Yesterday, a Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity was voted at UNO. As usual, Israel and the USA voted against. How did your country vote? Any thoughts about it?
I got 3 things to say on this:
If the vote was to recognize it as the worst thing humanity has done, I’d vote against. I feel like there are a couple other things that were even worse. Even only considering enslavement, out of all of history, I would have reservations against saying this was the absolute worst of it.
Every country that abstained was just against it, and didn’t have the balls to vote it.
Yeah, the US is an asshole. They’re screwing it all up across the globe and they’re also why Cuba is still fucked. Eat the rich.
As bad as African slavery was, I kinda agree with you that it might not actually be the worst thing humans have done to each other.
Specifically, how many native populations were genocided by colonizers the world over?
Or hitler killing like 6 million unarmed Jews, or the other slave trades that lasted far longer, or the terrible human experiments Japan did to people during ww2, or when hundreds of black people were blocked from having their syphilis cured for 50 years because scientists just wanted to see what happens, or the tons of times entire cities would be raped and pillaged and taken over with no male child left alive… I mean, there’s been so many atrocious acts done by humanity… To actually vote and say this was the worst one is just tacky.
Considering that the death toll caused by the triangle trade is estimated to be between 6 million and 60 million Africans with a general consensus of ~17 million, I think you may need to re-evaluate just how brutal it was.
Many people will point out correctly that Africa already had a slave trade structure before America and Europe got involved; but the fact is the Western slavery was far worse than the slavery in Africa. For example, the fact that slaves’ children were born into slavery was uniquely American slavery. Basically, African nations did not dehumanize their slaves, and it’s incredible what brutal things humans can do to each other the moment one side doesn’t view the other side as thinking human beings, but rather cattle to be done with as they please.
Study more history. This isn’t the thing with the most dead, the most raped, or the most cruelty, or the longest lasting. It was really fucked up, sure. But the worst thing humanity has ever done?
Hell… Religion might be the worst thing humanity has ever done.