I have read about this, and almost wrote a post about it several years ago, but couldn’t get all the facts together to suit me. A man that I follow on X published a post about it today, and it is so good that I wanted to share it. He is a science teacher, as he explains in his post, but reads a lot about many different subjects, and writes quite eloquently, I believe.

He is:

And this is what he has to say, and he says it better than I ever could.

So I had a student in my class the other day. She is doing post-secondary enrollment and was telling me about her “Black Experience” course. She quoted her textbook, which stated that slavery started in Africa.

I stopped her right there.

Not because I wanted to embarrass her, but because her textbook is flat-out wrong, and somebody needed to say it. See, I am a science teacher, but I also happen to read. A lot. And the actual history of slavery does not start where your college professor told you it did.

Let us start with the word itself. “Slave.” You know where that comes from? The SLAVS. White Europeans from Eastern and Central Europe who were enslaved for THOUSANDS of years by the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Moors, and just about every power that rolled through that part of the world. The very word for this institution was named after WHITE PEOPLE. Not Africans. The Latin derivation comes from their ethnic identity because they were enslaved so thoroughly and for so long that their name became synonymous with human bondage.

But sure, tell me again how slavery is a uniquely American sin committed exclusively against Black people. I will wait.

Now here is where it gets really uncomfortable for the reparations crowd. The first slaves in the Americas? Not Black. They were Irish. In 1612, the first recorded Irish slaves were sold, likely to the Portuguese, and shipped to the Amazon River Basin in Brazil. That is a DECADE before the first African slaves arrived in Virginia. King James I issued the Order of Banishment allowing captured Irish soldiers to be sold into permanent bondage in the New World.

Oliver Cromwell took it to another level. Between 1641 and 1652, over 550,000 Irish were killed by English forces and 300,000 more were sold as slaves. He ordered 12,000 Irish shipped to Barbados alone in 1652. His “To Hell or to Connacht” proclamation forcibly relocated the native Irish west of the Shannon River. Resist? Shipped to the West Indies or executed. Children as young as 10 were ripped from their parents and sold to Jamaican planters. By 1637, roughly 69% of Montserrat’s population was Irish. Between 1651 and 1660, Irish slaves OUTNUMBERED colonists in the American colonies.

I can already hear the “well, those were indentured servants” crowd warming up. Spare me. There are ZERO records of contracts between those forcibly removed and their so-called benefactors. They were traded for cotton and tobacco in a barter system. No contract. No choice. No freedom. That is slavery with a prettier label slapped on it by the British government.

And that is just the Irish.

The Barbary slave trade, which the education system pretends never happened, lasted over 300 YEARS. North African pirates operating under Islamic law captured and enslaved over ONE MILLION white Europeans. They raided coastal villages in Italy, France, Spain, and even ICELAND, kidnapping women and children. Under Sharia law, Muslims could not enslave other Muslims, but non-Muslims? Fair game.

Thomas Jefferson was so fed up paying tribute to these slavers that he sent the Navy and Marines overseas in America’s FIRST foreign military action. Eight Marines and 500 mercenaries marched across the desert from Egypt and captured the city of Derna in 1805. That is where “to the shores of Tripoli” comes from. America went to war to END white slavery. You will not find that in a “Black Experience” textbook.

Here is the part that destroys the reparations argument completely. Thomas Sowell pointed out that in 1776, Adam Smith observed Western Europe was the ONLY place on earth without slavery. The Barbary pirates enslaved MORE white Europeans than the total number of Africans enslaved in the United States and American colonies COMBINED.

So if we are doing reparations, where do we start? North Africa for the million-plus white Europeans kidnapped? The descendants of African kings who grew rich selling their own people? Because here is the dirty little secret. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. admitted, Africans sold other Africans to white people. That WAS the slave trade. Europeans stayed along the coast. African kingdoms in Ghana, Dahomey, and Angola waged wars specifically to capture people to sell.

Every culture on every continent practiced slavery. Romans. Greeks. Ottomans ran the LARGEST slave trade in history for 600 years. Vikings enslaved the Irish starting in 795 AD. Aztecs and Maya used captives as sacrifices and slave labor. This was not a white invention. It was a universal human failing.

You know what IS unique about the West? We ENDED it. Britain abolished the trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. America fought a civil war where hundreds of thousands of white Americans died to END slavery. The Republican Party was literally FOUNDED in 1854 to oppose it. Republicans passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Democrats filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 75 days. Democrat Robert Byrd, former KKK recruiter, led a 14-hour filibuster against it.

So when somebody tells me Black Americans deserve reparations, I have questions. Do I get reparations for my Irish and Slavic ancestors enslaved LONGER and in GREATER NUMBERS? Do white descendants of Barbary pirate victims get a check? What about the 360,000 Union soldiers who DIED ending slavery? Their families get reimbursed?

The claim that Black Americans hold exclusive rights to slavery’s suffering is not just historically illiterate. It is OFFENSIVE to every other group whose ancestors were enslaved, which is basically EVERYONE. Apply reparations consistently and every person on earth owes every other person on earth. Money goes in circles. That is what happens when you build policy on feelings instead of facts.

Quinn’s Law #1: Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent. Reparations would deepen racial divides, not heal them. Create new entitlements, not prosperity.

Quinn’s Law #6: Facts are the enemy of liberalism. And these facts make the reparations crowd real uncomfortable.

Nobody on the left wants to admit that the problems plaguing poor communities today are not legacies of slavery from 160 years ago. They are products of modern policies that destroyed incentives and replaced fathers with government checks. Black households with intact families have better economic outcomes and higher educational attainment. But that reality does not fuel the grievance industrial complex, so it gets buried.

Real justice is not cutting checks for something that happened to someone else’s ancestors. Real justice is a system where every person, regardless of skin color, can pursue life, liberty, and happiness, and where their own effort actually matters.

But what do I know? I am just a high school science teacher who reads actual history books instead of relying on activist textbooks that cannot even get the origin of the word “slave” right.