How Enslavement Lead to Negative Racial Attitudes Towards Africans in America.

How Enslavement Lead to Negative Racial Attitudes Towards Africans in America

I agree with the statement, "In this long evolution of racial attitudes in America, nothing was of greater importance than the enslavement of Africans." When the white men decided to take the Africans as slaves, it made the Africans seem exceedingly inferior and barbaric compared to the white Americans. The truth is, there wasn't much of a culture gap between colonial Europeans and Africans. This set the precedent that Africans were inferior beings that lasted a very long time. When the Africans were taken from their homeland, they were treated as non-human pieces of property. This greatly contributed to the belief that native Africans were inferior to the colonial Europeans. These beliefs have stuck with people through the years and are the main reason for negative racial attitudes towards African Americans in today's society.

The main belief that resulted from the enslavement of Africans was the belief that they were inferior, as well as their cultures. As it turns out, there cultures were nearly as sophisticated as the American's cultures. "Recent studies of "pre-contact" African history have showed that the "culture gap" between European and African societies when the two peoples met was not as large as previously imagined. By the time Europeans reached the coast of West African a number of extraordinary empires had been forged in the area" (Nash 42-43). One of these empires was the Kingdom of Ghana, which comprised of advanced architecture and political organization. The Europeans completely missed out on the fact that the Africans were civilized people, and because of this they all had a bias that Africans were barbaric creatures. This bias continued as the Africans were brought out of their country and into the colonies. The idea that Africans were inferior to their European counterparts was generally accepted, because it was very difficult for the Europeans to communicate with the African slaves, so they had no way of knowing otherwise. This belief was passed on through generations, and still has not completely died out to this day.

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Another thing that contributed to the belief that Africans were inferior was that they were treated as non-human pieces of property. "Formerly a new source of trade, the continent now became transformed in the European view into the repository of vast supplies of human labor -- "black gold"" (Nash 44). The African slaves were given the nickname black gold because that is all the Europeans considered them to be. This is much different than the indentured servants because they were considered to be people, and of course were not bound to a life of servitude. The slaves became the lowest possible class. They even had a completely different set of laws than everyone else, called the "slave codes." A slave could not leave the plantation without carrying around written permission from his/her master. Punishments for petty theft ranged from whipping, cutting of ears, slitting noses, to being executed publicly. This is obviously much more harsh of a punishment than a white American would've received for a comparable crime. On the middle passage, Africans were packaged as tightly as possible (treated like property). "400 wretched beings...crammed into a hold of 12 yards in length...and only 3.5 feet in height...the suffocating heat of the hold drove negroes to panic in their attempts to escape to the upper air. The next day, he saw 54 "crushed and mangled corpses" lifted up from the slave deck" (Nash 48). The conditions were so inhumane that 54 people died overnight. This spurred on the spread of diseases because they were packed so close to everyone, and many Africans died of malnutrition because they were obviously not fed well. Africans were thought of as a trading item, and were readily exchanged for Rum. They were treated as inferiors, and this contributed to the belief that they actually were inferior

The belief that they were inferior continued to be passed on from generation to generation. These beliefs eventually lead to a split in America, which in turn lead to the Civil War. Although the North won, southern beliefs that Africans were inferior were still passed on. Had the Europeans just traded goods for goods with the Africans, instead of trading for slaves, they might have learned how complex their empires were. If this had happened, the belief that the Africans were inferior would've been much less prominent and probably would've died out as the years went on. Instead, the Europeans faced their lack of labor problems by taking the Africans as slaves. The belief that Africans were inferior quickly spread throughout the colonies, and has lasted to this day. This is why I agree with the statement in the first paragraph.

Bibliography

Nash, Gary. Black People in a White People's Country.