Slavery is an African custom. Tribes of that continet would fight each other and the defeated were held captive and sold off to other tribes or white people in exchange for cattle and grain or bullion. White people got involved in this slave trade and were able to purchase africans in greater numbers cuz they had the money to and brought thme to America. In the process, African children were separated from their families and often joined other Africans with whom they did not share a language or religion or traditions. The tribes of Africa are very different from each other and hate each other. They have no solidarity. Even now in Africa there is no peace. This is a continent with people who really did not develop a culture or trdations or schools of thinking. I remember there was this time when people thought that Haile selassie was a god.  I think he was gunned down later on. But there is this horiffic bigotry within Africa: the hutus think they are middle easterners and racially superior to none other than people who look almost exactly like them, the tootsies. Africa is like the wild, wild west with crazy islamophiles ( a more recent trend), and now there's a trend towards afrocentrism which I believe will get stronger cuz of the african americans in north america.

Anyhow my point is that Africans did not develop a culture. Yes, you can pull up one or two references to soem greta cities in Africa but something went wrong with the Africans. It's too long and difficult to elaborate, but their suffering seems to be the result of a failure to develop a culture, a lack of altruism towards their nrighbors, and their seems to have been no inspiration, ie no source of inspiration even back then.  A lack of undersatnding and compassion between their own peoples led to non-communication and constant warfare. WHen they were put on those boats to America they had no common language or religion, they had no parents or families, and they had to start from scratch. And now they have something, I think. It's nowhere near good or acceptable but give them another two hundred years and I think they will have something they can be proud of.

Black people are a part of America and as our compatriots they desevrve all the help the govt can afford to give them so that they can be part of mainstream America. 

Aside: I feel that the lives of Africans mirror that of the autochthonous peoples of India and I feel strongly  that the caste system of India was a grave, grave  mistake and is THE cause of India's backwardness. Cuz how can a nation become a great nation when we cannot be considerate to our neighbors? How can a nation become great when a large percent of its popl is denied education and the opprtunity to contriobute? there is no nationalism and fellowship if a  group of people are suppressed. No society can succeed that way. Southern Brahmins are often commended for having kept up their traditions and music but think of the potential destroyed by keeping so many millions of indians in the dark! How many mathematicians, mechanical engineers, chemists, scientists, scoial reformers, philosophers, nationalists, microbiologists has India lost! We missed the industrial revolution, we lost everything to the british,. Today's India is so tiny, we've lost a lot of land. When a nation fails or an empire falls it is because of inequalities within the social structure.

Of course, India got luckier than Africa cuz Hinduism which was an inclusive relion predates the caste system by thousands of years. Those years allowed for bonding and commonalities and friendships and marriages between different people  to occur. So we got at least a bit of culture.