Apparently white people are the only people who can be held to be guilty for their sins of their ancestors. White people are the only ones whose statues can be torn down and their names scrubbed from the public landscape.
Consider Islamo-foghorn Yassmin Abdel-Magied screeching that white people’s ancestors went “all over the world colonising and enslaving”. No mention that three of the 10 largest empires in history were Islamic. Nor that slavery was such an integral part of the Muslim Ottoman empire that, uniquely in human history, it had entire armies of slave-soldiers. Nor that slavery persisted in the Islamic world – and indeed persists today – long after European nations took the lead in abolishing it.
But Abdel-Magied is far from the only selectively outraged apologist for the past sins of “people of colour”.
Nigerian journalist and novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani writes that one of her ancestors sold slaves, but argues that he should not be judged by today’s standards or values.
No, that’s only for white people. Talk about “white privilege”!
But Nwaubani’s great-grandfather wasn’t an evil slaver; he was what she “prefers” to call a “businessman”. He had quite the diverse portfolio of interests: selling tobacco and palm produce.
And human beings.
So, should he be reviled, like Edward Colston? Don’t be silly – he wasn’t white.
Assessing the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.
You mean, the “ideology” of human rights – a Western invention, after all – and the startling idea that it’s a bad thing to buy and sell people like chattels?
Igbo slave traders like my great-grandfather did not suffer any crisis of social acceptance or legality. They did not need any religious or scientific justifications for their actions. They were simply living the life into which they were raised.
That was all they knew.
Cool. So, the Antebellum South is off the hook, then? It’s all they knew, after all.
Contrary to the leftist conceit that “white people invented slavery” (yes, they really believe that), slavery in Africa long predated the European presence. It really is an African institution.
Buying and selling of human beings among the Igbo had been going on long before the Europeans arrived. People became slaves as punishment for crime, payment for debts or prisoners of war.
The successful sale of adults was considered an exploit for which a man was hailed by praise singers, akin to exploits in wrestling, war or in hunting animals like the lion.
Igbo slaves served as domestic servants and labourers. They were sometimes also sacrificed in religious ceremonies and buried alive with their masters to attend to them in the next world.
So, who put an end to such barbarity? It certainly wasn’t the sainted People of Colour.
When the British extended their rule to south-eastern Nigeria in the late 19th century and early 20th century, they began to enforce abolition through military action.
But by using force rather than persuasion, many local people such as my great-grandfather may not have understood that abolition was about the dignity of humankind and not a mere change in economic policy that affected demand and supply […]
While the international trade ended, the local trade continued.
In other words, when Europeans tried to end slavery, Africans resisted. Against every effort of the bad old white people.
Records from the UK’s National Archives at Kew Gardens show how desperately the British struggled to end the internal trade in slaves for almost the entire duration of the colonial period.
BBC
But, sure, white people are the villains, here.
And, whatever you do, don’t dare hold saintly black people of the 19th century to account by the standards of the 21st century.
Here’s the thing, though: Nwaubani is right. We shouldn’t judge 19th century people from the lofty perches of 21st century morality. But that goes as much for Edward Colston and Cecil Rhodes as it does for Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku.
But guess whose statues are being smashed?
As the saying goes, if the left didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any.