I have heard many, many times about how African-Americans now want restitution for the fact that their ancestors were slaves in America, and truth to tell, I’m getting a little tired of it.
Why should anybody expect payment for their hardship? Does anybody even know where the word “Slave” came from? Well, I’m here to tell you.
The word “Slave” actually started out as “Slav”, i.e. a reference to the experience of millions of (white) Slavish people who endured centuries of slavery at the hands of African Muslims. Why aren’t their descendants getting restitution?
Yet the Slavish aren’t the only whites who spent centuries in captivity: Europeans of various backgrounds were enslaved by African Muslims as well.
All of this is heavily documented in such neglected pieces of scholarship as Robert Davis’s Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 and Paul Baepler’s White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives.
African-Americans were slaves here from 1620-1865, 245 years. The “Slavs” were slaves to African-Muslims for 300 years. In my opinion they deserve restitution more than the African-American slaves, yet not one of their descendants ever asked for it, why?
I’ll tell you why, they haven’t asked for it because their descendants know that 1. they themselves have never been slaves, and 2. the people who enslaved their ancestors are long dead, so who would they collect from?
These aren’t the only groups who were slaves, every nationality, or race has been enslaved at one time or another and in West Africa, they are still to this day enslaving people.
I’d say that there’s a lesson there for the African-American descendants of slavery. Remember, you have never been a slave, and the people who enslaved your ancestors are long dead, so please get over yourselves.
I truly believe the reason this country has so many problems is because people can’t seem to let anything go.
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