there was a time i used to feel kinda guilty about it, being an African from the continent – no, i won’t say “guilty,” but sorta embarrassed.

i don’t really feel any personal guilt for it because obviously i was not there, and neither my family nor my people benefited from it

see… i think the whole thing about “blacks actually sold other blacks to the whiteman” is mostly a party line that has been blown up by (primarily conservative) white people in order to help alleviate their own guilt about the situation. i’ve read some commentators suggest that slavery was the fault of Africans… the white man just happened to run into it

but you can’t approach it like “everybody on the African continent sold everybody who ended up in the New World.” first of all, there were certain “tribes” who were known to kidnap people and sell them into slavery (mine was not one of them). these people were fundamentally criminals, and to blame the entire African continent for the acts of a few criminals is no different from when your white co-worker grabs their purse when you’re around just because they’ve been mugged by a black person before

also, it’s not like the African continent did not suffer as a result of the slave trade as well… some people would even argue that those who ended up in the Americas (and survived, of course) were actually the lucky ones, you know?