Ghana’s President John Mahama has received the African Union’s backing in pushing the United Nations to recognize transatlantic slavery as the ‘gravest crime against humanity.’
There is broad historical consensus that the transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries, which involved the kidnapping, enslavement and transport of millions of Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean, was one of the biggest tragedies in human history.
They didn’t say it doesn’t compare, and they never suggested that the transatlantic slave trade wasn’t an atrocious crime against humanity.
The issue they’re criticizing is clearly the use of the superlative in this context, because it makes it about a competition between all the atrocities where there can only be one “biggest atrocity.”
The focus shouldn’t be on that. Each atrocity deserves focus, but not to the exclusion of others. It doesn’t matter whether chattel slavery, the holocaust, or the ethnic cleansing of the Americas was the “worst” atrocity. They were all atrocious.
That’s why using the superlative in this context is inappropriate, and it accomplishes nothing.