Why do African Americans believe Africans just "allowed" slaves to be taken???

[water]

So you think Africans just stood by when the Europeans came and offered up 20 million slaves to the "New World"?

Isn't that the beef some of you have?

I know that shit is NOT taught in your schools but at least try to find out the truth before you take the European version as truth........

 

[DAYNE]

Actually I read in the book that they trade us in for simple shit like cigarette's etc.

 

[water]

Actually I read in "the book" that they trade us in for simple shit like cigarette's etc.

I also read some shit in "the book" that blacks are inferior to whites.........

Does that make it true?




Anyway read this thread about the tobacco part and catch up.......

Role of Alcohol & Tobacco in Slavery even in 2007
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=157102

 

[gameboy]

it kills me is when you hold a conversation with some cac loving brotha or sista, & they make a comment like "well you know that africans were actively involved in the slave trade too",,, (as if they want to ease the blame on white people)

 

[Makkonnen]

some africans sold slaves

so fuckin what?

is that supposed to make it okay? the only people who would bring shit like that up are either ignorant or racist

 

[Mask]

guess their entitled to form an opinion off of what was told as "His-Story" over whats it the truth,

 

[(0_0)..l.. finger]

it kills me is when you hold a conversation with some cac loving brotha or sista, & they make a comment like "well you know that africans were actively involved in the slave trade too",,, (as if they want to ease the blame on white people)

I FEEL YOU...BUT THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THAT AFRICANS DID TRADE US NOT KNOWING THAT WE WOULD BE TREATED SO BADLY AS SLAVE.....YOU KNOW THAT THEY HAD SLAVE IN AFRICA TOO RIGHT?....BUT IT WASN'T THE SAME...IF YOU WAS A SLAVE IN AFRICA, YOU WOULD BE FREE AFTER 7 YEARS.....

 

[rahra816]

To be honest i dont think we trying to ease the blame on them europeans....i just find it hard to believe that as many slaves that were taken....didnt no body see nothing...


which leads me to believe them africans sold some of us...i mean like dayum didnt nobody ride on them all these boats showing up snatching niccas in your home land

and didnt no body do anything ...so I was like them africans must have sold us out rather it be for cig or shiney pieces of silver ...whatever bottom line i got to thinking like shyt they sold jesus out why not us....so its not a far fetched notion

 

[water]

To be honest i dont think we trying to ease the blame on them europeans....i just find it hard to believe that as many slaves that were taken....didnt no body see nothing...


which leads me to believe them africans sold some of us...i mean like dayum didnt nobody ride on them all these boats showing up snatching niccas in your home land

and didnt no body do anything ...so I was like them africans must have sold us out rather it be for cig or shiney pieces of silver ...whatever bottom line i got to thinking like shyt they sold jesus out why not us....so its not a far fetched notion

You notice that your opinions of events are based on what you believe without doing any research?

How can you come to a conclusion without the facts?

This is how we continue to be deceived.



Our information about history has been colonized to demoralize you.........

 

[Rukus]

Not that all Africans allowed it to happen. But their were some that worked with the Europeans to capture other africas. How do you think they were able to navigate through the jungles. They had to have guides that knew the terrain.

And if they were lucky enough to find an African who would trade that service for weapons to use against a rival tribe, better yet lead them to the rival tribe for enslavement. What tribal chief wouldn't help.

Its a known fact that it was some Africans that did help. Just like it were some Jewish people that helped Hitler in his quest.

And I've studied the works of Dr John Henrick Clarke and Dr Sulayman Nyang (professor of African studies @ Howard university)

 

[Majestic Lion]

Post the facts stating otherwise.

 

[curry_stain]

any other documentaries about this subject ?

 

[Blu Diablo]

Some Africans did, others didn't, but to hold a narrow view point on either accomplishes nothing.

 

[water]

Not that all Africans allowed it to happen. But their were some that worked with the Europeans to capture other africas. How do you think they were able to navigate through the jungles. They had to have guides that knew the terrain.

And if they were lucky enough to find an African who would trade that service for weapons to use against a rival tribe, better yet lead them to the rival tribe for enslavement. What tribal chief wouldn't help.

Its a known fact that it was some Africans that did help. Just like it were some Jewish people that helped Hitler in his quest.

And I've studied the works of Dr John Henrick Clarke and Dr Sulayman Nyang (professor of African studies @ Howard university)

And part of the equation that is left out is "under what conditions"

Under what conditions were Africans forced/coerced to participate?

 

[Rythm]

I FEEL YOU...BUT THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THAT AFRICANS DID TRADE US NOT KNOWING THAT WE WOULD BE TREATED SO BADLY AS SLAVE.....YOU KNOW THAT THEY HAD SLAVE IN AFRICA TOO RIGHT?....BUT IT WASN'T THE SAME...IF YOU WAS A SLAVE IN AFRICA, YOU WOULD BE FREE AFTER 7 YEARS.....

Exactly, once they found out what was really going on, and that blacks were never coming back, they fought against it.

My Ashanti friends till this day argue about the fact that they never trusted the whites, and tried to keep the other west Africans from dealing with them devils.

 

[rNubb]

Many folks like to toss around the notion that race is a social construct and that there is only one race-the human race.

They choose to ignore that racial characteristics were used to direct violent, terror and exploitation upon specific members of the human race.

Many of these same folks are quick to associate African participation in the enslavement of their fellow black African.

But their association often ignores that black Africans were the exclusive victims of this system of slavery. And that white Europeans were the overwhelming benefactors of the systematic enslavement of black Africans.

Racial identity may be illogical and irrational but racial identity often is indicative of a specific legacy and association.

Whites, brown Arabs and black African all participated in the system of slavery. Each group had their own motives. Whites gained (black) man power, brown Arabs acquired the black man's land and resources and black Africans postponed the enslavement of their own black tribe.

Each group adopted a mindset that permitted the violence, terror and exploitation.

Each group taught their own people that black Africans were subjected to this system of slavery because they were less than human, less intelligent, immoral, indecent and undeserving of humanity.

Many people in each of these 3 groups still cling to their irrational justifications that the descendents of these black Africans are still less than and lacking.

Many of us have internalized these irrational justifications too.

 

[nimrod-x]

The fact is that the Caucasian simply exploited something we already set in motion.
We had Domestic slavery- They turned it into Chattel slavery.
We traded with them, on the condition that the slave be given the option to be released from his contract after 7 years. They lied and reneged.

 

[~WS~]

HOLD UP NOW.

I am one of these people who happens to believe that some blacks cooperated with whites to get slaves in trade for western goods/technology.

I think this is common sense, since it would be easier to negotiate with someone at the head of a power structure to get slaves from an enemy tribe rather than fight that tribe yourself on his turf and risk bloodshed of your own men.

To think that they went in an fought tooth and nail for every slave they got is foolish.

 

[HALO2]

Believe what you want to believe...you'll have to, because none of us were there.

 

[water]

Post the facts stating otherwise.

I already started up top:

Role of Alcohol & Tobacco in Slavery even in 2007
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=157102



The portuguese first came as explorers and traders.

They built trading posts.


these were later converted to slave trading posts.


Elmina Castle is one example of this, simple article breaks it down:

http://www.blackhistorysociety.ca/Elmina.htm


Today, Elmina Castle is a tourist attraction and World Heritage Monument in Cape Coast, Ghana. This hasn’t always been the case. Looking at the castle from the outside, nothing can ever prepare the unsuspecting visitor or tourist emotionally to hear about the tales of horror and atrocities that went on beyond those walls.

The Portuguese built the castle in 1482, originally established as a trading post for goods bartered for local gold and valuable gem. However, as the demand for slaves increased in the Americas and Caribbean, the castle became strategic in the perpetuation of this abhorrent human cargo trade. The storerooms of the castle were converted into dungeons, and the ownership of the castle changed hands several times, eventually ending up being seized by the British in 1872. By this time, slavery had been abolished. The British didn't use Elmina to house slaves; they used Cape Coast Castle for that.

Elmina Castle, known then as the slave castle, is one of over twenty castles built along the shoreline of the Gold Coast (now known as Ghana). The Gold Coast was one of the richest markets for slave traders during the peak of the slave trade.


Hundreds of thousands of captives passed through the dungeons of Elmina Castle, and were shipped off, like commodities into the Americas and Caribbean against their wishes. This illicit human trade carried on for close to 300 years.

Slaves were captured through civil wars, and out-and-out attacks on villages. In some cases, social deviants were alleged to have been sold into slavery. Other times also, slaves were simply captured by slave hunters, like Kunta Kinte was in the Gambia.

They were shackled and made to march gruelling journeys, which could last hundreds of miles at times. It could be days or weeks before the slaves reached Elmina Castle and other castles and forts along the coast. Half of all captives did not even make it.

Not knowing what awaited them on the slave ships, those who made it to the coast were held captives in the castle’s dungeons. They were subjected to all sorts of indignities, intimidation and torture. They were shackled in the damp and dark dungeons. It is said that up to three hundred captives were packed into each dungeon, without room to even lift an arm or move around. Food was scarce and disease was rampant.


The unsanitary conditions under which the captives lived were unbelievable. Without room to breathe properly in those dungeons, the captives had to defecate there. The sick were often not attended to, and many of them died while held captives there. Air quality wasn’t a priority. The stench in those dungeons must have been nauseating. Even today, the dungeons still reek.

A visit to Elmina leaves one with an eerie feeling of ghostly hallucinations. As the tour guide is talking, it is easy to visualize hundreds of captives in the dungeons, screaming out their agonies, just pleading to be returned home. But alas, we know that didn’t happen. Countless number of them died under these atrocious conditions. Those who survived the dungeons had to endure further indignities of being shackled together, tightly packed like cattle, on those slave ships. As we all know, when they died, they were simply tossed over-board into the sea, and their names were forgotten.

Throughout the slave trade period, at different times, thousands of captured slaves were chained to cannonballs at the castle, and made to stand in the blazing sun.

Women, when their capturers were not raping them, could be made to lift heavy cannonballs in the blistering sun as punishment.

Other so-called rebellious captives were either murdered outright, or placed in solitary confinement in an airtight, dark holding ‘facility’ in the courtyard, and could be left there to starve to death.




Yet, while all these atrocities were going on, the castle also served as a missionary sanctuary and housed a church.

The slave traders held church services there.


[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]Perhaps the most significant memory from Elmina Castle is ‘The Door of No Return’.

This was where hundreds of thousands of our ancestors passed during the slave trade era to awaiting slave ships to be transported across the Atlantic to the so-called New World. This is where the ancestors of many African descendants in the diaspora, namely in the Americas, Canada and the Caribbean, passed to their doom. Those who survived were introduced to racism, and forced to loose their African language, identity and culture. They had to assimilate to a new culture or bear the consequences of being punished. Remember Kunta Kinte in Alex Haley’s Roots? Look at what happened to him when he refused to respond to his assimilated name – Toby.

There is a plaque next to the condemned dungeon door at Elmina. It reads:
“In Everlasting Memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We, the living, vow to uphold this.”

This article avoided assigning blame to any particular party, for what happened during the slave trade era. It however recognizes the need to make sure that what happened, never happens again.
[/FONT]

 

[wutamess]

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

 

[KRAZIE01]

Exactly, once they found out what was really going on, and that blacks were never coming back, they fought against it.

My Ashanti friends till this day argue about the fact that they never trusted the whites, and tried to keep the other west Africans from dealing with them devils.

it takes a cracker to take a black mans good idea and flip it, molest it, and rape it into some fuck up and unfair situ.

So you think Africans just stood by when the Europeans came and offered up 20 million slaves to the "New World"?

Isn't that the beef some of you have?

I know that shit is NOT taught in your schools but at least try to find out the truth before you take the European version as truth........

our president is black and black history is coming up and you decide to pull this out the crack of your a$$?

what is His-story is history? remember and learn from it. now we write our story and piss them crackers off when PRESIDENT barack write his accomplishments in office in these peasy ass crackers books.

it started in the newspaper. in november

President-elect Barack Obama is wasting no time getting ready to take over the White House 76 days from today - with two wars raging and an economic crisis clogging his in-box.

Fresh off his historic triumph, he may quickly unveil the leaders of his transition team - all of whom have been working anonymously for weeks - and announce his White House chief of staff by week's end. A new treasury secretary may follow soon thereafter.

and here in jan

President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information.
Mr. Obama called the moves, which overturned two policies of his predecessor, "a clean break from business as usual." Coupled with Tuesday's Inaugural Address, which repudiated the Bush administration's decisions on everything from science policy to fighting terrorism, the actions were another sign of the new president's effort to emphasize an across-the-board shift in priorities, values and tone.

so pop bottles in the club, roll a j at the crib, and chill. and let our story rewrite the bastard his-story for real.

 

[sirwoodz]

the notion that white men came to africa with great big fish nets, cages, and rifles and just "stole" us, is a work of pure fiction.

white men would still be over there now trying to catch africans if that is how they did it.

the truth of the matter is that many of us were already SLAVES when white people hit the shores of africa, and we were used as currency and traded out for jewelry, art, liquor etc etc...

what i've personally found suspicious is the fact that several slave traders wrote memoirs (books) about their experiences on slave ships, and history acts as though these books simply do not exist. in these books they talk precisely about how they went about rounding up slaves - yet nobody seems to care.

 

[~WS~]

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

C/S

We have to take responsibility and not try to intellectually excuse ourselves from the evils of the past and present.

Slavery is the worst thing to have happened to Africa IMO but the fact that we had even the slightest hand in it makes it that much worse.

 

[Privy]

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

You have to be out of your fuckin head. America in 2009 is NOTHING like America in the 15th century, you piece of shit.

 

[The Dark Mind]

The fact is that Africans sold other Africans into slavery. Period.

It's amazing that people are still trying to twist this point in history around.

You can't. Africans were practicing slavery for thousands of years before Europeans even showed up.

What's worse is, almost two centuries after slavery is abolished by Europeans, Africans are still selling each other into slavery.

 

[water]

HOLD UP NOW.

I am one of these people who happens to believe that some blacks cooperated with whites to get slaves in trade for western goods/technology.

I think this is common sense, since it would be easier to negotiate with someone at the head of a power structure to get slaves from an enemy tribe rather than fight that tribe yourself on his turf and risk bloodshed of your own men.

To think that they went in an fought tooth and nail for every slave they got is foolish.

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

Continuing.........................



The Portuguese built the castle in 1482, originally established as a trading post for goods bartered for local gold and valuable gem. However, as the demand for slaves increased in the Americas and Caribbean, the castle became strategic in the perpetuation of this abhorrent human cargo trade. The storerooms of the castle were converted into dungeons, and the ownership of the castle changed hands several times, eventually ending up being seized by the British in 1872.



So :

as the demand for slaves increased in the Americas and Caribbean, the castle became strategic in the perpetuation of this abhorrent human cargo trade. The storerooms of the castle were converted into dungeons, and the ownership of the castle changed hands several times, eventually ending up being seized by the British in 1872.



Why did the demand for slaves increase:

In the words of Bartholemew de La Casas (dude who was a missionary & rode with Columbus):


There are two main ways in which those who have travelled to this part of the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth.

First, they have waged war on them: unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. Second, they have murdered anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance, or even of wishing to escape the torment to which they have subjected him.

This latter policy has been instrumental in suppressing the native leaders, and, indeed, given that the Spaniards normally spare only women and children, it has led to the annihilation of all adult males, whom they habitually subject to the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals.

All the many and infinitely varied ways that have been devised for oppressing these peoples can be seen to flow from one or other of these two diabolical and tyrannical policies.

The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.

They have set out to line their pockets with gold and to amass private fortunes as quickly as possible so that they can then assume a status quite at odds with that into which they were born.

Their insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds; the land is fertile and rich, the inhabitants simple, forbearing and submissive.

The Spaniards have shown not the slightest consideration for these people, treating them (and I speak from first-hand experience, having been there from the outset) not as brute animals - indeed, I would to God they had done and had shown them the consideration they afford their animals - so much as piles of dung in the middle of the road.

They have had as little concern for their souls as for their bodies, all the millions that have perished having gone to their deaths with no knowledge of God and without the benefit of the Sacraments. One fact in all this is widely known and beyond dispute, for even the tyrannical murderers themselves acknowledge the truth of it:
the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until they or their fellow-citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other manner of trials and tribulations.



http://www.wise.virginia.edu/history/wciv2/casas.html

 

[rNubb]

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

A couple of gun toting men come your famly reunion. They killed your grandparents, rape your aunts, cousins, sister and mother and murders your father and brothers.

The survivors are led off to the pacific northwest - Oregon. 9 months later, these men have received life insurance benefits for everyone they murdered. They are richer than your ever were. Plenty of land and resources.

Your mother gives birth to your little sister. Your sister give birth to your neice.

Were these little girls born in a better place than you?

 

[RBGrider]

Excellent post Baba!

 

[(0_0)..l.. finger]

The fact is that Africans sold other Africans into slavery. Period.

It's amazing that people are still trying to twist this point in history around.

You can't. Africans were practicing slavery for thousands of years before Europeans even showed up.

What's worse is, almost two centuries after slavery is abolished by Europeans, Africans are still selling each other into slavery.

 

[Spectrum]

get em Kaya.. cat's didn't realize this was more of a rhetorical question than anything...

And "slavery" has various forms.... the type of slavery practiced in the "new world" in the U.S. and other countries was not even remotely similar to what you saw in many societies in the past... Slavery is immoral in my opinion, regardless of the implementation, but there is a vast difference between an indentured servant type of situation and the mass murdering that occurred during the middle passage and beyond...people talk about the vileness of the Holocaust... it was deplorable, but it pails in comparison to what the Europeans did to Africans...

and this is not to disregard the role that some Africans played in the process..but there role neither created nor perpetrated this situation. It was one small piece of a large machine.

 

[The Dark Mind]

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

Origins
-----------
Slavery was practiced in Africa before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.[10] Slavery and the slave trade were an integral part of African societies and states which supplied the Arab world with slaves for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans.[11] The African slave trade provided a large number of slaves to Europeans and their African agents.[12][13]

The Atlantic slave trade is customarily divided into two eras, known as the First and Second Atlantic Systems.

The First Atlantic system was the trade of African slaves to, primarily, South American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires; it accounted for only slightly more than 3% of all Atlantic slave trade. It started (on a significant scale) in about 1502[14] and lasted until 1580, when Portugal was temporarily united with Spain. While the Portuguese traded slaves themselves, the Spanish empire relied on the asiento system, awarding merchants (mostly from other countries) the license to trade slaves to their colonies. During the first Atlantic system most of these traders were Portuguese, giving them a near-monopoly during the era, although some Dutch, English, Spanish and French traders also participated in the slave trade.[15] After the union, Portugal stayed formally autonomous, but was weakened, with its colonial empire being attacked by the Dutch and English.

The Second Atlantic system was the trade of African slaves by mostly English, Brazilian, French and Dutch traders. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies, Brazil and North America, as a number of European countries built up economically slave-dependent colonial empires in the New World. Amongst the pioneers of this system were Francis Drake and John Hawkins[citation needed].

Only slightly more than 3 percent of the slaves exported were traded between 1450 and 1600, 16% in the 17th century. More than half of them were exported in the 18th century, the remaining 28.5% in the 19th century.[16]

 

[TheFuser]

fantastic info Kaya

 

[KRAZIE01]

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

GTFOH with that black righteous shit! I'm sure there were some that tried to prevent slavery but I can't help but apply a common sense approach. If they're doing that shit now while the rest of the world is past that then why on earth wouldn't they have done it back then?

We shoulder SOME (not all or even most) of the blame also. It's not to easen the burden, it's for us to start taking responsibility also.

Besides, slavery gort your black ass over here so it wasn't all bad (for you).

Look at it like this, if you had a chance for your kids to come to the greatest country in the world would you? Cubans risk their lives on a 90 mile trip on a blow up raft just on a maybe..

you right....except we had a longer trip just like the civil war, and the battle of big horn, and all that BS. it is the same as africa, even america attempted to commit genocide on the original owners of this land. look it up! they give them tax free lands and rights to casino's what a trade!! europeans were the reject and criminals of the east. it took people with common sense to come in and organize it into the great nation that it is today.

remember this,

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

unfortunately, africa just hasn't had that group of people that can come up with sense due to greed.

So you're telling me that a group of people that hord all their resources for themselves, commit genocide against their own people and always at war in the 2000's wouldn't sell the people they dispise in the 1400's?

you right but africa is and has always been in the blindness of greed. america too but smart enough to take it from other instead of ourselves.......in major cases of course. damn tax garnishments!!!!

 

[Spectrum]

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

Origins
-----------
Slavery was practiced in Africa before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.[10] Slavery and the slave trade were an integral part of African societies and states which supplied the Arab world with slaves for

See my post above. The type of "slavery" practiced in Africa amongst Africans, was not even remotely comparable to what was perpetrated by the Europeans on Africans....not even remotely. The term is being used too broadly.