My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-Trader | Hacker News Reader

My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-Trader

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63 pointsdanielam61 comments

Slavery was one of the original sins that built this country but its funny to see so many comments in here believe that was it. That once it was abolished call it a day. Blacks in this country were not truly free until the Civil Rights era. Which the height of it was only 10 years before I was born.

I agree that you can't let the past define your future but you also can't be naive and think that in 50 years true unabashed equality has been established. Hell it took until 77 to get redlining by race wiped out. Imagine not being able to buy the house you want to live in based on your race.

When I visited the US for the first time 3 years ago, I was shocked by the levels of segregation. For reference I grew up in black South Africa.

They're still not free, with racist policing and incarceration policies.

This is the most fascinating article I have read this month, if not year. Thanks to the author, if you find your way to these comments. What I found particularly interesting:

1. The insight into Igbo culture and its complexity. We rarely see this in articles published in the West about African culture, in part because many African writers care not to disclose (not just because of existing narratives into which western writers place lazy stories).

2. The nuance in the response to the past: guilt and pride. Many people feel this I suspect. I wonder if knee jerk reactions such as that by the commenter (1996) at the top of the comments is a reaction to that discomfort, rather than the perceived accusations of historical injustice.

3. The way in which traditional belief systems, curses etc, gave rise to such a mature and measured response to the sins of the past. There is a parallel to German acknowledgement of past sins; I'm fairly sure roooted in their traditional Catholic belief systems.

Can't we all let our ancestors rest in their grave?

Every country/ethnicity/race whatever you want to call it did some major wrong at some point or another.

Now please excuse me while I don't join in your self flagellation trip.

EDIT: to answer some of the accusations below, you guys know nothing about me, my background, or my ancestors, yet most of you are quick to jump to conclusions. It's both funny and sad.

The past doesn't make me feel anything anymore. It's the past. I care about the future now. I used to resent what was done to my ancestors. I don't give a flying fuck anymore.

Now I let the industry of guilt and regret find other customers.

> EDIT: to answer some of the accusations below, you guys know nothing about me, my background, or my ancestors, yet most of you are quick to jump to conclusions. It's both funny and sad.

It seems like in the US, knowing (or thinking you know) the "race" of the person you are talking with is fundamental, and everything always ends up being relative to that. When you don't state your own racial background (or what you said didn't convince them) people will simply guess something on their own.

Just a few days ago, a black (half black? but I think it's the same, in the US) humorist used the exact same words as the far right always does when describing the French soccer team, but somehow it was different because of his skin colour (that was actually his line of defense). Them explicitly saying they are French, not African was not something he could accept, because, you know, they're black.

When I was in the US or Canada, people were always asking my wife "where she came from" for no special reason, and very few accepted "Canada" as an answer. I was the actual immigrant, but since I'm white I wasn't subject to that. For her, after having mostly lived in France where nobody would ever assume you aren't just French unless you explicitely tell them (or can't speak French at all) it was a horrible experience.

It's just something I have observed. Everyone seems to be obsessed with the other persons' origins, sometimes with good intentions (who actually cares about being praised for their parents' birthplace, though?) but it never stops and it's very obvious to anyone who isn't used to North America.

Not sure if it's really on topic, sorry if I got carried away a bit.

People, mostly travellers but people in general, often ask where I'm from even though it's pretty obvious I was born in Australia.

I think people just generally like to talk about ancestry, and the people in the room who probably have the most different ancestry probably get the most attention.

Every family in Australia has a story about how they, their parents, or grand parents, or great great grand parents, got here. It's all still quite fresh.

He was acknowledging that their origins were African. Which they were. The humorist that you are talking about is Trevor Noah and he is from South Africa. He is an immigrant. So it's not really a US thing. Its a being subjected to a double standard thing. In the US when you're a minority and you are doing something positive you are considered without doubt an American. But when its something negative or objectionable to some people race comes in to play really quickly.

When I was growing up it was common for the news to report the race of a subject when it was a black person doing the crime. But you knew the person was white when race was not mentioned at all. In the past few years that has gotten better but it was definitely a thing in the not too distant past.

When a large segment of the population thinks its okay for police to profile based on race its hard for people subjected to it to not think about race in all avenues of life. Because its something that you deal with on a regular basis.

It’s not a minority thing; whites deal with the same (e.g., “[whites][0] [have][1] [a mass][2] [shooting problem][3]”). It’s just different groups that apply the double standard.

[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/white-men-have-committed-more-mass-...

[1]: https://www.salon.com/2017/10/02/americas-white-man-problem-...

[2]: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/9/1747592/-How-America...

[3]: https://psmag.com/social-justice/white-men-aggrievement-and-...

The issue is that by people from minority racial groups becoming hyper sensitive to race they end up perpetuating racial division.

Trevor Noah's comments are an example. His view of the world is probably significantly influenced by race due to real or perceived discrimination he has experienced, but by his commentaries focusing on race he pushes a worldview that directs people's attention to the fault lines of race rather than the things which unite us in spite of racial differences.

Acknowledging race is not being hypersensitive about race. The problem is in what you said "pushes a worldview that directs people's attention to the fault lines of race rather than the things which unite us in spite of racial differences". You have the luxury to not think about it because it doesn't affect you directly. When you're a minority its something that you have to think about either consciously or subconsciously. Because you run into it frequently. Depending on where you live and who you deal with it can be something you deal with on a daily basis or something you deal with every now and then. But it will be something you deal with.

And it doesn't have to be that way. The racialization of everything in our political and social discourse does not help. The political Left has become hypersensitive to race.

In America we have constructed a society where racial minorities can be more successful and more integrated into the broader society than in any other country on Earth. Racial divisions of the past are melting away. And yet the Identity Politics of the Far Left have come to dominate the worldview of many in a way that pushes them away from MLK's vision of a world in which people don't care about race, to one in which all they seem to care about is race.

We are well on our way to achieving MLK's dream, but it is in spite of Identity Politics.

Personally, it feels much different to know that my own ancestors did something horribly wrong than some other completely unknown people. Yes, this makes no sense but I guess it is human nature.

Knowing that, I believe that it is critical that we all reflect why people not so different to us could possibly commit whatever crime they did

It's not about past crimes and past wrongs; it's more about rising moral standards and rising expectations of peace and comfort.

The past was just a lot more brutal than the present. Judgement should be in that context.

Agreed. And yet: some nation-scale crimes are not that far in the past (or are being committed right now). On a tangent, it is also interesting to reflect what our children will think of our times when they’ve grown up. Will they e.g., see our lack of action on climate change as moral failure? Or even more interesting: will they see failure where we don’t even see an issue nowadays?

I don't think you can make the historical case that the past was uniformly more brutal or unjust than the present. I think it would be more accurate to say that in our current place and time, our current evolution of moral standards and expectations looks unfavorably (and rightfully so!) on human slavery, but there's no guarantee that we or others aren't regressing on other issues. That's probably a cause for humility as future generations will almost certainly look back on us and wonder how we could have tolerated those things that they will consider injustices.

This article contains actually interesting not much known history. It is more about learning about past and ditching away self serwing comforting tales. People want to talk about noble heroes going into adventures and celebrate them, but really really don't want to know about ugly stuff that was inherent to all that.

But when you accept ugly stuff for what it was and past leaders for who they were, you will find also a lot of lower level people standing in their way, arguing with them, becoming poorer or even risking their lives because they don't want to participate. Who are also interesting and complex.

We can judge Nazi and Stalin in their historical context, just like people from any other period. Just like slavery, they did not appeared via divine intervention of past - they appeared because of human decisions, activity, ideologies and struggle for power.

Look again. In different ways, moral standards have fallen.

You are going to have a very hard time selling that theory. The world is a vastly more fair and less savage place now then at any other point in human history.

That's the result of technology, not moral standards. People are the same as they've always been, and I'd describe the moral evolution as a random walk, more than anything.

That's an extremely broad statement. Do you really know that much history?

I'm sure folks in Syria would disagree.

I agree with such reflection, but a lot of people want to use slavery as an indictment against white people generally, even those whose ancestors took no part in the slave trade. There is certainly some truth to the claims that such white people benefitted transitively, but the error margins are gargantuan.

But in the states, white people still get the benefits of slavery and black folks still pay the for the costs. Why should that be allowed?

My parents were forced out of their country and came to the US in 1956. So..?

Unless that country happens to now currently be a part of the USA, it has no relevance.

and What? How does your parents immigration affect US history? Do you think paying for true cost of slavery means you will have to give up your house or bank account?

White people in the U.S. don't get the benefits from slavery, they benefit from a severely broken social fabric.

"Slavery" is a racial institution, and racial institutions do not exist in the U.S. But a social divide that somehow puts people of colour on the receiving end of society is an effect of the free market, and to be against that is to be a socialist, because everyone is responsible for their own success, with society having little to no bearing on that; that's the American dream.

To finally abolish slavery, institute universal healthcare, make high quality education available for everyone, create a social fabric that is inclusive. But that is not the American way: every success and every failure has to be self-made, and to think otherwise is communism and an attack on American values.

I agree with the last part, but not the first. As a class, white folks got capital, property, education, opportunities, and more—all denied to black people. I have to think that amassing of resources have an effect today.

My apologies. In my post I might have been more sarcastic than I intended, which notoriously doesn't carry well over the written medium.

The effects of slavery have been, in my opinion, been carried over to modern times in the U.S., but everyone on the right side of the divide hides behind "equal opportunity" and "personal responsibility". The defence is that everyone with an equal amount of assets has the same opportunities, which might be true, but complete disregards the historical opportunities of people to have amassed those assets in the first place resulting in the narrative that the U.S. isn't racist in nature, it's just that its ideals of equality just happens to put people of colour at a disadvantage so everyone not affected can shrug it off, secure in the knowledge that they really earned their wealth, and that those less fortunate should just work harder. The system is fair, after all, since it worked out for them.

Blacks aren’t denied opportunity in the US; some of them live in low-opportunity areas due to effects of historical slavery (too many but far from all). These problems are hard to solve even for those with great intentions. The distinction is important.

Let’s burn all history books while we’re at it.

After all, nothing can be learned from the past.

Unfortunately even then it is not enough. After all the grim and painful history of Jews, look at the plight of Palestinians under occupation.

I think OP was arguing against the idea that children inherit sins from their ancestors.

It's tempting to take this point of view, especially when it's your own ancestors that transgressed. But it's also important to realize when, generations later, the victims of those transgressions are still feeling their impact. It's a touchy subject and we have to guard against the language we use to talk about these things. We can't talk about sins or blame---no one is to blame for the actions of their ancestors. But I don't think it's out the question to say that those who's families benefited from exploiting or hurting others have a responsibility to make reasonable accommodations that help remedy current legacies of those misdeeds. What constitutes reasonable, of course, is debatable, but the responsibility, to me, isn't.

If one can inherit one's ancestors' wealth and privilege, then surely the same should apply to their sins to some extent. The asymmetry is problematic.

I’d have much less a problem with this line of thinking if there was a way to get to a reasonably accurate dollar figure. Specifically not everyone’s ancestors participated in slavery or left them with an inheritance. Do the white Americans that bankrolled the civil rights movement (and their descendants) get a write off? Does the price tag guarantee that people won’t later complain that the price tag was too low? The whole problem is intractable. That doesn’t mean we can’t work to create a more equitable society; it just means we should look to improving lives of the less fortunate and maybe give up on punishment.

Yes, it's a thorny question, but that doesn't mean it's intractable.

People continue to deny to this day that slavery, Jim Crow and redlining have any relevance for the state of racial politics and racial inequity in this country. "It's all in the past." If not reparations, the least we can do is come to real terms with our history. The number of educated, upper class Americans I know that refuse to is very frustrating.

You posited that if one can inherit wealth, they should be able to inherit social responsibility as well. Computing one's inherited social responsibility is the intractable problem, not making the world more racially equitable.

> The number of educated, upper class Americans I know that refuse to is very frustrating.

I've found that people are very willing to improve race relations if you present it as "here's an opportunity to help some people" and not as a "everything you have is because of your skin color so you basically should give everything you have to other people". Lots of people go around pushing the latter view, so you have to be careful to distinguish your message from theirs if you want to get reception.

>I've found that people are very willing to improve race relations if you present it as "here's an opportunity to help some people" and not as a "everything you have is because of your skin color so you basically should give everything you have to other people".

I'm not sure what this is referring to. I was talking simply about recognizing and acknowledging historical and socio-political patterns that led to the current situation.

An example of why not rest history is this part of the story: “Not everyone could summon the courage to be a slave trader,” he said. “You had to have some boldness in you.”.

That is fighter for human rights speaking. But still, his attempt to defend his father, he frames everyone who did not sold slaves as less courageous. That is how bad actors still frame things today - they are risk takers, brave, courageous and those who are not like them are less brave.

Reading this part makes sense and teaches something stories and entertainment can not possibly teach.

It's hard to respond when even your personal opinion post is getting dogpiled. I'll just say that I completely agree with you. I did not inherit the sins of other Americans when I became a citizen. Mine is to look to the future and look out for the interests of me and mine.

It's quite a strange situation as an immigrant.

I had an interesting conversation with a native American, that went down the "your ancestors did x/y/z" route (which I don't begrudge him, it wasn't unprovoked). When I pointed out my 'ancestors' arrived that May, he conceded that this wasn't accounted for.

(The discussion was regarding the local tribe's hiring preferences. We went on to become good friends. The conversation was blunt but not unfriendly.)

> Can't we all let our ancestors rest in their grave?

"The past isn't dead, it isn't even past", William Faulkner.

If you had read about the "ohu" in the article referenced by the link you'd understand that.

But it seems this place is becoming like reddit: no one reads anything.

Even after my edit, you assume I didn't read the article. Others also assumed I didn't know about the issues mentioned in the article. This is wrong.

I don't have to say anything else- replies likes yours clearly illustrate the point.

If you read the article it's about a lot more than guilt and regret, and the bits about ohu and osu are cultural tidbits that were news to me. Clearly in Nigeria this is not all in the past, if it truly is anywhere.

This is an odd response to the article. You've had quite an emotional reaction to a well-written and informative piece. In a quieter moment, you might reflect on all the possibilities for your raised ire.

I'm wondering what we are doing wrong at this moment. Allowing people to work in sweatshops for our own betterment comes to mind.

Working for giant tech corporations helping them collect data on the population?

It's important to remember that all civilizations practiced slavery, and not just in the remote past. African tribes cooperated with Arabic slave traders by selling them prisoners from rival tribes. American Indians practiced slavery; so did the Aztecs. The Barbary pirates captured millions of Europeans, at the very same time that other Europeans were enslaving Africans. Mauritania only abolished slavery a decade ago. And so on. Taking a broad view of history, westerners are no more guilty of enslaving other peoples than anyone else.

This is true. It's also 'whataboutery'. Slavery was always abhorrent, and the fact it was and is widely practiced does not excuse its beneficiaries. What is interesting is that I don't think you are deploying this rhetorical trick as a means to persuade others, so much as to make yourself feel better about something: to assuage some sort of cognitive unease. Contrast this with the author of the article: she owns it. That is absolute moral bravery.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone of anything. Not making any moral judgements about slavery, either, either positive or negative. It is what it is, an institution that has arisen time and time again in human society. What I was doing is making an historical point; lack of historical perspective is sorely lacking when discussing this kind of topic.

As to your keen insights on my psychological mechanisms: rational argument is conducted objectively, without reference to personalities or group affiliations. Arguments stand or fall on their strength alone.

I am not German, don't even speak German but stories like this bring me admiration for the German culture. Every country in the world has a "big shame", but I feel like only Germany faces their shame with dignity.

Belgium still keeps statues of King Leopold, Spain keeps statues of Cortez and Pisarro, Portugal of Vasco da Gama, the US is only now arguing about the statues for Confederate soldiers; Italy and France never did a real "mea culpa" on how they actually helped and collaborated with the Nazis, Brazil and most of Latin America keep ignoring the ongoing extermination of their natives, most Japanese try to avoid knowing what their country did in Manchuria during WWII, Turkey keeps denying the Armenian genocide, most African countries keep denying their active role in the slave trade ...

Germany has something to teach the world.

I'm not German either, although I'm a fellow EU citizen.

As someone old enough to still marginally view Germans in a WW2 context, it was their (her?) decision to allow a million war refugees to settle in Germany that really clinched it for me. That's how nations should learn from their past, statues notwithstanding.

I know the decision was not undividedly popular within Germany itself, but internationally, it made me proud, and made me feel that's what modern EU countries should aspire to: to be exemplary in the face of human suffering. That action put Germany's role in WW2 irrevocably in the past for me.

And what if these actions end up being a net negative not only for Germany, but even on treatment or acceptance of migrants in the future perhaps throughout all of Europe? For instance, I think we can agree that the sharp growth in European nationalism is strongly connected to this situation. Brexit was certainly strongly connected to this situation.

This is why I would take the opposite view. I do not think that people holding themselves in shame over something they had no direct role in is productive for society. It is bound to lead to emotional decisions which may make one feel good in the short run, yet blow up in your face in the longrun.

By contrast had Germany handled the migrants with more consideration to quality, integration, and what their country could comfortably support then we might have seen a huge boon for all parties as an example of how immigration can help both migrants and host countries. But it would also have been seen as heartless because that more responsible action would also have entailed turning away people who were suffering. Short term heartlessness or long term negative outcomes?

We can perhaps even see the longterm echoes of this sort of problem in the US. For instance Andrew Jackson wanted to free slaves, but under a system of transition. He proposed that existing slaves only be freed as they were trained and given compensation to start 'proper' lives for themselves. In the mean time new slave children would be taken from slave owners for a modest fee and then educated, trained, and sent abroad (to Santo Domingo in particular) to live life as skilled freemen. This system could be seen as cruel compared to outright freedom, yet here we are many generations after the fact still trying to solve an ongoing problem that the compassionate solution arguably produced.

And what if these actions end up being a net positive for Germany, and Europe by proxy? There will be a lot of German-Syrians, some of whom will return to Syria after things settle down. And they will speak to the disgruntled youth who have lost family there, and will speak positively about their adopted second home country. You want to prevent future terrorist attacks? That's how you do it. Not by bombing them more, but by being a friend in need.

> I do not think that people holding themselves in shame over something they had no direct role in

Remembering what your society is capable of, even if not directly culpable any more, is not a weakness; it's a strength. Branding that as "emotional decisions" is disingenuous. How a society treats its prisoners and pets is also an "emotional decision", as well as a good indication of how civilised a society is.

> I think we can agree that the sharp growth in European nationalism is strongly connected to this situation.

I don't think we agree there.

> Brexit was certainly strongly connected to this situation.

Brexit is strongly connected to the likes of Farage, their insulated partisan press, and UK exceptionalism.

> Short term heartlessness or long term negative outcomes?

Or a false dichotomy altogether? What exactly are the long term negative outcomes here?

> the longterm echoes of this sort of problem in the US.

The U.S. has its own share of problems. IMO it's of little use to try and draw comparisons between back-then problems of subjugation and the modern problem of influx of war refugees in Europe.

As one comment here this is certainly a discussion I'd enjoy continuing, but I find this response pattern of quote - one-liners, quote - one-liner, ... to be incredibly low effort and lacking in substance. If you can speak in any holistic fashion to try to make a coherent point then we can go that route.

In my opinion most of your one liners here are 'provably' (at least so much as social views can be proven) false, yet the effort required there to refute each one is probably not worth it. However, at the same time if you think any of these one liners would sufficiently encompass your worldview that compelling evidence to the contrary would change your opinion on matters then please do tell me which one it is.

> I find this response pattern of quote [..] low effort and lacking in substance.

It's a format of online discourse that has been used on mailing lists and usenet groups for decades now. It keeps things on point and makes sure we're addressing the same subjects.

> if you think any of these one liners

"How a society treats its prisoners and pets is also an "emotional decision", as well as a good indication of how civilised a society is."

Your arguments are based on "appeal to rationality," which sounds enticing, but is a form of "appeal to nature" when there is no evidence that "things will blow up in your face in the long run."

At some people, going back far enough in your ancestry:

- they were slave owners - murderers - rapists

We literally have them to thank for our current civilization and existance against tremendous odds.

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