Five Things They Don’t Tell You about Slavery

National Review ^ | September 4, 2019 | Rich Lowry

[Perseverando]

A sign commemorating the arrival of the first Africans is displayed at
Chesapeake Bay, in Hampton, Va., August 24, 2019. (Michael A. McCoy/Reuters)

It didn’t begin or end in the United States. The same people most obsessed with slavery seem to have little interest in the full scope of its history.

There has been an effort for decades now — although with new momentum lately, as exemplified by the New York Times’ 1619 project — to identify the United States and its founding with slavery.

To the extent that this campaign excavates uncomfortable truths about our history and underlines the central role of African Americans in our nation, it is welcome. But it is often intended to undermine the legitimacy of America itself by effacing what makes it distinctive and good.

Yes, slavery and racial prejudice were our great original sins. It would have been better if we had, like the British, been leaders against the slave trade and for abolition (the representation of slaveholders in Congress and the rise of King Cotton forestalled this). But we didn’t invent slavery, even in its race-based form.

Slavery didn’t make us unique, which is obvious if we consider its history in a little broader context. Critics of the American Founding don’t like to do this because it weakens their case and quickly brings them up against politically inconvenient facts that they’d prefer to pass over in silence.

Let’s dwell, then, on a few things they don’t tell us about slavery. None of these are secrets or are hard to find, but they are usually left out or minimized, since they don’t involve self-criticism and, worse, they entail a critical look at societies or cultures that the Left tends to favor vis-à-vis the West.

[Verginius Rufus]

Narvaez led a large expedition to Florida. Eventually Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Esteban, and two Spaniards were the only survivors (and they spent several years as slaves to Indians in Texas). I suspect Esteban was not the only slave among those who went to Florida initially with Narvaez.

I saw Henry Louis Gates on TV once talking about Esteban in glowing terms as if he had been the leader of the expedition.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Interesting side note. Mexico declared slavery illegal in 1829, yet 45 years later, slavers were still going North to raid Indian villages in the US for captives to sell in Mexico.

[elbook]

that

blacks owned other blacks in america

indians owned blacks

Black in africa captured black to trade to white men

arabs enslaved far move blacks than ‘whitemen’ ever did

slavery still exists today in certain parts of the world

democrats were the ones who supported slavery and still think of blacks as being owned by them

[Bonemaker]

[Eagles6]

Some of the largest slaveholders in the South were free blacks.

[Bonemaker]

[lizma2]

bkmk

[Uncle Sham]

Slavery in America, if one objectively looks at it from a historical perspective, is the BEST thing that has ever happened to the black race. It placed them at the table of the modern world and has given their descendants the opportunity to achieve equal status with the other races. How, when, and why this happened as it did no longer matters. We all have to live in TODAY’S world and focusing on that is how one stays afloat. That some choose to dwell on the past is their problem and is totally non productive to society as a whole.

[daniel1212]

Thank you.