Black National Anthem

[Dill]

(07-05-2020, 08:40 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: So, we should reject and refute an article stocked with direct quotes from what many would consider to be reliable sources?  One is a historian, author, and former Mayor of Ghana, one quote was cited from a Surgeon on a slave ship, another from a Nigerian who is a Professor of African Studies, one from an actual person who was held in slavery, another from an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, one from a Nigerian author that was part of an essay posted in the Wall Street Journal, African-American economist and Social Theorist Thomas Sowell. and even a citation from The Washington Post?

I completely understand the need to debunk disinformation and items falsely portrayed as factual.  However, this particular piece appears to be legitimately resourced and written to shed light upon historical activities based on the opinions and accounts of people who have expanded knowledge of, and or actual participation in the actual slave trade process.

These are excellent questions, and the right ones, I think.  We ought to also pay attention to how some of these quotes were originally used and then how they are deployed in your article, and to what purpose, in contemporary US debates, and what those debates are really about.

Regarding those debates, I think there is an effort by some scholars to make Americans more aware of the legacy of slavery, of the work that went into building US wealth without compensation, and the lasting international effects of that institution over 200 years as some Americans have tried to integrate blacks as equal citizens and others have tried to block this. This has been recently complicated by a demand for "reparations," setting off a round of questions about who owes what to whom, and how/whether that could ever be determined. People who currently compose "the other side" in these debates cast it as a kind of blame game, claiming whites are blamed for slavery as if it were alone their creation and responsibility. US whites may indeed feel "blamed," though most have never owned slaves. Hence the market for articles "proving" what no one has ever doubted, that slavery has existed everywhere from the beginning of human societies. Africans "sold their own," and the like. Some don't stop at "white folks are only as bad as everyone else," but go on to claim a special role for "whites" in ending slavery, an extra effort to manage any charge of guilt.

What I find remarkable about the above article is how some of the sources are used in it.

Equiano, for example, a former slave who published his autobiography in 1789 THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO, OR GUSTAVUS VASSA, THE AFRICAN. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF (1789). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm.

This was published in part for its help UK debates over the slave trade. It was largely forgotten for almost 200 years, then "rediscovered" by US scholars studying the history of slavery. There has been some controversy over whether O was actaully born in Africa, but most accept his compelling account as authentic, if it if was cribbed from other slave accounts (I don't believe it was, but do want to mention the controversy).

For present purposes, I'll mention Chapter II, in which he describes his capture in Africa as a child, by other Africans, and first held as a well-treated African slave by an African family, then sold to Europeans and eventually brought to Virginia. This is the part that might interest you, as it contrasts the institution of African slavery with that of British/American, in an economy based upon capitalism. O goes from being treated like a family member to being a piece of stock, a commodity chained and stacked below deck, in ship where every cubic foot is subject to a cost benefit analysis. (For those who love military history, check the naval engagement between British and French ships in Chapter IV--EXCELLENT description; O was a powder monkey on the HMS Namur.)

It is odd to deploy this work in support of arguments that slavery has "existed everywhere in all ages" when its primary interest for scholars has been precisely its picture of the difference between the Atlantic slave trade and others kinds.

The assistant professor of Ethnic Studies, Tony Hazard, is most noted for his work on "anti-racism," how that emerged in the US and played a role in US politics and foreign policy, as "liberals" began expunging racist terms and evaluations and language from government policy, setting off a backlash from social conservatives in the '40s and '50s. Citing his mention of African slavery in a TED talk conveys the impression that was the point of the talk, when if fact it was only a passing mention of what every historian already knows. Hazard's goal was to help non-historians understand how the European market for slaves altered African societies, making some suddenly economically dependent upon slavery for their livelihood, forcing neighbors to enter the slave trade and war for slaves to get weapons to defend themselves, depleting their own countries of manpower and destabilizing their economies anew when they collapsed after the trade was outlawed.  Like O., his work contrasts the difference between slave trade practiced under capitalism, and other varieties which have existed.

Duke, the Nigerian politician, is directly participating in African (Nigerian) debates about the legacy of the slave trade. He doesn't want contemporary Nigerians blaming Europeans for political dysfunction in Nigeria today. Same for the Ghanese historian Amarteifio and his claim Africans' role in the slave trade may be "deliberately forgotten" there, but is that a claim about the US?  Sowell is a black economist who has for decades to support conservative economic policies; I do not disrespect his work, but I do say it is often slanted towards winning culture war debates with "the Left."

So my complaint about the article is not that "this guy is no expert" or "that fact is wrong," but its slant, its selection of information to feed the impression that somewhere people are arguing that "Whites are all to blame," while the "truth" is that Africans were no angels and white Christians turn out to be anti-slavery heroes. ("9 milion in Africa still in bondage"! "It took Christianity" )