Europeans engaged in trade and viewed the people later called Africans equally years before the African Slave Trade. Somehow that changed. Is the following an adequate explanation of racism as a vestige of slavery?

"It is true that the institution of slavery was not a practice unique to America. Slavery is a very old institution and it is almost as old as human societies. Some African nations engaged such as the nation of Opobo, where King Jaja ruled a vast land and accumulated property but was himself a slave. Others opposed the trade as it was chattel and not indentured.

However, unlike American slavery, justification for bondage in other cultures was not confused with the notion of superiority and inferiority based on the color of one's skin.

This notion was later invoked as justification for black slavery in America.

In essence, the distinctive difference in American slavery is that it introduced an element that was never considered before in other societies: racism. "