There is truth to it. Many African nations did sell slaves and have slaves themselves. However, the individuals they sold were usually prisoners and captured in battle.
However, on the same token, there were still "Slave raiding parties" by Europeans, especially the Portuguese, and continued even after slavery was declared illegal in their home country.
Another thing, chattel slavery in the US was much more brutal and different than slavery in many African nations. For example, some Africans had slaves but they were only a slave for a particular amount of time because they were on the losing end of a war with another tribe or they were indebted somehow. They were not treat like cattle but as another member of the household. Again, they weren't treated a commodity where they would be put up to market but just a mutual understanding that if your group lost in battle some of the fallen or losers would become slaves at the end for a certain amount of time. However, there is without a doubt some Africans who saw the money Westerners were making in slave trading and participated in the same system the same way to make themselves a quick buck.
In the western world, slavery wasn't just about making the person do work but there was a organized effort to strip them of their humanity to strip black diaspora from any cultural connection to their homeland. Make them dumb by making even learning how to read illegal and worthy of punishment. Part of the reason there is a general cultural dysfunction in our society now, imo.
Also one other argument you might hear is that "well blacks in the US own/bought slaves" however they owned less than 1% of black slaves in the US and many times it was free black people buying their family members and then granting them their freedom afterward. However, there were those free blacks who wanted to own slaves simply because of greed and lack of any humanity for their brothers and sisters. However, you can always find these back stabbing no conscious motherfukkers in all races. There were some Jews during the holocaust who collaborated with the Nazis for their own benefit too.
Category:Jewish Nazi collaborators - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .
So, in the end, even if their is some partial truth to these arguments, don't lose sight of the intention of the person pushing them and in the end, nothing justifies what happened here in the US against blacks. Nothing. Period. These arguments are used to make you back off and maybe not judge white america too harshly. You'll notice that they always talk about slavery where they can reference these perceived contradictions in black feeling some sort of way about white america, however they always seem to forget the 100+ years of racial injustice that followed and continues after slavery which is just as bad.