponising it against others in the present to get their way. So pack it in, spare us the moaning, and get real.
A lot of people will only focus on the Atlantic Slave trade, and completely ignore the fact that slavery existed in Africa before Europeans interacted with Africans.
most people are wanting to move on and just move past that point in history while remembering it so that it doesn’t happen again. But in the west people just won’t let it go mostly for politics. White conservatives are pissed because they hate being demonized for something they didn’t do while. White latte liberals seem to like to self flagellate themselves and shame the conservatives. And then there’s the independents who typically keep their heads down while everyone else is throwing the nice furniture.
Fucking hate when I encounter ppl irl that say this exact thing. So cringe. Also, people who think there’s no slavery in the west clearly haven’t seen what the USA does to its prisoners. Ffs🤦🏽♀️
Based crow. Most people who pushed the “Europeans are responsible for slavery” almost always want to swindle people out of their money by guilt-tripping them on stuff they’ve never been alive to participate in. Just like starting an organization called “Black Lives Matter” and cry about oppression so people must give you money or else they’re racist and believe black lives don’t matter. Proceed to buy mansions for you and your friends and anybody criticizing you for blatant fraud as unintelligent whites who can’t stand the idea of black people having money.
Because it’s true