Olaudah Equiano Greed Essay

Psychoanalyst and social philosopher, Erich Fromm, once said “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” However, in comparison to other groups of people, such as Europeans, greed is not necessarily a “natural right”. The accounts of Bartolome de Las Casas, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and the New York Conspiracy of 1741 conveys the conquest of slavery in the Americas, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and the establishment of white identity. All in all, greed was the propulsion behind these vital historic events, thus birthing systematic oppression, psychological colonization, classism and racism in the creation of the modern world.
Spanish priest and advocate

Equiano concluded the white man’s vile actions are due to their undying yearn and cupidity for wealth. He emphasized the dehumanizing and barbaric treatment of blacks such as starvation, unsanitary conditions along with the equal treatment to some whites as well. This negatively impacted him emotionally and mentally, for he “had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves.” Notably, by any means necessary, the Europeans greediness was so vast that they do harm to their own people. At the end of the account, Equiano used the auctioning of bonds people to symbolizing how greed is the driving force of the Slave Trade by stating “on a signal given (as the beat of a drum), the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehension of terrified Africans.” In other words, the Europeans portrayed bonds people has property and were full of zeal to purchase them and as their excitement increased so did trepidation of petrified Africans. However, that was not the business nor concerns of the

Prince was forced to endure domestic duties and farming duties and if she failed to fulfil these tasks and abide by Captain I, his wife and Mr. D, she was brutally punished “licked, and flogged, and pinched by her pitiless fingers in the neck and arms…strip me naked - to hang me up by the wrists and lay my flesh open with the cow-skin…robbed me too of the hours that belong to sleep.” Out of gluttony, to ensure that their needs were taken care of, the slave owners dehumanized bonds people in any way they could. In addition, Mary and her sisters were separated and sold to raise money for their masters wedding. Again, another example of how the exploiters inquired and only considered their well-being with no regard to the how it effects the lives of the bonds people. Prince describes the “bystanders, who were looking at us so carelessly, think of the pain that wrung the hearts of the negro woman and her young ones? No, no!... slavery hardens white people’s hearts towards the blacks; and many of them were not slow to make their remarks upon us aloud, without regard to our grief though their light words…white people have small hearts who can only feel for themselves” In fact, slavery generated the wealth of the whites, and continued to do so for three centuries because