The Role of Africans in Slavery Remains Controversial
One of the most frequently asked questions from visitors to the Freedom Center is “who was responsible for the slave trade?”
The answer — often little understood or even acknowledged — is that Africans themselves were the enslavers of millions.
This unsettling fact causes great unease, especially among those who continue to advocate the payment of reparations to the descendants of slaves by those nations and companies that were involved in buying and selling human beings between the 16th and mid-19th centuries. If reparations are somehow to be paid, should not African nations be given part of the bill?
The subject of reparations rises to prominence every so often and then recedes, largely because most neutral observers believe that even if the principle of reparations is morally right and economically just, the matter of who is to make the payments (and who is to receive them) is insurmountably complex.
Such a conundrum is the subject of a new article by respected Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Gates observes that talk of reparations often breaks down in the face of the facts of African complicity in the slave trade. The involvement was largely driven by tribal warfare among various peoples living primarily along the western edge of the African continent, most notably Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As Gates poses the dilemma, if the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands — the chief beneficiaries of chattel slavery, and therefore the countries that owe reparations — ought to be liable for their involvement in chattel slavery, then shouldn’t also the African nations where enslavement actually began also be held responsible?
Gates says until this question is settled, reparations are not likely to be seriously considered.
What is your feeling about this issue? Should reparations be paid to the descendants of the enslaved? And should African nations also be held responsible?
Why don’t they move this to the union terminal? The freedom center is losing mass money. It also seems to stir up hatred. I wish they would just close it. It is stupid.
It makes sense when during a gun crime from an illegal possessed weapon, the person responsible for giving the gun to the suspect can be charged for a crime. I do believe in agreement that African nations should be held accountable for the actions of slavery. My questions then are what roles did they actually play? Where they promised something in return from those nations benefiting from the slaves? How do a reparations committee hold the African nations accountable and through what court of law? Look forward to hearing other comments.
Selah Bishop Sr.
I think reparations are simply the dream of lawyers hoping to cash in on a huge payday. The amount of money going to the descendants of slaves would be minimal at best. Better to have these nations that benefitted from human chattel pool funds to fight contemporary slavery in all its forms. Let us move beyond the “who did what to whom” argument, heal ourselves and work to end the practice. It is the only ethical thing to do.
Selah, African societies played an essential role in the transatlantic slave trade. Those societies were the ones which enslaved other Africans, through warfare or raids, and sold them to European and American traders. Without the African role, there would have been no slave trade.
As for what they were promised in return, each sale of slaves was negotiated, like any other business transaction. African traders were paid in foreign currency, or bartered for a wide range of goods, including guns, alcohol, and other manufactured goods and agricultural products.
There is no mechanism for holding nations today accountable for what they, or older societies from which they emerged, did in the past. Nor will there ever be financial accountability on the part of African nations for that continent’s role in the slave trade. Many African nations have already apologized for their roles, but they do not have the resources to compensate the descendants of the victims of the slave trade. On the contrary, European colonization deprived African nations of economic resources, while many of those descendants are, in fact, enjoy a standard of living substantially higher than most Africans enjoy today.