Was the Atlantic slave trade about race though? I don’t think that the tragedy that was the slave trade enslaved people because they were black, but because they were sub-Saharan Africans. I think it would have worked the same with any race that had been in those cultures.

There wasn’t a law or practice of enslaving people based on their skin color. As evidenced by the free blacks in other areas of the world that weren’t enslaved.

I think the racial stereotypes came about based on the race of the slaves, not the other way around.