The US Census Bureau says this about race: "White ? A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." So, where do you draw the line?

I think the point here 'shroom, is she's asking if blacks took other blacks and sold them into slavery. That answer is most definitely yes. Black took other blacks as slaves and took whites as slaves also. That's why Jefferson sent US troops in the First and Second Barbary Wars.

Yes according to the history of Africa who at the time of the slave trade was ruled by Iran. People of their own country were the ones who kidnapped then or captured and brought them to the shores and often times even took them out to the ships to be traded or sold. Here are two sources https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/introductionatlanticworld/trans_atlantic_slave_trade

Most of the Barbary States were ruled by the Ottoman empire. But you also had the Sultanate of Morocco. By the time Jefferson decided that the US was no longer going to pay tribute to stop their ships from being captured, the Kingdom of Sweden was already at war with the Barbary States over the same issue. When the US finally decided to stop paying, we were spending about 1/6th of our entire budget paying for the release of captured ships and sailors. This was one of the things that led to the formation of the US Navy. Funny enough, the writings of Jefferson say that Tripoli was taking slaves because the ambassador told him that it was their duty as Muslims to take the unbelievers as slaves.

Impressive knowledge of history, Archie! The Barbary wars actually started because of coastal raids, though, not raiding ships. Algerian pirates in 1631 attacked the Irish coastal town of Baltimore. The pirates attacked the small town and kidnapped all of the survivors. The men were made to paddle ships and the women were forced into prostitution. After 15 years of slavery, only three out of almost the entire town's population were still alive, and returned to freedom. Attacks like that were much more frequent in Italy, where the entire coast line was said to have been depopulated prior to the first Barbary war, with all of the people taken into slavery. As for slavery in the USA, the first colonial settlers had a difficult time hiring workers willing to travel across the ocean to work as farm hands, yet the settlers needed agricultural labour to survive. So they used indentured servants, who were essentially slaves paying off their debts through labour. For example, if you owed your landlord 200 pounds for rent, and couldn't pay, he could sell you as a slave for 200 pounds, but your master would set you free after, say two years as a slave, since you were considered to have paid your debt by then. Criminals were treated similarly. If someone stole a horse from you, you could sell the person into limited slavery to someone else for a contract worth the price of the horse, or whatever. Indentured servitude applied to the poor, regardless of race, so some indentured servants were black. As America came into its own culture, influenced by English law, but also influenced by the cultures of other societies settling around them, namely the Dutch and the Spanish, slavery began to replace indentured servitude i the agricultural industry. The Spanish were more apt to wars with Morocco and Algeria, right across the Strait of Gibraltar, and both sides were enslaving each other for centuries before the colonial period. The reason for black slavery in the south, as opposed to white slavery or native slavery, came mainly from developing racism and the influence from Spanish pirates who traveled to the southern US coast up from the Caribbean. Anyway, it's a long long story that could take days to retell, but in the 17th century, slavery was everywhere, but it took many different forms. The form that survived into the 19th century in the USA was heavily influenced by racism, but there were plenty of other forms of it around the rest of the world that lasted much longer.

Slavery in the US, as you stated, did indeed start with indentured servitude. More than half of the immigrants to the Colonies were indentured servants. This continued for quite some time until many factors caused it's decline, finally coming to an "official" end in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment. And you are right, there are many places where it did last much longer, with, oddly enough, the last country to officially outlaw slavery was in Africa in 1981 (although it still continues).

The question was the last sentence in the description without a question mark.

Sorry, I lost track of the comment. "So exactly how did we [white men] kidnap them [the slaves]?" Legally speaking, kidnapping is the act of detaining a person against his or her will and transporting that person. If you simply seize a person and don't force them to go anywhere, it's not kidnapping, but as soon as you move them, even if it's a few steps away, it's kidnapping. It might seem odd, but that's the way the law is defined. You also do not have to be the one who initially seized a person in order to be the one detaining them. So, by detaining the person against his or her will, and also forcing that person to move (which they ostensibly would move if they were forced into labour), it would fit the legal definition of kidnapping.

And yet you can buy a black man in Africa for about $400. Today. Slavery is still practiced in Africa. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/monicamark/slavery-nigeria-libya

I don't believe it is legal anywhere in Africa, although to be honest, I'm not 100% sure it's illegal everywhere in the continent and I know that it's very widely practiced still in all parts of the continent, without regard for legality.

It's not legal, but the laws aren't enforced.