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Apologize For Slavery, Part Ii

...But the problem with apologies
is where exactly do we start?
The Aztecs took thousands of slaves,
and ‘praised their gods’ but cutting out hearts.
The Indians enslaved each other,
and settlers in the many wars,
but the Spanish enslaved them,
equal opportunity horror.
And the British enslaved the Irish,
three hundred thousand sent across seas,
often used when black slaves were not,
since they were comparably cheap.
The black slaves people had to buy
from squabbling African kings,
raided their foes for human cargo,
they profited off the damn thing!
China had slaves, and India too,
Ancient Romans, Egyptians, and Greece…
But of all these civilizations
which one set out to make it cease?

It wasn’t the great peoples of the past
that fought hard to end this great pain,
the western word drove slavery’s end,
no other cultures can make that claim.
Folks today have no perspective
of the evil we put in the dirt,
slavery was no exception,
it was long the norm on this earth.
And now, instead of celebrate
this huge and moral achievement,
we’re demonized because back then
we had not yet set the precedent?
We’re told we have to give folks cash,
that it is all ‘stolen money,’
when most of this country’s great wealth
was born in states where labor was free?
Look at the south and at the north
way back during the civil war,
the slave states starved in slow collapse,
the free state out-built them and more.
When less than two percent of folks
ever claimed that they owned a slave,
to blame us all is asinine,
dishonors those who died to save
the country from this age-old sin,
those who ought to try a new path,
and insults all those alive right now
who think slavery worth our wrath.
But if you still want apologies
look at every one close to you,
their ancestors were slave-owners,
and guess what? Yours owned them too.

Copyright © David Welch | Year Posted 2020

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