IMHO it is better to reclaim your past and to be proud of it than to turn your back on it - in the same way the "new queer" movement has reclaimed past experience of homophobia.
But the situation of the black historical sailor was not significantly different from the white. Both were rigidly oppressed by their captains and by the economic and class structures of the time, and AFAIK the black sailor would not usually have been a slave.
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sj