Reading about the Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum in Wallace, Louisiana prompts this effort to add to human togetherness rather than fragmentation. Every decent person, learning about slavery, is appalled and overwhelmed with a sense to undo slavery's impact, to help others, and "right a terrible wrong." There is no argument with that and it was a phase I went through until supplemented by what I learned when I studied "slavery" from start to now. One must understand total "slavery" and not just what happened in America, if "slavery" is to be ended and not continued sub rosa or self-created by ignorance.

Like abortion now in most places, slavery was just the way things were, accepted, declared good, and rationalized. Since all peoples were basically tribal, uneducated, and ignorant of other tribal subcultures, they were considered uncivilized and needed control because they shared no values to speak of and were extremely hostile and savage, not surprising to be more bewildered and hostile than peacefully defensive. And the tribal subcultures almost always did the same enslaving to whomever they could control also. So "newly found people" were labeled "property" if you could do so. Thus everything outside of one's own tribe was foreign and threatening. Native Americans were regular brutal torturing enslavers of whomever they captured, as were tribes in Africa and everywhere else. So when "conquered" (or "taken over" for whatever reason), whoever new in charge imposed "slavery"--we "own" you and you must do as we say--You needed to do it or it was going to happen to you. We see it now with the KKK and many "black" yelling groups trying to take over those different. It was and is reality, still a function of lack of shared values and mutual exclusiveness.

"Biblical" slavery was rather benign for the most part. Again, people had little and depended on the leader, prince or nearest landowner for everything, for which one "worked" doing whatever told to do if one hoped for meals, for example. Such was the only way--there were no guilds, unions, trades, professions, employment contracts--so "agreements" were made to "work" for whomever-depended-on/in-charge, for periods of time (Early Christians were noted to voluntarily take over the slavery of another for the agreed upon interval as manifestations of Christian love). It was the culture of survival, and called "slavery" when a more accurate word for the Bible would be "servanthood" (When in the Navy in Holy Loch Scotland in early 1960s, we submarine officers would frequent a nice home for snacks and drinks, where a German girl served and charmed us--she was an slave ("indentured servant") for 5 years and "belonged" to the British owners of the house. She did whatever the owners wanted--I add there was no abuse of any kind.).

"Exploitative" slavery has always existed too as examples are scattered in the Bible. Learning how to sail against the wind, humans discovered new continents and "workers" were needed to build and do what the few new leaders, princes, imams, and owners wanted done on large scales. And thus exploitative massive slavery became the way for the huge plantations of the American South, the expansion and construction of Islam, and for whomever needed a large labor force. Interestingly, the most recent studies reject the "millions" of imported slaves--claiming 450,000 Africans imported to the Americas for about 100 years, with about 500,000 imported to Islam Middle East countries during the same interval. Noted should be that Islam Middle East began slave importing in the 8th Century and did not have to sail against the wind to import massively. Thus it is reasonable to believe that about 500,000 African were imported each century by Islam for over ten centuries--about 5,000,000 African slaves--and they have no descendents.

Not to be forgotten is the end of exploitative slavery--Such oppressive "slavery" was brought to an incomplete halt (Islam continues) by North American whites--of whom over a million died as casualties and a half-million were severely injured or diseased in the Civil War. The "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame at the Gettysburg Battlefield comes to mind--where the 600-man Irish Brigade, among its many battles, were given a startling (to observing generals) group absolution by Father Corby, the third president of the University of Notre Dame, and then attacked the South's battlements disrupting the Confederates so much that the North's reinforcements arrived in time to win Gettysburg for the North. Three-fourths of the Irish died there, quickly replaced by more Irish as the Brigade was regularly able to do. That North American Caucasians were responsible for the ending of slavery receives little recognition, when this fact deserves continuous promulgation to help overcome inappropriate bitterness and victimhood feelings, especially in those who self-enslave by over-identifying with the actually oppressed slaves. If today's blacks have the right to be angry with whites whose ancestors freed the slaves, then they should be more angry at blacks whose ancestors did not free themselves and even more angry yet at the Muslims who killed all their slaves not allowing descendents.

                Not to be forgotten are the tangible overlooked results of slavery:

1. The descendents of the 450,000 slaves, brought to the Americas between 1776 and the Civil War, reproduced to about 4 million slaves in the U.S. South, freed, at the end of the Civil War. Today, they have reproduced to over 35 million African Americans in the United States alone, most fairly well organized in civilized successful assimilation of millions of African Americans who developed themselves in way impossible in any other country. Indeed, earned-success descendents of African originated slaves are well represented in every North and South American country. That 35 million never-enslaved mostly successful descendents of 4 million freed slaves of the U.S. deserve "reparations", from Caucasians who freed them, is pure self-discrediting unjust exploitative scheming and totally denying of gratitude and opportunity. Freedom isn't free--Everyone must deal with life's unfairness by education, work and family togetherness, and not paralyzing victimhood.

2. The descendents of the 5,000,000 Africa originated slaves brought to Islamic countries of the Middle East cannot be found, even though Islam imported ten times more slaves for over ten centuries. In spite of Islam's alleged "benign" words about slaves, it is astonishing that there are no surviving well represented "black" civilized groups in the historically slave-receiving Islamic countries, as in the United States for example. Any claim of "absolute assimilation" cannot be anything but just another propaganda piece of lying as the Koran says to do. Only by mindless indoctrination, power-mad fascism or witless ignorance, can Islam appeal to any person with an African background--or maybe today's African backgrounders do not give a damn about Islam's absolute historical destruction of millions of their fellow Africans far exceeding such in the West.

3. Finally, there is the irony of all ironies: being born in the United States is to win life's lottery. All descendents of slaves in the Americas have to ask whether they would be better off in the original country of their slave ancestors. A brief look at Africa makes explicit that they would likely be dead or destitute if their ancestor had not been enslaved in America. And they would not likely have been born at all if their ancestor had been enslaved in Islam. By virtuous self-development, all slave descendents OWE their ancestors more than the paralysis of victimhood or the indecency of "racism" against slavers no longer existing. Instead, virtuous self-development is OWED their ancestors and the millions of Caucasians who stopped slavery.

                The Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum, if it has not done so, must HELP overcome the continuing impact of "slavery" by telling more than poor-us victimhood and exploiting the evils done. We cannot do good by just telling the bad even if we bizarrely "feel good" as we tell the bad. The millions of SUCCESSFUL African Americans ("Negroes"--a word wrongfully exterminated by victimhood idiocy), seen often with dignity, class, sophistication, and virtue, need to tell what they DID to succeed and not wallow in pseudo-suffering or promote self-defeating victimhood which makes one a parasite or maybe a "self-created slave"? Successful Negroes are the ones who have really "undone" slavery without oppressing or exploiting others by the latest brand of hypocrisy. There is much more than reviewing the entropic evils of slavery. Human togetherness can occur rather than more fragmentation. Tell the earned successes and of the hard work it took!--what Justice Thurgood Marshall called "the quality of intent" (Truth, Oneness, Good and Beauty) and Reverend Martin Luther King called "the content of one's character" (Life, Sacrifice, Virtue, Love, Humanity, Peace, Freedom, Death without Fear). Actually, color and race have little to do the defeat of slavery--except one and a half million Caucasians died and millions more supported the only effective effort anywhere to stop organized slavery replacing it by opportunities to self-develop. It is time everyone recognizes this including those paralyzed by victimhood.