The hidden origins of slavery
The giddy Multitude is about the British view on the Africans and how they treated them. If you had a different skin color back then, you were considered “deeply stained with dirt” or “dark” and “deadly”. Many Africans had been transported as slaves and soon there were too many Africans that it almost became impossible to ever get rid of them again. However, at that moment no one cared because they wanted people to work for them; slaves.
Furthermore, even though people had blacks as slaves, there was also the lower white class who they considered as slaves. Both did the same work and were treated the same way until the blanks and whites started rebelling together, for example, they both ran away. I think the planters could have expected this because both were treated so bad that they probably didn’t see the difference anymore between black and white. Unfortunately people still saw black people as being worse as the white slaves. They punished the blacks more and harder than the whites; they were being “degraded into a condition of servitude for life and even the status of property” (57). I think that this made it seem like the whites were more important than blacks, which created white slaves vs. black slaves. It also talks about Jefferson’s point of view about slavery. It is clear that he was not very fond of the blacks. He owned around “267 slaves” (69). They treated the blacks like animals; they sold them and bought them like they had no soul. The slaves didn’t have any rights and they weren’t “smart” enough to come up with poems or math problems. Also, when he thought “blacks and whites could never coexist in America because of “the real distinctions” which “nature” had made between the two races”(71), he decided all the slaves had to die to get rid of them.
Of course, as long as the majority of the people agree with each other it is very easy to make decisions about the slaves. But was it really necessary to tell them who they could and could not communicate with? The only people they were allowed to associate with were each other, they weren’t allowed to speak or associate with whites. Even white slaves were a threat to the black slaves because they bonded together and ran away. To stop this, they would punish the black slaves worse than whites. Blacks did not have any rights, why couldn’t they been seen as “normal” people? Because their skin color was different, it meant they must have been different people. Reading this chapter was quite interesting because I did not know how many white slaves there were involved and how they were compared to the black slaves. Both were treated horrible but in the end the black slaves were punished so much more. It seems so unfair how they were seen. They were “animals” or “products” and people killed them and got rid of them like it was no big deal, which at that moment, wasn’t.
The giddy Multitude is about the British view on the Africans and how they treated them. If you had a different skin color back then, you were considered “deeply stained with dirt” or “dark” and “deadly”. Many Africans had been transported as slaves and soon there were too many Africans that it almost became impossible to ever get rid of them again. However, at that moment no one cared because they wanted people to work for them; slaves.
Furthermore, even though people had blacks as slaves, there was also the lower white class who they considered as slaves. Both did the same work and were treated the same way until the blanks and whites started rebelling together, for example, they both ran away. I think the planters could have expected this because both were treated so bad that they probably didn’t see the difference anymore between black and white. Unfortunately people still saw black people as being worse as the white slaves. They punished the blacks more and harder than the whites; they were being “degraded into a condition of servitude for life and even the status of property” (57). I think that this made it seem like the whites were more important than blacks, which created white slaves vs. black slaves. It also talks about Jefferson’s point of view about slavery. It is clear that he was not very fond of the blacks. He owned around “267 slaves” (69). They treated the blacks like animals; they sold them and bought them like they had no soul. The slaves didn’t have any rights and they weren’t “smart” enough to come up with poems or math problems. Also, when he thought “blacks and whites could never coexist in America because of “the real distinctions” which “nature” had made between the two races”(71), he decided all the slaves had to die to get rid of them.
Of course, as long as the majority of the people agree with each other it is very easy to make decisions about the slaves. But was it really necessary to tell them who they could and could not communicate with? The only people they were allowed to associate with were each other, they weren’t allowed to speak or associate with whites. Even white slaves were a threat to the black slaves because they bonded together and ran away. To stop this, they would punish the black slaves worse than whites. Blacks did not have any rights, why couldn’t they been seen as “normal” people? Because their skin color was different, it meant they must have been different people. Reading this chapter was quite interesting because I did not know how many white slaves there were involved and how they were compared to the black slaves. Both were treated horrible but in the end the black slaves were punished so much more. It seems so unfair how they were seen. They were “animals” or “products” and people killed them and got rid of them like it was no big deal, which at that moment, wasn’t.
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