http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/white_slavery.htm

Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle, England's Slaves 1659 consists of a statement smuggled out of the New World and published in London referring to whites in bondage who did not think of themselves as indentured servants but as "England's Slaves" and "England's merchandise."

Colonial Office, Public Records Office, London 1667, no. 170 records that "even Blacks referred to the White forced laborers in the colonies as "white slaves."  Pages 343 through 346 of Historical Sketch of the Persecutions Suffered by the Catholics of Ireland by; Patrick F. Moran refers to the transportation of the Irish to the colonies as the "slave-trade."

Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South explain that white enslavement was crucial to the development of the Negro slave system.  The system set up for the white slaves governed, organized and controlled the system for the black slaves.  Black slaves were "late comers fitted into a system already developed."  Pp 25-26.  John Pory declared in 1619, "white slaves are our principle wealth."

The above quotations from various authors are just the tip of the iceberg on the white slave trade of the Americas.  People from the British Isles were kidnapped, put in chains and crammed into ships that transported hundreds of them at a time.  Their destination was Virginia Boston, New York, Barbados and the West Indies.  The white slaves were treated the same or worse than the black slave.  The white slave did not fetch a good price at the auction blocks.  Bridenbaugh wrote in his accounting on page 118, having paid a bigger price for the Negro, the planters treated the black better than they did their "Christian" white servant.  Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their contempt for those white men who, they could see, were worse off than themselves.

see even

http://www.geocities.com/~sconemac/slavery.html

The Forgotten Slaves: Whites in Servitude in Early America and Industrial Britain
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/forgottenslaves.html

Why do Welsh names seem to be so common within the African American community ?
http://www.data-wales.co.uk/plantations.htm

You probably didn't mean this to be, but the wording is quite offensive.  The descendants of black slaves in America did not "appropriate" slavery -- it is their history -- the slave trade in America was built on their ancestors backs, the whole rationale for slavery in that chapter of history was built on prejudice against them, and their people suffer to this day because of it.  The same cannot be claimed by the descendents of white slaves, however brutal the individual circumstances at the time.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes