The first attempt to enslave Africans was 1440, when the Portuguese got defeated by the Senegalese. They returned home but regrouped and received the moral blessing of the pope in the 1452 papal bull giving permission to enslave. Slavery stopped finally in 1888 in Brazil, making the Portuguese enslaves for well over 400 years. Fifteen percent of Africans were enslaved by the Europeans in well over 50,000 voyages. The Ottomans by some estimates took over 2 million Africans, increasing the total to well over 15 million, hardly a “MINOR FRACTION” of Africa. The Belgium King killed 15 million Africans in the Congo alone, making it the biggest genocide in the 20th century. All for corporatized rubber and other commodities.

As an American though, I care about the fate and the justice of the people in America. The people in modern day Turkey or elsewhere are welcome to fight for justice for slavery if they want. That’s there business, I live in America and the justice done and not done over long centuries affects the lives of my fellow citizens and the shape of the democracy we live in. We have a unique ability to fight for restorative justice and strengthen our democracy, rooting out the deep injustices, which means correctly addressing the past and the present, the place where the past carries on into.