To wonder why it's so controversial to talk about white behaviour throughout history?

[BeachParty]

It's an interesting discussion to have, and makes you think.
Why do so many immediately go into "how dare you!" mode or "why are you being racist towards white people?!"
Instead of actually listening to what people are saying? History is whitewashed in this country, we usually learn it from a "hero" viewpoint.

Oh good god. The Africans were selling each other well before we come along lovely.

You remind me of Dr Shola who is extremely vocal about her hatred of the bad white people yet likes to keep it secret her grand fathers made a fortune from selling people with the same colour skin.

Context is everything thing.

Yes everyone knows it's fine to buy people as long as they're already for sale!

And if it’s still evident today after we have long left the country - that’s on them. We cannot be held accountable for shit they choose to do today

It’s a very very left attitude that believes none white people have no agency over themselves.

I never said it was. But the slave trade was well under way before the Portuguese kicked it off trans Atlantic. The British we the leaders in banning it - using the Royal Navy to stop it,

But the slave trade in Africa continued after we stopped and continues to this day.

That’s why context is important.

I don't context ever makes slavery ok. The "but" isn't necessary.

Point to wear I said slavery is ok.

It really wasn't that long ago though. A couple of generations at most in lots of places.

The context only matters if your intent is to minimize our role.

Focusing on one particular aspect of it and omitting the bigger picture is very telling because it’s fits the narrative better of ‘The bad white people’

Its a half truth you peddle

It is not a half thruth at all. It is entirely wrong that we traded in African people. There are no buts needed.

But the African people selling African people was/is ok?

There's the unnecessary "but" again. If you wish to add context "and" "in addition" etc all work without diminishing the original point.

Suppress your inner grammarian @Kinshipug . It's detracting from the value of you posts.

And the Arabs also enslaved the Africans

Why do you struggle to reply to my question?

Is African people selling African people ok?

Try not change the subject this time …

The value is that’s it’s really eye opening to see the lengths people will go to not admitting the African slave trade was already up and running by the African people before the trans Atlantic take over and then continued after - to this day.

Really odd…

Everybody appears to have enslaved Africans. I listen to the World Service a lot, and it is the only place that Africans appear to have a platform allowing Africa and Africans to speak for themselves. Like most politicians, a lot is drivel but I firmly believe there are some who could harness the talent (there's a lot just in fashion and the arts and so there's as much, less easily illustrated to celebrate). Africa will, I predict, jump out of its skin to skip into the influence zone.

Yep! This thread is just going round in circles! No one seems to actually taking on board people like me who work in the History classroom!

While I love the history classroom @FrippEnos , nobody hired me to teach in it. I was too old (NQT at 55) and not moving from beautiful Cornwall to anywhere uglier. Even before I mention my Dh's business.

Wistfully, I still quite fancy a few hours teaching as a volunteer.

Gosh how hard is it to accept that Africans enslaved their own people since before records began - and still do.

There is so much history and modern day info on this.

I accept all your reservations, and share them. But there will be a tipping point, at which african energy could surge. I want to see it happen. I don't want to see more of the same names just hoovering the money into their private Swiss accounts.

Isaw a really interesting interview a few months ago on Trinngernoratry, about why business struggles in Africa. The woman they were speaking to, who is a business owner, argued that it was largely because when the newly independent African nations developed their bureaucracy and business regulations, they mainly copied examples from the Soviets and Chinese, which are extremely difficult for businesses. This was mainly because they were looking to try not to use the models that came from the western European countries.

One example she gave was that if she wanted to hire someone, it involved days worth of bureaucracy to get it approved - and then it was almost impossible to ever fire anyone.

It's quite interesting and worth watching.

Any race or creed of people that enslave any of their own or other people is obviously wrong. Yes Africans enslaving their own people is wrong.

But it is ridiculous to deny the global impact that transatlantic slavery had on the world and on black people.

I don’t think 1 white individual who had slaves is worse that 1 African individual who did the same thing. But I think the impact of African slaves being trafficked by white people had a larger impact than any Africans enslaving their own people.

I think it’s nuances like this that some people deny and for black people it’s irritating.

If there had been no transatlantic slavery, black people wouldn’t make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population in traditionally white countries.

There wouldn’t be generations of traumatised black families.

There wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of black Americans who don’t even know which country they’re originally from.

I could go on and on.

It’s like my husband who is lovely refusing to acknowledge that the historical behaviour of men has had a huge impact on women. It’s not his fault personally and of course women have also treated women badly but that doesn’t mean he should deny the role that men have played or seem to minimise the impact.

Look I think it's controversial to talk about white behaviour or white history because I don't think the amount of melanin present in some one's skin is a useful lens through which to consider history.

To do so might be considered racist as it pre-supposes that all people with the same white skin colour must have some thing more in common with one another than an ability to absorb more vitamin D which is useful when living far away from the equator. What really does the history of the Inuit people of the artic have to do with the history of France?

I think that nation states or geographical regions or empires or groups with the same ethnicity, culture or religion can all at different times be useful ways of considering history. So depending on the context we might talk about English history or European History or Russian history or the history of the Roman empire or Inuit history or Jewish history or African American history or Native American history.

It is not a half thruth at all. It is entirely wrong that we traded in African people. There are no buts needed.

Absolutely it is. Even the "couple of generations" of slave keeping and slave trading mentioned represents incalculable human suffering and trauma. There's a lot there to study.

But you can't call slave trading, though, is "white behaviour", as it wasn't practised by most white people, not all the people who practised it were white, white people haven't persisted in the behaviour. "White behaviour" doesn't doesn't make sense as a label for it.

What you can say, for example, is that colonialism was a big trend for most European nations for about three hundred years. So if you want to identify bad behaviour from western civilisations at great cost to other non-European societies, it's very easy to do.

Which makes this unexplained determination to shoe horn the word "white" in somewhere whether it makes sense or not even stranger.

You know people's actions aren't determined by their skin colour, don't you? Politics and culture and societal norms are what influence behaviour, and even then, people from the same time and place behave very differently from one another.