Discuss: Skip Gates on Slavery Blame Games
My Twitter timeline went up in flames this morning over a recently column by Henry Louis Gates published in The New York Times. While he deals with the familiar (that African leaders sold other Africans into slavery), he takes it to an unfamiliar place -- the very American reparations debate. Gates seems to think various Gold coast African nations are getting off easy in the debate over who should pay retribution to African Americans.
From The New York Times:
But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts.
The only problem with this is that the debate over reparations in the United States is specifically about how many Americans benefited from a slave-based economy and, later, the continued disenfranchisement of blacks. It's pretty specific, as in specific to the country that enslaved us. (The same would go for slaves brought to Brazil and South America to blacks brought to Europe for the same reason.) There are other ethical issues to be had in the discussion over various African tribal leaders and royal figures who sold their countrymen and women to a dire and disgusting fate, but the reparations debate seems to be a strange place to have this discussion. Especially in light of the fact of what happened to the majority of the continent of Africa after the slave trade ended and the eventual colonization began.
That doesn't absolve anyone of guilt, but ... and this could be me ... this is like suing the gun maker when someone shoots you. You can argue the ethics of dealing in weapons that can end people's lives, but you can't exactly ignore the person who actually shot you. But what do you think?
Danielle Belton | 57 Comments | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article | tagged Henry Louis Gates, new york times, race, skip gates, slavery 
Reader Comments (57)
The dude who traded his community (or enemy) for a barrel of rum and molasses can go sit down somewhere and STFU...the dude who did the trading can go to hell and GTFOH!
Of course, you do get wiki listings on the likes of John Smith and the Barbary corsairs...it's an Old World thing, I suppose!
I am really sick of the whole argument that Africans sold Blacks. They had no idea of knowing what conditions these slaves were being sold into. The African version of slavery was quite different than that practiced in the Western world. It looked a lot more like what we called indentured servitude. I also think that it is important to note that the western world has more than penalized these African nations. It should be noted that the average western African American has a higher standard of living than the average African. If anyone should be penalized it is the Western nations that have benefited from slavery. From governments, to banks, to corporations many people have benefited from slavery and they still have not been held accountable unlike the residents of the African continent.
what she said ^^^
Gates is bust trying to sell another book. This thesis (African were complicit in the trans-Atlantic slave trade) is not exactly novel. It is being advanced by Gates at this hour to articulate precisely what? That American government (which is broke) should not pay Black-Americans reparations? And could Obama even entertain such an idea with double-digit unemployment in this nation?
Morever, the fact that Africans were complicit in sellling other Africans to Europeans for gold and silver and a few "shiny things" does not absolve America of the crimes commited against Black-Americans and, in fact, the prosperity engendered as a result. Should Black-Americans therefore open a case in a world court and ask for reparations from the responsible African countries who sold other Africans into slavery? Well, ths strikes me as another take on Roots and one can see where Gates is going with this.
Of course, "I do not subscribe to "The Way We Were" notions of African and/or Black-American history (which, of course, is posited in world history); but, alas, I cannot imagine Gates gracing the pages of The New York Times Op-Ed pages doing anything other than articulating his genre-like narrative: that, in fact, blacks are always at fault and no reasonable indictment can be made against "white folks" for their trangressions, then and now, against black folks.
Africa has yet to recover from he transatlantic slave trade and the pillage and rape of their natural resources at the hands of Europeans (and now China and others). Gates's piece will certainly open up a great deal of dialouge in this nation; but, at the end of the day, it is clear that the Europeans and Americans benefitted far more from buying slaves than the Africans selling them.
This is coming from the same dude who shot a documentary in Africa, wearing a t-shirt that read HARVARD in big bright letters. Like Think said, Gates is trying to push some books. Yawwwn, I'm bored with Skippy.
Why can't it be that Africans were wrong for selling their brothers and sisters into slavery, and Whites were wrong to enslave Africans, and then in the U.S. specifically to pass laws that kept Blacks oppressed for decades after abolishing slavery?
You can still hold Whites accountable, but acknowledge that Africans had an unfortunate role in the slave trade. I don't see why this is an "either" "or" situation.
like lil' richard said at the end of why do fools fall in love...
"well, i could have told them wasn't none of them gonna get no money! ain't nobody ever gave us nothing! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
jeez - this is all so redunkulous i don't know where to start...
but one point - why are you assuming that africans sold their brothers and sisters? or that all africans see themselves as brothers and sisters? The way I remember it, the people who were sold into slavery for shiny things or money or foreign exchange were always the 'other'. They were sold either by rulers who had prisoners of war or slave raiders who raided villages.
And people still do that today - treat a group of people as other so they can do all sorts of things to them. see america and the war on terrorism
Gates has been advocating this line since his televised trip to Africa. His racial confusion is clearly reflected in his interracial marriage and his glee over the fact that his DNA reveals that his white DNA and his black DNA are equally divided. UHUH. He is a confused, ambitious, money-hungry arrogant Negro who has no sense of who or what he is, but has exploited his blackness. As THINK above has made clear, the enslavement of Africans by whites can be divided into two phases: the slave trade and the institution of slavery. Unquestionably some Africans benefited from the slave trade. However, only one or two African-American slaveowners benefited from the second phase, the institution of slavery that built this country economically by totally exploiting and degrading Africans during state-sanctioned slavery and the years of jim crow and segregation and discrimination following its supposed "abolition." I agree -- Gates must be writing a book. I suggest that if he is, it should be boycotted. He has gotten rich enough off of us black folks.
I'm with you Patricia. Why can't we acknowledge that our African brothers sold us to slave traders?
The most galling thing is when modern Africans and immigrants from Africa say that Black Americans have no history. We don't know where we come from.
No sh*t.
this is coming from the same skippy gates that was so overjoyed when his dna revealed he had more "european blood" than "african blood"...and who delighted in turning over his handcuffs to some museum after being treated like a common negro after "breaking" into his own house....ugh...
question:who made skippy the black intellect who speaks for black people, when he doesn't consider his own self black...
Wow! What is up with Skippy? Now that he's got that white DNA confirmation, is he trying to sell the rest of us down the river?
Why do some black folks spend a large chunk of their lives waiting for white folks to 'act right'?
It's a fool's errand, ladies and gentlemen. Good luck.
Big deal..... The govt will take my reparations and put it on my student loans.
Amen to D.A.LW. and Bertha! The fact that we are STILL wasting time trying to get reparations for an atrocity in which we can never set a satisfactory price tag to begin to settle accounts galls me to no end. The misery, wasted lives, and untold lingering side effects of slavery are absolutely real but no check will make them go away. The US government was barely willing to issue a grudging apology and the ancient African kingdoms who trafficked slaves are long gone. Their descendants in many cases can't even feed themselves or maintain stable governments. Where is this check going to come from? Some debts are too big to ever be paid and yes.. life isn't fair.
There is plenty of blame to go around for those Africans who sold us and the whites that transported us, financed the ships, and benefited from our free labor to build this country. A whole lot of folks got over on African Americans and guess what? We'll never get them back in any definitive, direct sense. Maybe it's time to stop worrying about it and make sure our kids can read, our communities are safe, and our families are intact and functional. We can build our own wealth rather than trying to squeeze blood out of turnips. The path to wholeness is finding ways to control your destiny rather than perpetually be at the mercy of others. Sometimes success is the best revenge.
Which continental group didn't sell each other into slavery?
I had a racism discussion with some dude on another discussion board a while ago (and, full disclosure, im reproducing some of what i wrote in that conversation) that veered off into this "well, Black people are just as guilty for selling their own kind into slavery." Umm no.
(I said) "The Africans involved were in it for greed and wealth, as were the Europeans who were MAJOR players in the transactions. But please keep in mind that those in West Africa did not consider themselves to be “selling their own kind” at this time. This universal “African identity” was not part of the scene at this time. This is significant because the benefits to those who participated were very much specific – chiefs and merchants who had power within these West African communities/tribes who wanted guns and other trade goods from the triangle trade in order to expand their own territories.
We can't pretend like the people in Africa and the African continent itself benefited greatly from slave trade. Their loss of population was detrimental to communities throughout West Africa and was a “welcome mat” for the subsequent colonization of the entire continent. Did the Americas benefit (specifically the colonizers)? Yes. Did Europe benefit? HELL yes. The notion of “Africans are just as responsible for this” ignores the power dynamic between Europeans and Africans at that time (who had the guns? Who had control over the trade? Who knew where the hell these captured Africans were going? WHO HAD THE POWER?). It ignores the fact that the benefits for people in Africa were not widespread. All things were not equal in the transatlantic slave trade."
This conception of the transatlantic slave trade that places Africans and Europeans involved in the slave trade on equal footing is ahistoric, distracting, and serves the interests of minimizing white guilt. Straight up. It's a cheap shot. An easy out that serves the powerful and is aimed at maintaining a view of history that minimizes the culpability of whites, and downplays the ways in which the effects of the slave trade are still felt (positive and negative) throughout the world. The fact that Gates would capitalize from this damaging and thoughtless meme is sad and angering.
(sorry for the long post)
@ Jaddadalos
Thanks for writing that. I'm West African myself and have stopped trying to explain or debate w/ other AA's who have similar viewpoints like Gates.
I have been away from this site for too long. Just realised how much I missed cogent and constructive discussion.
I have always felt that Africans were complicit in the slave trade, by selling off other Africans, enemies etc. But the
English. et al were horrible in the way enslaved and brutalised our forefathers.
If there were no buyers, there would be no vendors. Period. And Skip, the paleo-historian, continues to irk me.
@ NIjaG (and others)
I never realized that Black Americans commonly went to the "blame Africans" argument... What do the folks you've encountered say? Has anyone else been in conversation with Black Americans with Gates's viewpoint?
I'm intrigued... and troubled.
I use to really like Gates and have a lot of respect for him. It has been fading simply because instead of wroking and helping people understand history he wants to make a mockery out of it instead to further himself. He needs to call Oprah, maybe she can slap him back to reality adn he can go back to helping celebrities with their genealogy trees.
Peace, Love and Chocolate
It's not that black people are blaming Africans (or holding them solely responsible). We (maybe just me) are saying that our forefathers in West Africa who traded us away were culpable in our enslavement. The only victims in this saga were those who suffered through the Middle Passage.
In graduate school, West African students were the first say they did not want to be associated with African American students. They didn't want people to think they were in school because of affirmative action. They laughed at the "idiots" who participated in the Sankofa graduation program. I didn't participate either but, I didn't ridicule students for wanting a rite of passage ritual.
I'm not a fan of Skip Gates, but I don't totally disagree with him on this topic.
@ Monica
I mean, the tendency for some of my Continental African brothers and sisters to show contempt for Black Americans (based on the same stereotypes that are epidemic within the U.S. and exported around the world) is a HUGE problem. This attitude (also shared by some West Indians) is rooted in ignorance and a self-hatred that manifests itself by making the idea of "well, at least I'm not Black American" a sort of prize. It also points to a fundamental lack of knowledge of American history - I've had encounters with family of a college friend that spoke VOLUMES about what folks of color don't know or bother to learn or understand upon entering this country (I mean, just think about what AMERICANS don't know and connections not made...scary). Cause and effect should not be such a novel concept... but I digress.
These attitudes, however, have nothing to do with historical accuracy and the way in which the "conversation" Gates is promoting that implies that Africans had significant power in these transactions. To leave out a power dynamic and any accurate idea of WHO in the African tribal communities were participants in the slave trade is irresponsible and stinks of opportunism - why wouldn't the media jump on this as just a valid exploration? And coming from a notable Black historian? The media already FAILS when it comes to research and any type of journalistic inquiry.
What about the detrimental affects of the trade on the continent? I mean, if we're gonna play revisionist history and talk about Africans playing a SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH role in the slave trade to the point where we're talking about sharing blame and what not, then we should be talking about the affects on all involved - the wealth in the West and the devastation on the continent. The devastation part gets left out A LOT. The poor state of the continent is placed at the feet of corrupt African leaders (EFFECT) instead of on European colonization (CAUSE).
I just don't think the uninformed attitudes of Blacks immigrating (and 1st generation) to the States should be addressed by creating a "Y'all were participants in the slave trade" slap in the face. The two are unrelated.
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