REVISION: The Oppression of a People

Mashil Saleemi

Blog Post #1

                                                            The Oppression of a People

            One of the biggest issues that we are facing in today’s society, is race. Racial issues has not just America, but a majority of the world divided into groups of people that tend to interact solely amongst themselves. People tend to hang out with people of their own background, which is rational. However, there has been a constant battle of light skinned people feeling superior to darker skinned people, even of their own race, and this issue roots back down to the beginnings of slavery settlements in Barbados.

Slavery has been in existence for a few hundred years. The first slave society actually began in Barbados around the 1600s, where slaves were the primary source of labor. According to Edward B. Rugemer, Barbados “became a model for the ambitious colonists who settled both Jamaica, and South Carolina… Barbados passed two separate law codes … Jamaica copied Barbados slave code”. The slave code that Rugemer refers to was a set of codes created by the Barbados House of Assembly that were meant to control the slaves. The Europeans controlled them by using religion, and most importantly, skin color. According to Andrea Stuart, “The prototype for the plantation system throughout the Americas … from Virginia to the Carolinas, the nightmare of slave society – as developed in Barbados – was replicated again and again”. The layout that was set for Barbados ultimately was copied by plantation owners in other islands, especially the United States. “By differentiating so sharply between the rights of their black and white workers, Barbados set up a legal system that encoded racism,” Stuart says. The nightmare that she is referring to was the enslavement, and ultimately the separation between a people that left damaging effects on African people, for the centuries that followed.

European slave masters had indefinitely set the belief that they were a better people than Africans. They believed that they were superior because they felt that there were too many differences between them and the people of dark skinned descent. The Europeans were civilized, clean, unruly, and had a better religion, per say. As this PBS article shows us here, Christianity was one crucial advantage that the Europeans had that helped them control the enslaved people. They considered Africans to be underneath them, believing that the English language and the white skin color was clean and pure, whereas the dark skinned people, who they referred to as “black”, represented filth and sin (Soderlund, 65). With this mindset, enslaving people was seen as normal. There was no remorse, and barely hesitation when it came to the trafficking of humans.

When I first started this class, I already understood that racism was something that was created by man. It was unbelievable, but never had I realized how deep the depths of racism has been rooted into slavery. We, as a people, were separated ultimately because of the White man’s greed and opinion, which is something we are still fighting today, such as dark skin versus light skin. Even Angela Cole says in her video here that black people do not understand their opponent, and that their opponent is always working by setting up stories to downplay the reality that we have all been living in.

Sketch of a flag taken from rebels against slavery in Barbados, after the uprising known as Bussa's Rebellion. The flag appears to stress the rebels' loyalty to Britain and to the Crown while conveying their earnest desire for liberty. British forces on Barbados suppressed the revolt and hundreds of the rebels were killed. Date: April 1816 This image is from the collections of The National Archives

References:

 Edward B. Rugemer. "The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century." The William and Mary Quarterly 70.3 (2013): 429-58. Web.

Gobajan. "Angela Cole Talks about Racism in Barbados." YouTube. YouTube, 2013. Web. 03 Oct. 2016.

 Stuart, By Andrea. "The Caribbean Origins of American Slavery." History News Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2016.

 "The Slave Experiene." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2016.