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. 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, and 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, no indecisiveness 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.
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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.
This met all the requirements and held much clarity. There were some grammatical errors and incomplete sentences. For example, "Racial issues has not just America, but a majority of the world divided into groups." Some ideas were repeated in the second paragraph. Consolidate and introduce new information that could make your point more solid. In all, the post was balanced, flowed well and answered all the questions.
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