I’m fully aware of that history and agree that we need to understand history and it’s impacts on today. No argument there.

All I said was the African origins of slavery or the ancient origins of slavery were not the conversation.

Funny you use cognitive dissonance to deflect the fact you are trying to create consonance for yourself by deflecting the role of early American settlers by focusing entirely on the African continent.

Yes. Africans sold and profited off their conquested neighbors.

Yes. Americans continued the enslavement here in the US.

Yes. There are ongoing consequences of that enslavement.

Yes. Those consequences are still apparent and visible today.

Yes. Those consequences have been perpetuated in many ways by many people and continue to be perpetuated by people Today.

Yes. Many of the people who perpetuate it today do it unknowingly and some do it purposefully.

Yes. People believe there are no ongoing consequences of our history of enslavement.

It does not create any significant degree of dissonance in me to accept all the above statements.

Others here will state the same and blow off these statements in order to alleviate their dissonance. Some will even try to focus on the statement that creates the least dissonance and pound it like a drum so they don’t have to deal with the other statements because they can’t deal with the dissonance.

I’m glad we both understand that dissonance is a thing and leads us to ignore our blind spots.

I’m just saying the original discussion is not really truly informed by focusing on the African slave trade from the American or African side. The original discussion as I understood it was about what do we do about it now.

Yet here we are discussing ancient and African enslavement, so touché, you’ve been successful.