E. P. Thompson said something to the effect that in order to understand history, we must first liberate it from the condescension of posterity. No such rescue is attempted in Netflix' Stamped from the Beginning: a Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It is 90, aggrieved minutes of presentist hauteur, directed at an undifferentiated race, existing in a semi-mythical past. Where, of where, to begin?
As I argued in part one, identity politics is a counter-insurgency strategy of the ruling class, it's prevarication, obscurantism. It is racism and fascism in disguise, the same old ideas which defeated the workers' movement a century ago carefully repackaged and presented anew. The point is to sow divisions among the working class so as to keep us ever at war amongst ourselves. Stamped serves this propagandistic purpose.
In the US, race is not only a prophylactic, it has become a epistemic synonym for oppression. Race has ceased merely to identify a particular set of somatic characteristics and/or the different social relations which can be constructed upon them, but has been inscribed with an almost preternatural power to configure aspects of society beyond that which can readily be assumed to fall within its ambit. Just about all now agree that race is a reification, but a new class of racemongers, like the fascists of old, insist that race is a transhistorical phenomenon that has an agency in human affairs greater than any other. Not a few believe that capitalism devolved from racial antagonism, was created by it, and could not survive without the social reproduction of these antipathies. One can only wonder how slavery can exist without racism--and nobody is audacious enough to argue that it can't, not yet anyway--then how is it you can't have capitalism without it. This is the kind of theoretical conundrum which doesn't get broached in Stamped, let alone resolved.
Race has become the unassailable answer to all questions. One need only claim race as a cause or factor in this situation or that for the assertion to be autonomically accepted, no matter how absurd it might be. Race is the mother of all discursive ammunition as it shuts down further interrogation immediately and with finality. Here in America, race is the great brain de-activator, an ideation interdictor. Once race is invoked debate is supposed to end, and those who has the temerity to insinuate that there are injustices, even those suffered by Blacks, which are not attributable to race, have got a fight on their hands.
Race is no longer a social categorization among others, but an alternative ecosystem of criticism with differing standards, rules and presuppositions, and one with an ontology all its own. It penetrates and frames all political discourse, relevant or not, and often mediates it, picking winners and losers. Race is now the lingua franca of difference, it is to social critique what numbers are to mathematics.
And Again like the original critical race theorists, the fascists, this new race-uber-alles lobby defend their position fiercely, not infrequently issuing febrile, sanctimonious denunciations of naysayers. Race has become, as Bruce S. Hall sagely observed, "a moral ordering device."
However, as Hall also notes, it doesn't work as an investigative tool. From his A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960:
"My visit to Tin Aicha exposed for me the problem of trying to draw
too close a connection between a particular local history of relations
between groups of people over generations and the articulation of racial
arguments...
"At the beginning of my research I had hoped to use microhistories of
relations between particular groups of people over time as a way of tracing
the emergence of racial ideas and racial identities, especially among
former slaves and their former masters. But the problem that the Tin
Aicha case highlights is that racial arguments are, almost by definition,
abstractions that do not adhere well to real places and real people. Race
works instead as an argument about the world, as a moral ordering
device, even at times as a way of conjuring a utopian vision; it does not
work nearly as well in organizing the details of individual relationships. It
is precisely the abstractness of race that makes it so effective because it is
not easily susceptible to empirical disproof, and it can coexist with social
relations that belie the premises of different racial arguments."
Brilliant. I will argue that race is a moral disordering device, a Trojan horse, one with great political utility for the ruling class. It is not susceptible to empirical disproof, easy or otherwise, which is what makes it so effective.
Race fetishists, racebots as I like to call them, such as appear in Stamped, will certainly not agree with Hall. Their position is that race is an argument about the world that works, it is a moral ordering device, that it is not abstract, that it is an effective tool for historical inquiry, and its premises are not belied but confirmed by existing social relations. By dissecting Stamped, I hope to convince you that race is effect, not cause, epiphenomena. Underlying all the endless, shrill bloviation we get about race here in the US are concrete economic relationships to the means of production, conflicting class interests. Change them, I insist, and you will change race relations, and everything else. Absent such changes, we are all just pissing up a rope.
These capital-protective, racial meta-narratives can only be sustained by deception, be they lies or omissions, which brings me back to Stamped. Let's start with the title, Stamped from the beginning: a Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.
It is not a history of racist ideas, definitive or otherwise. In fact, it barely engages with that history. It studiously avoids the topic. Why? Because an honest look at that development, however cursory, undermines the racial argument which the documentary exists to vet. The facts don't support the POV, so they have to be suppressed. In its place we have a sequence of anecdotes about the suffering of oppressed Blacks. It makes an moist appeal for sympathy, but offers no discussion of the sequence of events which led to that misery.
Did you know that the father of American chattel slavery was a Black slave owner named Anthony Johnson? He didn't get mentioned in Stamped. Prior to his legal manipulations all the unfree in the British colonies were indentured servants. The history of racist ideas in the US follows a number of important court cases, slave revolts and some momentous events unfolding in the metropole. There is virtually no meaningful discussion of any of this in Stamped.
[This is too broad a subject to address here, but if you are interested in the history of racist ideas in the colonies read Theodore W. Allen's Invention of the White Race.]
What is meant by Stamped? And by Stamped from the Beginning? One of the contentious issues of critical race theory is whether racism arose here in the colonies as I suggested above, or whether White racist ideas predate the discovery of the New World and came to these shores on the Mayflower. Aside from the implication--if that it be--that Blacks were racialized not over the course of time and in response to specific historical stimuli, but "from the beginning." This "definitive history" raises the issue, offers an unsatisfactory explanation, and quickly drops the subject never to return to it.
What of stamped? This could be taken literally as I believe both the RAC and the VOC branded their slaves as slave ships were sometimes raided and slaves stolen. More likely it is meant figuratively, which brings us back to the unaddressed origin of racism question.
A definitive history of racist ideas?
I am old, curmudgeonly and jaded, and little surprises me, however, aside from Ibram X. Kendi, upon whose work this documentary is based, all the interviewees are Black women. Racism is multifarious. It's a relationship between/among two or more groups, but not in Stamped. This is Jim Snow racism writ large. Certainly no meaningful discussion of the topic of race in America can exclude Whites or Blacks. It's absurd. This is precisely the kind of racial effrontery which breeds contempt and engenders racial antagonism, which is precisely what racism is supposed to do. Racism is binary, it's about estrangement.
As I wrote elsewhere [Pardon the caps. I used them in a review of an article I critiqued line by line in order to differentiate the article's text and my commentary. I'm too lazy to rewrite it.]:
"WHAT CRT OBSCURES, IS THAT RACISM IS BINARY. UNILATERAL RACISM WON'T WORK FOR LONG. RACISM REQUIRES BLACK IDIOTS, LIKE MY FRIEND IN THE BATHROOM, AS MUCH AS IT DOES WHITE ONES. A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF AMERICAN BLACKS BELIEVE THAT WHITE AMERICANS ARE THOROUGHLY MINDFUCKED. BRAVO! I AGREE. NOW TAKE THE NEXT STEP. WHAT NOBODY SEEMS TO NOTICE IS THE OTHER 800LB GORILLA IN THE ROOM. TAKE OFF THE BLINDERS, DO THE MATH--IT TAKES TWO TO RACEBOT. MANY--NOT NEARLY ALL--BLACKS HAVE ALL KINDS OF RACIST IDEAS IN THEIR HEADS, AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW THAT THEN OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE NOT HAD THE WHITE EXPERIENCE IN THIS JIM SNOW RACEDOM. THIS IS NOT TO BLAME BLACKS (OR WHITES), THOSE HARBORING RACIST IDEAS ARE ALSO VICTIMS AS THIS PARTICULAR KIND OF IDEATIONAL INTERFERENCE IS NOT ONLY PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNHEALTHY, BUT HINDERS POLITICAL EFFORTS TO COMBAT RACISM. FOR OVER A CENTURY IN AMERICA, AS IS WELL DOCUMENTED, THE MINDSET OF THE GHETTO, PARTICULARLY ITS INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION, HAS BEEN CAREFULLY MONITORED AND INFLUENCED BY THE STATE INTELLIGENCE/ENFORCEMENT APPARATUS. THERE IS COPIOUS EVIDENCE OF JUST HOW MUCH IMPORTANCE THE BUREAU AND OTHER AGENCIES PLACED ON KNOWING AND DIRECTING BLACK OPINION. THE GHETTO HAS BEEN SUBJECTED TO MINDFUCKING TO SAME DEGREE AS WHITE AMERICA. BLACKS AND WHITES ARE THUS MADE PARTNERS IN THEIR OWN SUBJUGATION. BOTH ARE REQUIRED TO KEEP RACISM ALIVE. MY PARENTS TOLD ME WHEN I WAS A CHILD TO STAY AWAY FROM BLACKS BECAUSE THEY HATED ME BECAUSE I'M WHITE. I SUFFER TO REPORT THAT THEY WERE CORRECT. THERE ARE MANY, MANY LOVELY, BEAUTIFUL, BLACK, NON-RACIST PEOPLE WHO DO NOT WISH ANYBODY ANY HARM, BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF BLACKS--PLENTY--WHO DO HATE WHITE PEOPLE. THAT IS THE REALITY HERE IN THE RACEWORLD. THUS, IT WAS GOOD PARENTAL ADVICE I GOT IN MUCH THE SAME WAY THEIR TELLING ME TO LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE ROAD WAS GOOD PARENTAL ADVICE...MY FATHER WAS A RACIST AND MY MOTHER REALLY WASN'T, BUT BOTH CAUTIONED ME TO BE WARY OF BLACKS...
"IN THE MIDDLE OF MOST CITIES IN WHITE MAJORITY AMERICA THERE IS THE EXCEPTION TO EVERY NORM, WHERE THE SAFETY AND BELONGING WE FELT DISAPPEARED: THE GHETTO; A DANGEROUS NEIGHBORHOOD FULL OF DANGEROUS PEOPLE WHERE, IF YOU ARE WHITE, YOU ARE WARNED NEVER, EVER, TO GO. FOR WHITE AMERICA, THE GHETTO IS [NO PUN INTENDED] LIKE A BLACK HOLE. IT'S A MYSTERIOUS OTHERWORLD WHICH WE WHITES ONLY GLIMPSED IN TV CLIPS WHEN SOME BLACKS MADE THE NEWS BY GETTING ARRESTED. WE WOULD CRANE OUR NECKS TO SEE WHAT THIS HIDDEN REALM ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE. IT WAS TO US LIKE A PIECE OF A FOREIGN LAND ON OUR SOIL. IT'S INHABITANTS WERE DOMESTIC ALIENS, FAMILIAR YET ALWAYS OMINOUS AND THREATENING. THE GATES OF THE GHETTO WERE WHERE AMERICA, THE AMERICA WE WHITES KNEW, ENDED AND THE SHADOWY, PRECARIOUS NETHERWORLD BEGAN. WHERE I GREW UP, AN INTERSTATE PASSED OVER THE GHETTO AND AT NIGHT PARTICULARLY YOU COULD LOOK DOWN INTO THAT STRANGE LAND AND SEE MILLERS ABOUT ON THE STREETS. SOMEHOW, EVEN FROM THE SECURITY OF A SPEEDING CAR ON THE INTERSTATE, THERE WAS A DISQUIETING ASPECT TO IT. IT'S CREEPY TO GET A VIEW OF THE PLACE WHERE WE WOULD BE IN GRAVE DANGER SHOULD WE HAVE THE MISFORTUNE TO FIND OURSELVES. IT DIDN'T MATTER THAT THE PEOPLE BEING OBSERVED WERE NOT DOING ANYTHING OBJECTIONABLE, IT STILL REINFORCED THAT THIS IS A PLACE YOU DIDN'T WANT TO GO AND PEOPLE YOU NEEDED TO FEAR.
"AS SHOULD BE OBVIOUS, THE WHITE AMERICAN PERCEPTION OF THE BLACK AMERICA WAS/IS MORE THAN A LITTLE DISTORTED. NEVERTHELESS, THE DANGER WAS REAL, MY PARENTS WERE RIGHT--NO DOUBT IT WAS A GOOD HEALTH AND WELLNESS STRATEGY TO KEEP MY WHITE ASS OUT OF THE GHETTO. THIS RACIAL ATMOSPHERE CAN DO NOTHING BUT GENERATE FEAR, LOATHING, RESENTMENT IN THE WHITE COMMUNITY. THE GHETTO HAS EVERY RIGHT TO FEEL AGGRIEVED, NEVERTHELESS, IT CHANGES NOTHING POLITICALLY. WHEN THE PANTHERS WERE TOTING WEAPONS AROUND OAKLAND AND MONITORING POLICE ACTIVITY--ALL PRAISES, ALL GLORY TO THEM!--THEY WERE OPPOSED BY SOME LIBERAL WHITES AS WELL AS CONSERVATIVE ONES. WHY? FEAR OF BEING SHOT--IT'S REALLY VISCERAL STUFF. THE PROSPECT OF IMMINENT DEATH TRUMPS IDEOLOGY EVERY TIME.
"THE GHETTO IS WHAT THREATENS, INTERNALLY AT LEAST, THE PEACE OF AMERICA, HOWEVER OVERSTATED THE THREAT. BLACKS ARE NOT JUST A SOURCE OF CHEAP LABOR, THE EXISTENCE OF A HYPER-EXPLOITED, EMBITTERED, EMBATTLED, RACIALLY DEFINED AND DEGRADED UNDERCLASS, ONE WHICH CAN BE EASILY BROUGHT TO VIOLENCE BY PROVOCATION, AFFRIGHTS WHITE AMERICA. TO A POLITICALLY SIGNIFICANT DEGREE, THE ANGRY BLACK AMERICAN IS THE BOGEYMAN, WHO, TRADITIONALLY AT LEAST, HAS MADE THOSE PEOPLE INVARIABLY IDENTIFIED BY CRT AS WHITE SUPREMACISTS, OF WHICH A SMALL NUMBER ACTUALLY ARE, PASSIVELY ENDORSE RACIAL REPRESSION WHO OTHERWISE WOULD NOT. THE BLACK COMMUNITY HAS A TRADITION SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS 'THE TALK,' IN WHICH THE YOUTH ARE CAUTIONED TO BE WARY OF THE POLICE. THE WHITE COUNTERPART TALK IS TO BE WARY OF BLACKS. THE GHETTO SERVES TO KEEP WHITES SUPPORTING THE POLICE STATE, WHICH IN TURN FURTHER ANTAGONIZES BLACKS--AS IT SHOULD--WHICH FURTHER ALARMS THE WHITE COMMUNITY. IN PROTECTING THE WHITE COMMUNITY FROM THE PUTATIVE BLACK MENACE, THE STATE PERPETUATES RACISM AND WITH IT UPHOLDS PRIVATE PROPERTY, CAPITALISM, LOWER WAGES ETC. MOREOVER, AS WHITES UNDERWRITE POLICING, MASS INCARCERATION ETC., THE PRESENCE OF THE POTENTIALLY COMBUSTIBLE GHETTO IN THE MIDST OF AMERICA CHASTENS THE WHITE WORKING CLASS INTO GREATER POLITICAL COMPLIANCE AND DOCILITY. THERE CERTAINLY IS MORE TO RACISM THAN JUST THIS, CERTAINLY!, BUT THE AMERICAN RACESTATE IS PREDICATED UPON THE MUTUAL HOSTILITY OF THE BLACK WORKING CLASS AND THE WHITE AS A BINARY METHOD OF CLASS SUPPRESSION. THE RECIPROCAL ANTIPATHY OF REDNECK EUROPAEUS AND HOMEBOY AFRICANUS IS THE CORNERSTONE OF AMERICAN POLITY.
"IN OTHER WORDS, IF EVERY BLACK IN THE COUNTRY LEFT OVERNIGHT, IT WOULD CREATE A HUGE PROBLEM FOR THE PLUTOES AS THE GHETTO SERVES AS A BRAKE ON THE WHITE WORKING CLASS. THE GREATEST WEAPON--SHORT OF DIRECT STATE VIOLENCE--THEY HAVE WOULD BE LOST. THERE WOULD BE AN ENORMOUS POLITICAL VACUUM, A POTENTIALLY DESTABILIZING ONE. THE RULING CLASS UNDERSTANDS THIS, HENCE IDENTITY POLITICS, CRITICAL RACE THEORY ETC. CRT DOESN'T COMBAT RACISM, WHATEVER ITS RACEBOTS MAY BELIEVE, IT IS THE LASTEST POLITICAL STRATAGEM FOR ITS PRESERVATION. THE RULING CLASS NEED BLACKS TO ABET EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE MUCH LARGER WHITE WORKING CLASS. ABSOLUTELY THERE IS MORE UTILITY TO THE GHETTO FOR THE RULING CLASS THAN JUST THIS, BUT THE OTHERS RECEIVE THE ATTENTION THEY DESERVE, AND THIS ONE SEEMS TO BE INVISIBLE...
"AMERICA HAS BEEN A SUPERPOWER FOR ALMOST A CENTURY NOW. WE AMERICANS LIVE IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST. AMERICA IS A RACE-DEFINED, RACE-DELINEATED, RACE-CONSTITUTED, RACE-REGULATED, RACE-MOORED, RACE-FETISHIST POLITY. RACISM IS THE PRINCIPAL TOOL WITH WHICH RULING CLASS MAINTAINS A FAVORABLE BALANCE OF ANTAGONISTIC FORCES AND, THUS, ITS HEGEMONY...THIS IS CERTAINLY ONE OF THE REASONS CRT AND ITS ARMY OF RACEBOTS HAVE BEEN FED SO FAT BY THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION...CRT MOATS THE HOUSE OF CAPITAL. IT MAY BE HYPERBOLE TO SAY THAT THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST SYSTEM DEPENDS UPON THE MUTUAL HOSTILITY OF WHITE- AND BLACK-AMERICA, BUT MAYBE NOT. UNDENIABLY, IT IS A MATTER OF NO SMALL IMPORTANCE AS IS EVIDENCED BY THE OUTLANDISH SUMS THE PLUTOES HAVE SPENT ON IT. THE GREATEST DANGER IS THAT REDNECK AND HOMEBOY WILL STOP HATING EACH OTHER. THIS WOULD BE A DISASTER FOR AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL, MAYBE THE END....SHOULD BILLY JO BOB HATFIELD AND D'AV'ON'TA' MCCOY BRING THEIR FEUD TO AN END AND DECIDE TO TURN THEIR ATTENTION TO THEIR REAL ENEMIES, THE WORLD MAY SHAKE EVEN MORE THAN IT DID IN OCTOBER, 1917. THUS BLACK MUST BE MADE TO HATE WHITE, AND WHITE MUST BE MADE TO HATE BLACK...WHERE REDNECK INTERACTS WITH HOMEBOY ON THE STREETS OF TULSA, ROCHESTER, BAKERSFIELD AND FLYNT, IT IS GROUND ZERO IN THE GLOBAL CLASS WAR. EXAGGERATION MAYBE, BUT MAYBE NOT.
Being categorized as White in America has been in almost every case better than being Black, nevertheless, Whiteness, White supremacy, has been used to control the White working class (more on this later) just as the presence of a Black underclass has. Black scholar, Otis Madison, observed, "“The purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people, not Black people. For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient.” Madison is to be credited for overcoming, to the extent that he does, the parochialism (I don't say sociopathy) which all too often corrupts discussion of this topic, but, in the end, he too misses the point--half of it. Racism controls the behavior of both groups and configures how they interact with one another.
Du Bois talked about the public and psychological wage that White supremacy bestowed upon Whites, but like Madison he missed the half of it. The public and psychological wage that Blacks receive is the myth of Black innocence. The TAST is always depicted in America as a predatory act committed by White people against an overwhelmed Black population which universally resisted. Nothing could be further from the truth, nevertheless, this squalid racist deception is universally accepted and has the effect of cowing White people with guilt and bequeathing to Blacks a sense of moral superiority, precisely the kind of crass condescension and recrimination which abound in Stamped. "Your race is fully to blame for my subjugation. My race had nothing to do with it. Your ancestors kidnapped and enslaved mine. My race is innocent. It's all your fault." In this mythology, not only do the Black slave-catchers/sellers get historical immunity, perverse and obscene as that is, they are now rehabilitated as victims. This fiction invests Blacks with a sense of moral entitlement, which makes resolving racial conflict all the more difficult. An honest accounting of this history might make Whites and Blacks see each other differently, but that will never come from the US government because that is precisely what the racial narrative of American history is designed to avert.
The racialization of Blacks is meaningless absent the racialization of some other, in this case Whites. Racism is a binary phenomenon, it cannot fulfill its repressive function otherwise. Both races need to play their part in order for the system to reproduce itself in perpetuity. As racism defines what it means to be Black in American society, it simultaneously defines what it means to be White. And the White identity is as foundational to the hegemony of capital as is the Black.
I remember when I was young watching a news item on television about a marriage between a Black man and a White woman. The presenter described it as a "mixed marriage," which perplexed me. There were three generations in the Catholic, working class home I grew up in and everybody was fully Irish except me, who is half, and my father who was Catholic but not Irish. I have been an atheist for 50 years, but in that time, place and church a mixed marriage unambiguously meant a Catholic and a non-Catholic, it had nothing to do with race. It had already been stated that the man was Catholic, and the woman had an identifiably Irish maiden name, and in my youthful mind I was having trouble processing that there could be an such a thing as an Irish woman who was not Catholic. I didn't get it. An elder sister recognized my confusion and explained that the woman was Catholic, and what the presenter meant by "mixed" was race, the bride was White and the groom Black.
I was much too young to grasp its full significance, but this was my introduction to the hegemonic paradigm which governs American life and politics. This was my first inkling that I was a racialized subject; that I was "White," and there were do and don'ts associated with that classification; that I was expected to think and act in a manner consonant with being "White." And, most importantly, Whiteness existed in opposition to Blackness. The one delineated the other. There was all too much racism in my home, but I didn't then realize that it was an outgrowth of a fully developed, carefully maintained, nationwide program of racial differentiation. I was to learn that in America, race is how the ruling class rules.
Netflix owes its subscribers an apology. This documentary is racist in both form and content. Imagine what would be said of a documentary on racism in which only White males appeared. Race is not the private property, the bailiwick, of Black people. Race and racism affect everybody in the United States. White supremacy has advantaged a layer of the Black community and disadvantaged sections of the White community, whatever the case, all are touched by racism. Race is not a moral but an economic ordering device which affects neither Blacks nor Whites uniformly. To believe it does is to fundamentally misunderstand it.
As I learned long ago, if you expect the victims of exploitation to act in a more ethical way than their victimizers, you are going to be disappointed. A study of world history provides countless examples. Currently, the victims of the Holocaust are genociding Palestinians. Auschwitz didn't ennoble the Jews, and racism doesn't turn its victims into anti-racists. It doesn't make them wiser, as is amply demonstrated by Stamped.
Some years ago I made an effort to familiarize myself with the literature of critical race theory, which is not a rewarding task. Just about all of it is appallingly bad, embarrassingly bad. Geraldine Heng leads the pack here, she wrote the worst book I've ever read, so I had to review it. Given that I've criticized CRT mercilessly, decency demands that I acknowledge that among their number are a few whose level of scholarship is high. While I disagree with much in David Goldberg's The Racial State, it's well researched and the case well presented, which is quite rare in CRT. At the top of the list is Khiara Bridges' Critical Race Theory, a Primer. It's the best exposition of the theory and goals of CRT I've read. She thinks and writes clearly. She's an intelligent observer, and in the field of critical race theory, hopelessly outnumbered.
The documentary begins with the question "What is wrong with Black people?" Ibram X. Kendi, the lone male in the show, relates a fictitious story told by them American senator, Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederate States of America, which locates Black racial inferiority in biblical times, hence, stamped from the beginning. However, given that the account related by Davis is apocryphal, it could not have been widely known or believed. Thus it doesn't resolve the origin question, which is central to the race versus class debate. That a racist ideology developed around Black, slave-based commodity production is nowhere in dispute. Opening the show with such an incendiary question may be good stagecraft, but it has no probative value.
Kendi informs that W. European slave markets were predominantly dealing in Slavs. True, what he doesn't mention is that Slavs and other White slaves were sold in Africa as well. In fact, overall more Europeans were enslaved in Africa than Africans in Europe, incomparably more. Moreover, the largest buildings ever built in Africa in premodern times, larger than any pyramid, was erected by White slave labor, who were overseen by the Black Guards who were renown for their cruelty.
Jennifer L. Morgan tells us that that slavery is a piece of human history and has been as long as states and empires have been in existence. However, "something different happened in 1444 when...the first large cargo of captives were captured by the Portuguese in Senegambia and brought were brought to Portugal to be sold. That for me...is the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST)."
Several problems.
She says slavery is a piece of human history etc., but never can bring herself to say that slavery is an ancient African tradition. It predates contact with Arabs and well predates contact with Europeans. She dances around it, but never does say it. A tiny fraction of the slaves shipped the New World were kidnapped by Whites. The ancestors of just about every single slave-descended African in the Americas was kidnapped, yoked, marched to the coast and sold by a Black African. Listening to her, one could be forgiven for inferring that African slavery began with the Portuguese.
A footnote: at least some of those unfortunate individuals captured by the Portuguese were returned in exchange for other slaves and a trade deal was struck between the Africans and Portuguese. It was cemented with intermarriages as was the custom on both continents at the time.
She says that something different happened in 1444. That is false. Nothing changed. There has been a millennia-old, global history of an increase in demand for slaves for large-scale construction projects, when new lands were conquered and/or put under cultivation etc. It doesn't start then. Nothing different happened in 1444.
The transportation of Senegambian slaves to Lisbon may be the beginning of the TAST to her, but not in reality. We can forgive her abuse of the prefix "trans," but the TAST begins in Ireland. But, apparently, that doesn't count for some reason.
Everybody has prejudices, Morgan's are not hard to discern.
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