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The Atlantic Slave Trade Was Not a “Black-on-Black Holocaust”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Lansiné Kaba
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Abstract:

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This article, which derives from the wisdom of my Koranic teachers in Kankan, Guinea, as well as the dedication of the Africanist community, discusses the question of the representation of Africa in general, and especially the claim made by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that Africans committed a Holocaust-type crime by selling other blacks to whites. To refute this allegation, I rely on my familiarity with the literature on the quasi-universality of slavery in human history and on the Atlantic slave trade. This leads me to assert that, though painful to acknowledge, some Africans of the slave trade era did participate as pivotal middlemen in the brutal, ignominious, and peculiar trade that drastically changed the image of the black in the white mind. But the wars and raiding that resulted in the enslavement of millions of Africans were not fought according to any theory of racial or ethnic purity such as the one that would emerge as a key Nazi ideology. Furthermore, sound historical evidence points to the European and American origins of the slave trade. Far from being an accident, the slave trade was a significant part of modern European expansion. The white businessmen, ship owners, mariners, and plantation owners played the dominant role in this business, a point to which Gates—unlike W.E.B. Du Bois, in whose grand tradition he aspires to follow—pays only lip service. Therefore, the notion of a black “Holocaust” perpetrated by Africans in the era of the slave trade is a flawed and objectionable analogy which tends to “relativize” the Holocaust and to sow discord in the relationship between Africans and black people of the diaspora.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Dans cette version de mon discours présidentiel écrit en hommage aux érudits de ma ville natale de Kankan en Guinée ainsi qu’aux Africanistes de toutes origines, je me penche sur la question du mode de représentation de l’Afrique non pas dans les medias, mais dans la pensée des auteurs. J’ai jugé utile de discuter l’opinion présentée par Henry Louis Gates, Jr. selon laquelle les Africains de l’ére de la traite atlantique qui ont vendu leurs frères aux Blancsauraient commis un crime du genre de celui que les Nazis ont perpétré au moment de l’Holocauste. Basé sur une historiographie abondante, le texte admet la quasi-universalité de l’esclavage dans l’histoire humaine, ainsi que la participation effective de certains Africains dans la traite comme intermédiaires. Mais, les guerres qui alimentaient l’esclavage n’étaient pas fondées sur les principes de pureté raciale et ethnique que les Nazis allaient plus tard systématiquement appliquer. Comme l’esclavage et la traite atlantique faisaient partie intégrante de l’expansion européenne au Nouveau Monde, force est de reconnaître le rôle déterminant et primordial des Européens et des Américains en tant qu’investisseurs, navigateurs et propriétaires de bateaux et de plantations. En négligeant ces aspects historiques, l’analyse que Gates donne de l’esclavage diffère de celle de l’illustre érudit pan-africaniste noir américain, W.E.B. Du Bois, dont il aspire pourtant à suivre le bel exemple. En conclusion, l’idée d’un “Holocauste noir par les Noirs à l’ére de la traite atlantique” est inadmissible du point de vue intellectuel et même tend à “relativiser” l’Holocauste et à créer la discorde dans les rapports entre les Africains et les Noirs du Nouveau Monde.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2001

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