The new attacks on the Reparations movement: BLAME AFRIKANS for the European Holocaust in Afrika
Sister Suzette Gardner writes: "As the movement for Trans-Atlantic slavery reparations gathers steam, the opposition is busy waging a strategic battle for the sub-consciousness of slavery's victims.
"Reels of film are being thrown into production to depict Africa's part in the slave trade. Beautifully shot, their point is clear and simplistic: Africans sold Africans in slavery. There is no discussion of European guilt or responsibility, instead their plots go straight to the point and blame the victims.
"The latest film inflicting this 'blame the victim syndrome' on our collective consciousness is the Swiss produced 'Adanggaman " distributed in the U.S. by New York Films. Frankly, this film has no relevance outside of being a conduit for an idea which, left un-discussed will 'guilt trip' slavery's victims into renouncing their due reparations.
"The question then is not whether Africans are responsible for their own slavery, but who were these alleged Africans who sold other Africans in slavery, and how can we understand their identities today?
"Psychoanalysts agree that in order to inflict misfortune upon another, it is essential to see oneself as separate and different from one's victim. This also rang true in 17th century Africa-and Africa today. If Africans were caught and sold in slavery, it was not by people who regarded themselves as the same Africans. The Swiss production and others like it deliberately omit the presence of cultural ascendancies and politics at play in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. By oversimplifying the African context, they fall into that racist mold which denies Africans a history of society, commerce and imperfect humanity at work.
"As Englishmen enslaved their own and fellow Europeans to achieve the aims of their Christian crusade in the 11th century, so too did the 'African' under the aegis of Islam. As Italy's liaison with Nazi Germany bloodied its history for the sake of commerce and political power, so too did the kings of Dahomey with the Portuguese in the 17th century. Africans who craftily speared themselves the middle passage are no different from their political and social counterparts elsewhere in the world or history. All are given to exchange and discourse leading to selfish survival and domination as opportunity and circumstances may arise.
Comments
But wait! A political struggle engaged by Caucasians that liberated people other than themselves! Those pesky historic facts do make it difficult to milk the great cow of white liberal guilt, don't they? No wonder you are indignant.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X); November 23, 1964, Paris, France; [Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, p123]
Sean Gonsalves wrote: "[S]everal years ago, a University of California at Berkeley study found that the value of lost income to black Americans because of discrimination between 1929 and 1969 alone comes to about $1.6 trillion.
"So, contrary to Thomas Sowell's distortions, the idea of reparations is not about convincing people whose ancestors arrived in America after the Civil War that they owe anybody anything for what happened in the ante- bellum South. Clearly, black economic deprivation goes far beyond the Civil War and the ante-bellum South.
"It was AFTER slavery that America allowed the Black Codes, a set of laws designed to restrict the labor mobility of the newly freed slaves, guaranteeing cheap labor for white planters. One code stipulated that any freed slave without "lawful employment" would be subject to arrest and then be leased to a white employer.
"So there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the economic hardships faced by black America and those confronted by every other immigrant group in this nation's history."
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-09/02gonsalves.htm
Not really a big surprise that the enemies of justice wish to erase debts owed to Afrikans by Europeans. I believe Neely Fuller gave us a term for them. Your empire wouldn't exist without the massive exploitation and mass murder of us for centuries. Anyway, say "hi" to Adolph for us when you see him.