I was gonna ignore this until you went out of your way to post links defending your “Africans enslaved people too!” argument, and I couldn’t help but address this nonsense of an argument that already has been responded to over a thousand times to assuage their sense of guilt over the history of Transatlantic slave trade.
Before I get into addressing slavery, I just wanna say this: We don’t really care for white guilt. We don’t want your guilt. Nobody is asking for your guilt. What we want is for you to see and address the issues that affect us purely because of the social disadvantages that black people face. You just sitting there and feeling guilty does not in any way help challenge racism either. It is literally less than nothing. When you say this: “I never said racism was over, but blaming all white people for racism isn’t going to help anything.”, you are misinterpreting the goals of an ongoing civil rights battle, and it comes off as you attempting absolve yourself of any responsibility of challenging the racism in your society, including those that you can see happening in your day-to-day life. It comes off as “not my problem, I don’t like you bringing it up all the time”. And if that’s the case, then I can only say “You know what? Fine.” You’re free to do nothing about it. But don’t then turn around and complain to us over your guilt when shit starts happening to us, we start talking about it loudly enough to distract your routine decision of doing nothing about it. We don’t care. And we honestly don’t have the time for it.
Now back to the Transatlantic slave trade: Yes, many cultures across the planet have had slavery in one form or another. Yes, the continent of Africa had many kingdoms and societies which had slaves. And yes, many of those same kingdoms and societies sold slaves to Europeans, and profited out of them. No one is disputing this. But those who had the power, the influence, and the ability to sell slaves were the tribal rulers, chiefs, or even wealthy merchants of the regions the Europeans encountered. More often than not, people from enemy tribes who side lost in the tribal wars that occured were sold by those rulers to European men. The people that were sold by those chiefs were not considered as their people, but people from enemy tribes/nations. There was very little concept of even “blackness” as we now know it. They were not theirs, so they didn’t care what happened to them, and so, they were sold. As the demand for slaves increased from Europeans and Arabs, so too did the tribal wars, and of course, the selling of slaves. Slavery is inexcusable, and it is true that many African tribal leaders sold off slaves to Europeans, it is still a tip in the iceberg compared to the number of Africans that were forcibly migrated who were not already slaves before they were captured. The “Africans had slaves too” argument is nothing more than a verbal sleight-of-hand: a misdirection designed to take away attention from the elephant in the room: That the transatlantic slave trade was unique in its brutality, that it was industrial inhumanity on an unprecedented scale, and that the repercussions of the slave trade are still being felt today.
The United States, in particular, was created on the principles of equality “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, yet saw fit to exempt African slaves from experiencing these principles for nearly 90 years, and lagged behind even the empire which it broke way from when it came to slaves. Even as the country was made prosperous of their labor, slaves “graduated” from being property to second-class citizens, and because the offspring of the slavery: the system of white supremacy endured and continues to endure, it took over a century of segregation, disenfranchisement and violence directed towards blacks for the United States government to even begin to properly address the disparity of rights enjoyed by whites and blacks. This is not something that is easily swept under the rug with “Whoops, my bad. Didn’t know that stuff actually upset you guys. Let bygones be bygones?”, and it is not something to easily presume that because a lot more people now find slavery to be morally wrong, that somehow race relations is not a serious ongoing issue. This is dangerously naive nonsense, and it is really rich for you to stand on your pedestal and tell blacks to get over it.
To make the argument that “Africans were enslaving people too” is to misrepresent the history and the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade. Any attempt to make a moral equivalence between the slavery that occured in the African continent with the Transatlantic slave trade is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty, at the very least. It is tantamount to historical revisionism and even denialism. It diminishes and willfully ignores the suffering of 12-15 million Africans torn from their societies, their homes, their tribes and their families, never to see them again (which at least in Africa, there was a much, much greater chance of being reunited) over the course of four centuries: a trade which had permananetly affected the cultural and ethnic makeup of an entire continent - and why is it done? Because it’s uncomfortable to directly adress the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Nobody argues that the Holocaust was just “Europeans killing each other”, even though the six million Jews that died as a result of the genocide programs by Nazi Germany were Europeans. Nobody (or at least, no one sensible and with their head screwed on) uses the argument that before the settlers arrived in the Americas “The Indians were already killing each other”, because it willfully ignores that Native Americans had different tribes, different nations, and different histories, and does not address that a series of violent campaigns with the settlers led to the devastation of the Native American population. But it’s okay this argument used, and considered acceptable to use, with respect to the Transatlantic slave trade, because you know, the entire continent of Africa must have a monolithic culture and history, and not have independent nations and tribes of anything.
Next, Black Lives Matter: Tell me, why is bringing to attention that the relationship between black people and law enforcement creates violent confrontations in which members of the former end up dead, spreading hate? Why does taking action against the fatal instances of police brutality, most of which won’t even result in the perpetrating officer(s) being charged, and marching, the actions of a hate group? Why does this movement warrant a categorization reserved for groups such as the KKK and the NOI?
Yes, there is a worthwhile discussion to be had about the tactics that Black Lives Matter use in their protests, and if you want to have that discussion, it can happen, but to label them a hate group is just dishonest. They don’t target a specific group of people and harass them - which is what hate groups do. Their decentralised organization has the potential to become detrimental, particularly when it comes to the message put forth, and how much it deviates from the stances of the movement ‘founders’ - but the aims of Black Lives Matter are very simple:
To take action against the systemic police brutality towards the black community.
To take action against the disproportionate number of black people in prison, and the resulting damage mass incarceration of African-Americans has on their communities.
Which of the aims above indicate that they are spreading hate? If anyone told you any different from the aims that I listed above, then you’ve been misinformed. It’s worth pointing out, however, that BLM are not in the business of making people feel comfortable. And it’s up to you and other obervers what they do about that feeling of discomfort: You can either overreact or adopt retrograde stances, or you use it to decide on challenging institutional racism.
Maybe for you this is all tumblr arguments, but for some of us, this is real shit. Having said that, if you genuinely care about intellectual integrity, or the cause of equality, then I would strongly suggest that you actually learn extensively about the matters discussed before speaking on them.
Oh, and here, a reading list that you use as a good starting point:
Crommunist: “But black people had slaves too!”
Want To Help End Systemic Racism? First Drop The White Guilt
The New Yorker - The Matter Of Black Lives
The Social And Moral Cost Of Mass Incarceration In African-American Communities (Roberts, 2004)
The Atlantic: A Conversation About Black Lives Matter And Bernie Sanders
I Was A Civil Rights Leader In The 1960s. But It’s Hard For Me To Get Behind Black Lives Matter