If He Only Had a Brain

Slave trader's descendant begs forgiveness in Africa.

“Sir John Hawkins was a buccaneering Elizabethan seaman and adventurer, who helped his cousin Sir Francis Drake beat the Spanish Armada. And he was also one of the pioneers of the slave trade, becoming the first person to buy slaves in west Africa and sell them to Spanish landowners in the Caribbean.

Now his descendent, Andrew Hawkins, a youth worker from Cornwall, has delivered an extraordinary personal but public apology for his ancestors' involvement in the trade, kneeling in chains in front of 25,000 Africans in a stadium in Banjul, the capital of the Gambia.”

Oh please, Jr didn’t have thing one to do with this. He never bought slaves, owned slaves or traded in slaves. We aren’t responsible for the sins of those who lived before us.

I want to know who from the nation Gambia came forward to apologize for selling those slaves to a white man in the first place. No one? Really? None of the decedents of the black people who sold other black people into slavery, felt badly enough about it to humiliate themselves. Imagine that. “White mans burden” is taking on a whole other meaning.