Dakota Beacon

No one should be gullible enough to fall for Democrat calls for slavery reparations.

Slavery has a long, sordid history. American Blacks are not alone in bearing the stigma of this vile practice. Caucasians have been sold as salves in greater numbers for centuries. There is nothing special, unique, or peculiar to any one ethnic group whose ancestors were slaves – or slave owners. Everyone’s ancestors, however far removed, were slaves at one time or another.

That said, American slavery ended 150 years ago. Neither former slaves nor former slave owners of the antebellum period are alive today. Stated another way, no one alive in America today has been a slave or owned slaves during the antebellum period.

On the other hand, in our era of political correctness, in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement, knowledge of White slavery has all but disappeared. Slave trade in Whites is a story little known in America’s suppressed history. From the earliest days hundreds of thousands of Whites were kidnapped, chained, whipped, and worked to death up through the Industrial Revolution and later.

With the unprecedented focus on the Black experience by academia and the media, it is assumed that only Blacks were forced as slaves, a fine example of reverse stereotyping.

Slavery knows no racial, ethnic, or cultural bounds -- or era. There are Biblical allusion to slavery in both the Old and New Testaments. Thousands of years ago the Greeks, famous for their early practice of democracy, enslaved Whites as well as their fellow Greeks.

Romans enslaved thousands of Whites in Britain. Julius Caesar brought into slavery over a million Gauls. Slave dealers followed in the wake of his legions.

After Charlemagne conquered Saxony huge numbers of captured Caucasians were forced into the slave markets and sold like cattle.

From the eighth to the 11th centuries France was a major transit point for White slaves to the Muslim world. The sale of White slaves to Asia and Africa provided European treasuries with a continuing supply of gold. Rouen, France in particular was the port for shipping Irish and Flemish slaves to the Muslim world.

The stereotype often presented is the Muslim slaver herding Blacks across the desert. In fact, for more than seven centuries, until the fall of Muslim Spain, the opposite was true. It was chained White slaves being herded to market.

In the eastern European steppes there was a well-developed slaving network. Slavs and Finns entered the Muslim slave markets via the Black and Caspian Sea routes. The very word “slave” is derived from the word “Slav.” Muslims preferred Christian Europeans as slaves.

Venice, Italy was also a major transit point for White slaves brought from northern Europe across the Alps and traded for oriental luxury products, especially clothes.

White Russian Muscovites were enslaved by both European slave raiders as well as large slave raiding operations conducted by the Mongols and by the Ottoman Empire Muslims.

Slave trading was a major commercial activity in the Viking Age with the main source of slaves coming from the Scots and the Irish. Viking slavers sold tens of thousands of White slaves to Muslims in Spain. So lucrative was the slave trade that Spanish Muslims sent diplomatic missions to Scandinavia during the 840s to formalize trading relations.

In a more recent century, the British parliament in 1659 debated the practice of selling British Whites into slavery in the New World. The Whites were not referred to as “indentured servants” at that time but as “slaves.” White slavery in colonial America cannot be separated from the dehumanizing of poor Whites in urban England during the Industrial Revolution and the “Irish problem” confronting British landlords.

Between 1609 and the late 1700s, no less than one-half of all Caucasians came to the New World as slaves in one form or another. Even among passengers on the Mayflower there were twelve White slaves. Later, many came as indentured servants but were swindled into permanent slavery after their seven-year contract expired. During America’s early history White slaves cleared forests, drained swamps, built roads, and died in greater numbers doing so than any other ethnic group.

American Indian tribes owned Black slaves. The Cherokee, on their Trail of Tears, took with them their 2,000 Black slaves. The slaves worked the farms of the new Cherokee homeland. The Choctaw owned 2,500; the Creek, 2,000; the Chickasaw and Seminole owned about 1,000 each. Farther west, the plains Indians were constantly raiding each other’s tribes for slaves.

President Jefferson fought The First Barbary War in Tripoli with the US Navy and Marines to free White Americans taken as slaves by North African Muslims from ships sailing the Mediterranean.

Today, Caucasian-Americans are branded as “racist” if they don’t accept their “White guilt” for Black slavery during the antebellum period. In its sickest version “White guilt” is used by Democrat politicians to advocate for reparations to Blacks. These Democrat politicians are more interested in fostering hatred and division among Americans for their own political gain than they are in “starting a conversation” aimed at racial harmony.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)