Blog #4

Though some slaves were treated better than others and some were able to gain status, 12.5 million slaves were traded in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Not only was this a huge amount of people who were treated badly and in many cases killed, slavery continued through generations. In other words, people were born into slavery so, the children of slaves were automatically slaves as well. In the documents section of the chapter, primary sources are presented so that the readers could get a better sense of the situation. In the documents, one notices that slave owners treated slaves like items, depriving them of their dignity. For example, Olaudah Equiano explains "after about a month, I was again sold... The people I was sold to used to carry me very often, when I was tired, either on their shoulders or on their backs" (pg 701). In another source, a slave owner, Thomas Phillips, describes the business of slave trading. During this process, we see how slaves are dehumanized and treated like items when slaves were being marked as property. In addition, he explained how palm oil was placed on the area to be marked before being marked. He states that this made it less painful however, a burn to the skin is always painful. Here, we can see how slaves owners tried to justify their actions and make their actions seem trivial. Similar types of reasoning and justification can be seen in World War II during the holocaust.