American Trauma In Slavery

To start, it is important to take into account the fact that the trauma people faced under slavery is not comparable to any other form of violence that is usually associated with people living under states of war or occupation. Unlike war, people who grow up in slavery do not perceive their situation as “temporary”. Unlike those living in war zones, slaves do not have the “luxury” of living with the hope that one day all of this misery would be over and they can finally return to living their peaceful lives, similar to those living under a “typical” form of trauma. Therefore, in the case of slavery, the destruction of the psyche begins at the moment the woman slave gives birth to her slave infant. Moreover, the child who is born into slavery

However, it further includes the whole state of enslavement, from the intensive labor to being put in captivity in the plantation for life, all the way through the daily rituals that slaves go through when interacting with the slave owners. Moreover, the slave lives through a cycle of living that is built around fear and submission. This act of systematic destruction was not intended to target only slaves as individuals. In fact, the process of destruction was aimed towards the community as a whole. For example, though the slaves were meant to “breed” other slaves for the master to capitalize on, he or she can not protect their family members from the assaults of that same master, or even the overseers. Furthermore, any interference from a slave to protect any other slave, can result in severe consequences, in which whipping might be the lightest punishment, or in worst cases, the slave might get killed by the master (Gowin, 94). As a result, for many, even after leaving slavery, moving forward with their lives, was a difficult challenge, especially with the memory of the people that they have left behind, dead or

Thereafter, even though the freed people have struggled to maintain an individualistic identity, and fought for the right to whole citizenships, in most cases white masters held the position of superiority towards those who once were their slaves. In the case of Charles Hall Brown, according to his granddaughter, he was bound to the Ridgelys in so many ways. At first, though Charles Brown attempted to leave Baltimore, he had to turn back, and ask for legal papers to prove his manumission, as he feared that he would be mistaken for an escapee, he then never left again. Secondly, after his manumission, Charles Brown worked as a doorman at the Old Baltimore Club, where he frequently encountered many members of the Ridgely family (Oral). Under these circumstances, Charls Brown, is in the service of his old slave owners, yet again. Whilst, Sarah Howard did not, or could not talk about her grandfather’s feelings towards his life as a slave, Ivan Schulman favors a “xenophobic ideology”, in the introduction he wrote for “Autobiography of a Slave” by Juan Francisco Manzano, who was a freed man from the sugar plantations in Cuba. Schulman believes that the manners and the culture of the white man, is better than his own