The following image was shared from Right Wing News on my Facebook timeline by a friend wanting me to debunk it. So I did.
1. “Ask the average school student about slavery and they think that only white people had slaves”
What’s the difference between a school student and a student? Did
they mean high school student? Anyway, unless someone can provide a
source for this, it can be dismissed. I’m not about to conduct a poll to
prove this wrong.
2. “In the 16th - 18th century, Africans enslaved 1.5 million white Europeans in the Barbary slave trade.”
Rewritten to be factual and grammatically correct: “Between the 16th
and 19th centuries, pirates from coastal cities in North Africa enslaved
as many as 1.25 million Europeans during the Barbary slave trade.”
The region of North Africa that we’re referring to, the Barbary
Coast, is populated almost entirely by Arab-Berbers (97–99%). Berbers
are the indigenous people of North Africa west of the Nile. They are
caucasian, not black. Furthermore, not all Europeans are white. The
image is promoting a racist agenda by making it sound as if blacks were
enslaving whites.
3. “Whites were the first to stop slavery in modern times…”
This is true. It’s also convenient that the time period is restricted
to the beginning of the modern era. Even more convenient, of course
white-dominated modern societies would be more likely to end slavery.
That’s where most of the slaves were! You can’t end slavery in a place
that doesn’t have slaves to begin with.
4. “…whereas slavery still continues in Africa to this day.”
The word “whereas” denotes a contradiction or comparison, but there
is none. Yes, there is slavery in Africa. There’s slavery on every
continent except Antarctica.
