Terri
07-09-2003, 09:23 AM
Africa with Dignity
Linda Chavez
GOPUSA
July 9, 2003
President Bush went to Africa this week and issued a stinging rebuke against the United States' role in the slave trade, but his comments have not set off the firestorm Bill Clinton's offhand apology for slavery provoked when he made a similar trip in 1998. Why not? It's easy to blame politics, but there's more to it than that.
Bush isn't known for his eloquence, but the speech he gave Tuesday at Goree Island, Senegal, was one of his finest. "For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty," he said, standing in front of an old slave quarters. "At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history," he said.
Nor did the president shy away from the horrors of the Middle Passage, describing a "hot, narrow, sunless nightmare" that led some Africans to starve themselves, while others were thrown overboard when they became sick or died in their shackles. And he pointed an accusing finger at those Americans who trafficked in slaves and profited from their labor. "Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice," he reminded all of us.
More (http://www.gopusa.com/lindachavez/lc_0709.shtml)
Linda Chavez
GOPUSA
July 9, 2003
President Bush went to Africa this week and issued a stinging rebuke against the United States' role in the slave trade, but his comments have not set off the firestorm Bill Clinton's offhand apology for slavery provoked when he made a similar trip in 1998. Why not? It's easy to blame politics, but there's more to it than that.
Bush isn't known for his eloquence, but the speech he gave Tuesday at Goree Island, Senegal, was one of his finest. "For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty," he said, standing in front of an old slave quarters. "At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history," he said.
Nor did the president shy away from the horrors of the Middle Passage, describing a "hot, narrow, sunless nightmare" that led some Africans to starve themselves, while others were thrown overboard when they became sick or died in their shackles. And he pointed an accusing finger at those Americans who trafficked in slaves and profited from their labor. "Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice," he reminded all of us.
More (http://www.gopusa.com/lindachavez/lc_0709.shtml)