I saw that article this morning. While the Africans brought to America as slaves might indeed have been "lucky" compared to those bought by Arabs, they were pretty damned unlucky compared to those who weren't enslaved at all.

Some people have disagreed with my second sentence above, including economist Walter Williams. I've heard him say that he is glad his ancestors came to America even as slaves because that gave him the opportunity to be born in America instead of Africa. However, that sounds rather easy for him to say since he wasn't the one being enslaved.

Slavery was (and remains to this day in some places) an abomination. Were the slave laborers who were forced to work in the Nazi factories in WWII "lucky" compared to those sent to the gas chambers? Perhaps some were since they somehow managed to survive the war. However, multitudes were simply worked to death on starvation diets. That makes the sign about Auschwitz even the more cynical and diabolical: "Arbeit Mach Frei" means "Work will make you free". Of course, it was meant in the vein that death makes one free.