The Dehumanizing Effects of Slavery

Slavery was an institution that advanced the industry of American society, however it retracted the character of an American person. No matter what the race, slavery had an impact on the overall character of an individual. I feel that this impact in many, if not all, cases was exhibited in a negative fashion. For the African Americans, slavery reduced them into property and products by dehumanizing them from their ability to be considered actual people. Then for the European Americans, slavery instilled a sense of dehumanizing dominion over other human beings and manifested itself through restrictions, laws, and hatred. Therefore, slavery had a significantly negative effect on the individual character of a human being in America, no matter the skin color they embodied.

The dehumanizing nature of slavery is found in Walter Johnson’s book Soul By Soul. Evidence for these characteristics are exemplified in the follow excerpt from Johnson’s chapter entitled “Turning People into Products”:

Value in the slave market emerged out of the play of similarity with difference,

the choice of one slave from among many similar slaves made a sale. To sell a

slave, the traders had to peel back their own representations of commodified

similarity and slip beneath them a suggestion of personal distinction that would

make one slave stand out to a buyer who was trying to distinguish himself from

all of the other buys in the market. The traders had to make a pitch. In the slave

pens, the traders pitched their slaves by telling storied that seemed to

individualize and even humanize the depersonalized slaves. They breathed the

life of the market into the bodies, histories, and identities of the people they were

trying to sell, by using a simulacrum of human singularity to do the work of

product differentiation (pg 124)

This example embodies both the representation of the African Americans character being defaced and dehumanized by portraying them as products, as well as shows the grotesque character of the slave trader and slave owners’ desire to sell and buy a human being.

My goal in presenting this example is to purely point out that both races are depicted as dehumanized in their character. In this example, the slave is represented as an animal being kept in a pen, for sale with a price, and on display for all to observe. This slave market event is a clear example of the African American man and women being stripped of their dignity and sold as a product. The European American is found as the enforcer of this industry and the consumer of the product. The action of buying and selling other individuals is seen in today’s light as a significantly grotesque blemish in the European American character. I feel that the wounds and struggles that are a result of these dehumanized characters still reside in American culture today.