Slavery in Black and White
The White
“Much attention and condemnation has been directed towards the tragedy of the African slave trade, which took place between the 16th and the 19th centuries. However, another equally despicable trade in Barbary slaves was taking place around the same time in the Mediterranean. It is estimated that up to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary corsairs, and their lives were just as pitiful as their African counterparts. They have come to be known as the white slaves of Barbary.
Slavery is one of the oldest trades known to man. We can first find records of the slave trade dating back to the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon in the 18th century BC. People from virtually every major culture, civilization, and religious background have made slaves of their own and enslaved other peoples. However, comparatively little attention has been given to the prolific trade in Barbary slaves that was carried out by pirates, or corsairs, along the Barbary coast (as it was called by Europeans at the time), in what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Keep in mind that beginning around 1600 AD, anyone traveling in the Mediterranean faced the real prospect of being captured by the corsairs, taken to Barbary Coast cities, and sold as a slave.” Learn more from Ancient Origins Reconstructing the Story of Humanity’s Past
“Barbary pirate, any of the Muslim pirates operating from the coast of North Africa, at their most powerful during the 17th century but still active until the 19th century. Captains, who formed a class in Algiers and Tunis, commanded cruisers outfitted by wealthy backers, who then received 10 percent of the value of the prizes.” Learn more from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
“The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners to be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.” Learn more from Rasta Livewire: THE IRISH SLAVE TRADE – THE FORGOTTEN “WHITE” SLAVES
The Black
“Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani has written a sensitive essay, published in the Wall Street Journal, on the African role in the trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trade. She observes that the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of slaves in Virginia coincides with questions about guilt and responsibility and a debate in the United States about reparations to the descendants of slaves.
She observes that this fraught debate is largely absent in Africa, even though Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade. Africans raided for slaves, often in connivance with local chiefs, and then acted as middlemen with European and Arab purchasers. She recounts stories of the ambivalence of at least some Africans about the role of their ancestors in the slave trade. She reports that Donald Duke, former governor of Calabar state and a good-government presidential candidate in the 2019 Nigerian elections, acknowledges that his ancestors participated in the slave trade. However, Duke says, “I’m not ashamed of it because I personally wasn’t directly involved.” However, he does not want history to be forgotten.” Learn more from the Council on Foreign Relations: Confronting Africa’s Role in the Slave Trade
“Barack Obama was elected president some 143 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States. As teary-eyed African-Americans watched Obama’s 2008 election night speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, none could have imagined that America’s first black president would leave his own legacy of slavery—in Africa.
However, that’s exactly what he did, thanks to a combination of imperial hubris, disregard for constitutional restraints on executive war powers, and the use of false pretenses.” Learn more from Barack Obama, Progenitor of the Modern African Slave Trade
Barack Obama was and is opposed to human slavery, but his roots are a source of some embarrassment to him. He is not the only president with a history of enslavement of African people.
“Barack Obama’s Kenyan family, as part of the Luo tribe, most certainly engaged in the East African slave trade selling Africans to Muslims. This trade was older and more pervasive than the more famous West African trade.” American Presidents, Slavery, and the Confederacy
God’s Point of View on Reparations
The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the punishment of the iniquity of the father, nor shall the father bear the punishment of the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Ezekiel 18:20 MEV
Fathers may not be put to death for the sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin. Deuteronomy 24:16 MEV
But he did not kill the children of the murderers, according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, in which the Lord commanded, “Fathers must not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers. Rather, a man should be put to death for his own sin. 2 Kings 14:6 MEV
Closing Arguments
The Plantation Mentality
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. Marcus Aurelius
Do not eat the bread of him who has an evil eye, neither desire his delicacies; for as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. Proverbs 23:6-7
The maintenance of a plantation mindset requires the participation of two classes of actors: the plantation owner and those enslaved on the plantation. President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) understood this and put it into practice by the introduction of his Great Society program. I do not suggest LBJ was a devout Marxist; the evidence of his program simply means he recognized the power a ‘plantation owner’ can hold over a people he can enslave through government handouts. Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One, “I’ll have those n****** voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”
The Freedom Mentality
By no means do all black Americans settle for poverty and government handouts. Thomas Sowell, Lt. Col. (Ret) Allen West, Dr. Ben Carson are three examples of black Americans who champion freedom of thought and personal responsibility.
A preacher I knew years ago would say, “Truth is the way things really are.” A dictonary defines truth as the actual state of a matter; the condition of conforming with fact or reality; verity.”
As recorded in the Bible, John 14:4-7, “Jesus said to him [Thomas], “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Also, Galatians 5:1, “For freedom Christ freed us. Stand fast therefore and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
The key to enjoying total freedom, freedom from addictions, freedom from bondage, intellectual freedom, and freedom of associations, is to become a a child of God by faith. In some cases, hard cases like me, God will intervene in a person’s life directly. For most believers in Jesus Christ, discipleship through learning the Bible and congregating with fellow believers will free anyone from any ‘plantation.’
The State of California chooses to sustain the plantation mentality by legislating reparations to black people who have never been slaves, and paid by white people who have never owned slaves. Can you understand why Californians who do not subscribe to the plantation mentality flee that state?
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 
Leave a comment