After watching Uncle Ruckus I feel like we need to have a frank discussion on slavery. Ill divide my thoughts into two parts. The countries involved in slavery and then the people.
Throughout history nations have always traded excess resources with each other, particularly resources they didnt have enough of. In this case the white man brought money (in various forms), technology (guns etc) and civilization to countries in Africa run by black folk. Of course the Africans needed something to trade for it as otherwise the white man would just sail right on by. Whether thru biology or ignorance or any other factor the black folk in Africa have always been more fertile than white folk. You see white families have maybe 1-2 children and black families in africa have 7-8 even when they cant feed them anymore.
I know we all believe in the right of national self determination so we cant fault the black folk in Africa for making the decision to sell their excess resources (humans) in exchange for the various goods offered by the white folk. The Commerce between the two nations led to prosperity for the black folk who sold the others to slavery and less humans in their home country led to lower requirements for food and living space leading to a more peaceful time overall. As we can see both White and Black folk both profited immensly from slavery. I might even venture to say that the black folk in Africa came up ahead as technology takes time to develop while they can grow a new crop of slaves to sell in 9 months.
For the nations slavery seems to have been a beneficial thing. Now what about for the people themselves??
First we have to be brutally honest about something. If you were taken as a slave by the black folk stronger than you in Africa then you werent a Nigerian Prince. You were most likely in the bottom rung of society. Whether in Africa or in America you were probably going to end up as a slave anyway.
Obviously slaves ended up working the hardest jobs. Mostly in the agricultural sector. If you were going to work that job would you rather do it in the heat of Africa? Or in the more temperate climes of the US? Just being brought as slaves to the US was a massive increase to their standard of living.
Consider also that the person who bought you in the US values you as his property. The slave had to be caught by other blacks in Africa, brought by ship to America, and then ultimately sold to the end user. Thats a lot of value add in that chain which increased the price of slaves. If a slave died it would be extremely troublesome and costly to ship another from Africa to replace him. Now consider a slave in Africa. You just had to get caught by other stronger blacks. There is not a lot of value add in that production chain so if a slave died it would be easy to just capture another one. After all we have already established that people in Africa were just more fertile than those white folk abroad.
I think we can conclusively see that slavery was beneficial to all parties involved. The white end users, The black slavers, and the black slaves the black slavers captured.
