By Davis Carlton

Joel McDurmon has taken umbrage at Larry Elder’s comments about the way that slavery is taught as a component of black history. Larry Elder complains that the role of Arabic Muslim slave trading is often ignored in the discussion of slavery during “Black History Month.” Elder is an articulate and intelligent black man who simply points out the oft-ignored reality of Arabic Muslim enslavement of black Africans to put slavery as it was practiced in America into some historical context. One would think that Elder’s comments would be pretty non-controversial. Even mainstream leftists could feign at least token appreciation for Elder’s point without surrendering their disapproval of white America over the question of slavery. But Joel McDurmon is no mainstream leftist. Joel’s anarcho-Marxist tendencies won’t allow him to pass up the opportunity to virtue signal against the “racism” of American slavery in comparison to the rest of the world.

McDurmon states that he’s “honestly…surprised the objection is so popular, for it is quite easy to lay to rest.” We’ll see about that. McDurmon argues that it is only natural that American slavery be given a point of emphasis in the teaching of history in American schools. McDurmon even goes so far as to deny a liberal bias in mainstream teaching on the Civil War since it is only now that slavery is being taught as a central cause of the war. McDurmon continues by stating his admiration for black libertarian Thomas Sowell, who is often quoted by conservatives for his very salient point about slavery:

“Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, 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.” This quote is from Twisted History, featured in the Thomas Sowell Reader.

McDurmon responds, “Sowell was narrowly criticizing those who wish to defame men like Washington and Jefferson on the sole criterion that “they had lots of slaves,” without any qualification or context. Sowell’s point is good enough to dispense with that handily; but it not designed to do much more heavy lifting than that.” McDurmon then posts several quotes from Sowell about the particularly “racist” nature of American slavery. In response I would simply point out that while I believe that Sowell’s positions on a number of subjects is certainly commendable, he has a far from perfect worldview that influences how he sees various issues. Calling American slavery “racist” suffers from the same problems that the concept of “racism” carries in any other context. What exactly is “racism” and what makes it wrong?

The “racist” nature of American slavery is based upon the fact that only blacks were allowed to be held in perpetual servitude. The problem with simply condemning this as “racist” is that it is no different in principle from what is taught in Lev. 25:44-46: “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.”

Secular libertarians like Sowell might not have a problem condemning this standard as “racist,” but this shouldn’t be an option for professed theonomists like McDurmon. No wonder that this particular passage was never addressed by McDurmon in his book on slavery; a glaring omission if there ever was one.¹ Beyond this obvious conflict with Biblical morality, McDurmon’s point is entirely lost when we compare the nature of American and Western slavery with the institution as it was practiced in the non-Western world.

McDurmon’s rhetoric depends upon standard leftist tropes of white America as racist, bigoted, and just plain evil. McDurmon’s narrative including frequent rape of slaves, slave breeding, barbaric cruelty, systematic injustice, and family separation has more in common with Hollywood propaganda than reality. But even if we accept this narrative for the sake of argument, does the supposedly “racist” nature of American slavery make it worse than Arabic Muslim slavery? Arabic slavery was particularly brutal and especially in its treatment of enslaved Africans. The survival rates of Africans slaves moved across the Sahara desert was considerably less than it was for those transported across the Atlantic, and this is significant given the perils of sailing across an ocean in the 17^th century. Black descendants of slaves are numerous in North America, and they enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world!

Compare this to African slaves in the Middle East where males were frequently castrated and females were either raped or worked to death along with the men. There is virtually no population of blacks in the Middle East descended from slaves because these slaves had virtually no hope of ever acquiring freedom and were quite literally treated as chattel. The contrast is striking and by any objective standard it is obvious that Arabic Muslim slavery was far worse than American slavery. Does it really matter to those African victims of Arabic Muslim slavery that their cruel masters weren’t “racist?” McDurmon actually attempts this argument by citing a report on how Islam is taught in school textbooks which states, “In contrast to slavery in the Western Hemisphere, Islamic slavery did not have a racial dimension and slaves could and did achieve a variety of social stations, some of them of considerable power.” In fact McDurmon’s assessment of Arabic Muslim slavery comes perilously close to affirming the veracity of Islam itself by validating Islam as the ultimate force for trans-racial unity. It’s as though McDurmon takes the portrayal of Mecca from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X as a straightforward narrative of the way that Islam is and has always been.

McDurmon’s quote is also incredibly selective, because the context of the comment is in regards to the extensive nature of Islamic slavery and how more people from more regions were enslaved under Islam than in the history of Western participation in African slavery. The very next sentence after the one quoted by McDurmon states, “Muslim enslavement went on from the Balkans to Africa and Central Asia, and the estimated fourteen million slaves taken captive by Muslim rulers all over the world was a larger population than the eleven million Africans exported to the New World before 1850.” It should also be noted that the successful Janissaries, a powerful warrior slave class mentioned earlier in the paragraph and alluded to by McDurmon were not black Africans. Given all these factors can we really consider Negro slavery in America to be worse because of its “racist” nature?

The “racism” of American slavery is often overstated. Free blacks purchased and owned slaves, and many whites came to American in what essentially amounted to slave conditions. The hardships of slave life need to be understood within the context of the difficulties of laboring classes in general in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. All laborers had a hard life, and many of the victims of harsh conditions were whites. They Were White and They Were Slaves by Michael Hoffman is an indispensable reference on this point. Hoffman provides many examples of abolitionist duplicity among wealthy whites who preened about the conditions of black slaves while ignoring the ill treatment of white laborers who they employed.

“Theophilus Fisk, a Connecticut publisher and Jackson Democrat is ranked as one of the major leaders of the early U.S. labor movement. Fisk denounced wealthy White campaigners for negro rights and in 1836 gave what has been described as a ‘fierce anti-abolitionist speech’ in South Carolina. Fisk’s anger derived from his observation that White slavery had been ignored. Fisk “found that America’s slaves had ‘pale faces’ and as abolitionism grew in Boston, called for an end to indulging sympathies for Blacks in the South and for ‘immediate emancipation of the White (factory) slaves of the North.”²

“John Randolph of Roanoke, traveling in England and Ireland with his black manservant Johnny, wrote to a friend back home: ‘Much as I was prepared to see misery in the south of Ireland, I was utterly shocked at the condition of the poor peasantry between Limmerick and Dublin. Why sir, John never felt so proud of being a Virginia slave. He looked with horror upon the mud hovels and miser-able food of the white slaves, and I had no fear of his running away.”³

Hoffmann gives more examples of how both blacks and whites in the past recognized that poor whites often fared worse than even enslaved blacks.⁴ Eugene Genovese concluded “…The slaves saw enough abject poverty, disease, and demoralization among the poor whites… to see their own condition under Ole Massa’s protection as perhaps not the worst of evils.”⁵ Of course there were certainly differing opinions on this subject, but it seems that the complaints of Northern abolitionists about widespread abuse of slaves were both false and hypocritical. McDurmon knows that he cannot actually argue that Arabic Muslim slavery was more benign than Western or American slavery, so he has to play the race card and press a case that has little basis in actual history.

I appreciate the insights of Thomas Sowell and other black libertarian and conservative thinkers like Larry Elder and Walter Williams. Blacks would be exponentially better off if they followed the lead of these men above the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. But what about all those Thomas Sowell quotes about the “racism” and lingering effects of American slavery? It appears he got this wrong, and this isn’t the first time Sowell might have let political correctness or egalitarianism influence his opinion.

McDurmon ends by concluding that the Islamic role in slavery actually is taught in public schools contra Elder and cites a National Education Association essay on slavery published for Black History Month. A casual perusal of this essay reveals that the relative horrors of the Arabic Saharan slave trade in comparison to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade aren’t discussed. It’s virtually certain that almost no one chooses to read NEA statements like this anyway. Individual schools and teachers might implement these materials as they see fit, but we all know that the true evils of Islam are simply ignored in public schools in favor camping on the purported evils of heterosexual white Christian men. The essay that McDurmon cited earlier made this same conclusion which he conveniently ignored. Finally McDurmon suggests that people could simply browse Wikipedia or do a Google search for information on relevant topics because it is out there for people who are seeking the full picture. That’s fine, but beside the point. Of course the truth is out there for those willing to seek for it, but it isn’t going to be taught to them in public schools. That was Elder’s point, and pointing out what people can learn on their own initiative doesn’t address it.

Ultimately this serves as but one more instance of McDurmon’s animus against the West. This is why he supports cultural Marxist ideas like “Black History Month” as an opportunity to push his anti-white narrative forward. McDurmon’s assertion that American slavery was “even more damaging” because of “racism” is not born out by history or contemporary circumstances. The true horrors of the Arabic Muslim slave trade cannot be allowed to overshadow Western slavery in general or American slavery in particular if McDurmon is going to be able to peddle his white guilt.