Dinesh D'Souza I love America. I chose this country. And like millions of immigrants, I've been blessed by my life in America. This country does something truly unique. It allows you to write the script of your own life. Dinesh D'Souza Did America steal the country from the Native Americans? Much of this critique focuses on Columbus and the actions of the Spanish conquistadors. But Columbus never even landed in America. And the actions of the Spanish, that was 150 years before America. Dinesh D'Souza Gates and other scholars estimate that in the period before the Civil War, there were approximately 3,500 free blacks who owned more than 10,000 black slaves. In South Carolina and Louisiana, Gates points out, the percentage of free blacks who owned slaves was approximately the same as the percentage of whites who owned slaves.