Quote:
Originally Posted by MS Fowler
I do not believe I said it absolved anything.
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You implied that there was parity, that the guilt is equally shared. It is shared, I'll grant you. I'd say the white slavers had much more of the power in the equation. They had the exotic goods to trade and they had the boats to carry the slaves far away. Probably looked like a good deal to the Africans who sold the captives. They likely as not wanted to kill them in the first place and in selling them to the slavers, they were rid of them and got cool stuff to boot.
In a bizarre sort of logic, one could almost argue that the slavers did them a favor, as they might have been killed by their foes otherwise, that by coming to the Americas their descendants had more opportunity than their cousins who remained in Africa. I read a column by Dinesh D'Souza on that topic once. The logic is bizarre as none of the many generations of slaves had reason to see any advantage in the situation.