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Notes -
Presumably the African slavers who forced them into slavery and sold them felt otherwise.
In all seriousness, every pre-industrial civilisation relied on some system of forcing people to do back-breaking physical labour. Africa had slavery since Ancient Egypt invaded Nubia, in Europe we had peasants and serfs. Now we have robotics (lit. Workers in Czech) and machines. Soon we will have AI.
From where I’m standing, the devil’s bargain is importing an ethnically distinct forced labour class. Once you do, even post industrialisation it will be very clear who was on which side of the metaphorical or literal whip and those wounds aren’t going to heal with time. Especially when the forces that put A on top of B end up not changing.
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