Bakari
Williams
History
205
Professor
McKinney
28
September 2014
It is truly fascinating to read
these books and think of all the knowledge that was not shared when in high
school. One of the fascinating parts
about the books was that there was not a hero that followed each story. In high school when discussing the issues of
slavery, here comes Abraham Lincoln, the man who is given praise for freeing
slaves. When discussing the civil rights
movement, here comes Martin Luther King Jr. speaking about a dream he has, and
miraculously, everything changes immediately.
That did not happen though. These
books cut through the bullshit, and they give the straight facts. They tell the history of slavery, and they
help understand how the world was shaped the way it was.
When reading Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery, there are quite a few
moments in the book that stick out and cause one to wonder. In the first few chapters, there are pictures
and it speaks of the catalogues in which they would write their inventory of
slaves. The fascinating thing was that
when the names of the slaves were being written, they were either given an
entire new name, or they were not given a name at all. This was a very significant way in which
Africans were turned into commodities.
The question that rises is, “what is a name?” The simple answer would be that a name is a
grouping of several letters of an alphabet, or other symbols. Once these symbols and alphabets come
together to make a name, they have created not just a word, but rather they
have no created an identity. Therefore,
by stripping the Africans of their name and replacing it with other name, but
rather they are stripping their old identity and creating a new one. One then begins to think when seeing African
Americans on the street not just, “Who are you?”, but one can dig a little
deeper and ask the question, “Who were you?”.
In Holt’s and Brown’s Major Problems in African American History,
they raise the question of which one came first, slavery or racism? What was
fascinating was one of the assumptions presented by Kenneth M. Stampp, and he
said, “that innately Negroes are, after
all, only white men with blacks skins, nothing more, nothing less.” It’s a fascinating assumption because he is
saying that it doesn’t matter whether slavery or racism came first, for they
are both wrong. There are many different
type of races that make up the world that we live in. However, if you take away the color of ones’
skin, if you take away the different languages people speak, and if you take
away the different cultures, you end up with one single race. You end up with the human race.
We are all equal in
the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we
will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all
cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that
we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don't share blood, but we
share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my
black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my
brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I
am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me.
Africans were not
seen as equals toward whites because they looked different. Africans were
thought to be wicked, unholy, and devilish, while whites were considered to be
pure, holy, and divine. It was truly a
belief of the white man, during the time of slavery, that by taking an African
from his homeland was nothing but a favor to the African. Whites used religious justification by saying
that they were saving Africans and introducing them to Jesus. Can the brutal actions that were seen in slavery
be justified by religion? There are numerous
verses in the Bible, which talk about equality.
John chapter thirteen, verse six says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, a
servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one
who sent him.” Galatians chapter three,
verses twenty-six to twenty nine says, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of
God, through faith. For as many of you
as were baptized in Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there
is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are
Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” There are also Bible verses, which tell how
one should love and treat their neighbors.
There is Mark chapter twelve, verse thirty-one which says, “The second
is this, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no commandment greater than these.”. Luke chapter six, verse thirty- one says, “Do
to others as you would have them do to you.”
If there was real concern about showing the Africans the way to Christ,
snatching them from their homes, stripping them of their identities, turning
them into products, shipping them away, and forcing them to do labor was
definitely not the way to for that one.
The questions that
might arise after the readings are, “What would America be like if there was no
slavery?”, “Who would that person be if the names of slaves had not been
stripped from them?”, and “How has slavery affected the relationships between blacks
and whites today?”.
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