An apology for Slavery

I was having a drink with a friend I had known for some years, we were speaking of childhood, in all the time I had known him I never knew where he spent his childhood so asked where he came from and was very surprised by his bitter answer “My great grandparents were taken as slaves”.

My response may have been a little trite and explained that my mother has the same problem and she blames the Egyptians, Romans, Russians, Germans and several dozen other countries for over three thousand years of slavery or prejudice.

“Your mother is black?” Asked my black friend “No, Jewish, you have only had a couple of hundred years of being a slave and suffering racial prejudice. My family have had over 3,000 years of the same treatment and it continues today, even you, who should know better do it – a Jewish joke, a dig about being mean, running out of gas, someone whose rich being a Jew Boy but I forgive you and do not ask for an apology so why are you?

Because it was wrong, was my friend’s response. Yes slavery then and now was and is wrong but why is it only the white man that has to apologise and why the man who has been dead around 150 to 200 years. If there is such a place as heaven then surely the slave owner and slave would have forgiven each other by now? Why not ask the black African tribes who took slaves and sold them to the Arab and white man for an apology.

My mother, now an old lady, was in a shop struggling to get her coat on when a young teenage girl came over to help her and an elderly woman, younger than my mother, guided her down several steps. Both women were German and my mother thanked them and commented on how helpful foreigners were, “If they had been English, they would have ignored me or stolen my coat and pushed my down the stairs.”

I explained to my mother that the women that had helped her were German and seventy years ago would have been helping her off with her cloths and pushing her down the stairs, “didn’t she hate them?

My mother explained that she hated the Nazis, “but how can I hate someone whose father, grandfather or great grandfather did something their children could not control, there comes a time when you have to put it behind you and get on with life.”

Crimes against my mother’s race were perpetrated by many nations for several thousand years and continue to this day yet she does not hold the peoples responsible for those atrocities but the individuals, many of whom are dead. My father was English, can he or I be held responsible for the actions of people we had no control over, people that were in the minority. If you can then my mother should be asking the Egyptians, Italians, and Russians for an apology and compensation, if not money surely better treatment say a nice house by an Italian lake or a bit of cash for the time spent constructing the pyramids at today’s builders labour rate which would surely see her through retirement.

Slavery is regrettable, it should never have happened but it did in an age where such things were acceptable and so long ago the people concerned are no longer with us and cannot be held to account. Any apology my peers and I could offer would be empty and of no importance. We can regret that slavery was part of our history, that serfdom was part of out history. The Native American Indian probably regrets that slavery was part of his culture though slavery continues on the African continent between Black and Arab tribes where there appears to be little regret.

Tip: If you are ever going to be a slave make sure your master is Jewish, though the sign of a Jewish Slave is a little painful, having your ear nailed to a door, the Jewish Slave Master is obliged to treat you like his family so good food, wine, a day off a week and loads of holidays.