February 14, 2004
WHITE MEN CAN'T THUNK
An intellectual exercise: When the first Europeans came to America, they looked around and decided they needed slaves to do their dirty work. They also looked at about 2 or 4 million aborigines and made a decision: let's kill them, and import our slaves from Africa.
What the fuck?!? A handy slave population, waiting to be exploited, and you kill 'em? Then you pay freight to ship new ones in? I don't get it. All morality on the enslavement of peoples aside, I'm stumped. I'm in the transportation business. I know what freight costs. And with mortality rates of around 20% on a transatlantic slave hauler, an African slave must have been a dear investment.
Any one know why a Congolese was more valuable than a Cherokee? Anyone know why someone fleeing persecution thought it would be a grand idea to persecute others?
And here's the ugly question: would any African-American be willing to live on a reservation for a year or two?