Here is why I think it is bizarre just from a logic standpoint.
First and foremost, it is a race wanting credit for ceasing to enslave another. I think that is bizarre. Do you thank someone for not enslaving you anymore?
Second, I've read several times on this board, and heard the argument over and over how modern white people shouldn't be blamed for slavery that was abolished 150+ years ago. Because I didn't enslave anyone, and it's a generalization. But, this seems to want credit for something that nobody alive had any personal responsibility for. And as far as generalizations go, a distinct percentage of those same white people who were in fact directly responsible for the abolition of slavery would have preferred that slavery NOT have been abolished. Seems contradictory to me.
As far as the historical reasons:
Who else can you blame large-scale plantation agriculture in the western Hemisphere (which by the image it seems to be referring to) BUT white Europeans? And beyond that, short of there having been a insanely large scale slave revolt, who else COULD have ended it, but white people? They are the ones that started it.
And to preempt this argument, yes, Natives had slavery, but it wasn't chattel slavery. It was an ancient, primitive, I conquered-your-tribe-and-now-I'll-do-what-I-want-with-you type. And was not nearly of the scale or complexity or an integral part of their economy as the European-African Slave Trade.
In fact, that's what MOST slavery has/had been for millennia. There was not an implied racial element. The Romans had slaves, the Ottomans had slaves, Arabs had slaves. But, they weren't all uni-formally one race, from West Africa, with absolutely zero room for social mobility while enslaved. THAT'S why black people are still pissed about it. If even 20% of slaves had been white. Real, cradle-to-grave, born into it slaves, who knows what this country would have been.
But, to give credit to an entire race for stopping what they perpetuated and turned into a complex machine, that above all is what is bizarre to me.
Should a wife thank their husband for not beating the hell out of her anymore? If a guy is whooping my ass, just because he's bigger and stronger and he can, do I thank him for stopping?
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