Rapper Lord Jamar has some interesting theories on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and surprisingly, none of them involved slave ships. In fact, Jamar disputes that Black folks were brought to the Americas on ships at all.
During a recent episode of his “Yanahadeen Godcast” with fellow rapper Rah Digga, the 90’s lyricist blasted the notion that Africans were shipped across the Atlantic and forced into slavery upon their arrival in the New World. He argued Europeans did not have the resources to pull off such a feat, and instead offered a theory claiming very few African-Americans are descended from slaves who were brought here against their will.
“Did the Trans-Atlantic slave trade exist to the level that they’re mothaf—-s are claiming? No, it didn’t,” Jamar said. “They didn’t have the resources to do what the f–k they said they did. Where’s the slave ships?”
Jamar, a former member of rap group Brand Nubian, pointed to the historic ships preserved from the Boston Tea party but questioned why not one of the thousands of ships purported to have brought 10.5 million Africans to the Americas can’t be found. He went on to claim there were already Blacks in the Americas who had traveled there willingly before colonizers like Christopher Columbus arrived.
“You’ve (white people) showed me diagrams and you told me story — but my people were already here,” he argued. “Ya’ll aren’t that organized to do that. It’s a way to make yourself (white people) seem supreme. Like ‘oh, I was so industrious. I was able to subjugate and move that many people.’ No mothaf—-. ”
“You put a spell on a generation of people and you tried to kill off that generation,” Jamar continued. “And on the next generation, you just told them they were from somewhere else.”
His theory, deemed outlandish by some, drew criticism from his co-host, who argued that such a narrative perpetuates recent claims by rapper Kanye West that slavery was somehow a choice.
The rapper then tried to clarify his argument
“To be a slave now is definitely a choice,” he said.
Watch more of the discussion above.
