The ancestors of a great many of the victimized families live in Africa. 
 
That's a neat trick.  I wonder what their secret is??
 
EK
 

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 11 May 2007 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: Official Opposition Events


The implication here is that the "original sin" of slavery
rests with Africans, as if that somehow lets everyone else who
profited from the enslavement of African peoples off the hook.
 But framed that way, the argument is silly.  Human nature
being what it is, its not all that surprising that African
peoples bear their share of guilt for the historical thriving
of the institution.  Every market transaction requires buyers
and sellers, and both parties in a transaction expect to
benefit from it.  If the transaction is morally evil, both are
implicated in it.

The fact that some African nations participated in slavery and
bear share of the historical responsibility for it does not
change the fact that, with very rare exceptions, pretty much
ALL of the victims of the institution were African or Native
American.  The ancestors of a great many of the victimized
families live in Africa.  The forced migration of ten million
or so people, a substantial portion of whom were worked to
death in Caribbean plantations, is a historical evil. 
Moreover, slavery still exists in the world, so this
particular evil is not yet an artifact of history.  Under
these circumstances, it is not at all unreasonable to suggest
that representatives of those African polities whose citizens
are the descendants of people victimized by slavery should be
present to bear witness at Jamestown.

We should pause to ponder just why slavery is evil.  Slavery
certainly can involve harsh suffering and physical
deprivation.  But while those things are awful, it is not
primarily in the physical suffering that the evil of slavery
resides.  Slavery, as Orlando Patterson noted long ago,
demands the social death of the slave.  As a consequence,
slavery, by its nature, strips the slave of autonomy and the
capacity for self-definition and self-government.  

For citizens of the United States of America, slavery is
especially problematic.  As American thinkers have long
understood, the continued survival of the American polity
depends upon the continued public commitment of self-governed
citizens.  The promise of the American polity is ordered
liberty--freedom, rightly understood, constrained by right
reason.  The antithesis of slavery is this fundamental
American good:  liberty.  It is possible, of course, to
reconcile slavery with American republican values, by denying
the slave's full capacity for self-government.  But we know
today that this attempt to reconcile slavery with American
public ideals is premised on a lie--that racism has no basis
in reality.  

There can be no moral harm in asking slavery's victims to bear
witness to its depravity.  But there are especially profound
reasons for American citizens, of whatever genetic or cultural
background, to bear witness as well.  The salutary good that
comes from so doing is to remind ourselves, collectively and
as a people, what it is that we stand for.  In condemning
slavery, we affirm the deepest and most valued commitments of
our public order.  

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 11:53:45 EDT
>From: [log in to unmask]  
>Subject: Re: Official Opposition Events  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Why would African heads of state be invited?  It was the
African  tribal 
>leaders who oversaw the sale of their African brothers into
slavery in  the first 
>place.
> 
>J South
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University
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