John Stossel reports on the historical context of slavery in the U.S. with Wilfred Reilly, a politicial science professor and author of “Lies My Liberal Teach Told Me.”
JOHN STOSSEL: Today, Americans are taught that when it comes to slavery, America was the worst.
“The Atlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas was different from any other type of slavery.”
“The United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody—we created it.”
American slavery was worse because “the slaves were reduced to property. They were chattel property. No other system of slavery did that except American slavery.”
WILFRED REILLY: That’s complete nonsense.
Generational slavery—like if you’re the son of a slave, you’re a slave—was extraordinarily common. Slavery around the world was slavery.
STOSSEL: Books like “The Unfinished Nation” say, “Slaves in Africa were kept unfree only for a fixed term.”
REILLY: No, is the short answer. Most of the slaves taken by these sorts of players would be either kept a slave for their entire life or, more likely, sold to the whites and the Arabs in two years.
STOSSEL: Today, partly thanks to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, students are taught that “America’s slavery was unlike anything that had existed before.”
REILLY: We’re the worst society ever. We’ve done things that no one else has ever done. And sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging your historical mistakes. I mean, I’m Black, Irish, a bit Native American—at least per the family lore. Those are three people who have experienced a great deal historically. Nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
But it’s extremely odd to focus only on the negatives of your society and to exaggerate those.
STOSSEL: Americans are taught that slavers caught people in Africa and shipped them here, but few are taught that most slaves were not shipped to the United States.
REILLY: Between 10.7 million and 12 million slaves from Africa went to the New World. We got a little under 400,000.
STOSSEL: Under 400,000 out of 10 million.
REILLY: The extreme focus on slavery in the United States—why did that happen? One reason is that a lot of Black people survived here. Slavery was harsh, but it was a lot less harsh than clearing the Brazilian jungle.
STOSSEL: All right, but American Blacks are at a disadvantage. They have less capital—financial and educational capital. What’s the harm in pointing out how abusive white people were?
REILLY: The harm is that pointing out how abusive white people were is not going to get Black Americans any more capital. Most of the problems in the modern Black community don’t have anything to do with the historical ethnic conflict 160 years ago.
LYNDON JOHNSON: “The Great Society asks not how much, but how good.”
STOSSEL: Most of the problems began when welfare began.
REILLY: Crime in the Black community—every time I’ve tried to break this down—increased about 800% between, say, 1963 and 1993. Racism didn’t increase between 1960 and the modern era. You’re looking at the impacts of the Great Society, the welfare programs.
STOSSEL: Reilly argues it’s better to teach the truth: almost every society had slavery. The Aztecs, the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings—and most of all, the Arab world.
REILLY: The Arabs were probably history’s premier slave traders.
STOSSEL: Sometimes they captured poor whites from Slavic countries.
REILLY: The Muslims, many of whom were dark-skinned or even Black, took so many blonde slaves out of this region that they gave the world “Slav”—slave—to the global slave population.
STOSSEL: Many slaves were forced into harems.
REILLY: Sexual slavery was very much a part of slavery. If your group was defeated in war, the men would probably just be killed or they’d be sold as farmhands. The women would often be sold as harem girls or prostitutes.
STOSSEL: More than a million Europeans were enslaved. But Muslim slave traders took more people from Africa.
REILLY: The Arabs targeting Africa took out about 17 million people.
STOSSEL: The British and then the Americans were the rare people who moved to abolish slavery.
REILLY: The British Navy—in a story almost no one now knows—sank 1,600 slave ships. It freed 150,000 people who were enslaved at the time.
STOSSEL: Because the Brits objected for moral reasons.
REILLY: Yeah, they’d had enough of it.
STOSSEL: Saudi Arabia only abolished the slave trade relatively recently.
REILLY: Well, that’s another inconvenient fact, right?
STOSSEL: The Global Slavery Index estimates that even now, although slavery is “officially” illegal, there are more than 700,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia.
REILLY: Where there were no Westerners, you’d have a lot of slavery for a long time. And you do.
STOSSEL: American slavery was horrible. But it wasn’t unique. Our culture would be healthier if we learned about that. And schools dwelling on America’s evils hasn’t helped Americans get over them.
Gallup polls show that after schools started focusing on oppression, race relations got worse.
REILLY: The idea of generational slavery, the idea of slave trading—none of that was unique to America. And another thing: you don’t need radicalism to critique the worst excesses of an existing system. All you need is incrementalism and honesty.
