The Subhumanization Of Racism In Slavery, By Robin Osborne

A remarkably notorious philosopher, Aristotle, refers to slaves as “living tools”. Throughout history many societies have adopted slavery to further their overall production of goods and to expand trade. Whether people were enslaved for economic benefit or a matter of racism is the question at hand. One could assemble many arguments that the enslaved community was solely suppressed for reasons concerning racism, however slavery was economically beneficial to landowners and plantation development. Even though, slaves were thought as subhuman, lesser than the common man these thoughts could have been driven by the economic impact such people had on societies. Robin Osborne, in his novel, challenges the idea of slavery having roots in economic interest, “Slavery was an institution… maintained by prejudice…Athenians did not like the idea of devoting their lives… to labor”. Possibly, these thoughts of racism and inferiority flourished as an issue to the astounding commercial advantages to slavery. Not only Athenians, but other peoples, developed “justifications” for slavery such as certain races are higher than another because “all slaves did” was provide labor and household assistance. Since such people were enslaved, their state in society diminished due to the advantages they provided wealthy citizens with, leaving certain races being seen as less than human. This being said, the groundwork to racism toward …show more content…
“Slavery existed before money or law”. This being said, the economic benefits of slavery drove ideas of racism because slavery is the basis of economy and production of goods. There would be no economy without labor. With success comes greed, essentially saying that prospering plantations needed cheap labor to fuel profit. Slavery did benefit economies and let small plantations grow into large money making businesses that ignited robust