WHITE SLAVERY

The history of white slavery in the United States is swept under the carpet in this country in order to attempt to create a servile attitude in Black people here and abroad. These two authors, coming from different perspectives, outline the history of white slavery. Below I link to interviews with both authors. I don't agree with everything that they say, but it seems clear that white slavery in Europe was a precursor to enslavement of Africans by Americans. It also seems patently clear that slavery is much more about power than race.


Nell Irwin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University is the author of an extremely interesting book entitled, The History of White People. In a footnote to her book, page 42, she says,

"Present-day white nationalists resenting the burden of black slavery in terms of white guilt and black demands for redress seek to remind Americans of the history of white slavery, They were White and They were Slaves, by Micheal A. Hoffman II, for instance, begins with a protest, 'Today, not a tear is shed for the sufferings of millions of our own (white) enslaved forefathers, 200 years of White slavery in America have been almost completely obliterated from the collective memory of American People." Drawing on historical scholarship, Hoffman nonetheless blames "professorcrats' and 'the corporate media' for hiding information about enslaved whites from the public." 

This is a link to her interview on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124700316

A really interesting interview with Micheal A. Hoffman II gives a very thorough discussion of this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRZAyQznQM8

"The indentured servants who served a tidy little period of 4 to 7 years polishing the master's silver and china and then taking their place in colonial high society, were a minuscule fraction of the great unsung hundreds of thousands of White slaves who were worked to death in this country from the early l7th century onward. 

Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America's first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too.

Whites were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands. Free Black property owners strutted the streets of northern and southern American cities while White slaves were worked to death in the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica and the plantations of Virginia. - Description of Hoffman interview