[aaronbeekay]

Firstly, regardless of where a person ends up, if they get there by having several generations of their family kidnapped, enslaved, and systematically mistreated, I think it counts as “a hell of a hand”.

Secondly, it sounds like your thinking isn’t too far away from “well, aren’t they better off now?”, but you’re assuming that the development of African nations and societies progressed completely independently from the colonization and enslavement of their populations by Europeans. If you’re going to construct an alternate timeline where nobody was kidnapped, why does it follow that African nations would have developed in the exact same ways as if they were? Didn’t the United States reap massive economic benefit from the labor of those enslaved people, benefit which certainly didn’t make it back to Africa? And isn’t a lot of the quality of life that we in the United States currently enjoy built on the back of that economic benefit?

I’m engaging here because I do think you’re being earnest, but you should probably be aware that many people would find your question quite offensive, and I can see why. I think you’ve anticipated this, but I hope you don’t dismiss that offense as being “overly sensitive”, and instead ask yourself what you might be missing that would cause you to overlook the causes of such a strong emotional reaction.

[akomtu]

Why did American ships go to Africa in the first place? There were plenty of other undeveloped countries, including Mexico.

[sertsa]

They weren't kidnapped. 90% were purchased from black Africans in Africa and then brought here. The slave trade had been going on internally in Africa and into the middle east for centuries before the Europeans wanted cheap labor after finding the Americas. African nations profited immensely from the slave trade. The colonization of Africa did not occur until after the new world mostly abolished slavery.

This does not change the hand dealt to the people bought and brought to the New World however.

[aaronbeekay]

Hasn’t somebody who is born free and then later purchased and sold as a slave been kidnapped at some point, even if not by the person who is selling them at the international border?

I’m not well versed in the history of slave trade, but I would be curious to know what the relative economic benefit from slave trade was for African nations vs. the benefit of slave labor to purchasing nations.