The Great Slavery Debate: The Debt of Slavery

It is a recurring theme within American Black culture that White people owe a special debt to Blacks because of slavery. Certain conservatives try to short-circuit this claim by arguing that slavery was not profitable, but even if profitability was arguable (and it is not), some will still claim it as a theft of service. However, since slavery has always been with humanity, we will need to carefully establish the point, exactly, when it became theft, and worthy of damages.

Nowhere in the bible is it written that slavery is an abomination unto the Lord, or anybody else. There is no commandment against it. People were not stoned or crucified for practicing it, unlike stealing, killing, adultery, blasphemy, and a list of other prescribed avoidances. In fact, the bible and the Koran, the two most enduring rulebooks of history, and the basis of our rules of law, make nary a mention of slavery as anything more than an everyday part of life.

Did the tribal rulers of Africa think they were stealing the lives of rival Africans when they captured and traded them to Europeans for gunpowder/weapons, utensils and foodstuffs? I think not. Many Africans might argue that they were actually sparing the lives of their kindred enemies by shipping them off, as the alternative was to simply kill them. So it would seem that slavery broke neither laws nor moral codes, a continent away or here, until those practicing it changed their minds about it. This is no different than our current hot-button items of abortion, or same sex marriage. All is allowed until strictly forbidden.

People who argue for repayment nearly always cite reparations paid to indigenous Americans, Japanese internees, and WWII era Jews, but in those cases (here, here, here), laws (treaties) on the books were expressly broken. It seems that the acts of elevating the Atlantic Slave Trade, and slavery in America, to a cut above all other slavery invokes some special status where societal advancement no longer adheres to linearity. The sooner a proper perspective is in place, the better off we will all be.

Finally, perspective is not an invitation to insult and cruelty - slavery did happen and its association with a struggling group is undeniable. Nearly forty years ago a White high school classmate, Paul Ivancie, stated to me, unapologetically, how cool it would be to have a slave. His stupidity brought me face-to-face with the love/hate conundrum Blacks face in this country. There are still Antebellum Whites like him out there - I just hope that when my kids meet such people those words will roll off their backs better than mine.

James C. Collier

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