"Slave Resistance"

The cases of slave resistance presented in this essay are shocking, not because resistance existed, but because after so many attempts, it still took 450 years to bring about reform. Slave brutality was cruel and demeaning both in the physical and psychological senses, it is inhumane to think for a second that stealing someone from their native land, coercing them to work under unruly conditions, and beating them into submission is right. And this is what makes the situation sad, the fact that a human being saw fit to viciously undermine and blatantly kill, control, and subdue masses of other human beings. Not to mention justify their actions, and get mad when a slave tried to escape this treacherous persecution. Deeming it "hellish" as if what they were doing was apart of a divine plan. Another thing that caught my attention in this essay was the fear that the whites possessed when the slaves revolted, if the whites were so concerned with their lives, it was dumb for them to keep these people living under their noses. But the greed and sick satisfaction that they received from slavery was the driving force that gave them hope that their slaves wouldn't come up against them. I did read however, that the white slaveholders that ran the southern states were the "Negroes" of developing Europe in the twelfth thru fifteenth centuries. Supposedly, they took the harsh accounts they experienced and the psychological and psychosocial effects were the platform for how they treated their slaves. Which is still not excuse for slavery because 450 years of it, and even now seems to not have given them or their children enough time to get racism out of their systems. In closing, the essay was moving because no matter how many times I hear about slavery and its barbaric structure, I get upset all over again, simply because I couldn't imagine a human being being done the way slaves were treated.

comparison n contrast

In comparison to Ture and Early, both of them talk about the color line amongst Africans ourselves. They both discussed the fact Africans, of all generations are segregated, amongst each other. The difference however, is posed when they talk about how and why these divisions exist; and frankly I agree with Ture's point of view. He believes that there is a long genealogy of these divisions set in place strategically by our European counterparts. He says that these divisions were a way to keep differences up between us so that we'd think so differently about each other and always have this sense of separation or better yet, removal. This is funny because Early's essay qualifies this notion, "never African again", is he serious! Essays and viewpoints like these are what keeps us Blacks from achieving a unity that will make us the noble kings and queens that we once were. No I'm not talking about literally sitting on thrones (in which we could) but I'm talking about reclaiming our dignity and sense of pride about who we really are. It;s real sad that most of our youth are taught that we were an uncivilized race and that our history as the world knows it started with slavery. On the contrary, we were the first human beings to establish civilization, and although there were different tribes at that time, everyone was the same, it was the Africans who came in and created country lines both symbolicly and physically so that we'd never get back to the force that we used to be--Africans period.

Response to "Never African Again" (pg.63)

I love the way Gerald Early conveys the inconspicuous double standard that black people have when it comes to us being black, African-American, just American, just African, etc...
My interpretation of the essay as a whole is that Early was trying to make the reader take notice of an issue that she/he may be battling. The issue of being black in a white oriented society, while trying to prove to other Americans that we are just as American as they are, while at the same time trying to reserve the inner African in us that supposedly is more than the sum of our parts. He goes through the process of African people becoming blacks while trying to get back to the mother land, but when America is so convenient and readily at the forefront, the black then tries to adjust to the New World. Instead of being a counterculture to the white society, the new found "black" disingrates, but at the same time integrates and makes itself a subculture. No more are we fighting to get our lives back, but now our fighting is to improve our living conditions in a new home. Early goes on to outline the "Black's" fight to prove to society (a mere man made social structure) that he is WORTHY of the very soil that his own ancestors died cultivating. Gone is the fight to find out what really happened to us as a people, now it has been replaced with the configuration of out how can we become a better defined replication of the people looking down on us. Only when we feel defeated or oppressed do we try to connect to our African-American roots, as if the order of African life began with American enslavement. I think Early was tyring to get us to see that we do not have to fight to be something that we already are. All of the sum of a colored folk's whole makes them, them! Not because we feel like we went out and drew differences between those lines, but because the lines do not exist and at any given time we could connect to any one status if we take the time out to feel and not fight.