Say His Name: William Wilberforce

By: Tom Tancredo

As we all know, Race Marxists relentlessly push the narrative that:

• the history of slavery is the history of white people oppressing people of color; so
• all western institutions public and private are systemically racist; and 
• because of this, white people have an irremovable stain on their souls forevermore.

As a lot fewer of us also know, the history of slavery began to end when a privileged white man started humanity on the road to universal freedom. Here then, is the real history of slavery and the beginning of its end.

As many of us know, slavery was practiced and documented since the beginning of recorded history. Many of us also know that slavery was practiced in North America by its indigenous tribes long before 1619 and long before the 1492 arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean. Some of us even know that African blacks sold as slaves and shipped to the U.S. and Brazil were captured and sold not by white people but by Arab Muslims – and other blacks! 

What few of us seem to know is the point in history when slavery was first outlawed – and by whom. The answer, of course, is… privileged white men – and one privileged white man in particular: William Wilberforce.

Say his name: William Wilberforce. He became a British MP (Member of Parliament) in 1780 when he was just 21 years old. After undergoing an evangelical conversion five years later, MP Wilberforce embarked on the rocky road of first abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire, then outlawing slavery itself.

He introduced the first bill to end the slave trade in 1791. His first attempt not only failed but earned him the contempt of his peers. Undaunted, he offered the bill again and again until it finally passed in 1807 by the all-privileged white-male British Parliament. MP Wilberforce did not rest on his laurels, however; he commenced immediately to seek the total abolition of slavery.

Unfortunately, his ongoing efforts to end slavery in the British Empire cost him his fortune and his health, forcing him to resign from Parliament in 1826. Still undaunted, he continued to advocate for abolition until on July 26th, 1833, he learned that the government had made enough concessions that passage was assured for the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery. His long-delayed and hard-fought war now won, William Wilberforce retired to his bed and died three days later. A few months after he passed, his lifetime goal was fully realized when 800,000 slaves were freed. 

Given that William Wilberforce is one of the human rights giants upon whose shoulders all civil rights activists now stand, you would think his name should appear regularly in American history and textbooks. Of course, Race Marxists do not think this because they try to hide the real history of slavery, and the part privileged white men played at the beginning of its end so that they can further divide and damage our great country. 

Worse, Race Marxists (and the clueless Democrats who swallow their lies and loser ideology hook, line, and sinker) say that, because William Wilberforce was a privileged white man (and an ardent Christian, no less) he is disqualified from admiration – because of course, to admire his towering accomplishment would reveal the dishonesty and downright evil behind propaganda such as Critical Race Theory,  “The 1619 Project,” and other “woke” curricula designed to paint all white people as oppressors and all people of color as victims forever and ever.

If the Race Marxists were to even hint that privileged white men have ever done anything except commit crimes against “people who don’t look like them,” then it would undermine their fascist-communist goal of “fundamentally transforming America” into the same kind of racist, economically dysfunctional “socialist utopia” that has failed miserably everywhere it was ever tried. 

It is all a Big Lie, of course. The privileged white men of France abolished slavery in their country and colonies a decade after the British did; 17 years later, the privileged white men of the USA followed suit – after more than 300,000 mostly unprivileged white men died to make it so. Three years later, Brazil – the other major consumer of the industrial slave trade – also ended the practice.

Sadly, slavery still exists today and is more widespread than most of us know. Interestingly, almost all of the countries that still practice slavery are either black-ruled, or they are the “socialist utopias” held up by the Race Marxists as the model for a transformed America.

Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that slavery long ago disappeared from every country ruled by… you guessed it, privileged white capitalists – you know, like William Wilberforce.

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