Fake History Alert: Because Whites Were Never Enslaved, DEI Must Continue, Claims Black Congresswoman

Yet another splendid example of the dangerous of Fake History recently manifested itself — by a member of Congress, no less.

On November 20, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) tried to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives by arguing that black people had experienced something white people never did and therefore could not understand — “oppression” in the guise of slavery. At one point during the hearing, she yelled out:

“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 gonna go to work! We’re gonna steal your wives — we’re gonna rape your wives. That didn’t happen. That is oppression!”

Such statements reveal a staggering level ignorance. Many millions of white people have been enslaved, raped, and forced into labor since well before recorded history. And many of their enslavers were people of color.

Several Million White Slaves

Consider how the Mongols enslaved Europeans, particularly under the Tatars (Mongol converts to Islam). Described by contemporary Christians as the “heathen giant who feeds on our blood,” the Crimean khanate alone is estimated to have enslaved and sold some three million Slavs — Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and others — “like sheep” between 1450 and 1783.

As one historian observes, “[t]he massive enslavement of slavic populations during this period gave rise, in fact, to our word ‘slave’… to be a slave was to be a Slav.”

Similarly, according to the conservative estimate of Ohio State University Professor Emeritus Robert Davis, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.” (With countless European women selling for the price of an onion, it’s little wonder that by the late 1700s, European observers noted that “the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”)

Thus, in response to Crockett’s ignorant question about “which white man was dragged out of their homes!”: We can safely say that the answer is “at least 4.25 million Europeans.”

A Whole Lotta Slavin’ Going On

Records for specific years also exist.

In 1438, Italian Franciscan Bartolomeo de Giano described the Turkic slave raids throughout the Balkans.

From Hungary, 300,000 people were “carried off in just a few days.”
From Serbia and Transylvania, 100,000 were “led away in iron fetters tied to the backs of horses … [and] women and children were herded by dogs without any mercy or piety. If one of them slowed down, unable to walk further because of thirst or pain, O Good Jesus! she immediately ended her life there in torment, cut in half.”
The slave markets of the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with European flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.”

This is to say nothing of the countless more Europeans who were enslaved before the modern era, when accurate records were not kept or are lost. We know, for instance, that once Islam became a great power among men beginning in the seventh century, countless successful slave raids were launched against Europe, though exact numbers are seldom relayed. Rather, sources talk of “many” or “a large amount” of Europeans being hauled off to North Africa or the Middle East.

Changing the Complexion of the Populace

As for Crockett’s suggestion that the wives of white men never experienced what the wives of black men did — namely, rape by their masters — in fact, it’s quite the opposite: Records make it perfectly clear that Arabs, Mongols, and Turks especially coveted European women for slaves and concubines.

For example, because the Arabs “particularly valued blond or red-haired Franc or Galician women as sexual slaves, al-Andalus [Muslim-controlled Spain] became a center for the trade and distribution of slaves [The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, p. 159].” Christian subjects were sometimes even required to make an annual tribute “not of money, or horses, or arms, but of a hundred damsels (all to be distinguished for beauty) to ornament the harems.”

As for the Crimean slave trade, after describing how the Mongols castrated and savagely tortured European men (including by gouging out their eyes), an eyewitness adds that the “women are kept for wanton pleasures.”

In short, Crockett is flat-out wrong in saying that white people have never been dragged from their homes, enslaved, and raped by people of color.

While that is obvious, the reader may recall that my opening point was that Crockett has furnished yet another example of the dangers of Fake History. For instance, one can point to the obvious resentment she has for white people on the erroneous belief that they, uniquely of all people throughout history, are the only ones ever to enslave others (namely, her “people”).

But consider this more subtle and relevant aspect: Crockett’s enter tirade, her invocation of this brand of fake history, is to defend and permit DEI practices to continue. Because white people have never experienced slavery, she argues, and because slavery is apparently something from which no one can ever recover, reparations (including via DEI practices) are in order and should be the law of the land in twenty-first-century America.

In reality, of course, the Arabs, Turks, and Mongols never made “reparations” to the white man; rather, Europeans overcame their abusers and enslavers through sheer will and determination — through hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance. These are all splendid traits for all humans to have, though none of them can ever be attained, much less developed, by those accustomed to living off “freebies.” Yet, for those who, like Crockett, believe that no one can overcome oppression except through artificial “assistance,” the constant need for “freebies” is all that they will ever see.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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