The conditions were more even more deplorable and treatment more brutal than actual slavery. Eventually leasing prisoners, chain gangs, peonage and sharecropping was outlawed, but nothing was ever recorded and justice was never served for the individuals who endured such horrific conditions with many losing their lives. The revelation of this hidden history grants them justice in a small way. Cultural history that is shared between diversified people enables communication lines to be formulated and utilized in productive and respectful ways. The criminalization of African Americans was an indirect result of the justification of white laws that unfairly imprisoned thousands of people for capitalist profits gained through the use of prison labor.…
Frederick Douglass clearly described the horrible treatment of slaves as an inhuman act. For example, at the end of Chapter I, Douglass describes the whipping of Aunt Hester by the overseer for not obeying his order, which would tend to indicate that slaves had a strong sense of personal power, in spite of the horrible living…
In his article, The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates insists that “until Americans reckon with their compounding moral debts, America will never be whole”. He writes that after four hundred thirty-five years of racial injustice towards the African American community, the American government owes them. The slavery and slave-like conditions people were put in is something The United States should and will be ashamed of until the end of time. The horrific experiences and tragedies people endured are something that will hopefully never happen again. To think of the innocent who were lynched, raped, assaulted, and found guilty of crimes that they did not commit could make anyone’s stomach turn.…
Definitions- Reparation- : according to Meriam Webster- something that is done or given as a way of correcting a mistake that you have made or a bad situation that you have caused Argument 1 - America ended slavery over 150 years ago and there is minimal information to link slavery to the reason why the majority of African Americans are in economic trouble as of today. Even if the African Americans had it the worst, the fact that many other races that were mistreated or enslaved have jumped back up to a good economic condition. In WW2, the Italian and the Japanese were forced into internment camps and had, many pieces of their property confiscated and sold by the Americans in WW2.…
The African slave lost their humanity from the very moment they boarded the European slave ship. When they arrived in the New World, they were forced into labor. Even a slave’s unborn child would be cursed into the institution of slavery since “slaves born in the New World had no experience or direct knowledge of what is was like to live as free people” The African slave has been a victim of negative stereotypes throughout the history of the United States.…
Restitution African American people have been through a lot and it shows throughout past. I don’t think a majority of the 21st century African Americans believe that we need a reparations or restitution for our beloved ancestors and I don’t think that most of them that this situation has been introduced many times. We study our history every year we especially learn it from our books. Generation after Generation after Generation will know their past too. The many years of free labor that was giving, because of the disgusting maltreatment from crossing the ocean to living in cotton fields in this ridiculous journey because of the color our skin and because of greed for money and power.…
The human race has blood on its hands. We have segregated, subjugated, and slaughtered other humans due to something as small as race, a made social concept. This made up idea contributed to the scars of our history: Slavery, the Holocaust, Japanese Internment camps. We have made many horriable mistakes, but we have attempted to right the wrongs committed by our ancestors. These attempts, called reparations, often leave the problems unsolved.…
Throughout world history, countless groups of people from different ethnicities and cultures have befallen to the trap of institutionalized slavery. From the beginnings of colonial America, European settlers have enslaved both the indigenous people and also Africans. When the general subject of slavery is discussed, people assume this refers to the 13 million Africans that were transported to the America, as part of the “Triangular Slave Trade” (Ojibwa). The massive, historical representation of African slaves disregards many other racial groups that were subjected to this dehumanizing treatment. Although, Africans did endure the harsh enslavement by their European owners for approximately 300 years, slavery in America began long before this.…
States should not apologize for slavery because the people whose idea was slavery aren’t even alive anymore. Besides, sorry is way overdue. It should have been said when the people who caused it could say sorry to the people who were hurt by slavery. I’m not saying slavery isn’t and wasn’t a problem, but sorry seems a little, empty and not worth much by now. So, if we want to say sorry, we’d have to make it worth it.…
The slave masters were aware of the importance of violence in order to continue their profitable institution, as they implemented many forms of punishment on their slaves to retain their power over their “property.” During this dark chapter of American history, slaves endured many forms of violence: physical, psychological, and sexual. Even with all this abuse, slaves were able to find ways to maintain hope and humanize their existence, just as Thomas Jones who was fortuitous enough to…
As it was quite evident in history, we had to pay Native Americans a sum of money for taking their land unjustly. Yet, we did not force them into labor. This, however, was not the case for African Americans. We had committed a grave crime when subjugating them into slavery which, after 250 years, had accumulated a total of ‘222 Million unpaid hours’ reported Greg Gordin on Huffington Post in his article ‘What the Modern World Owes to Slavery’. Slaves had the worst jobs to do on a plantation.…
“Given the fact that there’s plenty of blame to go around for slavery — plenty of blame to go around among African and Arab states, plenty of blame to go around among Western states — I think we’re better to look forward, and not point fingers backward,” Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, mentions on NBC. The controversial debate of the United States Federal Government paying reparations to African Americans has been going on for countless years. Reparations, according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, is the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. Many claim that the difficulties faced by blacks today are deeply rooted within our nation’s history as well as society’s…
To illustrate, on auction blocks where they “were stripped, examined, and assigned meaning according to the brutal…slaveholding ideologies” , African-American slaves were dehumanized and “turned into products”. Slaves were denied their unalienable human right to privacy as every detail and flaw were scrutinized to degrade their self-confidence, making them submissive to their masters. Because African-Americas occupied the role of being slaves in American society, they laboriously served their masters like replaceable livestock such as “horses and other cattle” . They were understood to have no virtue or will of their own because of their skin color, making them perfect to control. Furthermore, “[s]lavery…was a system of unchecked brutality, made grotesquely visible on the suffering bodies of the slaves” as the slaveholders used violence to keep their possessions obedient.…
Coates provides a wide range of evidence, using numerous sources, to advance his claim for reparations and the need for American society to reevaluate African American suffering. Specifically, Coates uses statistics in the interactive census map, facts from various published articles, books, and expert historians, stories from witnesses who personally experienced the injustice like Clyde Ross, primary sources such as De Bow’s Review and more, to provide sufficient and convincing sources that support his conclusions about racial inequality. Building from credible evidence, Coates constructs a cogent and organized essay by dividing the piece into various parts, each focusing on a specific topic in African American discrimination. For example, in section IV entitled “The Ills that Slavery Frees Us From,” Coates explains how the formation of America as a slave society and the continual exploitation of slave labor allowed white Americans to thrive, while black Americans endured cultural, familial and personal destruction (25). By dividing the essay into various parts, each with a specific focus that relates to the overall argument, Coates leads his readers from one premise to the next in a logical fashion, culminating in a decree for reparations.…
For a human being to be treated as nothing but product displays an evil that will not soon be suppressed at this time in history, but instead will grow and worsen. This article paints a resplendent image of just how poorly the Africans were treated. This wretched mistreatment also creates a spark for what, in the future, will be a total division of a developing country. This shows that the slaves were rightful in their want for freedom. Who would want to live a life where they are ripped away from the ones they love and the homes they’ve hailed from, and forced to succumb to a life of toil, sickness, and sadness?…