Discuss Slavery And Race: Different Societies, Slave Labor (Term Paper Sample)

Slavery and Race
Name
Institution
Slavery and Race
Jane, a university medical graduate wants to move outside her country and work abroad citing better remuneration and healthy working conditions in those superpower countries. She has great passion until she has been able to sway the minds of every peer within her circles, to think of how blurred their future will be if they work within their parent country pinpointing several institutions and organizations faced with strikes every time. As a critic I stand aloof and keenly check on Jane's action .Why does she want to move? How did this superpowers make it to the top? Why are these countries beckoning many youths? Let us break down this present day slavery for better understanding of our topic today.
Slavery was an important phenomenon throughout history. Different societies made use of slave labor. Those civilised ancient Islamic societies used slavery as the mainstay of economies. Africa became intimately connected with the history of slavery as a source of slaves and also as an important stage for the establishment of slave societies.
A slave by definition is an economic property, a social outsider who is an alien in origin or who has been denied his/her heritage thorough judicial or other sanctions. Slaves were removed a considerable distance from their birthplace, thereby emphasizing their alien origin. The uprooting was as dramatic as the transport of Africans across the Indian Ocean through Sahara desert bundled together, some collapsing and dying on the way. For Islamic countries, religion was a means of categorizing slaves. Those recently acquired were not Muslims or were nominally not Muslims. For Europeans in the era of overseas expansions, slaves were perceived as racially distinct and even more clearly defined as outsiders.
Slaves were fundamentally tied to labor. They were to perform any task in the economy, from the most dangerous menial and laborious tasks assigned to them by their masters. They were speaking instruments of work and coercion was used to force compliance with particular orders. Sugarcane Plantations were established to supply the Europeans with sugar, consequently the captives were to supply the required labor. They were employed in the construction of public works including irrigations schemes. There were also artisans who escaped the manual labor.
Slaves did not have the right to their own sexuality and by extension their reproductive capacities. Women and men too were treated as sexual objects. The ability to marry would be closely administered and men on the extreme could be castrated. They could not engage in sexual acts without the master’s consent. When slaves could be allowed to have children, biologically they owned them but legally they belonged to their masters. Slave children could be taken away and sold, trained for army or adopted by the master's family. Slave population had to be replenished because of the short lifespan as a result of hash work conditions, tropical diseases ,unsuccessful castration and travel conditions destined for distant markets also took toll. Another demographic imbalance resulted from fewer women slaves compared to men.
Europeans could not enslave each other and had no military capacity to enslave Muslims. They turned their heads to Africans as they needed labor for commercial agriculture on the islands and also conduct mining operations .This led to high levels of prejudice against blacks during and after slavery. Eric Williams in his book, Capitalism and Slavery (1944),argues that slavery causes racism ,but economic motives, not racial impulses caused slavery. Capitalism caused importation of larger number of Africans to be held in bondage of which their labor was the cheapest form available. In the contemporary society, whites are superior to any other group of people. Subjugated people are portrayed as inferior. Africans became associated with slavery, savagery, paganism, immorality, primitiveness an...