r/answers • u/MercurySphere • 21h ago
Why is Arab slave trade not taught in American schools?
American culture puts a HUGE emphasis on African history, the cultures slavery destroyed, the people displaced, and the generational aftermath (and rightfully so!!!).
Yet Americans barely acknowledge the Arab/Islamic-world slave trade that has devastated Africans for centuries - and is supposedly ongoing to this day.
If Americans care about what slavery did to African people, why omit this?
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u/limbodog 21h ago
Same reason the Korean slave trade isn't taught in American schools: it doesn't take place in America.
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u/1rishChicken 20h ago
This is the answer. American schools do (dare I say) a decent job teaching the founding of our nation. American schools do a terrible job of teaching world history. Asking why we don't teach this when there are literally hundreds of more prevalent events never mentioned in school means OP is either being intentionally obtuse or is generally confused at what actually occurs in the American education system
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u/subpar_sapphoe 20h ago
I actually got a pretty decent World History education from my podunk rural NC high school. Probably helped that my teachers actually gave a damn.
The issue is that there's a LOT of world history to cover. You cannot be reasonably expected to learn about every single event in every single nook and cranny. If you want to do that, you go to college for it.
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u/RetrogradeToyGuru 9h ago
The issue is that there's a LOT of world history to cover.
I have a BA in History, I took a two part world history class then a two part American history class (in my freshman year), then took as many other history classes as I could. probably 20 more history classes overall. I did one on China, one on Russia/USSR, and the other 18 or so were all American history and every single one was post civil war. There were at least 5-6 more that were on the schedule and I wanted to take but didn't have space before graduation, and that is all post-civil war american history only.
It is literally impossible to learn everything or pick up nuances of every part of history, even when you specialize.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 18h ago
The real problem is that there is no way you can be comprehensive in scope and provide depth enough to the subject. Like you could, and historians/ archeologists do, spend years and years learning about very specific points in time for small specific regions of the world and still not have enough of an understanding.
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u/Excellent_Routine589 11h ago
Basically
It’s dumb to try to put ALL OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY into a single class. Literally not possible
So it’s easier to teach maybe the larger and more influential moments in world history and if you are particularly drawn to very specific moments in history, you specialize in that through college or more self-guided learnings.
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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 15h ago
The US education system by in large teaches the Boston tea party occurred because of tea tax. The tea tax existed for decades, the tea party was triggered because tea taxes dropped making the smuggling operations of the founding fathers bringing Dutch tea into the Massachusetts Bay Colony less profitable. It passes over any discussion of Locke,Paine, Montesquieu and other Liberals, barely talks about the Federalist papers, and referring to the current Constitution as the second constitution causes confused looks. Also the problem saying "American schools" is that education is primarily the duty of the States and topics and quality vary quite wildly.
Anyway, the question is obviously a dog whistle. Besides historians lamenting that the slave trade in the Arab world isn't talked about more in Western society are the people trying to deflect from the US and western involvement in the slave trade and the the later continuation of slavery after the slave trade was deemed illegal.
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u/AlmightyCraneDuck 18h ago
I took a lot of AP and IB courses in high school and honestly there really wasn’t a ton of material on anything pre-enlightenment. It wasn’t until I actually took an Arab history class in college that I got any kind of substantive knowledge of history beyond Europe in the 1700s.
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u/Ok_Umpire2173 7h ago
Yup. I grew up in Virginia, we seemed to only learn about American history in the context of Virginia. Luckily that’s like the whole first half, but I swear we took a field trip to Jamestown or Monitcello every single year.
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u/Bubbly-End-6156 20h ago
We only learn the American propagandized version of everything. We are too self obsessed.
Do Arabs learn about the Louisiana purchase? Like, why are we acting like every country covers every major historical moment worldwide since the beginning of time?
Tell me what you learned about the Gold Rush in California? Or heck, the civil war.
America only cares about America, and Europe when American didn't exist yet.
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u/Conspiracy__ 21h ago
You’re severely overestimating the emphasis American culture knows and cares about Africa/african anything
It’s almost baffling how much you’re overestimating
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u/Swarez99 20h ago
Honestly how much do people talk about the Brazilian slave trade or the Haitian one ? Which are in there neighborhood.
This whole post is just being dumb.
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u/Best_Philosopher152 19h ago
My wife’s family has deep roots in a community of escaped Brazilian slaves. The scale of the Carribean and Brazilian slave trade is way more massive than the USA. But they were all interconnected. The trans-Atlantic slave trade.
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u/Syscrush 12h ago
It's not being dumb - it's being intentionally obtuse to make Arabs seen worse than white American slave owners under the guise of "just asking questions".
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u/Accurate_Flower_4233 21h ago
It's not baffling. He's obfuscating on purpose.
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u/WangJian221 18h ago
The user thinks we cant access his hidden comments and posts lol
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u/MrMojoFomo 20h ago edited 9h ago
The common thread in all these types of posts is defensiveness. When certain people learn that the country/group they identify with did something bad, one of the first reactions is whataboutism. As in "America had slavery, but what about arabs/afrocans/other people?"
It's simply a way to try to avoid feeling bad by saying "other people did the same so therefore I'm not worse than other people. "
Otherwise, if they didn't have that crutch, they'd have to feel that guilt or shame and they wasn't to avoid it
Edit. The number of people posting a response because reading this makes them feel bad is literally hilarious
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u/lapusyonok 20h ago
I was just reading another thread today where a pro-Turkish poster brought up slavery in America in a discussion about the Hamidian massacres
It's like talking in circles
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u/Andres__Bower 9h ago
Part of it is just curriculum scope, American schools are largely built around a US-centric historical narrative, so even huge chunks of world history get minimal coverage regardless of severity, it's not unique to this specific topic
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u/parkaman 9h ago
This is the same in every country in the world.
No one is teaching all of world history at school level. Syllabuses are obviously designed around national history, usually with a bit of national myth making thrown in.
People love to point the fingers at Americans and say 'you didn't learn about this' often seem to forget neither did we.
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u/foggynotion__07 6h ago
Not to mention, mainly focusing on the history of the place we live in is not at all even a bad thing? How are we supposed to understand why our nation is the way it is if we don’t understand the things that lead up to the current moment? The American education system is pretty terrible but this is far far from the worst thing wrong with it
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u/Agreeable_Result9212 19h ago
That might be the tactic the OP is utilizing, but my education in the states specifically called out our atrocities because we committed them. If we also learned about all the other slave trades as kids, we would likely fall into more of the mindset of the OP.
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u/Top_Divide6886 17h ago
It feels so obvious I’m confused why people don’t get it. We’re studying our country’s history. That includes both the good and bad.
Somehow people think teaching the bad stuff = you should hate the country.
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u/oswaldcopperpot 17h ago
There are almost zero countries that didn’t commit atrocities on itself or others at some point.
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u/ontheru171 12h ago
Yeah and chances are that if you are from those countries your own history education at school will focus on your countries own past
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u/Agreeable_Result9212 11h ago
Yup, most countries have a dark spot in their past. I'm not sure how their education system handles teaching it, but I don't think they should ignore it.
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u/taylorevansvintage 14h ago
Context is also important though along with a broader world view and understanding. Idk why anyone wouldn’t want to know about the larger history or slavery around the world.
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u/LilaBadeente 9h ago
The interesting thing is that the US was the first country to actively do something against the Arab slave trade in the Mediterranean, while slavery within the US itself was still normalized and fairly uncontested.
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u/Accurate_Flower_4233 20h ago
"Why we gotta learn about slavery bro, what about the Sumerians?"
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u/liarandahorsethief 16h ago
“Why is no one talking about the amoebas in the primordial soup who swallowed up ribosomes and forced them to become the powerhouses of their cells???”
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u/OneLockSable 13h ago
Yeah, I brought up the mitochondrial slavery to a woke activist once and he went silent. You could tell he knew that everyone of his cells were still engaged in the practice to this day.
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u/FlyingFlipPhone 10h ago
Like Jefferson
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u/PrototypeDuc 7h ago
The true apple in the garden of eden, we could have just stayed Ameba (just found out that's a word we spell differently).
Now I gotta pay taxes.
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u/CrustBlocc 17h ago
Ironically, exploring the difference between different types of slavery in different eras and places... mostly just makes the triangular slave trade and the US necromancy inclination to keep it alive; even more devastating as a moral judgement against the US empire.
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u/jazz_star_93 17h ago
They aren’t actually interested in learning about the differences - they’ll just say slavery is slavery if you try to get in details of why making false equivalence is not helpful nor does it lead to a good understanding of either slave trades
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u/Min_sora 8h ago
I don't really understand why people think they have to feel guilt or shame? I'm not my country or my government or any part of those two things at any point in history. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about denial, I have no issue with saying "my country did this bad thing/is doing this bad thing, and it's awful how many people were hurt/killed and we can talk about the full scope of the atrocities" but I don't consider that to be some personal failing on my part. I guess maybe it's an issue for people who feel ultra patriotic, but that's not me.
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u/Temporary_Thought_66 14h ago
I agree with you with one exception. I often see people claiming to be Black Americans confidently proclaim that white people invented slavery when they came to Africa out of pure hatred of Black people. In such a case, mentioning that slavery was everywhere and long before is not an attempt to make oneself feel better, but to correct someone who is extremely uneducated.
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u/Healthy_Piglet1139 6h ago
Can you identify a single actual Black scholar who claims this? Then who gives a shit?
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u/HairyPairatestes 19h ago
Why are you talking in the past tense? There is slavery ongoing in Africa today.
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u/Observational-Mess 18h ago
Thank you.
American culture doesn’t put a huge emphasis on African history. Black Americans have historically had to fight for their stories to be told, and still do today. Especially in Hollywood.
Not sure why OP thinks otherwise.
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u/e39dinan 17h ago
Because slavery is so extensively taught in the US public school system, you would think that they would cover other forms of it including modern slavery.
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u/idk936z 17h ago
Right, but we were only taught about US slavery because it pertained to the US — it was a huge part of our history, while also setting the stage for many other significant events in the nation’s history. If US never had slaves, we’d probably have never been taught about any slavery at all.
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u/marchjl 17h ago
Why? When has history in the US ever focus on anything that isn’t America centric
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u/taylorevansvintage 14h ago
It used to be history based on the rise of Western Civilization and democratic forms of government. That was “too white” for our school district and we now have India and China history taught. They’re basing class time teaching on the demographic backgrounds in the community vs US History etc The is SF Bay Area, not sure abt other places
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u/e39dinan 17h ago
You never took world history?
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u/YT__ 12h ago
Other histories are taught, specifically world and euro are two I can think of. I believe my high school also had modern history, post WWII.
But there is so much content to cover in world history, that the focus is still usually let major events world wide.
AP world history may have delved deeper on some topics, but our general world history hit surface level I'd say in high school.
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u/beyd1 9h ago
It's also wrong to assume that we're teaching kids about the slave trade because we care about africa. We teach kids about the slave trade as it pertains to Americans. Frankly the Arab slave trade while terrible, isn't our thing.
I remember our school textbooks 30 years ago with arrows pointing every which way from Africa, but we only really covered the one pointing to America in depth with a few anecdotes for the others.
You can't teach everyone everything.
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u/Sorta-Morpheus 20h ago
In my school we learned we had slaves then there was a war, then there wasn't slaves. Then Martin Luther King Jr had a speech and it ended racism.
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u/Best_Philosopher152 19h ago
The South?
I guess not. You didn’t go off on states rights being the real reason for the war?
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u/Proud_Ad1776 17h ago
I grew up in West Virginia and graduated in 2005. In high school I was taught the European "settlers" had to fight off the "savage Indians." I was in our honors/AP program.
I also had a health teacher tell me that whenever dad wasn't at the birth of his child it's because "he's usually black."
We weren't taught anything about Africa.
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u/shart_attak 20h ago
I learned about slavery every single year I spent in the public school system. If it wasn't being taught in history class then we were reading novels about it in English. By the time I graduated I was pretty over it.
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u/taylorevansvintage 14h ago
My friend (who’s from India) said his second grader was super confused about the history she was taught wrt slavery. Coming out of that 2nd grade curriculum, she thought all Black people were slaves and still are. He said he spent a bunch of time trying to clear things up and ultimately just felt it was too complicated for 2nd graders and they shouldn’t be teaching it then
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u/meatball77 12h ago
There's a lot of history, only so much time. Typically hs kids do two years of us history (some state history there as well) one year of world history and then either econ/psychology/government in that last year if they are academic kids. They would also get a bit of history as context to the books they are reading in English class.
In order to cover everything students would need to have more time.
The slave trade in the US is covered because it's us history.
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u/VastEmergency1000 20h ago
American culture puts a HUGE emphasis on African history
This is 100% untrue. African history is the least taught history in America.
If Americans care about what slavery did to African people, why omit this?
Who told you Americans care about slavery? Are you American? Even if true, Americans care about the AMERICAN slave trade, not what happened in the middle east.
Your premise to your questions are flawed from the start.
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u/Reegurgitate 21h ago
Likely because it doesnt directly effect our current constituents and has nothing to do with American history
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u/Designer-Issue-6760 18h ago
They don’t even acknowledge slave trade between native tribes. Which persisted after the 13th amendment.
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u/i_give_you_gum 21h ago
There used to be world history and current events.
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u/OmniMinuteman 20h ago
Still, in k-12 you only have so much time to cover so many subjects. Frankly the Arab slave trade is just not high on the importance list of world events and so isn’t covered or covered very little.
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u/Significant-Way9330 20h ago
There is world history it's not really as comprehensive as you might want. Lotta world and lotta history to cover and only a handful of classroom sessions.
As for current events well current Arab slave trade isn't really a concern for western countries, especially America. Its mostly poor south east Asian and Africans getting preyed upon not Americans so there's very little interest in teaching it or reporting it.
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u/soreff2 18h ago
Its mostly poor south east Asian and Africans getting preyed upon not Americans
Yes, Americans weren't the bulk of those enslaved but the Barbary states kidnapping and enslaving Americans were the cause of our first post-revolutionary war. The opening line of the Marine Corp hymn honors the 1805 Battle of Derna (Tripoli).
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u/Sugarshmacker 19h ago
You don’t think that those classes teach ALL of world history right? We also didn’t learn about the war of the roses or about bolivar.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 18h ago
Okay. And world history in the US is one single year in high school, at least where I am from. We didn’t touch extensively on Indian history, Russian history, alot of African history is just completely ignored, south east asia exists? Japanese history? Korean history? Serious world history in high school cirriculum is so ankle deep on even things you think its teaching.
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u/Reegurgitate 20h ago
Yeah, in my hs all you needed was Us history and Government. The rest was an elective
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u/JWILLIAM00 20h ago
Nothing to do with American history you say? You might be surprised to learn that Americans were kidnapped and enslaved in North Africa during the early years of our republic.
Jefferson and Madison both fought wars against Barbary Slavers, and this is why the Hymn of the US Marines begins with: "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli." (Tripoli being the Capitol of Libya today, but back then it flopped around being part of the Ottoman Empire and its own regional power.)
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u/VictorianOfTheEast 15h ago
But Babary slave trade has its differences from Arab slave trade. When people say Arab slave trade, they refer to slave trade occured in trans-sahara, east Africa and India by the Arabs. While the one you referring to is Babary slave trade, which happened in north Africa, done by the Berbers.
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u/mag_num_opus 20h ago
Yes it does
Marine corps was created to destroy north african slavers
America was one of the only nations far enough from the ottomans that we could just kill the pirates without them coming after us
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u/WorriedApplication68 20h ago
It definitely does have to do with American history. The Barbary pirates were enslaving Americans. We waged two wars against them because of it.
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u/traveler_ 21h ago
American public education has very little material on African history. And what it has is basically ancient Egypt. And your ulterior motive is not well hidden.
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u/pilosch 13h ago
Yea this is the fifth time I have seen this exact question posted by different accounts across many different subreddits in the past 24 hours...hmmmm something smells fishy.
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u/Flag_Shagger 7h ago
every normal subreddit is being hijacked by undercover racists. I mean what are moderators even doing anymore?
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u/East_Turnip_6366 6h ago
What type of racist though?
I don't think there has been a recent even that provoked white nationalists to talk about white guilt in the slave trades. Bit of a weird topic to push out of nowhere, especially since it can backfire.
On the other hand Zionists are desperately trying to redirect public criticism towards muslims. And I see no mention of the disproportional high amount of jewish slavetraders which is a common white nationalist talking point when they are trying to redirect.
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u/LifeguardSavings370 4h ago
And - predictably - your post got hidden.
5-50% of Reddit activity is generated by bots. So if you were in charge of disseminating propaganda in service to selling an unpopular agenda to the public, you'd be using your bot army on Reddit, as well as Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
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u/MudJumpy1063 20h ago
Actually, we can't really tell how well hidden OP's ulterior motives are hidden. They could be... really ulterior.
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u/Quirky_Dino 20h ago
Actually OP is really a lizard person created from the dna of a desert salamander. His ulterior motive is ultimately the desert and its yearning.
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u/SouthParkIsUnfunny 19h ago
Salamanders are amphibians.
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u/this_is_life_now 15h ago
That's just what the lizard people want you to believe. You can actually track some lizard people through their frequent edits to the salamander Wikipedia article.
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u/Fruitopia07 20h ago
Tbh OP sounds dumb because it was but briefly mentioned like everything else in a world history course.
Like there is a reason why there is a sizable African Population in America.
+Ottoman empire was too huge to ignore
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u/Reegurgitate 20h ago
Could it be one of the race-baiting bots??
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u/MisinformedGenius 19h ago
I am shocked, shocked to find out that he has his post and comment history hidden.
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u/SlickPillock 15h ago
I think it's pretty standard for countries to only teach the history of their own country in high school education. It would be pretty wierd if they taught the American civil war in France or India for instance
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u/54B3R_ 20h ago
"what about the Arab slave trade"
Has become such a prolific talking point among racists, that I now assume anyone asking the question has alterior motives
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u/CryptographerOdd4483 15h ago
I see the most racist MAGA people in my IG liking all this Arab trade stuff. New talking point to go after rhe A-Arabs.
Also guess what country is funding / propping up this talking point ? Clue: many of this middle eastern country’s constituents are european genetically.
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u/aasfourasfar 2h ago
Ask them if they know what a mamluk is, and if they don't .. disregard.
Not saying all Arab slaves ended up ruling, but the Arab slave trade albeit widespread, was nothing institutional like European slave trade and more akid to that of antiquity
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u/alien_believer_42 1h ago
And then they’ll worship ancient Romans and Greeks who also practiced slavery
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u/Burghpuppies412 20h ago edited 20h ago
Wow. I disagree with almost the entire premise of your question.
American culture does NOT put a huge emphasis on African History. Most Americans cannot identify a single country on a map of Africa. American schools teach about the African slave trade TO America. Nowhere else. They don’t teach AT ALL about the cultures it destroyed or the generational aftermath. The only thing Americans are taught is what affected White Americans. And to a much lesser extent, the slaves. We pretty much as a nation don’t care about anyone but ourselves. That’s the problem.
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u/AccomplishedFerret70 20h ago
Completely false premise. American culture definitely does not put a HUGE emphasis on African history. I would wager that the most African history that 99% of Americans know is that African Americans ancestors are from Africa. And most of them probably think that Africa is a country.
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u/Dr-Chris-C 20h ago
We teach the American slave trade to prevent ourselves from doing it again. We don't teach it because "isn't slavery interesting?"
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u/MarionCobraCobretti 20h ago
The better questions is why the Arab slave trade isn’t taught in *Arab* schools.
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u/DueExample52 9h ago
I grew up in Morocco in the 1990s, and every history lesson listed slaves as part of the trade between dynasties in the area. This was primary school, when we start history and they teach about past kingdoms and dynasties of north africa and what/how they traded with the areas around them.
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u/Setting-General 19h ago
are you sure that it's not or are you just saying stuff
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u/DaddyCool13 14h ago
Not Arabs obviously but in Turkey we do learn that slaves were an essential part of the Ottoman court system and that the Ottomans kept large slave armies but we never really got taught about any participation in the slave trade. Things could be different with Arab countries though.
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u/MarionCobraCobretti 18h ago
Yes, I’m sure. Not only is it not taught, slavery is largely accepted, still, in the 21st century. The Arab States have the highest prevalence of modern slavery per capita in the world, with an estimated 10.1 people out of every 1,000 living in conditions of forced labor or forced marriage.
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u/Setting-General 18h ago
This doesn't show that it's not taught, only that it exists, which I'm well aware of
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u/sleepystaff 20h ago
Wait until OP finds about the Tuskegee experiments or Black Wall Street or a lot of USA history's underbelly. Ever wondered why all the public swimming pools are no longer around or why college education is no longer subsidized as it was before?
Fun times!
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u/PSquared1234 20h ago
We're barely bothering to teach our children about our own slave trade at this point, much less anyone else's.
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u/No_Logins_Required 20h ago
It was taught on my school, what state are you talking about?
Americans care about America, not Africa.
The transatlantic slave trade primarily involved Africa, not Arabia.
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u/Physical_Agency_5383 19h ago
Why is it that every time you see someone online bitching about the ARAB slave trade not being emphasized enough in AMERICAN schools, it’s always a White Supremacist hoping to engage in Whataboutism on the AMERICAN slave trade?
It’s so curious
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u/Life_Brother9612 21h ago
It’s much less directly relevant to our nation’s history. Same reason why we don’t learn much of the history of China, Australia, South America, or even Canada. The ancient history we learn is mostly things that impacted our democracy and laws.
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u/Ashamed_Cod_6741 20h ago
Probably the same reason we didn't study the South American, French and Dutch enslavement of Africans. I don't remember studying the British enslavement of Africans either.
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u/ParanoidSkier 20h ago
I mean, I definitely studied that.
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u/Ashamed_Cod_6741 20h ago
Hmm, well I went to a middle-tier public school in Los Angeles over twenty years ago for what it's worth. Maybe they've made more room for that now, which is good.
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u/KartFacedThaoDien 9h ago
Maybe you didnt pay attention. All of that along with the African - Arab slave trade would've been taught in a World History class.
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u/effrightscorp 19h ago
We studied those a decent bit in my world history class, but it was very euro-centric; subsaharan Africa got like 3 pages of our textbook until the Portuguese started carving out small coastal territories in the 15th or 16th century
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u/Prestigious-Row-1629 20h ago
American schools do not put a huge emphasis on African history. Let me know if you have any other questions.
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u/mokahash 20h ago
I’m an Arab American so I’ve travelled to the Middle East on many occasions. There are more slaves now than ever. Arab nations have basically laundered slavery, spare Palestine, for obvious reasons. It’s like some weird area between employment/indentured servitude but anyone with half a brain can see it for what it is.
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u/Ionia1618 6h ago
Thankyou, it makes me so angry to see priveleged Westerners deny this
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u/Open_Enthusiasm8528 4h ago
One reason they don't want to mention this is that it'd make for uncomfortable questions regarding American allies.
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u/tiredpersonnumber15 20h ago
The only thing I ever did about African history in school besides ancient Egypt was the Rwandan genocide and that topic was taught entirely through watching Hotel Rwanda. You are severely overestimating how much is taught about Africa, and this was my “World” History class.
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u/BlackStarDream 20h ago
They don't even teach much about the Transatlantic slave trade that literally resulted in 1/10 of the population being descended from stolen Africans.
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u/AbruptMango 20h ago
American schools barely teach about slavery in the US. Taking time to instead teach about slavery elsewhere wouldn't make much sense.
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u/Active-Cherry-6051 20h ago
American public school curriculum is entirely focused on state and American history until late high school, where (depending on the size of your school and/or where you live) you have classes like World Cultures or more specialized electives. In college there are plenty of in-depth history courses that study various cultures/countries/religions, but most of them aren’t requirements outside of history majors.
I personally feel it’s incredibly myopic and a terrible structure, and that kids need to learn global history at a much earlier age. But that’s not how it’s set up currently.
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u/Starduster75 20h ago
Kind of a streamlined education, really, especially in the humanities. Not just in America, it's pretty common.
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u/Unlucky_Situation920 20h ago
American public schools generally only teaches stuff about American history.
We learn(somewhat) about the transatlantic slave trade because america was directly involved in it.
We dont teach about the TransSaharan slave trade because america wasnt involved in it, nor were europeans in general.
On top of that America only teaches about the slave trade at all because black people had to fight for it to be taught.
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u/MemeNamesWereTaken 20h ago
You guys can say what you want but OP has a point, in AP world history slavery wasn't brought up at all
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u/spartclubchill 6h ago
So was the east asian slave trade , south asian slave trade and South American pre and post colonial slave trade . Shit America dont even teaches all aspects of tri Atlantic slave trade , it inly focus on AMERICA , not Europeans and africa .
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u/1K-Year-Egg 19h ago
Focusing on the Arab slave trade in Africa is basically an exercise in Whataboutism.
“Aw, c’mon, slavery in America wasn’t so bad, we weren’t the only ones doing it, the Arabs did it first!”
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u/Stunning_Client_847 20h ago
11,000 years of slavery throughout human history. No one learns even a sliver of it in school.
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u/MudJumpy1063 20h ago
Because it would take away valuable even essential time uses to teach the enormity of the contribution of the French to world and American history.
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u/theRetroGarage 20h ago
They also don't teach about Cuba that imported millions more than the US and South America too much
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 20h ago
Bro
Americans don't even learn about the french revolution and the industrial revolution.
Both things are arguably more important for modernity
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u/AgentCoulson2 17h ago
Just because you slept through your World History class, that doesn't mean everyone else did.
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u/makeherbeg4it 20h ago
Because we don't care (from a history curriculum standpoint) about what happened to all the Africans. We do care about what happened to the Africans who were enslaved and brought to America and their descendants etc. because it directly affects American society. The history you are talking about would be more of an educational selection reserved for study at institutions for higher learning like colleges and universities for students that need to engage with those topics.
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u/Equivalent_Use_7032 20h ago
1.) We do learn about it briefly (or at least I did)
2.) We didn’t important millions of Arab and Christian Slaves from the Arabs. We imported millions of African Slaves from other African slavers (who sold them to White Slavers) and guess who lives here now? The descendants of those African Slaves therefore that’s what’s relevant to us
3.) We fought an entire war over the issue of Slavery (if we are getting controversial Race Based Slavery because technically slavery is still legal here if you are in the prison system)
4.) We spent roughly 100 years after the Civil War systemically building systems to oppress African Americans to continue the slavery thing as long as we could without actually enslaving them. Therefore even though the Civil War and Slavery “ended” 160ish years ago, oppression of African Americans did not truly end until at least the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s which was only 50-60 years ago. Furthermore one could argue African Americans to varying degrees are still facing remnants of those systems of oppression and therefore are still disadvantaged
All this to say is that specific slave trade is much more relevant to Americans in their day to day lives and they need to know about it to understand why shit is the way it is here.
That’s not to downplay other slave trades, victims or slavers. Pretty much every group of people has done it at some point in history. That said your average American off the street doesn’t care nor needs to know that the Koreans for example had one of the longest lasting slave trades in Human History. Why? Doesn’t affect them in the slightest or the United States in general.
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u/Carradee 20h ago
Why are you pretending it isn't taught or presuming it's omitted? It's far more likely that you just don't remember.
I know I learned about it in American schools, myself. Less time was spent on it than slavery in the USA because it's less relevant to US history, but it was definitely addressed.
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u/Apart_Bandicoot_396 20h ago
Probably the same reason we aren’t taught about Belgium Congo. Unless you elect to take a western civ or world history class you’ll just get a basic overview of events relevant to the US
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u/OtterHostler 20h ago
There's an old joke about the sepos only going to war to learn geography. Since 57% of the country couldn't have pointed to Iraq on a map in 1990 bears this out. Since they've not gone to war with anywhere in Africa since Raygun decided to fuck education into a cocked hat full of fuck is it any wonder that Americans don't learn anything about history? Certainly they don't learn from their own history, including the lesson that a land war in Asia is a really really fucking terrible idea.
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u/Broflake-Melter 20h ago
high school science teacher. What I understand is history teachers only have enough time to scratch the surface of basically everything. If you wanted all students to learn about all types and areas slavery occurred that would be entire high school diploma by itself.
The best they can do is talk about it generally, give a few examples then cover how it happened in the United States.
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u/sysaphiswaits 19h ago
American history isn’t taught in American schools. If it’s not about how great the U.S. is then it’s suspect.
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u/Angsty-Panda 19h ago
this is asked every other day on reddit and its just americans doing some good ol' fashioned "whataboutism"
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u/wolfonweed 19h ago
why do americans only study american slavery in american history classes?
What are they american or something?
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u/skrufforious 18h ago
I mean, obviously because the slave trade from Africa to the Americas has to do with America. I don't think that American schools talk much about arabs much at all. However, it seems reasonable to teach children about our own country's history with slavery, which lasted for hundreds of years. Makes sense to help explain why their classmates have last names like Freeman and so on, this is the literal history of the country they live in and they should know at least that. Of course it would be great if they learned everything about everything but sometimes you have to prioritize.
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u/evlbb2 18h ago
America barely teaches American history. The only nonamerican things US schools teach is europe. The only thing surprising here is your focus on Islam. Basically everywhere had slave or slave equivalents at one point or another. There is also a lot of history that would take you years of study to get a semidecent grasp of that isn't focused on slavery that is still very significant.
So really the reason the US teaches about the American slave trade is because it's a significant part of American history. The reason the US does not teach about Qin Dyansty or many achievements and atrocities around the world is because it's not related to the US and it's history and did not make the influence cut to get taught in the tiny sliver of world history that you get.
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u/txorfeus 18h ago
Maybe because we’re all taught US history, not Arabian history, not history of slavery, not history of people behaving badly
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u/catinkatu 18h ago
Because it's also a part of American history and how many Americans came to America.
Duh doi
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u/NearbyCriticism5193 18h ago
I learned about in my public school in Virginia.
Sounds like your school sucked.
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u/Brief-Objective-3360 18h ago
I'm not American, but I assume they learn about the West African slave trade. The Indian Ocean slave trade is primarily where the Arabs participated.
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u/schilleger0420 17h ago
We're American that's why. We study and focus on the US. As such we know and care more about slavery in the US than somewhere like Korea. Also let's keep in mind slavery in the US was a relatively recent thing. We didn't get rid of it until the 1860's which is only 4 or 5 people ago.
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u/JuanValdez999 17h ago
Why would you burden students with the history of a different country when so many thousands in the United States died fighting over slavery in our own country. It warped and distorted our whole history as a country.
I wonder if you're trying to whitewash the history of American slavery by setting up some unrelated "they did it too!" argument.
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u/ozone_00 17h ago
13+% of the US population are direct decendants of slaves from West Africa, ergo it is a part of American history.
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u/kateinoly 17h ago
It isn't that they don't teach African history , it is that they teach American history. The African slave trade is a huge part of that. The Arab slave trade would be a minor part of the one world history class kids take
It is like asking why they don't teach as much about the attempted genocide of indigenous people in Australia as they do about the attempted genocide of American Native people.
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u/Loughnashade 17h ago
What in the world are you talking about? I went to elite schools growing up, and there was ZERO courses talking about African history. Where did you go to school where they teach you anything about Africa?
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u/BadUsername238 17h ago
Because a whiny "they did bad stuff tooooooo!" doesn't excuse our bad stuff.
And we learn American History, because... Wait for it... We're Americans.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 17h ago
American culture puts a huge emphasis on African culture? Accordingly to?
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u/Squirrel009 16h ago
So you're asking why American history doesnt teach more history that does not involve America?
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u/Global-Tie-3458 16h ago
Americans don’t even learn all their own history, now you’re asking them to learn something about another country too?
It’s too hard. Not smart enough.
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u/Definitelyhereforshi 16h ago
I wonder why Peruvian history isn't taught in American history classes. There must be some conspiracy afoot...
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u/WillTheyKickMeAgain 16h ago
I took a university course at a U.S. college in medieval African history. We learned about the extensive trade in humans in the Indian Ocean. Most Americans wouldn’t learn these things for the same reason most learn very little about that part of the world - it is remote and doesn’t often have an effect on America.
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u/FlatWonkyFlea 16h ago
American schools can barely teach kids how to read and you want to know why they emphasize the history of atrocities that happened here? Is this rage bait?
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u/mastermindman99 15h ago
Because America hasn’t even been able to process it’s own 250 years history.
How would they be able to process 4000 years of complex history around the world?
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u/Available-Love7940 15h ago
Let me put this in a way that might make sense to you:
The Translatlantic Slave Trade industrialized slavery in a way that had never been done before.
With it's limitation set forth in the US Constitution, slavers then industrialized chattel slavery in a way that had never been done before .
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u/Clear-Relative-2371 11h ago
Just listen to the comments in this thread. Africans enslaved Africans and people still complain like it's America's fault it happen.
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u/Smart-Practice8303 11h ago
If that taught about slavery anywhere else in the world that would go against the political goal of racial division.
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u/ksalana 11h ago
I work in Middle East and African policy - the Arab slave trade has never ceased since it started about 1,300 years ago. It has been given a new name - ‘modern slavery’ - but in some Arab African countries, like Mauritania and Eritrea, literal chattel slavery still continues. It is vile and it is a very, very low priority for the United Nations, so-called human rights groups, etc.
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