Saturday, May 12, 2007

Do You Remember The Days of Slavery ?

2005, apparently, according to this UN site reporting on the landlocked state of Niger.

"Last month in parliament, not one of the MPs took the floor for the debate on slavery. Yet there are nine white Arab slave-masters and a dozen white Tuareg slave-masters in the chamber," he said. "Everyone knows they own slaves but no-one wants to talk about it."


Black and white seem to be pretty relative terms methinks. In England an Iranian police officer is apparently black. In Niger, Arab and Tuareg can be white.

"A matriarchal society with a caste-based hierarchy" says this wargaming site of the Tuareg.

3 comments:

dearieme said...

It's an odd entry. Surely the Berbers were the original white people of North Africa? Perhaps their language and culture are now spread over a racially heterogeneous group. As the wags like to say, the Jamaicans speak a Teutonic language.

James G. said...

Now I am going to have Burning Spear running through my head all day...

Thanks.

Laban said...

The dub version on 'Garvey's Ghost' is nice. Sparse and stripped down, not drowned in reverb and special effects.