American Racism Pre-1783 Was British Racism

It is easy for us in the UK to look across the Atlantic at how Americans have treated black people and make all the right noises about it being abhorrent and awful but we seem to forget that up until 1783, America didn't exist and it was the British who made the decisions.
It was Great Britain in the early 17th Century who started the slave trade, ripping the first Africans away from their continent and shipping them to the colony of Virginia in the New World where they were sold, setting in train a legacy that tragically reverberates today.
It was British ships patrolling the coastline for escaping slaves and returning them to their owners and the British lawmakers who set in place the laws which allowed white owners to treat black slaves as their property to do with as they wished and it wasn't until until the Treaty of Paris was signed that America officially became America. 
Of course, all that has happened in the decades since is down to America and for all that it should be roundly condemned, the civil war with the South fighting to keep slavery in place particularly, but Britain played a repugnant leading role in all of it and anyone who has looked at the history of the British Empire will know that the slave trade was only one of many, many loathsome and shameful things Britain did and racism is rife here also so let's not be too smug about what's happening over there.