Did you know that “Amazing Grace” was written by a slave trader-turned abolitionist?

[Anonymous]

Yes, I did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

I don’t follow this. Why? Humans are all deeply flawed regardless of race. Black slave traders sold other blacks to the Europeans in Africa. Look at child soldiers in Africa today being abducted drugged and brainwashed.

Slavery in Africa was nothing like New World chattel slavery. There was no way that the Africans who sold slaves knew that they were consigning people to be property since that’s not how slavery worked in African societies. They had know way of knowing that the children of the people sold would be kept enslaved in generations because that’s not how African slavery worked either.

It’s also important to recognize that whiteness and blackness didn’t really exist yet as identity categories. Africans involved in the slave trade didn’t view the people they sold as sharing a racial identity. Ethnicity and religion were what mattered for solidarity. And even initially, whites were focused on getting non-Christians regardless of skin colors. Remember, they tried enslaving the native peoples of the Americas first. Most died and the survivors converted as a way of getting the protection of the Church.

PP you're responding to here and... okay, none of the above detracts from my point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

I don’t follow this. Why? Humans are all deeply flawed regardless of race. Black slave traders sold other blacks to the Europeans in Africa. Look at child soldiers in Africa today being abducted drugged and brainwashed.

Slavery in Africa was nothing like New World chattel slavery. There was no way that the Africans who sold slaves knew that they were consigning people to be property since that’s not how slavery worked in African societies. They had know way of knowing that the children of the people sold would be kept enslaved in generations because that’s not how African slavery worked either.

It’s also important to recognize that whiteness and blackness didn’t really exist yet as identity categories. Africans involved in the slave trade didn’t view the people they sold as sharing a racial identity. Ethnicity and religion were what mattered for solidarity. And even initially, whites were focused on getting non-Christians regardless of skin colors. Remember, they tried enslaving the native peoples of the Americas first. Most died and the survivors converted as a way of getting the protection of the Church.

I get it; you have a college degree, advanced perhaps, and have been taught why the people in Africa who sold their fellow Africans to evil white people where not as evil (or something) as evil white slave owners.

Just a quick thought: the pictures above are from the modern slave trade that still exists in Africa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

OP here. Newton was himself a slave. At age 18, he was press ganged into the naval service. When he was stubborn and insubordinate, his employer and slave trader Amos Clow gave him to his African wife Princess Peye, who treated him cruelly. Newton had no shelter, his clothes deteriorated to rags, and to curb his hunger, he resorted to begging for food. His father even asked a captain friend to search for the missing Newton, and Newton was found and rescued off the coast of Africa. Yes, he continued slave trading but began questioning the ethics of it. When he applied to become a minister at the church of England, he was denied due to lack of religious education, but then went on to write the most popular hymn in the English-speaking world. When he did become a minister, he often spoke about how he sinned a lot in the past, and how someone like him was not qualified to preach. That is a lot of humility. Then he wrote a book to expose the public the horrendous things that went on in the slave trade. One of his ship mates purchased a woman with a child about a year old. The baby kept crying at night and disturbed the ship mates sleep, so he threw the baby in the ocean. The mother was inconsolable after that. He also said he witnessed captives beaten to death and many were chained to irons. He contradicted the common idea that African women were savages. He said, with his time with the Sherbro people, he seen many instances of modesty, and even delicacy, "which would not disgrace an English woman." He apologized for his role in the slave trade and was instrumental in getting it abolished in England.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

I don’t follow this. Why? Humans are all deeply flawed regardless of race. Black slave traders sold other blacks to the Europeans in Africa. Look at child soldiers in Africa today being abducted drugged and brainwashed.

Slavery in Africa was nothing like New World chattel slavery. There was no way that the Africans who sold slaves knew that they were consigning people to be property since that’s not how slavery worked in African societies. They had know way of knowing that the children of the people sold would be kept enslaved in generations because that’s not how African slavery worked either.

It’s also important to recognize that whiteness and blackness didn’t really exist yet as identity categories. Africans involved in the slave trade didn’t view the people they sold as sharing a racial identity. Ethnicity and religion were what mattered for solidarity. And even initially, whites were focused on getting non-Christians regardless of skin colors. Remember, they tried enslaving the native peoples of the Americas first. Most died and the survivors converted as a way of getting the protection of the Church.

I get it; you have a college degree, advanced perhaps, and have been taught why the people in Africa who sold their fellow Africans to evil white people where not as evil (or something) as evil white slave owners.

Just a quick thought: the pictures above are from the modern slave trade that still exists in Africa.

You lack an understanding of the term context and are forced to try to compensate but putting words into the mouths of others. Truly sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

OP here. Newton was himself a slave. At age 18, he was press ganged into the naval service. When he was stubborn and insubordinate, his employer and slave trader Amos Clow gave him to his African wife Princess Peye, who treated him cruelly. Newton had no shelter, his clothes deteriorated to rags, and to curb his hunger, he resorted to begging for food. His father even asked a captain friend to search for the missing Newton, and Newton was found and rescued off the coast of Africa. Yes, he continued slave trading but began questioning the ethics of it. When he applied to become a minister at the church of England, he was denied due to lack of religious education, but then went on to write the most popular hymn in the English-speaking world. When he did become a minister, he often spoke about how he sinned a lot in the past, and how someone like him was not qualified to preach. That is a lot of humility. Then he wrote a book to expose the public the horrendous things that went on in the slave trade. One of his ship mates purchased a woman with a child about a year old. The baby kept crying at night and disturbed the ship mates sleep, so he threw the baby in the ocean. The mother was inconsolable after that. He also said he witnessed captives beaten to death and many were chained to irons. He contradicted the common idea that African women were savages. He said, with his time with the Sherbro people, he seen many instances of modesty, and even delicacy, "which would not disgrace an English woman." He apologized for his role in the slave trade and was instrumental in getting it abolished in England.

I understand that some people including scholars would say that Newton was a slave because he was force into labor. I don't agree with that language. By the 1700s, new world slavery had created a new and unusual kind of slavery (in the context of world wide slave systems across time and place). In the racial slavery of the Americas, an enslaved person generally had no legal identity as a person and their enslaved status would be passed down to their children and their children's children. Newton's forced labor was cruel and unfair, and he may have used the language of slavery to draw attention to his plight, but he was not legally a slave and called his time-limited forced labor slavery detracts from the full horror of slavery at the time.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, we learned that in elementary school. Doesn't almost everyone know this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and it's the reason I find its widespread inclusion in "diversity" events to be odd.

OP here. Newton was himself a slave. At age 18, he was press ganged into the naval service. When he was stubborn and insubordinate, his employer and slave trader Amos Clow gave him to his African wife Princess Peye, who treated him cruelly. Newton had no shelter, his clothes deteriorated to rags, and to curb his hunger, he resorted to begging for food. His father even asked a captain friend to search for the missing Newton, and Newton was found and rescued off the coast of Africa. Yes, he continued slave trading but began questioning the ethics of it. When he applied to become a minister at the church of England, he was denied due to lack of religious education, but then went on to write the most popular hymn in the English-speaking world. When he did become a minister, he often spoke about how he sinned a lot in the past, and how someone like him was not qualified to preach. That is a lot of humility. Then he wrote a book to expose the public the horrendous things that went on in the slave trade. One of his ship mates purchased a woman with a child about a year old. The baby kept crying at night and disturbed the ship mates sleep, so he threw the baby in the ocean. The mother was inconsolable after that. He also said he witnessed captives beaten to death and many were chained to irons. He contradicted the common idea that African women were savages. He said, with his time with the Sherbro people, he seen many instances of modesty, and even delicacy, "which would not disgrace an English woman." He apologized for his role in the slave trade and was instrumental in getting it abolished in England.

That’s some amazing history. Wow.

[Anonymous]

I love this movie made about Newton's transformation

https://www.bing.com/shop?q=amazing+grace+movie+2019&FORM=SHOPPA&originIGUID=E6A9EC450B9F41F2BECAADD8003473A2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I did.

+1

[Anonymous]

https://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Grace-Ioan-Gruffudd/dp/B000VNMMQG/ref=pd_lpo_74_t_0/144-7665607-3180911?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000VNMMQG&pd_rd_r=23d436f1-c681-4249-ae73-b22a86d0e380&pd_rd_w=kl8ln&pd_rd_wg=ljTOR&pf_rd_p=a0d6e967-6561-454c-84f8-2ce2c92b79a6&pf_rd_r=GK2JEA1HVZT0QP61546S&psc=1&refRID=GK2JEA1HVZT0QP61546S

[Anonymous]

Such a heavily edited thread.

[Anonymous]

I've known this since about the fourth grade.

[Anonymous]

I knew he had been a slave trader, I didn’t know that he himself had been a slave. Utterly fascinating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and I was surprised that most people don’t know this.

+1. It also kind of shows that people who are apologists for 19th century slave-holders, saying that the cultural norms were different then, don't really know what they are talking about. This guy was a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson.

There’s still a global slave trade today.

More slavery & human trafficking today than ever before in the history of the world. But carry on worrying about the 17th century. Safely in the past fir your virtue signaling.