Click Here For SOWELL : THE IRONY OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH
SOWELL : THE IRONY OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH -- 2/13/97: "A haunting picture of a thin and forlorn-looking African girl has this caption under it: 'A 12-year-old girl, given up as a slave to atone for a crime by a member of her family, stands at the beck and call of a traditional priest in Tefle, Ghana.' This is not a painting of something that happened long ago. It is a photograph that appeared in The New for by the family's giving up one of its young virgins for sexual enslavement.
I have not seen a word of comment, much less outrage, from any of the those who cry out so loudly about slavery in centuries past among people long dead. Not only does slavery persist to this moment in the backwaters of Ghana, it persists on a larger scale in Sudan and in Mauritania, which has about 30,000 people still in bondage, often under brutal conditions. This is Black History Month, but this part of that history is being swept under the rug. Far more popular are the myths that cater to current psychological and political needs, like the image of Kunta Kinte in 'Roots,' puzzled by the chains clapped on him -- even though slavery was widely known in the part of Africa from which he came, long before the first white man appeared on the scene.
Challenged by professional historians, Alex Haley's reply was: 'I tried to give my people a myth to live by.' No doubt Haley's intentions were good, but it is the truth that sets you free, not myths. The most painful of all truths is that slavery existed all over this planet, among people of every race and color, for thousands of years. Nobody wanted to be a slave, but that is completely different from saying that they opposed slavery for others. Slavery was as accepted in Africa as it was in Europe or Asia, or among the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Incredibly late in human history, a mass moral revulsion finally set in against slavery -- first in eighteenth-century England and then, during the nineteenth century, throughout Western civilization."
I have not seen a word of comment, much less outrage, from any of the those who cry out so loudly about slavery in centuries past among people long dead. Not only does slavery persist to this moment in the backwaters of Ghana, it persists on a larger scale in Sudan and in Mauritania, which has about 30,000 people still in bondage, often under brutal conditions. This is Black History Month, but this part of that history is being swept under the rug. Far more popular are the myths that cater to current psychological and political needs, like the image of Kunta Kinte in 'Roots,' puzzled by the chains clapped on him -- even though slavery was widely known in the part of Africa from which he came, long before the first white man appeared on the scene.
Challenged by professional historians, Alex Haley's reply was: 'I tried to give my people a myth to live by.' No doubt Haley's intentions were good, but it is the truth that sets you free, not myths. The most painful of all truths is that slavery existed all over this planet, among people of every race and color, for thousands of years. Nobody wanted to be a slave, but that is completely different from saying that they opposed slavery for others. Slavery was as accepted in Africa as it was in Europe or Asia, or among the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Incredibly late in human history, a mass moral revulsion finally set in against slavery -- first in eighteenth-century England and then, during the nineteenth century, throughout Western civilization."
posted by Robert at 6:59 PM
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