Day 254: Comments on Slavery

I watched this documentary about slavery on YouTube called Unchained Memories.  It's a fascinating film and really made me think.

     First of all, I'd like to say how impressed I am with the enitre documentary.  I had to watch the whole program because it was so fascinating.  I loved the idea that actors and actresses were making these stories come alive through reading them aloud.  Their narrations of the stories were colorfully enjoyable, and the pictures and music that were included greatly aided me being able to visualize the stories.
     With the wide range of stories, you really got a sense of the type of lifestyle the slaves led.  I think the biggest thing that kept going through my head was how brutal the slave owners actually were.  I certainly knew that slaves were treated cruelly, but the picture becomes much darker when you hear about all these different examples, some of which probably aren't repeated in other sources.  For example, some slaves were stripped naked to be whipped, pinned to the ground, and have salt rubbed in wounds afterwards.  Viscious!  A master would order one slave to shoot another one, probaby his friend.  The women could be just as cold-hearted as the men.  One former slave had stated she had to knit far into the night and would be punished severely if she fell asleep, so she often slept standing because she had been trying to stay awake.
     Some of those stories sounded so mean, that one human could do such things to another human being, that they don't seem real.  For example, I was watching an old movie once where it showed a little boy strapped over a table and swinging back and forth to fan those below, a human ceiling fan!  Then he was whipped for falling asleep.  It seemed too bizarre to be true, but that same situation was relayed in the documentary.
     Another thing I wanted to point out was the fact that slave owners brought slave children into their house to be playmates for their kids.  I almost find that contradictory.  Blacks were viewed as inferior and treated like animals, but they were good enough to be associated with their children?  They would allow their children to be influenced by blacks?  Some could even be in photos like another family member?  That didn't seem right.  Granted, I'm sure some of the children were brainwashed into acting superior over the slave children.
     Through watching the documentary and reading Frederick Douglass' book, I was given insight as to why some of the slave holders were so cruel.  It wasn't simply to keep slaves from running or maintaining white supremacy.  They saw that "knowledge was power," and if the slaves knew how good freedom was, they would have tried to escape much sooner.  That's why one person said you were sold if you were caught with a book, which at first sounded like an extreme punishment.  Owners impressed Christianity onto their slaves in order to keep them obedient.  They manipulated the humble acts of a Christian (obeying authority, love others, etc.) to further their own purposes.  They raped the women to prove their authority and undermine the family.  They forbade slaves from having funeral services to sever ties from their true culture and community.  All of these acts are sneaky, manipulatove, and scarily effective.  I'm suprised they got away with treating slaves that way for so long.