- 16 Nov 2016 03:14
#14738153
I'm honestly not sure what confuses you about it, so let me just elaborate on it.
Slavs were mostly slaves of Muslims. In the particular Muslim cultures that you're talking about, all slaves had certain rights. That's not to say that slaves weren't mistreated or that it was right for them to take on slaves, but in general the slaves that the Muslims took had certain rights and could even ascend to prominent positions of power. You can compare it to the Roman slavery, if you would like.
Slaves in the white world, on the other hand, were considered subhuman. Whites constructed an ideology of racial superiority in order to justify their economic system, which subjugated blacks based on skin color. This is what is academically known as chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is derived from the word chatel, which is derived from the word capitalis, which is derived from the word caput, meaning head. It shares an origin with the words cattle and capital. In other words the slaves were considered something other than humans with rights, they were considered property. Property had no rights, could be raped, could be killed, could be worked to the bone. Many slaves were worked to death. Many slaves died of overworking or malnutrition. Slaves suffered from high infant mortality rates. Slaves were not allowed to marry, not allowed the basic dignity of having their needs met. Slaveowner wives would often beat the young slaves to death.
Your people's slavery is horrible, but compared to the subjugation of the Mother People of Humanity, the Black People, well it doesn't compare.
And the holocausts were terrible but they weren't a four century affair of continuous suffering.
Even your people's brutality to themselves, at least there was a chance to fight it and a dignity in the struggle. To the black peoples there was no dignity. They were less than human. They were animals, or property to their masters. They would rape them and then blame the promiscuity of the black women. They would work them to death and then call them lazy. They would beat them in anger and then call them vicious. They would rape their women and then call them covetous. They would dehumanize them and then call themselves civilized.
Just because your people was enslaved doesn't mean it compares to what happened to black people. It's two different things we're talking about here.