Myles Darby
9/28/14
Professor McKinney
Reaction Paper #1
One of the most important and surprising aspect of slavery in the United States is the commodification process they were forced into. Instead of being seen as an actual human being, they are only seen as objects that can simply make them money. Before the trading of slaves became as prominent as it did, gold was one of the major commodities. Evidently, gold can be sold, traded, lost, and destroyed because it is an object. This is where the problem begins. White and European slaveowners believed that since these people were of a different color, they had to find a way to suppress them. If the blacks were not suppressed, then they may find a way to overthrow the whites. Because of this, the slaveowners treated slaves like objects, and not human beings. The fact that they viewed them as objects and not people, somewhat gives them a reason or excuse to treat the slaves how they did. Although there is no justification for slavery, there are always two sides to a story. The slaveowners also viewed the slaves as heathens because they did not believe in Christianity. They thought they were helping them by bringing them over, and exposing them to Christianity. In an extremely strange way, the slaveowners felt like they were doing the slaves a favor by bringing them over. Going back to the commodification process, slaveowners did the bare minimum to keep their slaves alive. They fed them just enough for them to slave alive, to save money and maximize their profit. However, this may not be even the worst part of it. The ships the slaves came on were hell on a boat. The ships were extremely overcrowded to get as much “profit” on the boat as they could. If the ship could hold a maximum of 200 people, the slaveowners would try to fit 250. Slaves could not move at all on the boats, there were no bathrooms, many slaves were seasick, and these trips took months. The thought of life on these boats is beyond unbearable. If slavery was not bad enough, their transportation to death could not have been worse. To the slaveowners, slaves were no more than objects. They did not have families to them, or names, or any prior life. Because of this mindset slaveowners had, it was okay to them to treat them how they did. They were simply an object that could make them money, or lose their money. They could do nothing else, and they were nothing else to slaveowners. They did not care if they were tired, hungry, or exhausted from working all day. All that mattered, was maximizing their profit the highest they could. This meant by any means necessary, and slaveowners seriously took this saying to heart. The idea of a human becoming an object is very difficult to even imagine. The fact that someone can break down a person so much to the point where they think death is a better option is unbelievable. Slaveowners deprived slaves of every single human aspect that makes someone human. They could not eat by themselves, have their own freedom, or even have the opportunity to read and write. This is insane because the work done by slaves is what vitalized the American economy, and was the major force behind it. Without slavery, the American economy would not be even close to what it is today. Although slaves were probably aware of this, there was no way that they were going to free their slaves. There was too much money to be made, and this process had been going on for so long that it worked like clockwork. The only way this process could be ended was for a slaveowner, or powerful white males to stand up against it. There was no way a slave could do this alone because they have no authority, or even a voice at all.
Another key theme from this material is the sense of community slaves constructed after coming to America. As soon as they are sold, their whole lives are taken. Their identity, names, background, religion, traditions and customs, and most importantly, their freedom. Slaveowners try to break the slaves down as much as possible, so they will have no way to revolt. Families are taken away, spouses separated and siblings torn apart. Even Africans from the same tribes are separated while on the boat, so there is no way possible for a revolt. If slaves cannot communicate with each other, then they cannot unite as one and stage a revolt. Even after all of these attempts to dissemble their sense of community, slaves somehow made a way out of no way. They made their own language so they could communicate with each other. Created secret songs that only they knew, so they could sing around their masters without them having any idea of what they were talking about. They also found a way to tell time by observing the environment and the sun placement. This is very interesting because slaves were smart and innovative enough to find their own way of telling time. They somehow found a way to build a meaningful life out of nothing. They developed a three step system of trying to develop a community. They had to figure out who they truly were, created a kinship with other slaves, and also realized that more slaves were coming. The main reason for this construction of community was so that they could make this “endless purgatory” seem not as bad. They knew that they could not fully escape slavery in just one setting, and that it would take these small steps of building a community to ease the pain somewhat.
Commodification and the sense of community have a somewhat strange, but direct relationship. Because of the commodification process, slaves needed to find a way to get themselves out of it. They were being treated as inanimate objects by their masters, and decided to join together although they were all from different backgrounds. After joining together and developing a relationship and community with one another, they could bond more, and help each other out. Most of them felt like they were no longer alone in the world, and that they could now talk to others about their thoughts and feelings since they were all going through the same thing, together.
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