words I Say to Myself

THE TRUTH OF THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE:

The transatlantic slave trade was not a reflection of African weakness or inferiority — it was a hostile, calculated, and psychopathic system of mass abduction and terrorism driven entirely by European greed, expansionism, and a moral sickness that dehumanized millions for profit.

African people were not complicit in their own destruction. They were sovereign, intelligent, spiritually evolved, and technologically skilled societies with rich cultures, laws, education systems, and civilizations that thrived for millennia before European contact. These societies were attacked — not because they were weak, but because they were rich in land, culture, knowledge, and people.

This was a hostile invasion.
European powers invaded the African continent and the Americas with military force, manipulative diplomacy, deceit, and devastating violence. African people were taken hostage — stolen from their lands, families, and languages in one of the largest and most violent genocides in human history. It was not “slavery” as often softened in language — it was state-sanctioned human trafficking, racialized torture, and psychological warfare.

The perpetrators — European and American powers — operated not out of necessity, but greed, racism, and a pathological desire to dominate. They built entire economies off of African pain, and their violence was not accidental, it was systematic: forced breeding, public lynchings, language erasure, family separation, spiritual mutilation — these were tools of control, not the failures of a flawed system.

African and Indigenous peoples are innocent.
They did not instigate this terror. They did not travel the globe looking to enslave others. They did not colonize Europe or extract its people for labor. They showed compassion, even to those who eventually betrayed and massacred them. Many African leaders were manipulated or violently overthrown when they resisted. Others fought tirelessly against invaders — some even winning battles — though these stories were erased or rewritten.

The shame is not ours to carry.
What happened to African and Indigenous people is not a reflection of their worth, intelligence, or spirit — it is a testament to the depravity and moral collapse of those who could enslave, rape, torture, and destroy millions, all while calling it "civilization." The internalized shame felt across generations of African heritage people is not an inherent wound — it is a scar inflicted by centuries of lies, propaganda, and psychological warfare.

But the truth is unbreakable:
African and Indigenous people are survivors of one of the most horrific assaults in human history — and they are still here. That is not weakness. That is strength beyond measure.