Ok so it’s been a few days since Mr. West said in a TMZ interview that the enslavement of Africans in the United States was a choice. As an African American who is six generations removed on my mother’s side and five generations removed on my father’s side from slavery, I have to comment on this (before the two week American news cycle delivers us more garbage and distractions). His reasoning for the “choice” was that in parts of the south the slaves had the numbers and that should have tipped the balance in our favor if there were to be an uprising.
On paper it all makes sense, the only thing that was needed was a slave uprising. There’s just one problem with Mr. West’s theory, there was a slave revolt, and not just one but many. There were slave revolts every year during the slavery period in the United States. Most were small and quelled within a few days or so, but they did in fact happen. The biggest and most famous of these was led by Nat Turner. This revolt had all of the makings of what you think of when slaves revolt against their oppressors, complete with a charismatic leader but in the end it was crushed.
I was listening to a black radio show (I won’t mention the name of the show for trademark reasons), who was Hispanic and from Florida, that said that he agreed with Kanye for the reasons mentioned earlier in this post. One of the hosts then tried to ask about what he thought about the Holocaust, and the caller proceeded to say that that was a different situation. The male host then told the caller that he was ignorant and hung up on him.
I also saw a video on YouTube of a black man saying that he also agreed with Mr. West saying that “something about us Black Americans just means that we have no fight”. He mentioned that Haitian Revolution of 1794 and said that if they could do it then why couldn’t we. He also talked about modern day issues and why the black community in the United States is so messed up.
Before I go any further I will note that I am not Haitian nor do I have any family ties to the West Indies. So I may offend some with this. As far as the Haitian revolution goes there were two big differences between that and any revolt in the United States.
One they took advantage of a malaria outbreak at the time of their uprising which weakened the small French and Spanish population but didn’t affect the Africans enslaved because they were from the tropics and were more immune to the outbreak. It is important to point out that Haiti is in the tropics and is still affected by malaria like western Africa.
Two the island of Hispaniola did not have an large indigenous population that at times helped the Europeans preserve the system of slavery because it benefited them as well. In the United States some native tribes held slaves or just looked the other way when Africans were enslaved because it spared their people from bondage. There were also tribes that would catch escaped slaves and either kill them or return them to their plantations for a reward. This does not take away from what the Haitians did for their country and their freedom, (as well as for the Dominicans but we’ll leave them out of this).
All of this goes back to the idea that Black Americans are lazy and just waiting for a hand out. That we don’t fight for our rights or that we don’t do what’s best for ourselves, our families and our community. This is why you have so many people of other ethnicities, and even some of our own that agree with Kanye.
Now I will say that I have more respect for Black people in the past than I do for a lot of our people today, and we do have a lot of problems in our community that need more attention than a commander in chief singing Al Green at a press conference, but as far as black people not rising up and doing something about their conditions in the past that is a lie.
One last thing to note, to my fellow Black Americans I will just say learn your history and do NOT argue with people of other ethnicities trying to “prove” your worth, dignity or humanity. Others will probably always have something negative to say about us in the United States, but as long as we develop a positive self image about ourselves we’ll be ok. Trying to prove your worth to others and caring about their opinion of you is the definition of slavery by choice.