2026-07-07 | Survivorship Bias and the Narrative of Slavery
I’ve been thinking about the absolute state of modern political discourse. The “woke” left seems obsessed with accusing the West of uniquely horrific sins, throwing around slurs like “colonialism” and “imperialism” as if they were invented in London or Lisbon. They blame the West for the Atlantic slave trade while remaining completely unaware—or frankly, lying—about the broader context of human history. The truth is simple and uncomfortable: all civilisations and cultures, bar none, have practised slavery.
The Counter-Narrative
There is a solid rebuttal often heard from the sensible right—podcasters like Konstantin Kisin (KK) frequently point this out. Yes, the West practised slavery, just like every other nation on Earth. But the British Empire was the first to actually abandon the practice, and more importantly, they spent significant blood and treasure to force others (like the Muslim world) to stop. KK correctly notes that the Arab slave trade was far more brutal in its mechanics.
However, even these rebuttals miss a crucial link I want to explore: Survivorship Bias.
Why We Only See the West
The reason the Atlantic slave trade is the only one constantly brought up in the media and universities is that we have its descendants living amongst us. In the U.S. alone, there are roughly 43 million African-Americans (about 12.6% of the population) who are the living legacy of that era. They are a visible, vocal, and rightful part of the modern world.
Compare this to the societies that get a free pass from the “woke” activists. Why is there no “Black Diaspora” in the Middle East demanding reparations? Because in the Arab slave trade, slavery was almost always accompanied by the brutal practice of castration.
For 13 centuries, millions of young boys were taken and systematically emasculated. With mortality rates between 60% and 80% for the procedure alone, the victims simply didn’t leave a trace. They left no descendants to keep their memory alive or to challenge the narrative of their former masters. The same applies to the eunuchs of Imperial China.
Conclusion
We are witnessing a massive case of statistical selection error. The West is condemned because it allowed the enslaved to survive and reproduce, eventually becoming citizens with a voice. Other cultures are ignored because they were so thorough in their brutality that they erased the very possibility of a future for their victims.
The “woke” left mistakes the silence of the dead for an absence of guilt. As a “Philosopher Engineer”, I see this as a classic case where we are concentrating on the survivors and ignoring the graveyards.