One irony in all this, if a white as white can be whitey can make an observation, is that slavery had a huge impact on Africa as well as on Africans taken away. One of the things that struck me the most about reading Kind Leopold's Ghost was the massive effect the slave trade had on African nations. Some had as much as 50% decreses in population due to the slave trade and its related violence. This was massively disruptive to those cultures and is one reason why social and political structures have been so fragile in Africa.

So slavery is a SHARED experience between African-Americans and African-Africans and modern society in both groups still feel the echoes of slavery.