Slavery

Slavery was cancerous but does anybody regard cancer in the United States as an evil peculiar to American society? It is a worldwide affliction and so was slavery.

Both the enslavers and the enslaved have included people on every inhabited continent — people of every race, color, and creed.

More Europeans were enslaved and taken to North Africa by Barbary Coast pirates alone than there were African slaves taken to the United States and to the colonies from which it was formed.

Yet throughout our educational system, our media, and in politics, slavery is incessantly presented as if it were something peculiar to black and white Americans.

What was peculiar about the United States was that it was the first country in which slavery was under attack from the moment the country was created.

What was peculiar about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to destroy slavery, not only within its own countries but in other countries around the world as well.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Slavery is too serious for an apology and somebody else being a slaveowner is not something for you to apologize for. When somebody who has never owned a slave apologizes for slavery to somebody who has never been a slave, then what began as mushy thinking has degenerated into theatrical absurdity— or, worse yet, politics.

Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow and other races being both slaves and enslavers. Does that mean that everybody ought to apologize to everybody else for what their ancestors did? Or are the only people who are supposed to feel guilty the ones who have money that others want to talk them out of?

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

During the dark days of American slavery, slaves were forbidden to be educated. In some states, it was a crime to teach slaves to read and write. An educated slave class was a dangerous slave class. Today, we fail to teach kids to be financially literate. It is another way of creating slaves—wage slaves.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich