: the practice of owning slaves, people who are forced to work
with little or no pay and are denied physical freedom or the
opportunity to leave
WHEN IT’S ANTISEMITIC:
A post falsely claiming that Jews owned over three quarters of American slaves.
The claim that Jews controlled or made up a significant
portion of the Atlantic Slave Trade is false. The Council of the
American Historical Association (AHA) “condemns as false
any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate
role in the exploitation of slave labor or in the Atlantic slave
trade.” While some Jews with resources owned slaves, as
did wealthy people of all backgrounds, it was by no means
widespread within the Jewish community.
This trope has been spread by the far-right and far-left,
from David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan wizard, to Louis
Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI). The claim
was popularized in Farrakhan’s 1991 publication The Secret
Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One, and has
most recently resurfaced within segments of the Black Lives
Matter (BLM) Movement to prevent Jews from taking part in
the protest movement. The conspiratorial film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” brought to a mainstream audience through a celebrity endorsement in fall 2022, falsely claims Jews orchestrated the transatlantic slave trade.