General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "American by birth southern by the grace of God" [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)The point was that the slavers didn't care if people died until they could be put to work. The records of actual deaths aren't complete, but from those that do exist, we know the slave trade was genocidal.
The point is that this was a systemic abuse of one group of people by another people for the purpose of economic and political power.
The holocaust didn't come out of nowhere. The legacy of the holocaust is the legacy of religious hatred among Christians for those of other religions - a legacy that, btw, was disproportionate to Christians in Europe from the time of the beginning of the rise of global economies in western Europe.
During the middle ages, when Spain was under muslim rule, they had more religious tolerance for others, including Jews, than Christians did.
The two systems, therefore, evolved in the same place, within the same culture.
One targeted Jews (and Muslims, but when so many of them were expelled from Europe during the same time as Jews, they went south, while many Jews migrated north and west.) The other targeted Africans.
Both were systems that dehumanized "the other" for their own gain. Both gained political power by this dehumanization.
One has a far more long-lasting legacy simply because it was allowed to exist for so long. That legacy includes genocide.
I think there's a lot of denial in the south among white people about just how horrific the legacy of slavery was. I think it's important for whites to talk to whites about the real horror of that legacy.
genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation. the slave trade engaged in genocide.