Thanks for clarification. I reacted only because I saw you arguing about it in the comments (that’s why I replied to your comment and not your article), and frankly the sole fact that many Africans were even part and parcel of trans-Atlantic slave trade was completely new to me literally few days ago (I'm more focused on pre-historic Near and Middle East and Mediterranean).
As for Native Americans, and just as a side note, IIRC e.g. Iroquois played some pretty nasty political opportunistic war games that had rather unfortunate impact on their enemy tribes. But I agree, the proportions of culpability in "sum total" are in both cases simply incomparable.
However, I think that these are the proverbial "skeletons in the closet" that must be sooner or later faced head on. Case in point -- and I'm glad you mentioned Jews -- me being (also) of Jewish ancestry taught me the hard way that a self-segregated community that considers itself to be better than thou and/or chosen by God is a surefire way to attract a lot of attention and not in a good way. And being (also) of Slavic ancestry, I always point out that there were two times as much Slavs killed in Holocaust than Jews. But yeah when looking at it through the lens of percentages, it was only a fraction of the whole population -- what a great way to relativize the value of human life, isn't it? And you should see the flak I get every time I even hint at the possibility of those undeniable facts (especially as I'm not a "pure blood" Jew). Nevertheless, the truth is completely worth it.
With all that being said, I feel neither responsible nor defensive. I have no reason to. I have also no clue why should be descendants of West Africans upset that their predecessors were involved in trans-Atlantic slave trade. Maybe it’s a black version of white guilt. I don’t know, I come from a Slavic society that was in forced (and complete) socio-economic thraldom for a little more than thousand years (this was ideologically rationalized on the tribal / cultural basis), and everyone knows the Jewish history. I have also no collaborators in family tree, so I don’t know how it feels to bear the burden of being a descendant of an oppressor. All in all, I want to have a historical overview that is as correct as possible. After all, things always happen in some context and, as they say, to know where one goes one has to know where one comes from. And anyone who closes their eyes before emotionally unpleasant (or inconvenient) facts promotes the attitude that got Giordano Bruno burned at the stake.
