…There are a lot of misconceptions about slavery in today’s world and some of them are:
History taught us many important lessons, but not many things about slavery are actually learned in school. In this article, we will delve deeper into this controversial topic that often sparks arguments and disagreements among people.
With a lot of care for details and accuracy, the team from Historical Files got in touch with a few historians who helped us debunk some of the worst misconceptions about slavery.
How did it begin?
The first ship carrying “20 and odd” African slaves sailed to Virginia’s shores in August of 1619. This day was around 400 years ago, marking the beginning of a lasting connection between the establishment of the United States and the illegal exploitation of enslaved people.
However, even centuries later, misconceptions and the long-term effects of slavery are still being neglected. For example, many of the slave uprisings and revolts that occurred across the country were wiped away, which helped to spread the myth that those who were slaves were docile or content with their circumstances.
Another enduring myth is that black labor exploitation has ended, even though millions of African Americans are still incarcerated and frequently earn “wages” of less than $1 per hour as a result of mass incarceration.
Based on historians’ word-for-word stories, here are five misconceptions about slavery that are present in today’s world:
1. Slaves never fought back
This is probably one of the most common misconceptions about slavery. Why? Let’s see. The US slave trade has resulted in a complex mythology full of incomplete and misleading information due to misinformation. A significant gap in history is related to slave protests. Few accounts of the transatlantic slave trade in popular media or history texts address the numerous slave uprisings that took place in early American history.
In the book History of the Pan-African Revolt, the author James C.L.R. relates several minor revolts, including the most significant one that took place in September 1739 in the South Carolina colony, where two guards were slain by a small group of African slaves. They spread to neighboring plantations, where they killed around twenty enslavers, particularly the brutal overseers, by setting them on fire.
2. They ran away from enslavement to commit infractions
Many individuals undoubtedly considered this after reading about slaves. Those who were able to escape that kind of existence desired to become like everyone else by learning to read and write.
Many others simply fled and fled quickly. Others produced books, joined abolitionist groups, and lectured to the public about life as a slave. Others show the courage to lead or engage in direct fights with their former owners.
To cite a history professor from California State University It is easier to cover up the horrific and violent treatment that African Americans held as slaves suffered at the hands of their masters if these stories of protests are ignored or minimized.
It’s simpler to assume that all the people who were enslaved were submissive and satisfied and that their living circumstances weren’t all that harsh from the outside. We can easily jump to conclusions if we believe all the misconceptions about slavery that are circulating in the media and even in some books.
3. Compared to field slaves, home slaves had better lives
…Hmmm not so much. See, this is another misconception about slavery that’s been going around for a while now, yet it’s totally false. Be aware that this paragraph isn’t exactly for the faint of heart.
Even though the physical labor of cultivating land, sowing, and harvesting often destroyed the slaves’s bodies, the emotional abuse women and children had to endure in the house of their masters was way worse. And unfortunately, it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
In reality, 2016 research found that 16.7% of African Americans may trace their ancestry back to Europe due to the widespread practice of rape of black women by white owners. According to one of the study’s authors, African Americans who were genetically connected to the males who had raped their mothers, grandparents, and/or great-grandmothers were the first to flee the South.
These were the African Americans who worked in the homes of slave masters and were the enslaved people who were closest to and spent the longest periods with white males. We can’t possibly imagine how traumatic the experience was. The fear of being held captive and the shame associated with anxiety over and over again for years lead to PTSD.
Are you curious to read the book we mentioned in the previous paragraphs? You can find History of Pan-African Revolt on Amazon for just $2.09 for the Kindle version.
4. Racism ended with abolition
There is a widespread misconception regarding American slavery that, upon its abolition, racism, and white supremacy in the country likewise vanished. A common version of this fallacy was recently put out by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who stated that he was against reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago.” The Kentucky Republican descended from slave owners, believed that racial inequality had been balanced by the battlefield. Slavery was either simply accepted as the norm or it wasn’t.
However, the reality is that white Americans held onto the same white supremacist ideologies even after the Civil War, which continued to influence their attitudes and behavior both during and after liberation.
White people still had the mindset of slave owners, particularly in the South. They used convict leasing and sharecropping in the late 19th century to manage Black work, passed Jim Crow laws in the early 20th century to control African American conduct, and continue to police the color line with racial terror today.
The situation wasn’t any different in the north as well. Following liberation, they refused to give freedmen access to confiscated and abandoned property because they thought African Americans would not labor without white supervision. Moreover, white Northerners imposed their version of Jim Crow, dividing communities and refusing to recruit African American laborers on a nondiscriminatory basis, when African Americans started to leave Dixie during the Great Migration.
Slavery was indeed abolished 150 years ago, but unfortunately, even now, African Americans continue to be affected by the institution’s legacy of racism in the United States.
5. Slavery isn’t active anymore
We’ve left one of the most common misconceptions about slavery for the end. In actuality, it developed into mass imprisonment in its current form. Globally, the United States has the world’s biggest prison population. Over 2.2 million Americans are behind bars, while 4.5 million are on parole or probation. The percentage of African Americans in the overall population is around 13%.
However, the proportion of African men, women, and adolescents in the criminal justice system is disproportionately high—34 percent of the 6.8 million individuals under its jurisdiction are African Americans. Their labor is put to use creating goods and services for companies that make money off of prisoners.
How do you feel about this topic? Let us know in the comments section.
Are you a history lover? Then you might be interested in checking out: These Incredible 9 Facts About Native Americans Will Change Your Perspective.
13 Responses
Talk about all slavery from the beginning of time.You talked-about a blip in the slavery timeline i.e. isolated incident in the carnages of the northen americas. From the 1019 years of Anglo Saxton slavery in 1776. Who bowed when the monarchy stepped in a room.
Just because slavery officially ended in the US with the Civil War does not mean that racism ended. It is still ongoing both as “white privilege” and as “Black Lives Matter” movements. Whites unconsciously discriminate against blacks on a daily basis, while many blacks demand better treatment than whites in all things no matter what the situation. One sign of this was and is the ongoing insistence that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt had to be a black woman. Her own contemporaries described her as a ‘Macedonian blonde’ and she was descended from Alexander the Great’s half-brother Ptolemy. This means her ancestry is eastern Mediterranean leaning towards Eastern European NOT African. Macedonia was north and slightly east of Greece; Egypt was in the Easternmost part of North Africa, making it just east and south of the Central Mediterranean. Even back in those days, Arabic ancestry dominated the Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, including all of North Africa. Black Africans came from farther south. There may have been Black African bloodlines in Egypt, reference the “Nubian Pharaohs”, but Cleopatra was not Egyptian by ancestry, only by culture.
As a born American Black Woman I indeed have experienced the instilled racism lingering from enslavement within this country. Being the mother of adult sons, their reality is harsher. One of the hardest aspects is the denial of White people that it does not exist and there is equality across the board. As a resident of Buffalo NY, the segregation is extremely apparent in this city, regardless of the fact that there’s a Black mayor. I truly believe that countless Black Americans live with some level of anger towards the hypocrisy of the United States of America.
Then leave ,go to Europe ,Africa,or some place you’ll feel comfortable,no one is holding you here !
As a Caucasian woman, living in Virginia, I can tell you that there is still a sense of superiority that we generally have, like it or not (and I do not like it, but sometimes I feel insensitive as well) and the answer is not to find another place to live (or to learn to type) but to try to understand all people we share space with in this country. Most of us do little to take ourselves out of our comfort areas and literally try to imagine what others experience just because of the color of their skin. Why don’t you try living somewhere that your skin color is in the minority and come back and respond respectively.
It’s shit like this statement that makes us privileged white folk dislike you people.
Slavery still exists in the U.S. & is planned to expand if the Communists take over fully. And the prisons are loaded with Negros, who though educated, are discarded for employment because they’re black or given low paying jobs. So racism is still practiced here. Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge this is racist & not being honest. America was born in war & violence & hasn’t quit yet.
Weren’t the negroes brought to Jamestown in 1619 by the Dutch sold as indentured servants, the same as many whites and some of my ancestors? Wasn’t slavery made legal in the northern states as early as 1620 and not in Virginia until about 1660? Weren’t Irish rebels sold as slaves in the West Indies? Weren’t the vast majority of Africans captured POW’s and sold by their own people? Wasn’t slavery early man’s alternative to killing the survivors of war? Did not the Soviet Union keep German POW’s for as long as 15 years after WWII? (These were young men and boys who were drafted into the military and not guilty of the crimes committed by their government.) Weren’t some of the largest slave holders in the South Negroes? My paternal grandparents were poor sharecroppers, were they slaves also? My maternal great-grandparents had a few slaves who left home in 1865; but, came back and wanted to know if they could come back home? After my Grandmother died when Mom was seven years old, she was raised by an old ex-slave woman. The only mother she knew after age seven, she and her sisters loved that old woman as much as any real mother. Yes, slavery is wrong now and back then. the 1860 census shows there were many more slaveholders in the North than the South. Didn’t more negroes die after the war because the North wouldn’t provide sufficiently for them? I could go on; but, I’ll shut up for now. Just remember it all goes both ways.
It is very sad but slavery and discrimination have indeed existed since time began. Go back to biblical times, and look at what Moses had to go through to convince the Pharoh to let his people go! They were slaves were they not? I don’t believe that everyone was white I think that there was brown and black also. Whatever you want to call it racism or discrimination it ends up being the same it’s because of your skin color. So it’s a never-ending story so unless aliens attach the world then I will see humanity uniting LOL! God Help Us!
We are God’s people all of us, no one should own another human being.
Slavery is and was wrong but implying that black men in prisons are slaves is a joke…I worked in a prison for over 20 years…it blew my mind how many young black men never got past the 9th grade in school yet had 4-7 kids by 3-4 different women….the majority of these women were white…and expected these women to put money on their books. They are there because they committed crimes, mostly multiple times, before they ever got sentenced to prison….lots of slaps on the hand before that ….you have to learn to take responsibility for your own actions….the white man didn’t put you there, you put yourself….Put God first then family, and try to better yourself and quit blaming something that has been outlawed since 1865. If you have kids take care of them…Nuff said, 95% never listen anyways!! As the author stated only, 13% of the USA’s population is black, but one would think 50% if you watch TV and commercials etc. White women are causing the majority of issues in race relations though Obama certainly didn’t help bring the Country together!!
I like following all info on the past and the future of people of all color and the problem that exist today, while many are being incarcerated and being use and under paid as if they are enslaved still.
I’m over 80 years old and have been insulted, name calling, and threaten by official for no reason just being black. the system is messed up, come on let’s get it together we’re all in this together.
What bothers me is the fact that slavery is alive and well all over the world but the U.S. gets the flack for it. How come no one raises an eyebrow about the slave markets in Nigeria, or the slaves in China or the Middle East? I could go on but you get the gist. People in North Korea are the next best thing to slavery. Our prisons are chock full of black inmates b/c black people commit most of the crimes. Look up the stastics.