Negative Effects of Slavery Disunity in the Black Community and Family

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateA-, November 2007

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Intro A community can be viewed as a people that share common languages. Attributes and many other cultural similarities. Strong communities usually signify a unity or bond. This bond forms a sense of sense of self and "brotherhood". However, this does not appear to exist in the Black community. Slavery has nearly destroyed the existence of any unity. When the Africans were taken from African, different tribes were mixed together on the ships and stripped of their identities. The differences between the African tribes had a positive affect for the enslavers because it caused disunity. Which helped them maintain control both during the voyages and once they arrived to the U.S. realizing the affect of the disunity, slave owners continued to develop tactics that would further disunite African Americans from generation to generation until today.

Slavery Period The disunity among Africans helped the slave owners operate their plantations more efficiently and furthered enslaved the Blacks.

Their lack of unity increased because of distrust for one another and an increase of loyalty and dependence on their owners The Africans were divided based on physical attributes (ie. Skin tone, physical build). Of all the attributes, skin tone was of the most prominent tactics of division used. The fairer skinned were usually used as house laborers and held a higher status than that of the darker skinned who were used as field hands or given harsher treatment. . Because they were more privileged, a sense of superiority arose among the light skinned or house laborers. This caused the darker skinned Africans to envy the fairer skinned by distancing Negative Effects of Slavery and disconnecting themselves from each other, they caused division on the plantation.

Any sign of unity, even seemingly harmless bonds such as bonds between children and their parents, posed a threat to the slave owners...