Comments on Brightwork Article on Where Did Slaves Come From

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• This article contains comments from the article where did slaves come from and where did slaves go.

Introduction

These comments are in response to the article Where Did Slaves Come From and Where Did They Go?.

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Comment #1: From Lala24

Whoever wrote this thank you so much!!! This needs to be spoken about! I’m not white but In this time in America where everyone is up in arms i am doing research on such topics to open my mind to some truth I can find. So thank you.

Sure thing.

A big part of tearing down white-based societies is to provide a false history of slavery. Providing a fake history — these individuals — who have no interest in what is true will seek retribution on those societies. As long as slavery is selectively observed and selectively critiqued — that is only slavery if whites are involved, a false history can be created. It is becoming more apparent that a considerable portion of the population does not follow a rational model — and they don’t hold out that what is true is essential.

Comment #2: Zinnor

The situation is sickening but not surprising. The love of money is the root of all evil (Tosefta Menahot end.)

Comment #3: John Bryer

Where do you get the idea, “most blacks think they know from? I don’t think you even know mot Blacks. Most of us don’t even think about African or slavery because it’s the past (slavery) and it’s not our culture (Africa).

We don’t know any blacks, and no one here does. However, we read what black authors write, and that is where our understanding of black views comes from.

The idea that blacks don’t bring up slavery is inaccurate, and blacks constantly bring up slavery. We have written that slavery has become a fetish for blacks and has Blaming Black Problems on Slavery Become as Fetish for Blacks.

But our point is that blacks seem to think they are experts in slavery because they are black rather than studying the topic. When we discuss slavery with blacks, we find that the average knowledge level is deficient. Among other races, the intermediate knowledge level is also low but not as common as for blacks (on average). However, blacks think they know more than other groups on the topic. But knowledge does not come from the race. And it comes from either first-hand experience or the study of the topic.

For example, you said that blacks don’t think about slavery because it’s not part of their culture. This implies that blacks historically did not practice slavery. But they did, and in Africa, they continue to do so. Slavery was widely practiced in Africa when the Europeans first interacted with Africans. The Africans that European slave traders purchased were purchased from either African tribes or Arabs.

Furthermore, the more colonial influence an African country had, the less slavery it has today. This is because Africans are not particularly opposed to slavery, only to being slaves themselves. The article Why Do the Most European Influenced Societies Influence African Countries Have the Least Slavery explains in detail.

The motivation to end slavery came from white societies. African societies fought against white influence to maintain slavery.

Comment #4: John Bryer

One, I hate the term Black and African-American. All of these terms were placed over us, we weren’t given an opportunity to vote on them.
I made a duel statement about slavery of the (Past) and (African culture). We don’t think about (slavery of the past) or (African culture). Because the culture of Africa is not ours, you have to live in a place and experience the culture for it to be a part of you.  Most of us are too busy to concern ourselves with the slavery of the past, we’re taught as if we had not beginning, except for slavery!

We don’t see the problem with black as a term. Whites are called white, and everyone seems ok with that. African American was an attempt to be more sensitive, but that changed back to black.

Review the article links we sent because we cover the area, and we find that blacks do bring up slavery quite often. There is no other group in the US that brings up the topic as often as blacks. But the slavery they discuss is a type of fantasy slavery, and it is brought up to score points. The slavery history that allows blacks to achieve the most points is where they create a fantasy that blacks never enslaved anyone or that all slaves in human history were black.

Then when we bring up the details of the universality of slavery before the abolitionist movement that began in England in 1780, the conversation tends to become muddled, or the subject is changed. If you go to the Gulf States today, they still have slavery. Arab/Muslim societies still support slavery today. However, this is very low-profile slavery because the enslavers are not white. Slavery is common in India today, but no one notices that it’s Indians owning Indians, so it is not considered an issue. The only way to get enough focus on the issue of slavery is if the enslaved people are black. Again, when the enslaved person is not black, they lose all interest in discussing the topic. And you don’t encounter black authors that write about non-black slavery except for just a few, including Thomas Sowell and Henry Louis Gates.

Comment #5: John Bryer

Black means nothing: it’s not a race or a nationality, it has no culture whatsoever! Everything associated with the word is negative, and people treat those who have brown skin, (not Black) as criminals, even those who are not! Most people who are considered Black or not even black, they’re various colors of brown. As for African-American, “By referring to black people as “African-American,” we are effectively reminding them that they should not feel too at home here (American) because, really, they are only half American. Hyphenated designations may be fine to apply to people who strongly identify with another culture, but they are offensive and insulting when applied to people who do not and who actually have greater claim to being fully “American” than do most white Americans.” – May 20, 2013 Why “African-American” is a Patronizing, Even Racist Term

This comment seems to move into a different area than what we discussed.

Comment #6

Good Evening, I have been reading some of your articles as I wanted to gain more perspectives on Slavery not just from my own Black people, but also from others. I find your articles informative and an interesting outside view on these topics. But the one question I had was this. Are you insinuating in your article which speaks of the corruption in Liberia and Black owned cites, that Blacks are unable to take care of themselves?

Black societies operate at a different and lower level than both white societies and other societies as well. An enormous divergence between black and white societies was evident when white societies first came into contact with black or African societies. This same thing occurred when Europeans encountered Japan, which led to the Meiji restoration. After being more or fewer hermits, the Japanese internalized this difference and changed their society entirely to account for this.

Corruption is as you have said is a prominent issue in many Black countries. Leaders who care little for the good of their own people and more for their own profit cause many countries to be unable to develop properly.

That is correct. Africa has the poorest outcomes of all regions no matter what you measure, be it public health, wealth, educational outcomes, etc.. Take a look at the bottom of the rankings of the corruption index according to Transparency International. African countries are very prominently at the bottom.

However, in your conclusion your statement may come across more biased than educated. When one infers that the only countries that have done well are those where Europeans have been, does this not imply the decade old stereotype that Blacks are incapable of managing themselves and need to be policed?

Bias means that a person is putting forward a view that is not reflective of reality and is rigged towards what the person wants to be true. When I describe the outcomes of black-managed societies, those reflect reality. If my statements and evidence reflect reality, they cannot be biased. They can be considered not to be politically correct. But political correctness is not accurate. Political correctness is the corrupting of thinking and modifying statements to meet a politically acceptable predetermined common understanding. Typically when I am accused of having a bias, it ends up being that I am simply not providing conclusions that are consistent with PC. If I were concerned with being PC, I would change everything I write just to make everyone feel good. Men are the same as women, and sex is just a social construct; dwarfs can be excellent basketball players, etc…

The corruption in some leaders does not represent the entirety of the whole black race. What one leader has done does not mean it would have been the same with another.

That is true, but black-run societies can be averaged or taken as a whole. If we look at white or European societies, there is a significant difference between Western Europe and Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe has far higher levels of corruption and operates at a lower level of society. But they are both white, right? Well, there are still significant differences. I rank Western Europe and its satellites at the top, and Eastern Europe below them. The number of countries that are what I call Tier 1 societies have a tiny fraction of the world’s population living in them, but the world wants to live there.

Corruption has never not been an accepted way of behaving in Africa. The degree to which corruption is reduced is to the degree to which Africans adopt European ways of being. African states are marked by high degrees of factionalism or tribalism, something that, with the immigration of non-whites to white countries, is now increasing dramatically in those countries.

Under a tribal system, whoever is elected to the office then hands over the benefits to their tribe. This is precisely what occurred under Jacob Zuma in South Africa. His tribe is the Zulu, and he corruptly handed over the benefits to the Zulus and cut out other tribes. This same thing has drastically impacted Lebanon. You don’t need a racial tribe to be factional or tribal. Factionalism was a significant concern of the US founding fathers, which is why they did not want political parties to form, which I cover in the article How in the Federalist Papers James Madison Argued Against Democracy in Favor of a Republic.

Why is it that when one speaks of Europeans take for example the case of your article on the myth of European wealth primarily coming from Africa, you will point out the nuances that yes while many European countries profited from colonialism many did not, as well as how African-American Slavery may have been a boost for America but did not build the country (I know that the industrial revolution and world wars were a major turning point for the U.S).

There is an important point you are making here, but I can’t entirely make it out.

Statements that European wealth is based upon colonialism did not hold up once I analyzed European countries and their colonial activity level. So that needs to be acknowledged. The people that make this claim do not know enough to make it. And they did invest the time to consider whether their hypothesis matches reality.

I don’t think that slavery boosted the US. The Southern whites developed a lazy non-industrious, poorly educated way of being. A significant reason for this was that slavery devalued the work for middle and lower-class whites. The South still has some of these behaviors to this day. Furthermore, slavery increased income inequality in the Antebellum South. Slavery is essentially the design of Latin America. These societies do not make progress and contribute little to intellectual property development. I am opposed to slavery on moral grounds and the grounds of the outcome. Slave societies have poorer outcomes than where wages are paid. Slavery also was a big part of why Rome fell to tribes/barbarians that it quickly defended itself against in the past.

You mentioned the case of South Africa where many qualified whites are not hired for jobs but rather given to Blacks that the employer is connected to, you speak of that and yet do not mirror where that idea comes from?

I guess not, but the idea came from the ANC. The ANC favors tribal affiliation over competence, which is the norm in African societies but is also very prevalent in Latin America. Merit-based hiring is also primarily a European modality, but it means breaking from tribalism. You can’t have both merit-based hiring and tribalism. The conflict with each other. Due to its racial diversity, the US is now becoming less about merit and more about gender-identity politics. More than any other group, blacks in the US push for non-merit-based hiring. So even blacks that are many generations separated from Africa seem to move back to a tribal modality. Blacks in the US speak of representation and equity — but they don’t talk of competence.

You speak easily of the many different shades to European history and talk about their accomplishments but on the other hand do not offer the same opinion when you speak of Blacks. I enjoy reading from scholars who aren’t being biased and in their subtext intend to belittle and degrade other people based on ethnocentrism rather than have their research be fleshed out and nuanced, paying homage and respecting everyone and still pointing the faults.

By any measure, black societies accomplished the least. Why is that biased to say? There is not a single black person who has won a technical Nobel Prize. Nearly all the Nobel Prizes won by blacks are for Peace, which is not a Nobel Prize for intellectual accomplishment. Why is that biased to observe that? I am not in charge of giving out Nobel Prizes, and I am observing what occurs. Black authors constantly provide a false impression that black societies have good outcomes and are just held back. However, African societies did not have good consequences before encountering whites. How were black societies held back from inventing things like the wheel if whites did not even interact with these societies at that time?

Frankly I need more than Blacks are simply just unable to control themselves unless there is the presence of a European as reasoning. As a black person I like to be taught and not degraded, and I believe the sentiment is the same for everyone regardless of race. If that was not your intent then please pardon my presumptuousness.

It is not great to hear that your race/culture is not in the vanguard, and I appreciate you being reasonable in how you bring across your concern. I can also tell that you are intelligent. However, nothing I have written is inaccurate. It is not appealing to hear, but what I am writing is true. The problem is that I am competing with black authors that are essentially lying to you and creating a false history that is not about being accurate. Blacks often live in a bubble where they call things they don’t like or acknowledgments of white accomplishments as racism or white supremacy. However, groups are not the same. It is not true that the world has received much of its inspiration from Papua New Guinea or Indonesia. All races and cultures are not the same. Any blacks who think so can always move to Saudi Arabia or Micronesia to test the hypothesis that everywhere is the same.

If you look at one of the greatest historians, he is black. His name is Thomas Sowell. However, he is rejected by many blacks because he explains that slavery, for example, has been a human universal and does not simply break down upon white and black lines. That is terrible history of putting historical slavery in a primarily racial context.

The things that black societies should do is emulate Western European societies — but with less resource consumption. The danger of whites is that they create so much technology that the technology destroys the environment. Paradoxically, without whites, there would not be climate change. Whites are guilty of making and using technology without considering the long-term implications. So you have accused me of bias, but I am acknowledging that whites are the reason why there may not be many humans on the planet within just a few decades. Why would I do that if I was speaking from merely a biased perspective? I am not in some white global “Elk’s Club.” I don’t meet whites and then look both ways and then have a secret handshake as with the famous Eddie Murphy skit where he dons whiteface and realizes the secret world that opens up as soon as there aren’t blacks around. I actually like being around few people of any color. But I write articles about things that I think are generally covered very badly and are inaccurate.

Once we isolate the environmental problems from white inventions, white societies develop superior systems and methods. If it’s true, then it’s right to acknowledge it, and then to learn from it. All that has to be done is to have them adopted. Look at how rare freedom of speech is in African societies. It should be adopted. There are lots of things that can be adopted. I would say take the Japanese approach and be conscious of the differences and adopted those that are better, not deny there is a difference. The Japanese did not stay in denial but quickly adopted white methods and technologies.

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