The Editor, Sir:

Response to the Letter of the Day, 'Blacks, not whites, should apologise for slavery' - hogwash!

To think that someone had the gall to write something as treacherous as that and then to include his email address is equally puzzling.

Yes, black people sold their own into slavery. But slavery was not just about working people to death, it was also a political means by which the European separated himself from other people, leading to the establishment of an ethnic pecking order for the enforcement of 'otherness'.

The writer of that letter lives in a predominantly black society and is fortunate that he does not have to deal with the racism and xenophobia that other descendants of slaves in America or Europe have to put up with on a daily basis. God bless that day when the burning and lynching of black people were outlawed in the United States.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is right to apologise because Europeans did a lot to support the tribal conflicts in Africa to achieve their ends, and continue to keep that continent subdued by way of International Monetary Fund debt and the unfair rules of the international trading system, the World Trade Organisation.

Yes, I agree that Africa has to take responsibility for its part in the slave trade, but for someone to absolve Europe of its role in the diabolical practice of slavery is myopic and completely absurd.

Why the hell do you think that the majority of black countries are poor?

Did you know that there was a time in Jamaica when black people couldn't own property and were themselves chattels, could not get a bank loan or a decent job? The progress that black people made in Jamaica came because of our forefathers' willingness to spill their blood in the streets - Paul Bogle, Nanny of the Maroons and many others.

In addition, if those slaves in Haiti had never massacred their masters (in 1804) in that blessed Carnival of Revenge, slavery could well have lasted another 200 years!

It is not for us blacks to rejoice at the plight of Africa. It is just a painful reminder that practices such as slavery should be universally condemned!

I am, etc.,

ALICIA MARSHALL

angelicvibe1000@gmail.com

Spaldings P.O.

Clarendon

Via Go-Jamaica