History Teacher's First Reaction to PragerU | A Short History of Slavery

hey there i'm mr terry a high school history teacher welcome back to another history teacher reacts video one of the channels that i have been recommended to respond to it's called prageru now it's a channel i've heard of and i've heard people talk about but i have not really seen their content so this is not only going to be just a reaction to this video but maybe to the channel in general now one of the things i like to do when i check out a new channel is to simply check out their about section so let's take a look at it real quick all right so here's the page right here let's see what the description says rigor u is an educational media platform dedicated to promoting pro american values our videos educate inspire and entertain millions of online viewers all right so right away we have an agenda i guess you would call it as being is promoting something pro american values right away you get you know your bias alarm should be kind of running off and i think if as long as people like you know declare that that they have a bias or they have a of a goal that way then i think that's fair right to to make that known so you know what you're getting into serving audiences of all ages our informative content offers a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology and culture media and education i guess we're talking a right wing conservative kind of view of things here burger u is experiencing severe censorship on big tech platforms go to prague.com to watch our videos for you from sensor all right so i think i have an idea of what we're getting into before i even watch this video all right so the video i wanted to check out is my first one from prageru is a short history of slavery um since a history topic and the ideas about slavery often are kind of misunderstood that there are going to be some objective things about slavery that i would think in a history of slavery should be discussed now if you know my channel pretty well i am basically apolitical on a lot of these types of reactions and stuff and hopefully help you develop more informed opinions on things all right let's get started and now for a brief history oh kenneth owens she's a conservative one african-american woman so she gets talked about a lot as somebody that may break some norms that some people think usually occurs in the republican party anyways yeah she's a very popular conservative politician and you need to know slavery was not invented by white people it did not start in 1619 when the first slaves came to jamestown i would say most people know that i would say most people know that i mean i've been teaching for over a decade and you know we we talk about slavery's one of the first things you end up talking about because uh slavery is often as old as society i mean especially in uh since the agricultural revolution where people became sedentary and more of a reliance on agriculture slavery and warfare have increased since those times um so it goes back of course very far so i mean i honestly i want to know like put down in the comments is this something you think is true like people don't know that slavery is before the triangular trade slave network of the 17th century or do you know people that honestly think that way let me know it existed before then it did not start in 1492 when columbus discovered the new world in fact when the intrepid explorer landed in the bahamas the native taino tribe hoped that he would help them defeat their aggressive neighbors the carobs the carobs enslaved the taino and on occasion served them for dinner slavery existed in africa now i i'm assuming again the objective thing she's going to talk about definitely the european um the european um age of exploration expanded the slave trade to its biggest height um ever and with the colonization of the americas that brought the african slave trade which already existed i think she's going to talk about this the african slave trade existed in a in a network that connected africa the middle east and asia and had done so for centuries and when europeans start showing up to africa and asia they insert themselves and then start using that system to populate the americas asia and the middle east the word slave actually comes from the slavs of eastern europe that's true millions of them that's that's something that people have have said i gotta look more into the the um um the etymology of the word but yes slavs uh were slaves um when you look at like the ottoman empire um the ottoman empire had a policy that you did not enslave other muslims and eastern european christians were among those people that they had enslaved but i got to know more about the etymology of the word but i have heard that but i i also want to say i've heard that not be fully the case all white by the way were captured and enslaved by muslims in the 9th century and later by the ottoman turks slavery existed when the roman empire controlled the mediterranean and most of europe from the first through the fifth centuries slavery existed when alexander the great conquered persia in the fourth century bc i mean if you want to look at those the histories there i mean in the roman empire slavery may have consisted up to like a third of society now slavery means a lot of different things in a lot of different times as far as terms of slavery what life is like for us for a slave it is very different across the world right some slaves can't they have may have some rights um some were exchangeable as property which is chattel slavery right or um i can you know their slavery can end or their children don't become slaves it is it is pretty big the the um greek culture was like that to athens was probably about a third slaves as well it was so common that aristotle simply considered it natural yeah the slave master model was just how the world operated in the great philosopher's day well yeah that's because he aristotle felt that people were inherent some people were inherently just like better than others and some people were inferior that way as a awful awful justification hope's not saying that that's a justified slavery existed during the time of the ancient egyptians 5 000 years ago as far back not as much as you would think though that's that's one thing people think that the um the uh uh like the pyramids were just built by this massive amount of coerced slave slave labor right and it's just simply not as true they had um uh a lot of the the the and it depends too when you're talking about pyramids because you're talking about thousands of years of time between pyramids but um many of the the pyramid construction projects were built by um agriculturalists okay like farmers and stuff in the off season so you have your planting season and then in your off season where it's the growing season a lot of them were used and paid to build the pyramids right and we have all kinds of evidence of that they were paid for we didn't know what they were often were paid for some of them were paid literally with like what you would call today like beer as like a commodity that so the slavery in egypt thing although that was true there was a slave uh labor some of the ways that we think slaves how they operated in egypt is not necessarily true okay and definitely not like the pyramids being built by like jewish slaves or something like that just didn't happen so we can go in human history we find slavery as renowned historian john steele gordon notes from time immemorial slaves were a major item of commerce as much as a third of the population of the ancient world was enslaved here's the second thing you need to know largely i mean there's some places where where slavery was you know handled completely different somewhere like persia which had much different ideas of what slavery was but i don't know i i have to see more of what if you're saying a third of world history or whatever has had people that have been slavery i gotta see what they mean by slavery though white people were the first to formally put an end to slavery in 1833 britain was the first if you're saying like lost and that that's the country in the history of the world to pass a slavery abolition act they were quickly followed by france who in 1848 abolished slavery in her many colonies then of course came the 13th amendment in the united states constitution it still needed a war which still needed a war to to finalize it's like the 13th amendment passed and then the southern confederate states were like oh all the slaves are free okay we're all good like okay it's it's it's done you know that kind of thing um slavery laws have changed a lot through all history so if she's talking about the modern chattel slavery of the transatlantic um slave network well then of course it was ended by white europeans and by the way um the idea of like whiteness has also been something historically that has changed a lot there's been times where people don't consider a lot of parts of europe white like it may only mean um anglos right and like no like the and then like no not even uh uh french count or italians count or polls count or irish like over people you say the irish don't count so that's been different but if they're saying if the argument is that it's it's whites that ban the slavery but if you're talking about slavery in the 1900s or 19th century the 1800s then of course it was them that banned it because they were the ones facilitating it in the 1800s it couldn't be any other way because they were the ones doing that are you saying slaves i mean the alternative is slaves banned slavery well no not unless you have the haitian something like the haitian revolution which happened which ended slavery um in haiti uh by former slaves but this is a kind of seems like a non-argument for centuries of human slavery white men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice that includes the 300 000 union soldiers overwhelmingly white who died during the civil war again i guess i would i would say who who else would have ended it now am i saying that this means she's definitely referring to the transatlantic slave process of slavery it seems like correct me if i'm wrong on any of these by the way this is a first time reaction um to this let me know down in the comments well better than anyone else of course not but that is true purpose here is this absolutely the truth and the truth is that human history is complicated no one regardless of skin color stands guiltless sure yet today we are never told to consider the murderous persian empire or the cannibalism of indigenous tribes of north and south america or the heinous actions under the imperialistic muslim chinese mongol or japanese empires to name just a few why not who who is not doing that who is they who's she talking about they there seems to be a very uh there's like a marginalized or um really just categorized group of this they that they're talking about right this is a global phenomenon when we talk about the mongol empire in a classroom are we saying man that you know eliminating like a quarter of the world's population that was great you know i mean like i don't think these discussions are happening in my experience instead we're told that slavery is a white phenomenon and like all persistent lies which is true i mean it's true it's true that that's that's false it's true that that's that's uh um if that is being discussed then yeah that's a bunch of other lies on social media i come across extraordinary depictions about how africans lived like pharaohs before europeans came and laid waste to their paradise they did i win well those a lot of them did now i can see if she's going to go into the very important of the transatlantic slave trade which needs to be talked about which is where did europeans get african slaves okay now originally some europeans could usually talk about the portuguese early on because they were the first to really extensively explore and deal with the african coastal nations of africa um would try potentially to capture slaves themselves but it was difficult and inefficient so largely speaking the transatlantic slave trade european slave traders would deal directly with african leaders who um were far more adept to being able to enslave um other african tribes you know warring tribes and stuff like that and then sell those slaves for four products right and then be able to kind of live their lifestyle in a lot of ways a lot of people kind of this idea that it was like when you were in western africa if you're an extra african west african nation it was like you were either doing the enslaving or you were being enslaved it kind of became that scenario there wish any of this were true but it's not it's a fantasy there was a lot of powerful ones i mean go go to go to the eastern africa which i think she's ignoring a lot too where that slave trade has been around a long time swahili coast states the kings of those city-states were very very wealthy because they dealt with slave trade they dealt with a trade of all goods and lived some they had some fantastic palaces and stuff we have these places and again in eastern africa where you have these palaces filled with like chinese porcelain we're talking hundreds of years before europeans had ever even been to asia before by boat or anything like that or they'd ever been a part of this as well so yes there were african kings um that lived um quite uh with a lot of power because of their involvement in the slave trade the truth is that africans were sold into slavery by other black africans and in many cases sold for items as trivial and mirrors much bigger ones though we're guns okay i hope she's gonna talk about that guns um manufactured guns coming out of again places like portugal which was an investment for europeans because basically what they'd be doing is selling these african nations weapons and then they would use those weapons in their efforts to enslave others so it was like an investment that way but yeah rum was also one as well these were very valuable commodities back then in africa because they just didn't produce those whites didn't go into the interior and round up the natives some did they waited on the coast for their black partners to bring them black bodies the stark reality is that our lives had very little value to our ancestors here's the third thing you need to know if you think slavery is a relic of the past you're wrong there are some 700 000 slaves in africa today right now that's the lowest estimate that i could find other sources say there are many more for context that's almost twice as many slaves as were ever brought to the united states child soldiers human trafficking forced labor these are the conditions that currently exist okay this is this is fudging data a little bit i'm not fudging data but using data a little bit misleadingly because they're talking about the united states the united states was a very small part of the transatlantic slave slave trade network um what is it i gotta look at my my my pie charts and stuff again that i like to that i show um well like five percent or something like that and actually coming there huge percentages though go to first off the caribbean the caribbean had the highest percentage of slaves that's because well couple reasons one of them is that the native population almost 100 percent died out also it provided the climate and opportunity for a lot of profitable agricultural work that uh slavery was used for um one big example would be sugar okay and then the second biggest percentage uh was in portuguese brazil so you had that in about what 15 or so maybe into the spanish americas where slavery wasn't needed as much because there was higher populations and where spain had conquered but even though about 90 percent of native americans died of disease with with european arrival there was still a higher population available to be able to do any kind of slave-like labor which like for example in like western south america though was largely like mining but african slaves did not do as well as locals at those altitudes in those climates but anyway what i'm trying to say is she's using and yes the whole like modern slavery thing is still a major problem there are countries that still have very vague laws about it and some only banned you know some of it more recently in the 1960s or something like there's also the changing definitions of slavery if you talk about um some of like the the debt slavery wage slavery um child labor that kind of thing so you start to i don't know if change definitions of slavery as time progresses as labor is changing continually in the same sub-saharan region where the trans-atlantic slave trade originated african bodies yeah it's municipal if you're talking about it today it's minuscule as compared to the overall slave trade that happened in the americas in general from north to south america to the caribbean what she was saying about the united states yes surprisingly a lot of people know united states again was a very small pop percentage of where african slaves actually went to they're being sold today like they were sold then and no they are not being purchased by any country of white men human trafficking in fact slavery by any traditional definition is exclusively practiced today within non-white countries but we hear almost nothing about that just like we hear nothing about how slavery was universal until good people in europe and america ended it two centuries ago why because our so-called leaders black and white wouldn't profit from it black victimhood is nothing if not profitable it elects politicians and funds racial grievance groups and if black americans began to view themselves as partners in the american dream if we embraced the patriotic spirit that holds all men are created equal the patriotic spirit that is our real heritage then the race hustlers would soon be out of business and who wants that i'm candace owens author of blackout for prager university interesting now uh let me give you my final thoughts all right so the last kind of point she was making there were some there were some good points about there about how it is important to talk about slavery as a concept um a global concept spanning multiple eras for sure right now obviously there is this thing about called recency bias in history where we're far more focused on issues happening closer to when we live because they're more relevant right people don't feel a connection or see any type of repercussions from roman slavery right no one talks about that or sees it where a lot of people because we're only a few generations removed from this are not going to view slavery the same way that someone's going to view roman slavery right because um of the the the the issues that still come from not being that long ago that slavery existed like in the united states and i know with this channel it focuses on the united states i mean we saw that at the beginning of the video when we were looking at their about section but it is kind of saying that they're that she's she's framing the global i can put this right the global slavery problems through an american lens only and using the data of global slavery uh to specifically kind of stick to how it's or to to address how it's covered in the united states which i feel is a little bit i don't know if i want to say it's dishonest i don't know if i go that far but it definitely is strategic um to do that like she's saying with the stats about slavery come in the united states and then versus slavery in more modern africa because it ignores a much bigger chunk of things right so again people are going to care more about the slavery that has affected them in their personal histories than other parts of the world let alone other parts of the world in further times back and i think to expect to look at it any differently than that other than its recent history is probably not going to be effective that's that's that's kind of my take here going through this but nevertheless i can assure you that um history education uh educators are absolutely uh you know especially uh in like a public setting are talking about slavery in its historical context and again as i can speak for myself and the teachers that i know but curriculums are very very clear about this because it talks about when you a major theme that we talk about in in social studies classes is the history of social structures right how people have been divided throughout history whether it's by class or it's by just purely occupation or religious standing there's a lot of different ways that class is done and that's a part of human history that it is talked about because you can't go through you know a hierarchy of populations in history and ignore slavery because it comes up all the time okay and all of its different forms anyways so this was informative i i did think there was some good points made i also thought there was a little bit of misleading points and but nevertheless i i think it's good to hear all these different perspectives and display that to you and then help you make more informed decisions about historical topics because historical topics influence the world today all right with that we'll cut it here and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 89,670

Keywords: react, history, prageru, slavery, candace owens

Id: SuP5J63sN8Q

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022