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 

Black Pharaohs from Nubia

This article, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/black-pharaohs/robert-draper-text., talks about Black pharaohs of Egypt. Now the concept of race, the way we mean it, was not important in ancient times. In fact, the concept "race" is basically an invention by Europeans who exploited others. Many Afrocentric scholars believe that many more pharaohs were Black than the ones mentioned in this article.

"Piye was the first of the so-called black pharaohs—a series of Nubian kings who ruled over all of Egypt for three-quarters of a century as that country’s 25th dynasty. Through inscriptions carved on stelae by both the Nubians and their enemies, it is possible to map out these rulers’ vast footprint on the continent. The black pharaohs reunified a tattered Egypt and filled its landscape with glorious monuments, creating an empire that stretched from the southern border at present-day Khartoum all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea. They stood up to the bloodthirsty Assyrians, perhaps saving Jerusalem in the process.
Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history that largely went untold. Only in the past four decades have archaeologists resurrected their story—and come to recognize that the black pharaohs didn’t appear out of nowhere. They sprang from a robust African civilization that had flourished on the southern banks of the Nile for 2,500 years, going back at least as far as the first Egyptian dynasty."

African Prehistory Summarized

From General History of Africa: Volume I, Methodology and African Prehistory

In a nutshell, material civilization originated in the tropical latitudes of Africa and Asia in prehistoric times, and then shifted to more northerly latitudes in Europe where, as a result of its enhanced technology and the amassing of capital, its performance has been outstanding.... However, the more the productive forces gain strength, the sharper the conflicts generated by will to power. The struggles for national liberation and social emancipation being waged all over the continent epitomize its rejection of being shackled in the fetters imposed so long ago. It is this struggle for liberation, this unquenchable desire for higher things, free from the constraints of alienation, that have characterized human beings ever since the time when, no longer animals, they stood up and took their first steps. In Africa, the creation of Man by Man, which began thousands of millennia ago. In a sense, Africa prehistory has still not come to an end. 

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is the experience of anxiety or concern in a situation where a person has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about their social group. Check out the lecture by Claude Steele below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOjiAivuPfI&feature=em-uploademail

Ethiopia:The First Civilization

From the blog, "An Ethiopian Journal." I am using this direct quote because of all of the books the author notes.

The Ethiopians were considered as occupying all the south coasts of both Asia and Africa,” and adds that “this is an ancient opinion of the of the Greeks.” Then we have the view of Stephanus of Byzantium, that: “Ethiopia was the first established country on earth; and the Ethiopians were the first who introduced the worship of the gods, and who established laws.” The vestiges of this early civilization have been found in Nubia, the Egyptian Sudan, West Africa, Egypt, Mashonaland, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, South America, Central America, Mexico, and the United States. Any student who doubts this will find ample evidence in such works as The Voice of Africa, by Dr. Leo Froebenius; Prehistoric Nations, and Ancient America, by John D. Baldwin; Rivers of Life, by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong; A Book of the Beginnings by Gerald Massey; Children of the Sun and The Growth of Civilization, by W. J. Perry; The Negro by Professor W.E.B. DuBois; The Anacalypsis, by Sir Godfrey Higgins; Isis Unveiled by Madam H. P. Blavatsky; The Diffusion of Culture, by Sir Grafton Elliot Smith; The Mediterranean Race, by Professor Sergi; The Ruins of Empires, by Count Volney; The Races of Europe, by Professor William Z. Ripley; and last but not least, the brilliant monographs of Mr. Maynard Shipley: New Light on Prehistoric Cultures and Americans of a Million Years Age.

First African Settlers Reach North America

"On August 20, 1619, a Dutch ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, carrying Captain Jope and a cargo of twenty Africans.... Although they were not the first Africans to arrive in North America, they were the first African settlers." 

from Black Saga: The African American Experience by Charles M. Christian

These are the first African Americans.

http://www.blacksaga.org/

Buddy Guy - Hoochie Coochie Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yowJiQZBXrA&feature=related