Dehumanizing Effects Of Slavery Essay

The horrible treatment of enslaved black people continued under that institution of slavery in the United State. Nell Irvin Painter describes the atrocities of slavery in her work “Those Who Were Enslaved” a chapter from Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. In this work Painter describes slavery as, “a dehumanizing institution”, she goes on to describe how, “assaults on the bodies and minds of the enslaved exposed them to trauma that was both physical and psychological” (Painter, 2006). Many enslaved African Americans faced horrible physical abuse, but possibly more horrifying and historically significant is the psychological trauma endured by those who were enslaved. Slavery not only dehumanized …show more content…
Slavery is such an ultimate evil the it dehumanizes any person who comes in contact with it, either directly or indirectly. The dehumanizing effects of slavery are so far reaching that no person is safe from its influence. Although the effects of slavery on white people were far more indirect, it is important to understand how every person was affected by this evil institution. Although the dehumanizing practice of slavery affected whites as well as blacks, misconceptions about the degradation of the lives of blacks persisted after slavery while the effects on the white community had little effect. The misconceptions that arose during slavery about black communities were so widely accepted that they even affected the perceptions that black people help about themselves. Slavery created the misconception that the lives of black people are worth less than their white counterparts. Unfortunately, slavery was only the beginning of a white supremacist ideology, that is based in the misconception of the inferiority of black …show more content…
Ida B. Wells describes the horrendous practice of lynching in her work “At the Hands of a Mob” from Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Wells goes into detail how lynching was used was a way to execute black men at the hands of a mob without and trial or ability to defend themselves physically or legally. She describes the argument for lynching put forth by white supremacists who claimed they were, “defending the honor of their [white] women” (Wells, 1892). Based on this argument the chastity and sexual purity of white women holds more value than the life of a black person. Oftentimes these victims of lynching were never proven guilty. Even more atrocious than this were the cases when a white woman was clearly lying in order to maintain her own reputation. Wells describes a situation of, “a mother whose son had been lynched that he had left the place where he worked because of the advances made by the beautiful daughter of the house. The boy had fallen under her spell, and met her often until they were discovered and the cry of rape was raised… He had been horribly lynched” (Wells, 1892). In this specific example this man’s life was taken simply because this white woman claimed he had raped her. It wasn’t, however, until after they were discovered in the act that the woman decided say she had been raped.