Slavery reparations... to whom?

"North African pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780 in a series of raids which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall," observed the March 11 London Guardian. The paper was summarizing the findings of American Professor Robert Davis of the University of Ohio in his new book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800.

According to Dr. Davis' findings, as described by the Guardian, "Thousands of white Christians were seized every year to work as galley slaves, laborers and concubines for Muslim overlords in what is today Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.... Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were hardest hit but the raiders also seized people in Britain, Ireland and Iceland."

While scholars generally agree that slaver raids of the sort Dr. Davis describes occurred, some suggest that his estimate is excessive. In any case, his findings illustrate compellingly the aberrant foolishness behind the movement to extract slavery "reparations" from contemporary individuals and business interests. The vile institution of chattel slavery has existed in every culture in human history, and persists to this day. It has never been a simple question of white racism, as many "reparations" agitators insist.