Check out this excellent opinion piece by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., about the widespread responsibility for the massive, centuries-long African slave trade.
Gates emphasizes that Africans were the primary foot-soldiers who captured and marched slaves to the European-controlled forts and factories on the coast. This is an important point, but my only concern is that many people will use this as an excuse to dismiss the historical culpability of Europeans and Americans (including Latin Americans). I have found that many of my students seem willing to dismiss that culpability with the argument that "if Africans enslaved fellow Africans, it's not the fault of white guys." Yes, Africans share the blame, but in this short article, Gates didn't have the space to talk about the great diversity of Africa, a vast continent with hundreds of peoples and cultures. We can no more expect a kind of racial solidarity from 15th-19th century Africa than we do from, say, 16th century Europe. David Brion Davis put this well in an article published years ago, refuting the old canard that Jews were somehow primarily responsible for the slave trade: Davis stresses that people from dozens of nations, ethnicities, religions, and cultures profited from and condoned slavery and the slave trade. There's plenty of blame to go around. Just because "they did it too" that shouldn't detract from the atrocious crime of slavery and the ongoing effort to find some way to ameliorate its ongoing legacy.
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