Very well, then, that was ancient times, and people were primitive and knew no better.

However, in modern times, it was suggested that Ham, the youngest son of Noah, was a black and the ancestor of all the blacks that have existed since. This, of course, is entirely wrong, Ear the Canaanites, if we go by linguistic divisions, were as Semitic as the Israelites, the Arameans, the Babylonians, and the Arabs. They were not blacks.

However, it suited the slavemasters of Europe and America to pretend that Ham was black because that made black slavery a divine institution and placed the blacks under that same curse the Israelites had made use of three thousand years before. When preachers from the slave states said that the Bible enjoined black slavery, Noah's curse was what they referred to.

In fact, you don't have to refer to a particular Biblical verse to make yourself sound moral and noble. After all, when you enslave a black, you free him from his slavery to his superstitions, his false religions, his primitive way of life, and you introduce him to the benefits of Christianity and save his soul. Since his soul is worth infinitely more than everything else he possesses or can possess, you are doing the slave an enormous favor by enslaving him and you're earning for yourself kudos in heaven and flights of angels will sing you to your rest for being a noble slaveowner. (If you think that slaveowners didn't use this argument to justify themselves, you are very naive.)

In fact, to slaveowners, slaves were always responsible for their own slavery. To Aristotle, that great Greek thinker, those people who weren't Greeks were slaves by nature. These "barbarians" (so-called because they didn't talk "people-talk" the way the Greeks did, but made uncouth incomprehensible sounds like "bar-bar"), being natural slaves, were natural y enslaved. You do them a favor, obviously, by letting them be what they naturally are.