The transatlantic slave trade treated innocent people as if they were commodities to be bought for the lowest price and sold for the highest. They were traded in exchange for “Gold dust; copper basins; brass bracelets; bars; and pots; colored textiles; linen and Indian cloth; barrel-shaped coral beads; strings of glass beads; red beads fashioned from bones; enamel beads; felt caps; and horsetails” (Hartman 68). “Diaspora” was perhaps the most common term used to refer to the transatlantic slave trade. “Diaspora” is the Greek word for “dispersal” and was used to illustrate the newly enslaved African people as scattered across the world. This term became prevalent in the 1990s to describe people of African origin living outside of the “Motherland”.
