Is Black Slavery Of The Same Gravity As The Jewish Holocaust?

Answer 1

Yes of course it is.

Answer 2

No, because slavery was an acceptable practice within it's own culture, it was imported into the plantationsthousands of years after it became common practice in Africa, (in fact the origin is uncertain) the only difference is they were shipped across an ocean to work for another culture only more advanced by a few centuries. Bond slavery wasn't any more humane because often the sentenced never survived to be free if they didn't escape, and their intolerance for the heat is why they decided to import slaves from Africa. I'm not justifying slavery, it always has, is, and will be EVIL. But it's only the hope of a hand out that makes the history of slavery in the USA an issue. But the South and it's wealthy landowners were destroyed during the war and the remainder looted by carpetbaggers afterwards. I'd like to see someone declare that slavery everywhere, worldwide, will stop, now and forever, and enforce that, but you'd run into a big debate at the UN and nothing would happen. But slavery still exists, and no one admits that culture is evil, the race of the slaves is unimportant.
The Holocaust on the otherhand was the result of a people being seized due to the accident of birth, rounded up and slaughtered like cattle and turned into products like soap, mattress stuffing, leather, etc., a deliberate and calculated attempt at wiping out a whole culture, simply for political gain.

Answer 3

No.
Apart from the other points made, the holocaust killers had been all brought up in a culture that forbade killing of other humans except for specific crimes. In promoting the holocaust they contravened their own cultural heritage.
As for slavery, it had existed since ancient times. Jesus did not condemn it. St Paul returned an escaped slave. (And don't forget the ARAB slave trade!) The slaves were not being deliberately exterminated, and life in America or the West Indies MIGHT be better for them than their life in Africa. So for a long time nobody realised they were doing anything wrong.

Answer 4

The question is flawed.

First of all, no one is black or white, we're all kind of brown. You might think I'm being politically correct - but I'm not. I'm just saying that "Black Slavery" does not really mean anything. Slavery has existed for millenia in countries around the world among peoples of hundreds of different ethnic backgrounds. Did you know that Irish people were sold as slaves in the Caribbean? Russian peasants (serfs) are considered to have been technically slaves by many historians. The experiences of slaves were vastly different depending on when and where slavery existed. The Torah (Old Testament) urges slave owners to treat their slaves kindly, while on the island of Haiti slaves were reportedly chained to the ground, covered in molasses and fed alive to ants during the period of French colonialism.

I believe what you are referring to is a ridiculous contest that has cropped up recently in mainstream media to guess who has had it worse - African Americans or Jews. It boils down to two lobby groups trying to outdo each other to score political points. Questions like this one stir up people's emotions without leading to constructive debate, because ultimately the two are so different that they have no point of comparison.

Answer 5

Not even close. With slavery, the point was to exploit the slaves for labor, not kill them, although a lot did end up dieing. With the Holocaust, the whole point was to kill the Jews. So in my opinion, that makes it a lot worse. That is not saying, however, that slavery wasn't bad.

Answer 6

Any slavery is bad, no matter who performs it. Slavery has gone on since the ancient Egyptians and it's never a good thing for those enslaved.

On the other hand, the holocaust was the mass extermination of millions of innocent people.

I just don't think you can compare the two.

Answer 7

Excelent question. I never had this view before.
You are right. It happened genocide, torture and somehow concentration camps.
People were put to starv into death during their long journeys (land, sea and then markets inland again). Specific races were exterminated, societies deconstructed, massive movement without care about gender or age.... Entire cargoships drowned and slave labor without propper conditions.....

Perhaps intensive commercial slavery period were worst than the holocaust. More like capitalism and less human than more ancient habits of slavery that happened before.

Good point.

Answer 8

No. blacks were inslaved mainly because of their color. They were in most cases treated no better than animals, and by many thought to be no more than an animal but did have value to their owners. Jew's in the holocaust were rounded up and made into slave labor and then killed just because they were jews. Not to minimize slavery, both slavery and the holocaust were horrible things to do to another human. But, inslaving a people do to color is just a small notch below mass killing of a people with the intention of eradicating them from the face of ther earth.

Answer 9

How can it?
There was no conscious intent to exterminate every Black alive only to enslave the ones captured. Slavery is abhorent but to compare it to The Holocaust is just ignorance.

Answer 10

I think oppression is the same for Jewish, African Americans, Native Americans, white people (haolis in Hawaii), etc.

But, I will add that, for me, being physically attacked by one local man in Hawaii (because of my white skin) inspired an awareness of my connection to others more than prejudiced remarks did.

"And from a ... point of view, those who are being oppressed have a chance – just as people did in the civil rights movement – to be purified by what is happening to them. They have the opportunity to let hatred be replaced by love and compassion and try to bring about change by nonviolence and nonagression. Instead of sinking into self absorption that have a chance to let their suffering link them with the suffering of all beings – those harming, those helping, and those feeling neutral. In other words, they have a chance to soften what is rigid in their hearts and still hold the view that injustice is being done and work toward unwinding that injustice or that cruelty."

Answer 11

Black Slaves suffered greatly, but the Holocaust was much worse, it was mass extermination, people had no value or any chance of surviving the death camps. I don't know of anything that could have been worse then Hitler's extermination of the Jewish people.