Obama in Ghana: Slavery Was Degregation of People Who 'Appeared Differently'
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 04:27AM Appeared differently….than whom, Mr. President?
During President Obama’s trip to Ghana last week, he visited a notorious slave trade station and CNN’s Anderson Cooper was there to ask him about his impressions, and what lessons we can learn from the Ghana’s slave trade industry today.
COOPER: How did you explain it (slave trade) to — to Sasha and Mafia?
OBAMA: Well, you know, you try to explain that people were willing to degrade others because they appeared differently.
…….COOPER: Do you think what happened here still has resonance in America, that the — that the slave experience still is something that — that should be talked about and should be remembered and should be present in everyday life?
OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that the experience of slavery is — is like the experience of the Holocaust. I think it’s one of those things you don’t forget about.
…… The capacity for discrimination still exists.
The capacity to think about people who are different, not just on the basis of race, but on the basis of religion, or the basis of sexual orientation or gender, still exists. And, so, you know, trying to — to — to use these kinds of extraordinary moments to widen the lens and make sure that we are all reflecting on how we are treating each other, I think, is something the I want my kids to think about, and I want every — every child to think about.
One would wonder if Mr. Obama understands that it was Africans, Ghanaians, who captured and sold their own countrymen into slavery. True, Europeans and Americans were buyers, but it was Africans who turned on their own people, and used them as slaves for themselves and sold them as merchandise, and that might have been a bigger point for the president to make. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss because a friend betrays a friend, not a stranger.
And African-Americans should be insulted that President Obama compared gays and women, who enjoy every imaginable freedom in the United States of America, to the victimization and industry of slavery.
Barack Obama, Race, VIDEO 
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Reader Comments (5)
i am pretty sure he knows the lords traded there own countrymen. White persons always trying to blame others or miniminze the white persons role in slavery. despicable.
Really, greatone? Then why did Obama implicate only white people?
And I wasn't blaming "others" I was pointing out the obvious. Why is blaming white people okay and not blaming black people who did the same thing?
In the states, there's no contest. White people acted sinfully and inhumanely by keeping slaves. They are completely condemnable.
But are you willing to say the same about blacks who sold their own brothers and sisters into slavery? Or used them as slaves themselves? I am. Obama apparently isn't.
Wonder why? Because he's a racist who believes in Black Liberation Theology.
No one's minimizing the role, Greatone. Just trying to set the record straight that in the context of history, what should be the extraordinary story isn't that America ever had slaves, but how America and Britain is where the first real anti-slavery movements in the world began and had an active hand in ending slavery after 10,000 years of its practice all over the globe.
I wish our U.S. president knew this basic fact enough not to say "because they appeared differently." It was mostly Africans who captured Africans to then sell them to white Europeans. Of course, it's odd that there are then black Americans today who wish to shed their "slave" names by adopting Islamic names, given how the Islamic countries were the worst partakers of African slavery in the world. Only about 3% of the transatlantic slave trade of Africans ever ended up arriving in the States. Yet America is supposed to feel uniquely guilty? Give me a break!
Our president understands that African slaves were captured and sold to European and American traders. He had, in fact, just been on an historical tour of Cape Coast Castle, and had been explaining all of this to his own children.
The historical lesson he seems to have been imparting is that no one was enslaving their own kind, but only those who appeared to be different from themselves. In the case of European and American traders, that meant traveling to the distant continent of Africa for slaves. For the African traders, that meant enslaving or buying slaves taken only from other societies, people who looked and acted differently from themselves.
I think the mistake here is to assume that the modern American conception of race, which arose only after slavery had been underway for generations, existed back then. In fact, during most of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery wasn't based on race at all. The Africans involved believed that they were trading foreigners to other foreigners, and didn't see race as relevant (or even see the same racial categories that we do). Similarly, Europeans had been keeping mostly white slaves for many centuries and saw Africa as merely another source of slaves.
wordsmith, Obama has repeatedly made mistakes about US history since the campaign began, the most recent being why he doesn't use the word "victory" in Afghanistan. He doesn't want to appear imperialistic and used the Japanese surrender as an example, noting the wrong person surrendering.
So I wouldn't say for sure that Obama really does know that Africans were enslaved by Africans. Or at least, he may want to twist those facts to fit his racial biases.
The fact is that he failed to mention this when "telling his daughters" that people enslaved people in Ghana who "looked differently", once again bigotting up the story to say that only white people traded in slaves when the reality is that blacks were perpetrators of their own people.
This does not address the inhumanity of slavery in America. The subject was slavery in Ghana and it sounds as if Mr. Obama is trying to rewrite history to contribute to the demonization of whitey.