I remember when I was younger, my mom used to always tell me that there are three sides to every story: his, hers, and the truth. Throughout the years what she said has been shown to be true over and over again. There is no greater example of this than the history of slavery in the United States.
Nobody doubts that the United States, for a good portion of its history, participated in one of the worse acts in human history, slavery. This is the 'true' part of the story. This is the part that has the facts behind both his side of the story and her side of the story. However, how it gets interpreted, and what it says about the United States are two very different, I would even say, opposite conclusions.
You have 'her side' of the story, the one we're all familiar with, that says that this fact demonstrates that the United States is inherently racist. It claims that because of this part existed in the history of the United States, the members who trace their roots to those generations should be ashamed, some even go as far as saying that they should pay 'reparations' for what they have done. This past is forever engrained in her image, and determines how she looks at all aspects of the United States history and future.
Than you have 'his side' of the story that says that a part of the history that has been left out shows a greater picture. Yes, the United States participated in slavery, but the portion that is often left out is that so did practically every other race, religion and continent. Slavery has been a part of human history for as long as history has been recorded. And every group has participated in one way or the other. Christians, Atheists and Muslims all had a big hand in it, so did the vast majority of cultures. Bernard Lewis, emeritus professor at Princeton University, writes "The institution of slavery had indeed been practiced from time immemorial. It existed in all the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and pre-Columbian America. It had been accepted and even endorsed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as other religions of the world." In fact, the name slavery comes from the word Slavic, because of the frequent enslavement of Slavs in central Europe.
So it is not slavery that makes the United States unique, since it was actually practiced by every race and color and for every reason imagineable. In fact, a good portion of African slaves were sold to Europeans by Africans themselves. So undoubtedly, all people making the charge that the United States is racist have somewhere in their history, some roots in slavery, both being enslaved, and being the slave owners. So what is it that makes America unique, if it's not in having slaves? Thomas Sowell hints at it when he writes,
...nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.
People of every race and color were enslaved -- and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century -- and then only in Western civilization.
Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.
Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the total population.
It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.
In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to America, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States -- despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal in both Africa and the U.S. at the time.
What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination but what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.
That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost for every six people freed. Maybe that was the only answer. But don't pretend today that it was an easy answer -- or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains, when most leaders and most people around the world at that time saw nothing wrong with slavery.
So the United States isn't unique in having slaves, the United States is unique in fighting against slavery. Yet little of this is mentioned in 'her side' of the story.
Furthermore, if you factor this into the fact that the United States is the most pro-immigration country in the world, you arrive at opposite conclusions than those arrived at by 'her side' of the story.
So the United States, when looking at the big picture, is not the 'racist' country it is made out to be, but the exact opposite. Compared to other countries in the world, it is one of the most open, unracist countries in the world. And its about time 'his side' of the story gets told more. (Originally published: 10/17/2004)
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