Briana L. Urena-Ravelo
1 min readSep 7, 2016

--

The comment you made about Africans selling Africans is really disrespectful and oversimplyfing. Africans who sold off Africans in the Translatlantic Slave Trade did not create or benefit off of it like Europeans did and they had no idea what they were trading people into, they believed it was just a type of indentured servitude. I think if they understood the true magnitude of what would happen to us, they would never have done it.

And the way you phrase it is like it is between “The Africans Who Had a Good Time And Stayed Home And Kept The Culture And Never Were Hurt By Colonialism and US POOR AFRICANS WHO THEY SOLD AND TRADED INTO MISERY AND LOST THEIR ROOTS” which is a very colonialist, gross and generalizing false binary. We have both experienced so much hurt and lose due to colonialism that is unique to the both of us. These kind of comments (along with condoning people doing creepy hodge podge cultural ish) weakens your argument (that has many good points!) and is mired in a really problematic gaze that makes me uncomfortable.

--

--

Briana L. Urena-Ravelo

Writer. Community organizer. Errant punk. Ne’er do well. Fire starter. Email: Dominicanamalisima@gmail.com