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The start to end of the Slave trade

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THE SLAVE TRADE: HOW AND WHY IT STARTED To understand the African Slave Trade we must understand slavery as an institution an institution almost as old as human society. Every people, sometime or another, have been slaves. In fact, Europeans enslaved other Europeans for a much longer period than they enslaved Africans. Slavery was a permanent feature of the ancient world, in Egypt, Kush, and Rome. The African slave period is best known to us because it is the best-documented. However, these documents are often confusing because they were created by people who were trying to justify the slave trade. Most people, especially Europeans who created most of the documents on the slave trade, write about the subject with the intent to make the victim of slavery feel guilty and to vindicate the perpetrators of the slave trade. There is probably more dishonesty related to the interpretation of this subject than any other subject known to man. The African slave trade, like African history, is often written about but rarely understood. This misunderstanding probably grows out of the fact that we nearly always start the study of the African slave trade in the wrong place. The germ, the motive, the rationale for the African slave trade started in the minds of the Europeans in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. ...read more.


2. A verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle or the like. Science: 1. A branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths about the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Theory: 1. A proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural. So an opinion is basically a thought about the world and a belief is an opinion about the world that we have confidence in and/or hold with strong conviction. We all have opinions and beliefs. We have opinions and beliefs about politics, entertainment, sports, and the people in our families. It is important to note that neither opinions nor beliefs necessarily have a basis in fact or truth. Believing something to be true has no impact on its veracity. Facts are pieces of information about something that actually happened and/or actually exists. SCIENCE AND FICTION Cognitive Dissonance may be one of the answers to the question. Why did Europeans need to view blacks as sub-human? Next we must explore, how did Europeans convince themselves that those of African descent were a lesser class of human ?� All manner of opinions, beliefs, halftruths and outright lies have been presented over the years to 'prove' blacks are inferior to whites. Many of these were presented in the name of science, and many of these were printed in text books, scientific journals and media of the era. ...read more.


They were inferior, first because they were not European, and second because they were not Christian. Thus, Africans were viewed as impure, irreligious and uncivilized, fit to be slaves. So Linnaeus was just expressing his opinions. Did any of these descriptions have anything to do with science? Were any experiments designed to see if his observations were correct? Did he even have any intention to design experiments to test them? Do any of them have any basis in fact or truth? The answers to all of these questions are a resounding NO!! Linneaus' taxonomy, Jeffersonian reasoning, Phrenology, and IQ testing all served as the 'scientific' foundations upon which the institutions of slavery and racial superiority/inferiority were constructed. Since the time the first slaves arrived in the Americas from Africa in the early 1500's to present day, Europeans and their descendents have gone to great lengths to justify the 500 years of trauma and dehumanization they and their institutions produced. The effects of this trauma and dehumanization are observable today, and can be explained by the theory of The legacy of trauma is reflected in many of the behaviors and the beliefs; behaviors and beliefs that at one time were necessary to adopt in order to survive, yet today serve to undermine the ability of the descendants to be successful. Source: Degruy Leary, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Oregon: Uptone Press. 2005 ...read more.

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