Slavery

I find it strange that part of the history of slavery seems to be cut off from the discourse--namely that it was a norm in the cultural paradigm of Africa to have slaves, and export slaves as a way of building personal wealth and power, as land ownership was not in the culture.

I am not saying slavery was a good thing or anything like that, rather that there is a larger context which is often ignored.  The white European's didn't start the slave trade by themselves--it was already extant.   The demand for slaves changed the scale, and that had a huge effect.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/slav/hd_slav.htm is one of the most macro-whole picture articles I have read about it, and I appreciate that.

I'm reading the book "Brainwashed", which is also very interesting; I haven't gotten that far into it yet.

There were also white Irish slaves in America, but it was nothing like the scale.