Black-on-black slave trade in Africa preceded U.S. customs

As a professor of African studies, Malik Simba should have been more forthcoming in references to the institution of slavery (Valley Voices July 4).

Students of history are aware that, had it not been for the already existing institution of slavery in Africa, and the complicity of native Africans as sellers of their own kind, slavery may have never reached America. From the middle of the 15th century, black rulers, merchants and others in power, controlled the waterways by which slaves were transported and were used by such power holders for selling and transporting slaves.

Additionally, the fact that free blacks owned slaves for similar reasons as whites puts Mr. Simba’s position of slavery being current blacks’ “holocaust” in peril. If blacks of today find slavery so nefarious, what business did their ancestors have in engaging in the same activity?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. in “The Root” March 4, 2013, Barack Obama’s cohort, acknowledges the foregoing, as to black ownership and opportunism on the part of black slave owners in America. He calls it “insidious.”. To have an honest dialogue, we must address the totality of history.

To my knowledge, Jewish-owned cattle cars didn’t transport other Jews to Auschwitz.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Black-on-black slave trade in Africa preceded U.S. customs."