# How much responsibility do African tribes share in the slave trade?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 17, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019 "2016-05-17T18:35:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/81 "2016-05-25T14:45:27Z")

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> [@bump](#):
>
> Here’s the thing though; the evil of one side doesn’t affect the evil of the other. Nobody’s saying that the demand side is not evil, just that the supply side isn’t somehow less evil or less culpable.

Yes. Blame is not a zero-sum game. The buyers of slaves are 100% at fault for slavery. Sellers of slaves are also 100% at fault for slavery.

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**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/82 "2016-05-25T23:59:27Z")

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Well, reminding black folk that the true source of the slave trade was their fellow black folk just ain’t gonna sit too well.

I welcome you to bring it up sometime. Let us know how it goes.

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**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/83 "2016-05-26T02:30:40Z")

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> [@Pleonast](#):
>
> Yes. Blame is not a zero-sum game. The buyers of slaves are 100% at fault for slavery. Sellers of slaves are also 100% at fault for slavery.

The African kingdoms that supplied slaves to the Americas ended up screwing themselves over because of it in a lot of ways and caused significant and usually negative social changes in West Africa.

However… slavery includes more than the act of capturing and selling people. African kingdoms that sold slaves did not contribute much to institutionalized racism that arose from the American slave trade, for example. Of the negative repercussions of slavery that are felt in the Americas today, the actual trading part did not cause many of them.

I think some people balk at the effort to apply blame to the suppliers because it seems to be in the context of “look, everyone was messing up back then, just forget about it.” But we can’t just forget about it because it still is influencing things today.

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