That is what we know now.  What led to this condition was a set of historical circumstances that took 2000 years to unfold.  But one thing was certain: force and a lack of internal African unity and self defense was central to the destruction of indigenous African civilizations. Unprepared militarily, softened culturally by adaptation to an abundant environment, naive, lacking internal cohesion and toughness, humane to a fault, weaken by internal strife and in-fighting, divided, we could not be successful.

Infiltrated, invaded, unable to measure up under the weight of a tradition of gentleness, invasion, war, destruction, colonization, predatory occupation, enslavement, holocaust came down hard.  Many times whole African populations were defeated and broken even before they engaged in battle. Pitched battles were lost, lost battles become lost wars, lost towns become lost nations, lost regions become a lost continent.  Overwhelmed, retreating to the interior of the Africa continent, trapped, cut off, surrounded, oceans completely monopolized by the invading interlopers from the deserts and north seas.  Some giving all that they had, some searching every star for a solution, some unwilling and unable to match the oppressors intensity and ferocity, some just quitting. The sheer savagery of these invaders effectively hitched the entire African race to their merciless plow building Western Civilization,  and Islamic Civilization. 

Overcome, overwhelmed, beat down, loss of courage, loss of will, loss of fighting spirit, energy and heart of armies broken, confidence shaken, some their best, their best just was not enough, rage had to be relentless and was not; broken, beaten, confused, maimed, massacred, dismembered, mass murdered, continental holocaust, Black civilizations ruined, scattered, anarchy, devastation, cultural growth stunted and retarded, populations raped and ravaged, children orphaned, moral systems destroyed, families torn apart, buildings torched, nations pillaged, whole territories occupied by invaders, will broken, conquered, prostrate, destitute, bent over, burden heavy, taking on the names/religions/clothing/beliefs/likes/dislikes---everything of the invaders. Like the aftermath of a level-6 hurricane that hit dead on, our people, and nations today are patched up and held together on a wing and a pray. The cause, impact, and result of the 2700-year devastation have never been systematically calculated and repaired.  Limping, hybrid black-skin carbon copies of Arabs and whites, crying everyone else's tears, pleading to everyone else's saviors---we have forgotten to look in the mirror, roll up our sleeves, learn what other successful populations (nations) already know, and get to work doing it in this world and in this lifetime.

Repeated predatory invasions, one after another, non-stop, merciless, wave after wave, Hittites, Hyksos, Libyans, Jews, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Turks, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Danes, Brandenburg Germans, European Jews, Scots, Swedes, Belgians, Irish, Russians, clever cunning killers, noose in hand, their religions just another flowery cancerous mess. 

Flesh agents, a syringe and a vein, their system a vampire sucking the blood of the sufferers, with blood and fire they placated, wherever they set foot devastation and destruction passed on like the deadliest viruses, whole populations wiped out, the number one growth industry being coffins and shovels, the stench of missionaries whose mission was to enslave, colonized and destroy; saving souls while stealing land and working to death defenseless people.  The shattering of whole societies, pillage-forts called ports, cannons aimed at villages under the guise of "trade," men rapped in rages riding camels with big steel swords demanding unequal "trade" or else: burning, pillaging, raping, enuches, harems, mutilating. Black mass now without roofs, floors, clean water, food, now homeless, flesh and bones, rivers of blood of our own, nameless cold billions gasping for redemption, naked, thrown in mass graves with not even a rock to cling to in a storm, not deserving of their fate, such a great wrong, so many children and women intimately harmed, so much suffering, so much injustice, conquest after conquest, the drums of death having a beat from a beast, slight rumbling rising to a crescendo.

Recently, in 1700 years of invasions, pillage, predatory occupation, enslavement and holocaust--- annihilation---over 600,000,000 Black men, women, and children dead and intimately violated; crying everyone's tears, in another realm they are, in there, inside this private war we all died before.  For centuries kidnapping children, raping and molesting little boys and girls, selling babies---this was the "business," and "commerce," called "trade" in your history books.  Now on auto-pilot, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries spent capturing, caging, branding, packing, kidnapping, mass shipping, crossing oceans of blood, sick bodies just tossed to awaiting sharks, docking ship, inspections, intimately violated, breaking to broken, conditioning to make humans into brutes, histories wiped out, breeding, enslaving, working to death, throwing in unmarked graves,---like clockwork, efficient, predictable, murderous, criminal.  Out of it nothing was any good.

The best years of our lives snuffed out, hanging from ropes, dismembered, burned on open fires, hanging from meat cleavers, bred, literally worked to death for nothing, for nothing.  Everything for them and nothing for ourselves, in bondage from crib to grave, filthy gravel bed to unmarked hole in the ground, having paid in full for all of our future sins.  Of one mind they were, brute force, pure death personified, and full of money, standing there looking like an angel counting backwards to zero, sending us to an early grave, no mercy---certainly not in this world.  Alone after all was said and done, alone, with not even a rock to cling to in a storm, their secret our fear.  For our rage had to be relentless and it was not.  The ones harming us had to know that it would not be easy; it was easy.  Generals cannot take peace awards from the enemy while your forces are still in the field being brutalized and overwhelmed: African/diasporaian mis-leadership today continues to take payoffs and peace prizes while African workers have no peace or justice. The enslaved had to end their own enslavement by the steel in their own hands.  Where this happened the population is free today.  Rare.   But selling each other, catching each other, killing each other, "trading" with cannons and rifles point at African villages, all for strings of beads, co-wry shells, chunks of iron, obsolete guns, colored rags called textiles, rum, molasses, liquor, sugar---junk--- lasted for nearly 600 years.