Dissecting Fact from Fiction as It Relates to the Chattel Slave Trade

If you are not African (Black) and/or you don’t participate in and pay close attention to issues within the African liberation movement, you probably won’t have much framework for what I’m talking about here.  Within African community dialogues within the U.S. there is a contentious discussion about the true origins and connections of Africans within the U.S. today with the transatlantic slave trade.  These discussions are raging everywhere from African churches to petti-bourgeoisie opportunism electoral politics, to revolutionary nationalist organizing spaces.  The central debate centers around how we came to the Western Hemisphere.  Did the majority of us come here through the transatlantic slave trade, kidnapped from Africa?  Or, did we come thousands of years before that on our own?  Or, were we always here and therefore have no actual connection to Africa?

I think primarily because I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying the transatlantic slave trade, I have learned – not from the bourgeoise educational institutions in this country – but from my independent Pan-African education learned within the work study process of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, that our people from Somalia to Bokango to the middle passage to the Western Hemisphere have always fought courageously against colonial oppression.  Since I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt, I have absolutely no shame at all at knowing that for a brief period of our African lives, we were enslaved by European colonialism.  There’s no disgrace in that for me no more than there would be if I was attacked on the street by 10 people and captured despite the fact I fought valiantly against them.  The odds were against me and they took me hostage as a result.  I see our history in the transatlantic slave trade that same way. 

If someone doesn’t know our valiant history of resistance, then I understand why that person would have no desire to identify with that slave history.  The only other alternative is to see us  willing participants in our oppression.  The happy house slave narrative of someone who happily accepted being disrespected and dehumanized.  If people believe those lies about us, than its even easier to see why that person would see the need to create a more “honorable” version of our history.  And, for the most part, with the Africa deniers and to a slightly lesser extent, the “we came on our own” crowd, I’m afraid some of this shame is driving much of their narrative.

Certainly, for the we were never in Africa people, this position is 100% driven by ignorance and shame about history these people clearly haven’t lifted one finger to digest and understand.  I haven’t met or seen a single one of them who has read a single book about transatlantic slavery.  Certainly, nothing about Africa.  Instead, they rely almost (and incredibly) entirely on conspiracy theories about the lack of fully intact slave ships today as proof that there was no transatlantic slave trade.  For these poor souls there is not only a lack of understanding of our history of resistance, but a very sad and disgusting oblivion of understanding of anything about Africa.  In fact, you can test it.  Ask these people to tell you absolutely anything about an ethnic history, practices, customs, biological, etc., connections between African people in the West today and Africa and you will receive nothing in return except a litany of rhetoric with no substance.  This problem is the direct result of colonial anti-Africa miss-education.

The people who believe we were always here present a little more complexity, but not much.  Their argument, which they rely on credible scholars like Ivan Van Sertima and Cheikh Anti Diop to substantiate, expresses that Africans left Africa in large numbers long before colonialism and ventured to this Western world and settled here.  There is no question that Africans did travel here before colonialism.  They developed relationships based on mutual trade, assistance, and understanding with the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere.  Actually, there is evidence that people traveled all over the place before colonialism without engaging in antagonistic and dominating behavior towards the people they encountered.  So, that portion of this analysis has legitimacy.  The point of contention is the percentage of African people in the West who fall within this number.  According to these people, a significant amount of our people here represent this reality.  In order for us to take this suggestion seriously, we need these people to present much, much evidence.  In other words, the people advancing this notion cannot provide you any scientific evidence to justify their claim.  They will argue that an African with roots in Louisiana with a French surname (like my family) could have that as a result of slavery, but could also have it because of historical patterns (they claim) of Africans losing their family knowledge and people settling everywhere, even in slave states.  Although it could be possible that some people fell within this realm, its highly unlikely that large percentages of Africans living in slave states fall under this definition and these people produce nothing to suggest any differently besides their desire to believe this. 

I’m forever open minded and ready to learn.  The minute these people offer something beyond their hopes and dreams, I mean scientific evidence, I’m going to go all into studying it.  In the meantime, I reject their position in the basis that its extremely disrespectful to our ancestors who fought to keep us alive in this hellish experience.  I refuse to diminish the courage and dedication of our ancestors.  I acknowledge their suffering and for me, that means recognizing those slave shackles and our constant demand to break them.  There’s no shame in this whatsoever.  Its actually one of the proudest legacies out here because we come from a people who fought to be free.  Maybe I see it this way because I've roamed the somber chambers of slave dungeons in Ghana and Senegal.  I say this because no one who denies our legacy of slavery that I've talked to or studied has endured those horrific memories.  If they had, it would be akin to a Jewish person denying the Holocaust.  This spirit explains the constant spirit of resistance, creativity, and defiance that so many non-Africans spend 24/7 trying to emulate.  I guess in the final analysis, this is what it comes down to for me.  We are a people fighting for our freedom and liberation today.  That fight is fueled overwhelmingly by our spirit of resistance.  In that frame of reference, our struggle against servitude is a very proud and necessary aspect of what makes us up as a people today.  I don’t know what it is that makes these people wish to deny that, but I wear it proudly.  Its that spirit that refuses to let me give in to oppression today. Its that spirit that drives me to challenge injustice everywhere all the time, despite the consequences.  And, probably, its their fairytale version of history that explains why they exist with a fairytale analysis for how we will move forward as a people.