Oh, this bullshit again. I took a quick look at the existing answers. Not surprisingly, we have a bunch of answers like this:
“Slaves are valuable property. Of course, they’re treated very well! They’re fed, clothed, and have holidays!!! They loved their white masters who took such good care of them, and they never wanted to be free.”
Someone just watched Gone with the Wind.
Look at them, just two lovely gal pals. How cute!
First of all, let’s set the record straight. The question is 100% valid. The enslaved people during the American Chattel Slavery era were treated with unfathomable cruelty. And their treatment was not isolated incidents. It is prevalent.
After watching 12 Years a Slave, I asked a black friend, “was it really that bad?” granted, I wasn’t nearly as informed about slavery as I’m today. And it was a pretty shitty question. But my friend, being the nice guy that he is, said, “Oh, it’s a lot worse. 100 times worse.”* And I believed him. I started to read about American chattel slavery, told by black people. And now I know he’s right. It was 100 times worse than what you see in the movies.
* A lot of people seemed to have issues with this statement. And there’s no end of shitty self-congratulatory comments about “oh, your friend is 150 years old” or some such. Trust me, you ain’t nearly as smart as you think you are.
I assume you understand the concept of reading about history from books and learning about history from family members. Just because you never picked up a book and now actively trying to ban books in our schools doesn’t mean other people don’t read and educate themselves. And as far as Black history is concerned. I will always assume a black person knows more about their own history than I do. I listen to black educators and black people when it comes to slavery and systemic racism. We should ALL listen to black people when it comes to Black history.
We have slavers’ own diaries and journals as records. Just google Bennet Barrow and Thomas Thistlewood.
From Barrow’s journal:
1838
Jan. 23
my House Servants Jane Lavenia & E. Jim broke into my store room - and helped themselves very liberally to every thing - I whipped [them] ... worse than I ever whipped any one before
Sept. 28 Dennis and Tom "Beauf" ran off on Wednesday - . . . if I can see either of them and have a gun at the time will let them have the contents of it ...
Oct. 12 [Tom ran off again] will whip him more than I ever whip one, I think he deserves more - the second time he has done so this year ...
Oct. 20 whipped about half today
Oct. 26 Whipped 8 or 10 for weight today -those that pick least weights generally most trash ...
Oct. 27 Dennis ran off yesterday - & after I had whipped him
Nov. 2 Dennis came in sick on Tuesday - ran off again yesterday - without my ever seeing him -will carry my gun & small shot for him - I think I shall cure him of his rascality
Nov. 7 Dennis came in last night - had him fasted - attempted to escape. ran as far as the creek but was caught - the D[ammedest] rascal on the place
Dec. 30 Demps gave his wife Hetty a light cut or two & then locked her up to prevent her going to the Frolic-I reversed it turning her loose & fastening him
Mind you, Barrow considered himself a benevolent slave owner who had treated his slaves a lot better than his contemporaries.
Thistlewood was a lot worse, I don’t even want to quote it here. If you want to read it, google it yourself.
The simple fact is, despite the enslaved people being considered “property,” they were treated with cruelty and abuse. On top of the endless beating and raping, they were not provided adequate food and clothing. Slavers gave some grain and fat trimmings to the enslaved people. And the enslaved people must grow their own food or forage the woods on their own time to supplement their food supply. Meaning after the enslaved people worked from sunrise to sundown in their human trafficker’s plantation, they needed to work on their own gardens and small plots of land to grow their own food. They were not provided with clothing. Enslaved people were given one set of new clothing at the beginning of the year. That’s all they have for everything. They might have a thin blanket for the cold. Enslaved children were not given shoes.
And there’s the psychological abuse. Families were often forced to live separately, to isolate people so they couldn’t run away together. Children were separated from their mothers. Siblings were torn apart and sold separately.
So do us a favor and shut the fuck up about how enslaved people were treated well. I don’t know what fantasy story United Daughters of the Confederacy had sold you. But hey, I don’t blame you. You don’t know better, considering white people are so fragile that watching a movie about a brave black girl going to school is just, OMG, too much for the precious, precious white children.
And, of course, there’s the question “why.” Even if the slavers saw enslaved people as property no better than their cows or horses, one must notice the same people wouldn't have beaten their cows or horses bloody to the point they couldn’t perform their functions. The fact is, the slavers often went out of their way to be cruel to enslaved people.
So you can't really explain this kind of behavior with isolated sadism. I don't think slave masters or overseers beating slaves until their backs were bloody all got off on it.
I thought about this a lot, and this is the conclusion I eventually reached:
I think slavers treated enslaved people with such cruelty not because they didn't see enslaved people as people but as properties. I think that, on the contrary, the slavers knew inside their hearts that the black people they enslaved were people. Perhaps in their mind, these people weren't as “superior” as they were, but they were people nonetheless. It's hard not to see them as people. Human brains function in such a way that we recognize and often assign humanity. We see our pets as “family members". We “assign" personalities even to inanimate items like cars or ships. It is in our human nature to seek out humanity in other beings.
Chattel slavery really required slavers to see enslaved people as non-people. Not even animals, the enslaved people must be seen as “objects." And it was hard. It was against what we’re naturally hardwired to do.
In order to deal with this kind of cognitive dissonance, slavers ended up becoming savagely cruel with their charges. Slavers must put enslaved people through that much pain and humiliation, completely taking away their humanity, in order to maintain a society built on chattel slavery. This desire was so strong that it outweighed the “logical” consideration of supposed “property value.” In other words, the slave owners didn’t care if their cruelty against enslaved people would cost them financially. They NEEDED to dehumanize enslaved people in order to live their lives as slavers.
So you have this weird, inhumane paradox that slavers treated the enslaved people horribly, not because they saw them as property, but because they knew black people were humans. Then, they had two choices: becoming an abolitionist, as many white people did throughout history, or torturing the enslaved people and taking their humanity away.
Fast forward to modern-day America. We learned about how horribly the enslaved people were treated. You have two choices: learn about history as much as possible, and make sure we never go back to that. Or you could accept the Lost Cause rhetoric and believe, “but it’s not that bad….”
It seems that this answer has attracted some conservative racist shitheads, and I’ve been getting shitty comments non-stop. After replying and blocking these people, I realized they never read past the 3rd paragraph, and I was wasting my time on these racists. So comment closed.
I would say this, though: all this time, the vast majority (if not all) of the racist and hateful comments I got are from white male boomers, judging from their name, profile picture, and graduation year (most of them graduated college in the 70s). Sure, people fake their identity online, but these people look like they are very proud of their “white heritage,” and they’re more likely to boast it than hide it.
I understand the guilt. I do. You identify with your slaver ancestors, and you feel that you’re being attacked when people discuss the cruelty of slavery, and you want to mitigate that guilt by minimizing the damage of slavery.
But here’s the thing. There were white abolitionists, and there were slavers. The fact that none of you identify with the abolitionists and ALL of you shitty racists identify with the slavers says a lot about your morals. That tells me if American chattel slavery is reinstated today, you will happily go buy black and brown people as your property. You will form militias to terrorize racial minorities (if you haven’t already done so even now). You will kidnap and sell non-white people for profit.
In your heart of hearts, you WANT to be a slaver. You want that kind of power over a human being. And you want to be seen as the good guy. That’s why you’re so angry when you read this answer.
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