The Truths About Slavery, Its Rhetoric in American Race Relations:

Benefactor Nations from the 1400-1900 Slave Trades:

The Truths About Slavery, Its Rhetoric in American Race Relations:
By Marc Chamot

In Barack Obama’s speech, he was right on one thing that race relations in America are in dire straits. Both sides are equally guilty in the great race divide while no groups want to come forward in finding compromising solutions in resolving this matter.

It has become nothing more than a blame game from both sides.

Former slave nations in the Caribbean, Central-South America has made great strides in racial relations while America has been lagging behind.

I am a well-traveled man and have lived mainly in Latin America during my early childhood.

As I had previously written on one of my blog posts called Culture Shock: Sensitivity, Thin Skinned and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS “PC”, Latin Americans Wondering; if America Has Taken the FUN Out of IT?

Culture Shock and Political Correctness 101:
"Being a world traveler and having lived abroad for a third of my life and being formerly married to a Latina from Peru, I decided to write about our Political Correctness and theirs in comparison.Now, my bulk of experience and knowledge would be Latin America."

"No nation in Latin America has ever had American style civil rights movements for their indigenous peoples, maybe some in a smaller case to help their neglected Indians but relations between black, Mestizos and white Latinos have always had harmonious and affectionate, relationships unlike the United States."

"Take for example their most popular Salsa music and my favorite of all music, there are no race definitions on who can compose and sing these songs like, “baila mi Negrita”-dance my little black girl, “mira como baila mi Negrita”-look how my little black girl dances “Mi negrita me dejo”-my little black girl left me.””In America any artists outside the black race would be seen as Racist, and composing and singing like this would be potential career-enders for them but not in Latin America.”

“Because these songs are being done in affectionate jest not to disparage or demean another race Latinos in general do not see it as racism.”

Race in America is a big unresolved issue. But radical African American groups like Louis Farrakhan and United Trinity Church of Christ’s Jeremiah Wright still hold the anger and resentment over these acts (slavery), and want reparations for something that historically was being done at the time that wasn’t entirely America’s fault.

According to historical accounts African slavery started in Africa among its own tribes.

It then escalated on to the Muslims in the Middle East. Then eventually led to Europe and the New World in North America, the Caribbean islands and Latin-Central America.

Slavery was a world wide escalating effect at the time for cheaper labor.

According to Wikipedia the United States including North America were only 4.4% beneficiaries of the slave trade (chart below) compared to largest Brazil, second largest Spain and its empire, third the British, the French and the Dutch.

Distribution of slaves (1450-1900)
Destination
Percentage
Brazil
35.4%
Spanish Empire
22.1%
British West Indies
17.7%
French West Indies
14.1%
British North America and future United States
4.4%
Dutch West Indies
4.4%
Danish West Indies
0.2%

The enslavement of Africans was definitely a bad, sad dark time in our world history. So was NAZI Germany’s Adolph Hitler’s annihilation of six million Jews around the early 1940s. Most Jews around Europe have been able to move on over their tragedies of the NAZI regime that happened over 65 years ago.

There are some groups in America mainly African Americans that can’t get over the tragedy of slavery that happened over 150 years ago.

While it’s true that civil rights in the United States were slower in coming while other Caribbean, Latin-Central American countries moved quicker in equal rights for all citizens. If you want to believe race baiters they want to blame America, the United States over this issue when in reality it was a worldwide problem at the time.

The real true culprits behind the slave trades of the 1400’s to 1900’s were the African benefactors, the Muslims, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the British, the French and the Dutch.

While most Caribbean and Latin American countries including Brazil who all were once former countries that enslaved Africans in epic proportions have pretty much gotten over this issue where as it seems that in America it’s a lingering issue that will never die.

We all thought that America was making great strides in racial relations but that philosophy has been clearly blown out the water after the Jeremiah Wright pulpit videos.

Part of the healing process should be moving on, ridding the anger, accusations and working together as Americans for common cause.

A brief history of the world slave trade:

Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

Slavery was practiced in Africa before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.[10] The African slave trade provided a large number of black slaves to Europeans and their African agents.[11][12] When the first Africans were shipped to the New World, relying on African slaves to keep a plantation economy running wasn’t new to the Europeans.

The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade taking a toll on Africa, although it was one of the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique: "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth). ... Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean."[19]

See also: History of slavery, African slave trade, and European colonization of the Americas
There are two main eras of the Atlantic system.

The First Atlantic system was the trade of African slaves to mostly South American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires and accounts to only slightly more than 3% of all Atlantic slave trade. It started (on a significant scale) in about 1502[13] and lasted until 1580, when Portugal was temporarily united with Spain. While the Portuguese traded slaves themselves, the Spanish empire relied on the asiento system, awarding merchants (mostly from other countries) the license to trade slaves to their colonies.

During the first Atlantic system most of these traders were Portuguese, giving them a near-monopoly during the era, although some Dutch, English, Spanish and French traders also participated in the slave trade.[14] After the occupation, Portugal stayed formally autonomous, but was weakened, with its colonial empire being attacked by the Dutch and English.

The Second Atlantic system was the trade of African slaves by mostly English, Brazilian, French and Dutch traders. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies, Brazil and North America, as a number of European countries built up economically slave-dependent colonial empires in the New World.

European colonists initially practiced systems of both bonded labor and Indian slavery, enslaving many of the natives of the New World. For a variety of reasons, Africans replaced Indians as the main population of slaves in the Americas. In some cases, such as on some of the Caribbean Islands.

Blacks
A significant number of Latin Americans are of African ancestry
Millions of African slaves were brought to Latin America from the sixteenth century onward, the majority of whom were sent to the Caribbean region and Brazil. Today, people identified as black constitute important parts of the populations of Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Peru and Ecuador.

The first slaves to arrive as part of a labor force appeared in 1502 on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Cuba received its first four slaves in 1513. Slave exports to Honduras and Guatemala started in 1526. The first African slaves to reach what would become the US arrived in January of 1526 as part of a Spanish attempt at colonizing South Carolina near Jamestown. By November the 300 Spanish colonists were reduced to a mere 100 accompanied by 70 of their original 100 slaves. The slaves revolted and joined a nearby native population while the Spanish abandoned the colony altogether. Colombia received its first slaves in 1533. El Salvador, Costa Rica and Florida began their stint in the slave trade in 1541, 1563 and 1581 respectively.

Distribution of slaves (1450-1900) Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
Destination
Percentage
Brazil
35.4%
Spanish Empire
22.1%
British West Indies
17.7%
French West Indies
14.1%
British North America and future United States
4.4%
Dutch West Indies
4.4%
Danish West Indies
0.2%