Slavery

Slavery

Foundation of Slavery

Slavery is the circumstance of bondage in which one is considered as the property of another. In modern times, slavery is a phenomenon that is practiced by many people around the world. It was accepted in Africa as the fate of prisoners of war and as appropriate punishment for criminal activity. Unlike the captives brought to the Americas, however, such slaves commonly retained important rights and were often able to work off their obligation. Slaves in Africa were not looked upon as subhuman or racially inferior; rather, they were regarded as outside the tribal group or clan and therefore not subject to its protections. As a slave lived with a tribe or family, his or her status might change. For example, a slave who adopted the religion of his owner or a slave woman who had children by her master might gain the right not to be sold. In effect, they would become less a slave, and more an official member of the tribe (James, 1988).

Tradition and Slavery

Slavery as practiced in the United States was unique, but slavery itself has existed and been generally accepted since pre-biblical times. Before the transatlantic slave trade, a trans-Saharan slave trade had existed for several centuries during which Africans were transported by Muslims to Islamic countries as well as to India and China. In African societies, slavery was widespread, and in Europe the "Slavs" of Eastern Europe were routinely enslaved for centuries. And slavery in Western thought was embraced and celebrated by many of the leading philosophers. Thus, what distinguishes slavery in the United States is not that some persons were chattel or in servitude to others, but that the United States maintained a slave system in which the enslaved Africans were deprived of natural rights and civil rights and subject to totalitarian and frequently savage rule (Wilma, 1998).

Major Factors that Contribute To Racial Prejudice and Discrimination

Slavery as practiced in the United States constituted a totalitarian political system, one in which virtually all bases of power were monopolized by whites in a brutal, barbarous relationship with enslaved Africans. Slavery was more than mere racism; more than mere inequalities in power and status between a super ordinate group and a subordinate group; more than mere discrimination by a majority group against a minority group. Instead it was a system of oppression on a scale of barbarity and savagery unparalleled in human history, a ...