It is not allowing me to comment of any posts.
I also believe that the likening of African Americans to livestock or
property was a way in whites attempted to make themselves less morally
responsible for the mistreatment and abuse of slaves. However, I believe whites
had other intentions for categorizing slaves as less than human. They wanted to
make it evident that these beings that inhabited their plantations were a part
of the machine that exported the most cotton the fastest. Slave owners felt the
need to show the slaves that they were replaceable if they did not meet the
standards of work the owner wanted to uphold. Slaves were the only workers on
those plantations, while you may see some cattle here or there. It is not like
previous times where oxen were pulling wagons carrying crops, these slaves did
everything. In my opinion, they in some ways were the cattle’s replacement; a
superior replacement but slave owners found a new population they could
dominate over. Just like the Jim Crow laws, the white southerners wanted to subliminally
make the ranking in the social caste system clear. Implementation of the notion
that slaves were less than human was a way to further submit African Americans
to a level that whites hoped they could never come up from. Everything whites
did to their slaves had a purpose. Using various explanations for slavery it
appears that southerners were trying to ‘save face’ and make it appear they
were naïve to the humanity of African Americans. I do disagree with your statement
that whites believed their slaves deserved rights. If that was the case, why
would they have tried so hard to dehumanize and submit the entire race? They
did not value them as humans they valued them as their means for income; they treasured
the money and image these men and woman created for them. To white southerners
they were never people, they were property which supplied them with income. Without
this property, they would not have the money or the image that kept them in
business.
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