A Review of Netflix' Hideous "Stamped from the beginning: a Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," Part Sixteen, Rewriting History

 Netflix 16

About 53 minutes in, an unidentified commentator says "Black abolitionists are the first abolitionists. No one needed to tell enslaved people that 'You know what slavery is wrong, this is bad for you.' Like they knew that and they were the first to speak out about their grievances...and about the evils of this institution."

Presumably she's referring strictly to the US/colonies, and I don't know who the first abolitionists were. According to Google AI, and a tiny bit of research beyond that, Francis Daniel Pastorius, Benjamin Lay and Benjamin Rush, all White, were the first to organize protests and write abolitionist tracts.

Whatever the case may be, directionally this glib comment is dead wrong. There are multiple problems here, but to play the racebot game by racebot rules: neither here in the New World nor in the Old have Blacks been the driving force for abolitionism. Quite the opposite! The only friends slavery has left on this planet are Black. Africa is the only continent left where elected officials are willing to stand up publicly and in the halls of government and advocate for slavery. If we must divide the world into races, as the woman in the video does, then it is undeniable to say that the Black race has not been abolitionism's greatest friend, but its greatest enemy. White people are massively more responsible for its eradication from our world than Blacks. What this deluded woman claims is absurd!