The Editor, Sir:

I recently read that Prime Minister Tony Blair had apologised for Britain's role in the slave trade. Personally, I do not think he has anything to apologise for. In fact, I don't think any European has anything to apologise for.

First of all, Tony Blair was not alive when the slave trade was taking place, nor any other European alive today, for that matter. Secondly, slavery, human exploitation, torture, brutality, savagery, and genocide (caused by tribal wars) were not exports from Europe to Africa. These were the reality of African life from the dawn of African 'civilisation'.

And if any white man should apologise, then it is only fair that the black men who captured their own blacks and sold them to the white men are even more culpable, and therefore their offspring should apologise first. A dastardly act is such, irrespective of the colour of the skin of the perpetrators (something that black racists can never comprehend); therefore, to assume that the Africans involved were mere innocent bystanders is a historical fallacy.

To go further, I was glad the day that those treacherous blacks put my foreparents on that ship, because at least in the modern world, neither I nor my recent foreparents have had to contend with the likes of Daniel Arap Moi, Gene Bedel Bocassa, Idi Amin Dada, Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Charles Taylor, Joseph Kony (of the Lord's Resistance Army) and the present scourge of the continent, Robert Mugabe. Nor are we likely here to experience anything along the lines of the Rwandan genocide.

Looking at myself now in Jamaica, not having to contend with Gabon vipers, king cobras, puff adders, sleeping sickness, leprosy, guinea worms, malaria, and all the diseases that Jamaica has wiped out more than 40 years ago (but are still a fact of daily life on that continent), I would say that the white man has been totally vindicated.

Slavery has also taught me to appreciate the white man in a way that I can never learn to appreciate blacks. Put it this way, regardless of their complicity in the slave trade, at least they never sold out their own.

Apologise? Seriously now, for what?

I am, etc.,

XAVIER NEWTON-BRYANT

cyberdyne@cwjamaica.com

94M Old Hope Road

Kingston 6