The statement that Europeans began the slave trade with Africans is simply untrue!
Africans were enslaving each other for millenia before European slavery began in a significant way. There were many Black (Nubian and Ethiopian) slaves in Pharonic Egypt, for example.
There also was an extensive slave-trade prosecuted by Moslems against BOTH Black Africans and White Europeans, with the added point that the religious differences between Moslem and Christian, along with the perennial military conflicts, (against the Christian Copts in Egypt, against the Byzantines, against Greeks, Albanians, Andalusians, Franks, Sicilians, and even, when they could get away with it, with Northern Europeans!! These religious differences often incited the Muslims to far worse cruelty and viciousness to their White Slaves then they were to blacks.
There were, of course counter-atrocities on the part of White Christians at the time (e.g. the Crusades) but it doesn't change the fact that White Christians were the last, not the first to engage in the barbarity of Chattel Slavery, and the FIRST to really try to suppress the Global Slave trade!!
I remember our favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, said something about the evil of accepting the burden of undeserved guilt.
PEACE AND FREEDOM
dkmeller
