Race A Human creation
Race was not always a mean for division. It was something that had started to take shape throughout the years Racialization was something that mostly began through the Transatlantic slave trade where enslaved Africans were being sold off to the new world. Enslaved people being sold eventually ended up being the reason for race and why people with darker pigmentations are looked as inferior to those with light pigmentation. My views on race is the division of people based on their characteristics and the way they look. This class helped me understand the way race came to be using different events that happened in history that one is not exposed to in previous classes which exposes many false things we were taught as children.
During class I learned that not only were people forced to be enslaved, but higher class Africans were selling other Africans. These people were being sold because they were enslaved due to lost battles from war. This evidently shows that race was not a thing because people that looked the same were being sold and it had nothing to do with what they looked like. This leads me to present this quote by Robin Blackburn “have found no evidence," writes Blackburn, "that those most concerned with the construction of the slave systems were primarily animated by racial feeling."(TMNS pg1). This quote supports the idea that race was created because it says that race was not proven to be the reason for slave systems which means anybody could have fell into slavery. This changed my whole perception on how I saw enslaved people and the diaspora. This also supports that enslavement of Africans had to have started from racialization.
Racialization was worldwide not just in the new world. Another example that race took shape throughout the years this example particularly in the West Indies. Richard Dunn states in his article “For the West Indies, the seven was a formative age : sugar became the dominant staple, slaves replaced white labor and large estates supplanted small farms (TRPCE pg477)”. This quote shows that race was a developed trait for humans because they began to take away white’s out and replace them with enslaved people which were people that were not white. This represents that they started to look down on people dark skinned people and through history we see what slavery became .
Race in my eyes had to start with certain people thinking they were born superior and meant to be ahead of other people. The evolution of dividing people has had a great where today you see most people who came down from are enslaved are not as successful or have as much privilege as the people who were masters and at the top have a better chance at success. In “An American tragedy” the author states, “.In cities across the country, and in rural areas of the Old South, the situation of the black underclass and, increasingly, of the black lower working classes is bad and getting worse”(pg1). This is the effect of slavery and race all these years later and the impact it had. This speaks a lot about how cultures were divided into who was better and who is inferior and somehow there needs to be a change.
Man in chains represents enslaved man during slave trade.
http://www.factslides.com/s-Slavery
Slave trade to the new world.
http://www.slaverysite.com/slave%20trade.htm
Work cited
Blackburn, Robin. The making of new world slavery: from the Baroque to the modern 1492-1800.
London: Verso, 1998.
Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and slaves: The rise of the planter Class in the english West Indies,
1624-1713. New York :W.w. Norton & co., 1973
Loury, Glen C. “An AMerican tragedy : The legacy of slavery lives in our cities. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-american-tragedy-the-legacy-of-slavery-lingers-in-our-cities-ghettos/ .1998
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