Although i agree with Marinna that slaves were crucial to the development of New York and a lot of America, I find it such a shame that this was so. As I was reading all of the articles, I found myself forgetting that the slaves were actually real human beings. The way in which the authors simply described the laborers as “slaves” made it easier to imagine them as a piece of property which could be bought and sold. This is disturbing to me, because this was the mindset of most early Americans.
So even though America might not be what it is today if it weren’t for slaves, it also wouldn’t have attached all of the negative connotations associated with “black”. As the last reading stated, even after slavery was abolished, blacks still had to fight to be seen as one of the Americans or New Yorkers. People associated the color of their skin with derogatory terms and evil doings. They would compare someone who had committed a lot of sins as having “skin as black as a Negro”. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for those just trying to fit in.
Before reading these articles, I had always thought that New York was one of the colonies least associated with the slave trade, so I was very shocked to find out that it was in fact one of the largest ports for it! Although we were one of the earliest colonies to abolish slavery, nothing can justify our means in putting all of the innocent people to work and giving them such cruel punishments for disobeying silly rules.
