Responding to Representative Jasmine Crockett’s and Jamal Bowman’s Comments About 'Oppression'

Among the many recent examples of racism directed against both our nation and white people in particular, three examples prominently stand out. On November 20th Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (TX-D) retorted during a debate on DEI on the House floor, “You tell me which white man was dragged out of their homes! You tell me which one of them got dragged all the way across an ocean and told that you’re gunna go to work!  We’re gunna steal your wives—we’re gunna rape your wives. That didn’t happen—that is oppression!”  More recently, Rep. Jamal Bowman argued in his “Dear white people” letter that white supremacy led to a jury’s finding Daniel Perry innocent of criminal charges in the death of Jordan Neely. He additionally hurled other false charges against the “white people” of America. Finally, on December 13th Duke rape accuser Crystal Mangum finally admitted 18 years after ruining many lives that she fabricated the rape accusation she leveled at several white male students. Although she asked the young men to forgive her, she admitted, “I don’t have any regrets.”

All of these racially incendiary examples stem from the false historical narrative put forth in DEI and CRT initiatives. Despite the billions spent to create the false image of Western Civilization and the U.S. being unique in bearing the responsibility for slavery and for oppressing non-whites, a lingering historical reality contradicts this simplistic view. Such racist opinions, now thoroughly ingrained in higher education and the federal government, require a detailed response. Several historians have recently responded to the plight of an estimated 3 to 4 million white Christian slaves who were seized by non-Western people of color for over 1,200 years. Unfortunately, these responses have neglected a more complete societal comparison between Anglo-America and Africa. In response to Rep. Crockett’s charges, in particular, it’s important to remember that: 

– African kingdoms aided and abetted the enslavement of both Africans and Europeans for almost 1,200 years. Anglo-America enslaved Africans for less than 250 years—the United States for less than 100 years. Despite the international African slave trade being eventually stopped by Europeans, Africa today has the most slaves of any continent. 

– For 1200 years, European women were openly trafficked as sex slaves in Africa’s Muslim city-states on both its Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Contrary to DEI and CRT teaching, Biblical and societal norms in British North America worked to discourage such sexual relationships. For example, there is no African equivalent to our colonial anti-miscegenation laws. Moreover, African Muslim leaders openly kept large harems of Christian women for sexual purposes. Although at times there were so many Christian slaves in Algiers that one could be purchased for the cost of an onion, the ransom price established to free Christian women and men showed their actual value. When Edmund Cason was sent by England in 1646 to purchase the freedom of as many slaves as possible, he spent over £1,000 each for many of the freed English women vs only £38 for men.

– Although CRT argues that the conditions faced by African slaves in America were unprecedented, European slaves in Africa faced far worse. African slaves in America saw no equivalent to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of European galley slaves—chained to their oars for the duration of their short lives. 

-- The greatest threat to slavery in America was the written word. The Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and many legal ‘freedom suits’ all served to win freedom for countless slaves. Where are the African equivalents to our Abolitionist Societies and to our documents and lawsuits opposing the enslavement of Christians? There are none. There simply are no African equivalents to U.S. v Claiments of the Amistad (1841) or “Mum” Bett v Ashley (1791) and countless other freedom suits. Nor did any African city-state ever pass the equivalent of the ‘Personal Liberty Laws’ that many northern states enacted in opposition to the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

– Before the end of slavery in America, there were many white martyrs who willingly gave their lives, their fortunes, or who were severely punished for their efforts to abolish slavery. Elijah Lovejoy died for freedom of the press. Robert Carter III—the richest man in America at the time—gave away his entire fortune to free Africans from slavery in Virginia. (He died poor, and his grave is unknown today.)  Cassius M. Clay, Charles Sumner, and John Brown risked their lives or personal well-being in the struggle. Sherman Booth and John Hossack were among the many whites found guilty of harboring slaves in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Where is the list of African or Muslim martyrs who struggled to free any of the millions of white slaves held in Africa?

-- Whereas Islam has many different sects within the faith–similar to Christianity–not one single African or Islamic sect argued for an end to the enslavement of Europeans. Within Christianity, however, Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and other powerful Christian voices opposed African slavery. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of white American Christians signed petitions to Congress urging the abolition of African slavey.

– Americans so opposed slavery that they fought THREE wars against the institution–two to free white Americans enslaved in Africa and one to free Blacks enslaved in America. What African or Muslim nation can boast of such a record?

– Whereas there are many examples of prominent individuals of the “oppressive race” working to end slavery in America (John Brown, Theodore Weld, Lewis Tappan, William L. Garrison, etc.) it’s difficult to find a single African or Islamic leader who devoted his life to the betterment of European slaves. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century America produced many authors, poets, educators, clerics, editors, and politicians who worked diligently to develop an anti-slavery culture in our nation before the Civil War. There is simply no cultural equivalent to Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Garrison’s “The Liberator,” or Longfellow’s ”Poems on Slavery” in Africa over the 1,200 years of European enslavement.

– Often, American slaves could simply run away from their condition. In doing so, they were protected by northern antislavery citizens of both races. Unfortunately, the typical U.S. History textbook fails to mention that the same men who formed the Republican Party in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, were part of a 5,000 strong band of white males who freed an escaped slave from jail only days earlier. European slaves in Africa had no such opportunities for freedom. They were trapped by deserts, the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, and a population that mostly regarded them as ‘dogs’ and ‘beasts.’ There are no examples of thousands of African males organizing to free white Christian slaves such as what happened in Ripon, Boston, and elsewhere.

--Anglo-American society often celebrated the successful escapes of Africans from slavery within our nation. The Amistad freedom fighters became celebrities in New England where collections were taken up to pay for their education and legal costs. Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatly, Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, William Wells Brown, and numerous other African American slaves became both successful and prominent within the white dominated culture of their time. The ‘white oppressive’ society permitted their establishing newspapers, operating successful businesses, petitioning authorities for redress, and allowed for their filing of lawsuits—often with results in their favor. African slave states tolerated no such activities on the part of their European slaves.

– It’s commonly agreed the worst experience for African slaves was the “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Slaves that died enroute from unsanitary, crowded conditions were simply thrown overboard. This, however, is not unlike the thousands of European slaves who died for centuries while being chained for life to an oar in an Islamic galley or who worked on building the massive breakwaters for African harbors. These unfortunates were beaten daily to get the very last ounce of work from them, then simply cast into the Mediterranean when they died. To replace them only required attacking any defenseless Christian coastal town or ship to obtain more.

– Many prominent Americans joined the American Colonial Society, an organization charged with purchasing the freedom of slaves and returning them to their homeland in Africa. Americans purchased land in Liberia, Africa, and supported missionary and educational efforts to improve the lives of Africans. No Africans ever bought land in Christendom for the sole purpose of returning Christian slaves to their homeland.

– Many states in both the North and South passed “manumission laws” to encourage freedom. No African or Islamic city-state ever passed laws to encourage non-white masters to free their white slaves. 

--Due to many of the reasons above, it’s no surprise that among all nations in the Western Hemisphere, the fewest number of African slaves were brought to what is now the United States. It’s also notable that only in the U.S. were slaves able to augment their numbers through natural childbirth—thanks to a longer life expectancy than in Latin America.

These are only some examples of how Rep. Crockett was  wrong in her interpretation of the past. There are additional historical examples to prove her wrong—the indentured servitude of countless Anglo emigrants to British North America, the enslavement of the Irish who were sent to the Caribbean during Cromwell’s reign, the plight of over 25,000 British convicts who arrived in American in chains, the impressment of tens of thousands of Englishmen and Americans into virtual slavery by British naval press gangs, the breakup of families and the sale of countless German “Redemptioners” in the colonies before the Revolution. Nor does this include the contemporary example of Western women being the victims of countless rapes or sexual assaults by “people of color”—often from Africa—in Scandinavia and other parts of Western Europe. One British paper declared the 1400 young girls who were sexually abused and traded amongst the foreign-born men in the city of Rotherham in recent years were the equivalent of their being sex-slaves.

The above examples are given as a partial answer to Rep. Crockett.. Can it be that she and Jamal Bowman represent the two best examples of what’s wrong with DEI and CRT?

The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa -- the National Social Studies Honor Society -- past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.