am i going to waste my time commenting on the question of whether or not slavery is a choice?

well, what does that mean, exactly? does it mean that 51% of people made it a choice? does it mean that they made the choice free of duress? is this collective or individual?

and, i think that the difficulty of trying to figure out what the fuck it even means to ask whether slavery was a choice or not is indicative of the lack of thought put into the statement. that said, it also opens up a lot of space for careful thinking.

it's really not as insane as it appears on first glance; when they sent white people here, they often came under a concept of 'indentured servitude', which wasn't very different than slavery and was in fact some kind of a choice - perhaps not always a really free choice, but a choice between one kind of hardship and another. a serf tied to the land would have seen indentured servitude as an escape mechanism.

given that comparable systems of feudalism and slavery did exist in africa, i think the kneejerk reaction is actually fairly historically ignorant. it seems to be rooted in the idea that white people showed up in africa with fishing nets and just rounded up all the noble savages like they were bananas; this is of course patently absurd. this does nothing to deny the brutality of the whole thing, and the fact that so many people died in transit is worth pointing out. but, the buying and selling of humans in africa generally happened with some kind of negotiation process around people that were already enslaved. how many africans sold themselves into slavery in africa, with the understanding of what that meant in africa, only to be sold to american or arabic slave traders, and transited to strange lands against their will, for purposes they didn't initially agree to? then, where does that idea of choice become meaningful?

we could ignore the initial capture and talk instead about descendants, but this doesn't make the question any less complex. would a house servant be considered to have made a choice to be a slave if he rejected a slave revolt in the plantation? that's a category error, at least - these are not the same things. and, if the slaves of one master revolted due to severe mistreatment, and the slaves of another didn't due to more tolerable conditions, does that mean the slaves that did not revolt made a choice to accept the condition they did not make the choice to be born into? at what level does the question of free will becoming meaningful?

i don't think kanye has thought much about this.

and, that's unfortunate.

he's somebody that should have.

do you want my honest opinion? i think kanye should enrol at a university, take some history courses and get back to the world when he's better informed. and, i don't state that in a sardonic tone. he has an obligation to educate himself, if he's going to open his mouth and speak to the audience that he has.