Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Chapter 3 "Slavery and Immigrants from Africa"

While reading chapter 3 I found it interesting to read about slaves not being considered "immigrants". It was brought to my attention becuase it reminded me that slaves were not seen as regular people like the whites, rahter they were seen as poor, unwanted, and uneducated people. What some people don't realize is that slaves did alot of labor for those with big companies. Slaves are part of American history because they were immigrants who came looking for a better life, to work and save money to live in better conditions. But as we already know, that wasn't the case. Africans were treated differently, they were beat, killed, and at times they weren't even fed.

Also, it was interesting to learn that most slaves were young males. But more interesting, that by the end of the slave trade it was balanced out with both males and females. I can see that they chose to having the younger age group becasue they were able to handle long work hours and most importantly they could survive longer than an older person could without having something to eat. On page 64, towards the end of the chapter it mentioned that the mortality rates for African babies was higher than the ones of white babies. Well that didn't surprise me! ofcourse it would be higher, African slaves didn't have the resources to survive and no one cared about them. White people only cared about them working for them to make money and be wealthy. It's sad to read this because wealthy families couldn've helped these people survive, but instead they decided to let innocent babies die.

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