Not sure if anyone has seen it or not, but on my youtube, a video popped up on my feed of people reacting to a video about the world history of slavery. The information was taken from Thomas Sowell's book Black Rednecks and White Liberals where he has a chapter that has a nice condensed overview of slavery in the world where he goes over Europeans who were enslaved, all the slavery going on with Africa and the fact they sold the slaves to the Europeans, slavery in the Middle East/Ottoman Empire, and more.
It kind of made me sad that all of the people were shocked and didn't seem to have any idea about slavery outside of the U.S., and there was one black lady in particular who (now I can't read minds but it seemed like it) seemed to be disappointed because I guess the video took away slavery from her as a unique element of victim status. I would hope something like that would open some eyes, but I'm doubtful.
As I've stated before I think slavery should be taught from a global perspective, although for young people a basic overall history of the United States would be good but I have reached a point where I think if you want to know in depth histories of different groups you can take an elective or read up on it for yourself.
It really is a shame how so many people are clueless about the history of the world and endlessly talk about America's past as if slavery/land conquest is something unique to this country. I remember during the 4th of July in 2020 Trump gave a speech at Mt. Rushmore, and CNN mentioned that it was land taken from the Sioux tribe (of course they never mentioned that when Obama spoke there) somebody mentioned in the article comments that the Sioux had conquered another tribe to gain that land. I'm not trying to justify past actions but I guess I am just tired of this narrow minded focus and some people today can't just learn history and move forward.
Sorry for the long rant.
As I mentioned before, most of my friends are on the left. It happens that I was recently discussing Egypt since 2 of them just came back from a vacation there.
They were offended that Egypt was built on the backs of black slaves - because what else are you going to worry about when you go see the remains of an ancient civilization. I had to tell them that they had slaves before going south in to Sudan and that the pyramids were not made by black slaves. I also told them that black people had slaves as well but no pyramids so you can still admire and credit the Egyptians for what they did.
What really bothered me was how focused they were on black people of Egypt and that they did not care about any other slaves except the black slaves. Simply put, non black slaves are not important.
They have been brainwashed to think like that. A lot of my cousins are on the left and they have made those points about Egypt too. I tried to debate one of them who was saying that the Egyptian rulers were black (which I thought that had been debunked) but I just gave up. They have a similar mindset as your friends.
I may be wrong so someone can contradict me if I am. What I knew was that Egyptian pharos are generically the same as current day Syrians or even some eastern Europeans. However there was a dynasty that ruled of Egypt that was black, they invaded Egypt after Egypt started falling apart, they ruled for a long time, more then a hundred years. At one point egyptians pushed the nubians out and that was it.
So there is some bases of black pharos.
That’s true. I guess I was referring to those who say it was always black.
Those things are crazy, there are some that say there were black people in Scandinavia just because at one time some Vikings reached Egypt. No proof that they brought even one slave back, not to mention not a black slave or even if those Vikings ever returned home but this does not stop them.
Or how the equivalent of brunette appears in some texts in Europe, that can mean anything from dark skinned greek or italian to simply having dark hair but for them is proof of sub-Saharan Africans.
Another was darker skinned people on some vases, this can mean anything, I paint miniatures and I have a hard time getting the correct skin color shade all the time. The vases were painted using natural pigments not professional miniature paints and somehow I'm to believe that they put in the exact shade, it never altered and light brown means African - despite not having racial traits associated with black people. More then that it was commen to paint men with a darker skin simply for working outside, I've seen a lot of paintings that did that where men have darker skin then the women.
The length they go to make even the slightest non paper white skin tone mean black people is ridiculous. And they never bring genetic proof. If black people were common in Europe then we should find skeletons, the sub-saharan African have skeletal features to help identify it and then you can run DNA tests.
It is so clear that is an attempt to attack white people out of hatred, I do not even get angry, just tiered. What really gets to me is the failure of historian to push back, they fear being called racists or not-progressives so much that they will compromise their entire profession.
Sorry for the rant.