In response to an article I wrote about two African American men who were speakers at the American Tea Party Movement convention on October 8 - 9, 2010, one of the men, Bishop E W Jackson commented:
The writer is ignorant of American and black history. Those Judeo-Christian values are precisely what made slavery controversial from the time slavery was imported to this continent. It was a source of serious contention precisely because it contradicted those Christian values which most early Americans held. Slavery was not invented by Americans. Muslims were enslaving Africans long before Europe began to colonize Africa. Slavery is a spiritual problem born of the sinfulness of the human heart. It is not a racial issue. Christianity - with its ethic of love, forgiveness, reconciliation and salvation - is precisely the answer, but our country is moving away from that ethic. (Beware of what you ask for.) That is why you had Europeans having European slaves and indentured servants. Wake up from your racial myopia!
Bishop E W Jackson Sr.
My comment to the comment made by Bishop E W Jackson Sr. is:
This writer is very aware of American and African American history and knows that those white Americans who professed Judeo-Christian values and attended church religiously had no qualms about enslaving and brutalising enslaved Africans in America. Even after slavery was abolished these proponents of Judeo-Christian values continued to brutalise African Americans. In 2005 this writer had an article published about the story of Lena Baker (June 8, 1901 – March 5, 1945,) an African American woman who was executed by the State of Georgia after she defended herself against a 67 year old Christian white man who had been physically and sexually abusing her for several years. On the day that this dreadful torment of Lena Baker came to a head, her abuser had locked her in a building on his property for several hours while he and his son went to a Christian worship service. When this Christian white man returned from the service he once again attempted to rape Lena Baker at gunpoint and in the ensuing struggle he was killed with his own gun. Lena Baker was executed by electrocution by the State of Georgia on March 5, 1945, but was granted a full and unconditional pardon by the State of Georgia in 2005, 60 years after her execution. There are many other horrific incidents of white Christian abuses of African Americans documented in books like Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America published in 2000 and at the website: http://withoutsanctuary.org/
This writer is also very aware of and has written articles about the history of Muslims enslaving Africans and transporting those enslaved Africans to the Middle East and Far East. This article to which the good Bishop is referring is not about Muslims who are right now in this 21st century, the target of rabid Islamophobia.
This article is about the Tea Party Movement in America which is overwhelmingly peopled by white Christian supremacists, extremists and foaming at the mouth rabid racists.
The enslavement of Africans in America became “a source of serious contention” not “because it contradicted those Christian values which most early Americans held.” It was the continued resistance of enslaved Africans to the state of slavery and the continual debasement of their humanity that put the fear of God into the Christian white men and women who held the Africans in slavery. Africans refused to be complacent in a state of slavery and attempts to dehumanise them by white Christians.
Africans were resisting from the moment they were captured and bound; they resisted in the coffles, they resisted on the slave ships, they resisted at every point and by any means necessary. They struggled mightily against great odds. The names of those freedom fighters in the USA are legendary: Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman etc., The enslaved Africans in America also heard about the many enslaved Africans who fought for their freedom in the Caribbean and throughout the Americas because enslaved Africans were sold across the continents and the word spread. The crowning point was the revolution in Haiti. That revolution really drove the point home and very shortly after that victory in 1804, the British abolished their slave trade in 1807 then slavery 1834 -1838. The Americans abolished their slave trade in 1808 but it took a further 57 years (until 1865) of struggle to end chattel slavery in America.
Finally, to the good Bishop’s statement: “That is why you had Europeans having European slaves and indentured servants.” You are wrong my brotha! This writer is saying that Europeans in America did not enslave other Europeans. Europeans in America were indentured for a few years and then were free to live like any other white person in America. They were not stripped of their belief systems, language and names. They and their children were not ripped away from each other and sold to work their entire lives for no pay. It is utter nonsense to compare white indentured servants to enslaved Africans. It is very unfortunate that some of us are blinded by the illusion of inclusion. Watch out for that coiled, ready to strike snake that is the emblem of the Tea Party Movement, my African American Christian brotha!
