Neo

I’m sorry guys, I had to pop it! 🎈📌😂 2 Thessalonians 2:15 - “hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”

This is what happens when historical ignorance is accompanied by an astonishing degree of intellectual arrogance. First, there were no “West African countries” during the transatlantic slave trade. The region comprised kingdoms, empires, city-states and independent societies. Applying modern national identities to centuries-old history is an extraordinary display of ignorance. Second, Europeans did not arrive in Africa as benevolent abolitionists. For centuries, they financed, institutionalised and industrialised human trafficking, supplying weapons that fuelled wars and slave raids, creating an enormous market for human captives, and codifying racial slavery into their laws. African collaborators existed, but their complicity does not absolve the European empires that sustained this monstrous commerce. Entire African communities were devastated, populations displaced, villages destroyed and societies destabilised. Millions were deported across the Atlantic, while countless others suffered captivity, violence and death on African soil. Africa was itself a vast crime scene, not merely the departure point of enslaved people. And perhaps the most remarkable historical fraud is how European nations have managed to present themselves as the liberators of the very people they spent centuries enslaving. I grew up in a former French colony in Africa being taught from primary school that slavery was abolished by a Frenchman named Victor Schœlcher. It was only in 2026 ( yes this year ) that I discovered that people in former British colonies had been taught a remarkably similar story, except that their white saviour was an Englishman named William Wilberforce. Yet long before Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1833, enslaved Africans in Haiti had fought a revolution, defeated European armies and proclaimed their independence in 1804. Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines were central to that struggle. In 1816, Haitian President Alexandre Pétion supplied Simón Bolívar with weapons, ammunition and military assistance to support South America’s liberation struggles, on the condition that he advance the emancipation of enslaved people. And he went on to free more than half a dozen Latin American countries. And what was Haiti’s reward for daring to liberate itself? Diplomatic isolation and, in 1825, a crushing indemnity of 150 million francs imposed by France, effectively forcing formerly enslaved people to compensate the descendants of their enslavers for the loss of their supposed property. Meanwhile, Britain compensated slave owners with £20 million following abolition, while the enslaved received nothing. Where are these stories in the European narratives of abolition? Where are Nat Turner, who led an enslaved uprising in Virginia in 1831, Queen Nzinga, who resisted Portuguese expansion and slave raiding in Central Africa, or the countless African rulers, communities and freedom fighters who resisted enslavement? Black people fought for their freedom. They rebelled, resisted, organised, sacrificed and died for it. Their liberation was never simply a gift bestowed upon them by benevolent Europeans. There is something profoundly tragic about descendants of enslaved Africans, born and educated in the lands of their ancestors’ enslavers, regurgitating sanitised colonial history, seemingly incapable of distinguishing historical scholarship from imperial propaganda. The greatest triumph of colonial indoctrination is when the descendants of its victims become the most zealous defenders of its mythology. What a pity!

This is a masterclass in selective historical hypocrisy. Yes, African kingdoms, rulers and merchants participated in the slave trade, but that does not absolve Britain of its own responsibility or diminish the immense wealth it accumulated from enslaved labour. British institutions profited enormously from slave trade. And it helped to fund Britain's industrial and global imperial expansion. Dismissing the reparation conversation by citing the failure of past debt-relief efforts is a flawed argument. Debt cancellation and reparation are not the same thing, and the shortcomings of one does not automatically invalidate the case for the other. Reparations should and must not be reduced to a demand for free cash. Today’ taxpayers should not be assigned personal guilt for historical crimes, but that does not mean the state and institutions that accumulated enormous benefits from those injustices have no responsibility to engage with the consequences. Britain's eventual role in abolishing slave trade does not erase centuries of exploitation. To make matters worse, Britain compensated slave owners after abolition, while the enslaved received nothing. That historical injustice deserves honest scrutiny, not deflection. You cannot celebrate Britain's slave trade abolition as a worthy legacy while conveniently dismissing the enormous economic benefits it derived from slavery. Historical accountability is not an attack on Britain, it is an acknowledgement of history.

If there's one thing the closure of @bioware has taught me, it's that the majority of racists are straight, white males from low income brackets with low educations who are pissed off because they couldn't win a race that was literally rigged in their favor from being born straight, white males. And if they don't have somebody to blame, eventually they'd have to admit that the person responsible for most of their problems stares back at them in the mirror every morning. But they'll spend more time obsessing over immigrants, blacks, gays, and DEI "agendas" than they ever have trying to improve their own lives. An immigrant didn't blow your paycheck at the bar. A gay couple didn't get your truck repoed. A trans kid didn't make you drop out of high school, lose your job, and get divorced. A black family didn't keep you from learning a trade, showing up to work, or acting like a decent human being. YOU did that. All by yourself. So when you're standing there screaming that everybody else is getting special treatment, maybe ask yourself why you're getting lapped by people who had to climb over fences that you never even saw. Racism isn't strength. It's what insecure people wrap themselves in when they don't have accomplishments to brag about. Homophobia isn't toughness. It's fear wearing work boots. And all that DEI whining is just you saying "I'm too scared to compete" when everyone else finally gets their fair shot. The hard truth is that if your identity depends upon somebody else staying beneath you, you never stood very tall in the first place. Quit blaming minorities for your misery. Quit blaming LGBTQ+ folks because your life's a train wreck. Quit looking for scapegoats and just grab a mirror. Because that reflection has cost you more opportunities than every immigrant, every pride parade, every DEI program, and every person of color combined.