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The Legacy Of Slavery - White Guilt or White Pride?

Guy White - 11/14/2007

One of most common myths that people are forced to repeat in the Left’s never-ending quest to humiliate whites at the altar of egalitarianism and multiculturalism is the idea that whites should feel guilty about their legacy of slavery.

According to the politically correct theory that the “Darker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice”, minorities are never to blame for any of their troubles, and whites are the source of all things that are wrong with the world. Actions by whites, even those that have taken place a century and a half ago, are somehow to blame for the flaws of the American blacks today, and all whites must be held responsible only because of the color of their skin.

Many people correctly cite that all the world's nations, and especially the Africans, owned slaves. What most people forget is that whites were the first people to eliminate slavery, not only by abolishing it in their own societies, but by forcing the rest of the world to abandon the practice.

Arabs, who kidnapped and enslaved blacks long before Europeans did, had legalized slavery until the 1980s in two countries – Sudan and Mauritania. Even Egypt had lawful slavery until the 1960s. To this day, the Arabic word for blacks and for slaves is the same – 'abd'.

Blacks themselves engaged in slavery and slave trade. The vast majority of blacks taken to Europe and the New World were not enslaved by whites, but rather by their fellow blacks. Nor can whites be held responsible for black-on-black enslavement, as it began long before whites began buying slaves. Blacks were selling slaves to each other, as well as to the Arabs. Even the main hero of Amistad, upon winning his freedom, went back to Africa and became a slave-trader.

Today, Africans claim that slave trade devastated the continent. Were it true, they themselves would be to blame. But the claim is false. Indeed, it was slave trade that built an empire in West Africa.

The only reason slavery ended is the realization by whites that slavery is immoral. If the slave market existed today, we can be sure that blacks participate in slave-ownership and slave trade, as they do when they can - such as forced labor in African gold mines and the kidnapping of children who are turned into child-soldiers for African militias.

Back in the United States, the Human Rights Watch published “No Escape” that described slavery, including rape and other severe abuse, in prisons. The majority of slaves are white and the vast majority of slave-owners are black.

Blacks and others do not feel guilty enslaving people, especially those who belong to other races. Only whites do.

For white people, the legacy of slavery is not starting the practice, but ending it. It should be the source of pride, not guilt.