Argumentative Essay On Why Me

Why Me? In many school systems around the world, it is mandatory to have student enroll and complete at least a history or social studies course in elementary or high school or even both. These classes were meant to expose students to past and contemporary issues around the world and their local and international relevance. One of those issues was that of slavery. Not just slavery but slavery in the American North America. Every time a teacher brought it up and actually taught it in classes, there was that feeling that it must be a sobering subject so I had to feel emotions like anger, disgust, pain and more. But honestly because of how it was addressed and summarized, I just felt that it is unfortunate that the slave trade occurred but it …show more content…
I have come to the conclusion that the reason for the enslavement of Africans specifically is too broad to explain with a single theory. Africans were picked and retained as the main commodity in the forced labor market due to a dangerous cocktail of situations that seemed to perfectly align. Firstly, slavery was already widely practiced in Africa. Slavery is an institution that occurred all over the world from the most technological advanced corners of European to the most destitute areas in the Congo forest. Once there were people and there was the existence of power, there was going to be slavery once in a while. The African continent was not exempt. Paul Lovejoy in the first chapter of his book, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, explains this, “Africa has been intimately connected to this history [slavery], both as a major source of slaves for ancient civilization, the Islamic world, Indian and the American and as one of the principle areas were slavery was …show more content…
Even David Brion Davis mirrored this sentiment when he stated that the development of sugar cane as a major cash crop and sugar as a sought-for commodity caused the slavery of the African populations in the precolonial periods. In addition to Davis’s sugar, Williams mentioned cotton and tobacco as major players in the need of a large and cheap labor supply. So according to the explanations of both Davis and Williams, racism wasn’t absent but it was a result of the buying and selling of black individuals. There is a truth to the assertion that racism was a symptom of the slave trade and enslavement of the black people. As Williams stated, “Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor.” But is it impossible to believe that a belief that the white man was too big and ineligible for slavery was not one of the main reasons that the black man had to do it. Eltis said it in his book, “Throughout Europe the state could take the lives of individuals in Europe but enslavement was no longer an alternative to death; rather it became a fate worse than death and as such reserved for