Degrading Human Dignity

The United States of America stands for many great things and has many powerful symbols. One of the most important symbols our country represents is freedom. Every man and woman has the right to be free, and all humans should be treated the same, no matter what ethnicity or race. However, in the early 19th century, it was not always like this, and the states were put to the test when slavery was entrenched in economic society. Many Americans held slaves and nobody ever thought it was a bad thing. Slavery is degrading and puts many men and women in terrible conditions. Slavery was brought into America for many reasons, and it was not likely to change for a long time. Many slaves who were brought over from Africa were economical benefits for the slave owners. They were cheap labor, and did a lot of hard work. After slaves were examined, they were arranged to be sold. Someone would purchase the slave and keep him or her for their own benefits. Society craved slavery for many years during the early 19th century, and if something bad were to happen to a slave, it would be a big financial hit to the owner. One example is Prince Rahman, who was the son of the King of Futa Jallon. His owner, Thomas Foster, hated to see Prince Rahman run away because it was such a financial hit for him. This shows that slavery was a big deal at this time and was most likely not going to change for a while. Another thing that happened with Prince Rahman, and many other slaves, was taking leadership roles. Many of these slaves would train others and oversee them, which helped the owners out a lot. All these things that came from slavery were reasons as to why it became entrenched in society during the early 19th century.

Although slavery seemed like a good thing in the eyes of the owners, it was still a terrible thing to do to humans. All humans deserve rights and should be treated equally. Slaves would be beaten and treated poorly if work was not done to the owners demand. It is a degrading thing for any human, and since it was based off of race it was even more degrading for the African men who were enslaved. Africans would be shipped in a slave ship and put below deck, where many people were crammed and nobody noticed if someone died. The African men would be put to work and all the white men would torment them. This is degrading towards the Africans because it shows white men are more powerful than colored men, and it is just because of skin color. The African men are just as much humans as the white men are, so there should be no reason as to why the white men had more power of the people who they enslaved. Clearly, this was not a fair and something had to be done. However slavery lasted many years until is was abolished, and throughout the entire time it was degrading and affected human dignity the whole time.

A system of slavery based on race ignores many aspects of how life should be. All hard work done on the plantations and fields was done by the slaves, no matter how skilled they were at it. If one was not skilled at the job and did not do it well enough, they were most likely beaten. This was not fair and showed that the owners did not care about their slaves at all. If a white man was more skilled than a slave, he would still make the slave do the work. One thing that was interesting was that slave owners claimed that the slaves would rather be enslaved, than be free. Nothing can be assumed though because most, if not all men, would rather be free to live their own lives than having to be told what to do all the time. A system of slavery based on race effects human dignity in the eyes off the country as a whole, and the men and women who are being enslaved. There is a lot of hypocrisy involved in a situation like this because America claims to be a free country, yet they enslave so many men. This is degrading towards the men being enslaved and country because it is full of hypocritical people.

This Image here is the cover of the PBS film, "Prince Among Slaves" which is a documentary about Prince Rahman and his voyage to America as a slave. The video shows in great detail about how Prince Rahman became a slave, and then eventually went on to bigger and better things later on in his life.