Note to Readers: Kaliher has never been sufficiently liquored-up enough to bungee jump.
Almost every other day I read somewhere some moron is asking someone to apologize for slavery. On the in between days I read some state governor moron apologizes for slavery. It’s usually a black moron asking and a white moron apologizing. Unfortunately, if we’re dealing with black slavery, the wrong people are being asked to say sorry.
I write this article to clarify the asking and the apologizing. The descendents of black slaves should ask apologies from the descendents of the Africans who sold them. No white American, much less his ancestors, was the original seller of a single black slave. They may have been the original seller of white slaves, as reading Kidnapped demonstrates, but that’s the end of that.
Being one of the few people around that can commune with the dead, I decided to look into this. I called up the spirit of a 1600s New England slaver, Captain Teddi Kennedy, perhaps a distant ancestor of the currently famous New England drunk and modern white-slaver. Before he fully materialized, I said, “Teddi, you dirty bastard, don’t you think you should apologize for your part in slavery?”
His hugely gross form solidified for viewing. He lowered his goblet of scotch and said, “For what? It wasn’t my fault.”
“Didn’t you sail to Africa and purchase black people to transport to the colonies?”
He scratched his crotch and said, “I watch your modern commercials from the nether world, and it’s not my fault.”
I wished his bulbous nose hadn’t materialized so well, but despite my disgust I said, “No one today, besides Moslems and some Africans, condones slavery.”
He picked a nit or two from his cuff and said, “Oh, yeah? Don’t your commercials warn people if they leave their keys in the car and someone steals it, it’s not the thief’s fault? Don’t politically correct ethics say you shouldn’t tempt people into being a criminal?”
I stomped on the nits he’d dropped to the floor, fearful they weren’t from the other side and said, “What the hell does that have to do with slavery?”
He fixed me with a beady gaze. “I was capturing the occasional Mick and Spaniard to sell into slavery. It was a low scale business. Most of them were eventually ransomed back, even if I sold them to the Moors. Then the African chiefs starting having cut rate sales. Not my fault at all. Are you telling me, if you were tempted with a bargain basement rate on Negroes you wouldn’t buy a parcel of them?”
Old Teddi had me on that one. I didn’t know what to do about the moral dilemma he’d put me in. He’s been tempted into his foul deed just like the public service announcements claim. Still, I found it odd someone who never knew a slave would demand an apology from someone who never owned a slave while completely ignoring who first sold the slave he wanted an apology for.
There’s no doubt slavery is a great evil. That’s an easy call while living in a modern western culture. What’s more difficult is assessing one’s own personality then, applying it to another age and believing they would never be master or slave. The hypocrisy of people making slavery an issue today is beyond comprehension to anyone using their intellect. Those claiming the most offense over slavery, white or black, would have believed fully in slavery were they born more than two hundred years ago. But most astonishing, none of those claiming outrage about slavery ever go to Africa or the Moslem Middle East to fight slavery. So, perhaps we better apologize to each other. From the time before the Jews and Pharaohs all of us have ancestors who were masters and slaves. In lieu of apologizing to me personally that your ancestor owned one of my ancestors, send ten dollars care of Ether Zone to assuage my feelings.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”