Where did the Slaves come from?

Why do most believe that Oliver is being disingenuous? If I posted something that was met with instant disdain, I would disengage.
 
ServiceSoon said:
Why do most believe that Oliver is being disingenuous? If I posted something that was met with instant disdain, I would disengage.
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/search.php?searchid=4276290

Or:

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ServiceSoon said:
Why do most believe that Oliver is being disingenuous? If I posted something that was met with instant disdain, I would disengage.
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Probably because if he had entered "information about where the slaves in the United States originated from" into a google or bing search i.e. his opening sentence he would have found plenty of information, so his claim "Given the lack of information available online," was blatantly ..er... misinformed.
 
isissxn said:
I see "slaves" in the title. Then I see an avatar that includes jerky, disruptive animation. Then I see this sentence: "Given the lack of information available online, it seems as if that question isn't much of an issue for some strange reason." And then I still finished reading the post.

I should have just stopped at the title. I should know better by now. I guess a tiny part of me thought maybe it was going to be a discussion about the actual ethnic backgrounds of people who became slaves, which I don't think I know very much about. But I should have guessed it was a lead-in to more whitewashing crap.
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If one was asking what geographical location in Africa the slaves imported to America came from that could be alegitimate discussion. It could also be a legitimate question regarding slaves in places where they had bizarre pieces of autonomy - such as Scythian archers in Athens and such. Those could be conversations worth having.
 
I find the notion that the fact that the people brought to America as slaves were mostly already enslaved in Africa somehow makes slavery all right to be rather similar to the notion that a person who buys his meat in the supermarket is somehow morally superior to a hunter who kills his own meat.

Most of the stuff that white supremacists like to cite as justification or mitigation of slavery are true. It is the notion that any of this stuff somehow makes slavery okay, or even makes it less bad, that I find morally repugnant.
 
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CORed said:
I find the notion that the fact that the people brought to America as slaves were mostly already enslaved in Africa somehow makes slavery all right to be rather similar to the notion that a person who buys his meat in the supermarket is somehow morally superior to a hunter who kills his own meat...
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Perhaps a more direct analogy would be people buying illegal drugs feeling they were not responsible for the drugs trade because there are drug users in source countries anyway.
 
Hans said:
That said the question is well researched - what is less well researched is the Arab slave trade that operated on the East Coast of Africa and the more traditional routes into north Africa.
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It's less that it's not well researched and more that it spans some 1200 years and encompasses a wide range of disparate enterprises and very different experiences for the slaves. Being a Mamluk soldier or household servant for a wealthy family was rather different from being a court eunuch under the Ottomans, and all those were very different from the racialized agricultural industry the transatlantic slave trade spawned.
 
CORed said:
Most of the stuff that white supremacists like to cite as justification or mitigation of slavery are true. It is the notion that any of this stuff somehow makes slavery okay, or even makes it less bad, that I find morally repugnant.
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White supremacists also like to couch slavery in terms of a benign attitude with well-looked after slaves (which is certainly true in a relatively small number of examples) while glossing over the stuff they don't want people to think about

1. That these people were forcibly removed from their homeland and packed like sardines into the holds of ships for many weeks on end where the conditions under which they existed were appalling and where many suffered horrible deaths from things like starvation, heat exhaustion and dysentery.

2. That the majority of those who survived the trans-Atlantic journey were brutally treated by their owners and by the staff employed by the owners. Many slaves died from exhaustion through overwork and lack of rest.
 
smartcooky said:
White supremacists also like to couch slavery in terms of a benign attitude with well-looked after slaves (which is certainly true in a relatively small number of examples) while glossing over the stuff they don't want people to think about

1. That these people were forcibly removed from their homeland and packed like sardines into the holds of ships for many weeks on end where the conditions under which they existed were appalling and where many suffered horrible deaths from things like starvation, heat exhaustion and dysentery.

2. That the majority of those who survived the trans-Atlantic journey were brutally treated by their owners and by the staff employed by the owners. Many slaves died from exhaustion through overwork and lack of rest.
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Yes, and the slaves who were ill-treated didn't have the option to quit and seek out a master who would treat them better, nor did the ones who were (relatively) well treated have that option either. Even if they weren't beaten on a daily basis, were given a reasonably workload and were well fed, they were still slaves, subject to the whims of masters and overseers, and could have their families torn apart at a moments notice if their owner decided to sell somebody, with no recourse for any of that stuff.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
"When a mommy slave and a paddy slave are paired up by their Master, they give each other a special hug and then quickly get back to work"
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Actually quite insightful. The first "English" slaves sent to the caribbean were Irish obtained during Cromwell's anti-catholic Irish campaigns.
 
CORed said:
Yes, and the slaves who were ill-treated didn't have the option to quit and seek out a master who would treat them better, nor did the ones who were (relatively) well treated have that option either. Even if they weren't beaten on a daily basis, were given a reasonably workload and were well fed, they were still slaves, subject to the whims of masters and overseers, and could have their families torn apart at a moments notice if their owner decided to sell somebody, with no recourse for any of that stuff.
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Yep, and that's completely ignoring the immense psychological suffering caused by being the property of another person who has the literal power of life and death over you, with no repercussions or disapproval from his peers.

Planigale said:
Actually quite insightful. The first "English" slaves sent to the caribbean were Irish obtained during Cromwell's anti-catholic Irish campaigns.
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Can I get a source on that? I know a fair number of Irish forced labourers were used (especially on Barbados, I think?) but I believe English bond-servants were widely used as well. I'm not saying you're wrong, because it's not my strongest area and it's been a while since I read up on it.
 
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