Back in May 2022, I wrote:

I have always doubted the historical consensus that Africans sold their own people into slavery. The whole point of slavery is that you’re forced to work without pay. If whites were powerful enough to force millions of blacks to work without pay, they would have been powerful enough to take those workers from black countries without having to pay for them in the first place.

Also, if they were going to pay for slaves, then why go all the way to Africa to get them? The whole point of going to a less technologically advanced region to get slaves is that you can take the slaves by force.

Lastly, if you believe in HBD (which many people dismiss as racist pseudoscience), the average white American is about 15 IQ points higher than the average black American and that gap would have perhaps been 20 points before white genes entered the U.S. black gene pool in large numbers. A 20 point IQ gap (if it reflects a genuine gap in intelligence) is so large that whites would have been dominant enough to simply help themselves to whatever resources they wanted in sub-Saharan Africa (including human ones) without having to pay anyone anything. In fact if whites really had to pay for slaves, it calls HBD into question because it implies a business deal among equal races, not an advanced race enslaving a more primitive one.

Since writing that, I came across a historical figure named John Hawkins, a white man who did indeed catch his own black slaves.

According to wikipedia:

In 1562, he set sail with three ships (Saloman, Jonas, and Swallow) travelling down the African coast as far as Sierra Leone, he captured people and enslaved them as he went, taking around 300 people in total.^[5] From there he sailed to the Caribbean, he did not have permission from either Spain or Portugal to trade with their colonies so he sold his enslaved people in Isabella, Puerto de Plata and Monte Christi – places where the local authorities did not enforce government trade embargos.^[5] The enslaved people were traded for pearls, hides and sugar.^[7][8]

The trade was so prosperous that, on his return to England, the College of Arms granted Hawkins a coat of arms which displays an enslaved male.