No White New World Colonist Ever Enslaved a Black African

April 19, 2022 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

No White New World Colonist Ever Enslaved a Black African

Paul Craig Roberts

Identity politics, political correctness, virtue signaling, and wokeism have broken down intellectual integrity and scholarly standards in the academic world.  Scholarship now exists in attenuated forms that serve ideological purposes, not factual ones.  In short, “scholars” have come to serve ideological agendas, not truth.  Even mathematics and science have been corrupted. Recently, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran had to reject 41% of the mathematics  texts for Florida’s K-12 curriculum because they contained critical race theory and other propaganda used to indoctrinate students.  

History, especially US history, has suffered terribly from the proliferation of anti-American propaganda masquerading as legitimate history. An example is the “1619 Project” that concludes that the United States originated in racism. A spinoff from this “history” is something called the “New History of

American Capitalism” which argues that capitalism’s existence was dependent on slavery.  The impression one gets is that slavery is an American phenomenon for which reparations must be paid. 

Legitimate historians at the risk of being labeled “apologists for racism” have skewered the fanciful claims, but they as well as the proponents of the new history overlook the basic fact that no white colonist in the New World ever enslaved a black African.  The black Africans were enslaved prior to their arrival in the New World.  They arrived as slaves.  They were enslaved by other blacks.  Some of them were warriors captured in slave wars while trying to enslave other blacks.  

The black kingdom of Dahomey was the principle enslaver of the time.  The kingdom raided other blacks for slaves and sold the surplus. This history has been well documented, but it is not part of “black studies,” the “1619 Project,” or the “New History of American Capitalism.”

The real documented history is disappearing because it totally contradicts the new propagandistic history.  Even the critics of the new history seem to be unaware of it.

The association of slavery with racism is another manufactured fiction.  All peoples have been enslaved, including whites. (See for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/10/23/white-slaves-one-of-the-many-memory-holed-facts/  and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/03/12/whites-were-slaves-in-north-africa-before-blacks-were-slaves-in-the-new-world/ .) Slaves brought to the New World were not brought because of racism.  They were brought to the New World as a labor force so that the abundance of fertile land and natural resources could be exploited.  

By the time the United States was formed out of the British colonies, slavery had been a labor force institution for a century and a half.  For the US, slavery was an inherited institution, not a creation of independence and the Constitution.  The Confederate States of America had no responsibility for the fact that the labor force of large scale agriculture was a slave labor force.  This was an inherited labor force institution.  Whites as well as blacks were born into the institution.

When the basic facts of New World slavery are totally ignored, it is obvious that the new history is propagandistic serving an ideology, not the truth.  That universities and “scholars” corrupt themselves by loading curriculums with falsehoods is more proof that truth is less valued than propaganda that serves agendas.