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The effect of slavery on slaves
The effect of slavery on slaves
The effects of slavery
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When considering the slavery of African Americans, few will deny the negative impact it had on the African slaves. However, in his Narrative, Fredrick Douglass makes it clear that several of the slaveholding characters are undermined by slavery—regardless of being unaware of this. By examining the characters of Edward Covey and Sophia Auld, it can be seen that Douglass feels that slavery has a negative effect on the white slaveholders as well as the black slaves.
A particular character that is undermined by slavery is Sophia Auld. When Douglass first meets Sophia, he finds her to be “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings.” (Douglass 43) He states that he “saw what [he] had never seen before…a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions.” (41). Douglass emphasizes the fact that “She had been a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery.” (43) In fact she does not respond well to “the crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave…she seemed to be disturbed by it.” (43) Ultimately, “slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to [him].” (48). Douglass showcased Sophia’s drastic change in character by using hyperboles, at first describing her as heavenly and angelic, then as harsh and demonic. He notes that, “she became even more violent than her husband.” (48) So, it can be seen that slaveholding greatly changed the character of Sophia in a negative way. It can additionally be seen that Douglass finds this to be an important fact to make note of by his use of dramatic and somewhat exaggerated language.
Unlike Sophia, Edward Covey is consistently portrayed in a negative way throughout his sections of the Narrative. Covey ultimately does himself a disservice by putting significant effort into keeping his slaves in line. The first account Douglass gives of Covey’s behavior—when he sends Douglass “very early in the morning of one of [the] coldest days in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood” (66) with “a team of unbroken oxen” (66)—displays Covey’s intent to devise impossible tasks which a slave cannot possibly complete; giving Covey the excuse to beat his slave. Covey had to have known that leading untamed oxen through the woods on a bitterly cold day would be an immensely difficult task for any average individual to complete. He undermines himself in the sense that he spends unnecessary time using his intelligence to devise these plans instead of putting it to more constructive use.
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The film”Sankofa” and the Negro by Du Bois reflects on the ideas about the desires of African intellectuals during the 1920s and the identity crisis to the black Americans. The American society refused to offer African Americans equal rights as their white counterparts. The two sources engage the reader to ask a question as to why an individual self-esteem is affected by race. This is a troublesome issue for the blacks considering the fact that Europeans viewed them as people without practical history
contains many central ideas from the Harlem Renaissance. Aspiration includes ideas from African-Americans’ shared heritage and cultural identity, the progression from slavery
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largest and most well known disputes is associated with the idea of slavery, and civil rights for African Americans. Prior to the Civil War, the institution of slavery left African Americans feeling oppressed. African Americans had little to no rights, and were subjected to mistreatment on a regular basis prior to the Civil War; whereas, by 1877, with the help of the Federal Government, African Americans held critical roles in American politics and were -generally- well regarded in society. To begin
continued to discriminate and mistreat. As a nation we have mistreated African Americans by morally wronging and discriminating them, and for this owe them some form of reparation. The wealth this nation was built on was earned unjustly, and the wealth whites have earned through slavery has compounded, putting them at an unfair advantage over African Americans. Even after slavery was abolished, segregation put African Americans at a disadvantage by denying them good education, work, religion, and