December 3

Blog #68 – Dehumanization of slavery

Dehumanization and slavery have gone hand in hand ever since slavery had been invented.  Using Frederick Douglass’ autobiography was done to show you how horrible slavery can be and also to settle any questions that racist white people had back then who didn’t believe that he could have been a slave (because he was so smart and eloquent).

One of the first ways that dehumanization occurred must begin with the constant rape and physical abuse of female slaves.  Frederick’s father was white, most like his mother’s slave master, and surely not a willing participant.  The creation of many mixed children was more common than Southerners would like to admit.  Women were used for men’s pleasure, little else.  Afterwards, Frederick was separated from his mother and raised by an elderly woman, much like animals are weaned from their mothers when they are young.  His mother had to sneak away in the middle of the night to come and visit her son.

Frederick also describes vividly how the slaves were fed: “It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied” (Douglass 12)  Douglass intentionally used the word “pigs” and “trough” to give you an amazingly vivid image of children fighting over their food like animals.  Slaves didn’t need utensils.  And when the slave owners don’t see their slaves as human, it becomes easier to treat them in a violent manner  (like kicking a dog or much worse).

After Frederick tried to escape and was caught, he was thrown in jail.  “Douglass portrays the slave traders and agents for slave traders as men auctioning for cattle instead of human beings. The slave traders and agents for slave traders at no point stop to think what they are doing is wrong, instead it is business as usual and they are eager to acquire misbehaved slaves at steep discounts, much the same as farmers will bid pennies on the dollar for underweight farm animals.”  In this instance, slaves were a commodity, something to be bought or sold, instead of human beings who have thoughts, emotions, and feelings.

Lastly, the dehumanization crosses the color line to affect the white owners like Mrs. Auld.  Though she started out as a kindly owner with the best of intentions “she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery” (Douglass 14).   Mrs. Auld accepted Frederick as a human being first, teaching him his most important skill (in retrospect b/c they helped him escape) of reading a few words.   She eventually turns cruel and mean as she is put in charge of slaves and is dehumanized herself.

My question for you:

Does slavery bring on the dehumanization of a person or do you need to dehumanize a person in order to enslave them?  Yes, this does sound a lot like the slavery / racism question we discussed back in first tri, and in some ways, dehumanizing =racism, but dig deeper and comment on how the dehumanization boomerangs back on the slave owners and envelops them as well.  By dehumanizing others, we do it to ourselves.  Why?

200 words.  Due Monday, Dec. 8 by class. 

 

Sources:

http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/greatworks540spring2013/2013/03/19/frederick-douglass-and-the-dehumanization-of-slavery/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick_Douglass,_an_American_Slave#Publication_history

 

Tags: , ,

Posted December 3, 2014 by geoffwickersham in category Blogs

72 thoughts on “Blog #68 – Dehumanization of slavery

  1. Eric "Leviathan"

    Slavery causes dehumanization, and you don’t necessarily need to dehumanize to enslave, sometimes it is the act of being enslaved or enslaving that causes people to become treated as animals or act inhumane, dehumanized. i once heard of this Harvard psychology study where people had a prison scenario. People volunteered to be either a prisoner or a warden. The wardens could have the prisoners do whatever. At first the wardens were kind to the prisoners, but the longer the study went on, the worse the volunteered prisoners were treated. It continued until the prisoners had to alert the people conducting the study and gathering data that the project had to stop. The power that comes with having complete control over someone makes it so that people no longer see them as a person but a something that exists to control rather than someone to care about. For obvious reasons the enslaved are dehumanized, people don’t see them as human due to their enslaved status. The Harvard study seems too similar to the description Frederick Douglass gave the change in nature of Mrs. Auld. At first she was kind to Douglass, but she became stricter and stricter, and crueler, and crueler. Unfortunately, Douglass didn’t have the luxury to simply stop being enslaved like those in the study.

  2. Skyeler McQ

    Skyeler McQueen
    APUSH B
    Wickersham
    December 6th, 2015
    Blog #68
    The process of slavery was detrimental to everyone involved. In order to successfully enslave a person, dehumanization must first occur. This applies to both the slave and the slave owner. For slavery to occur successfully, the slave owner must lose their humanity. Slavers beat, sexual abuse, starve, and subject their slaves to backbreaking labor. If they had any humanity at all, these slave owners could not have abused their slaves in such ways. They truly had to think of them as property, not as people. If slavers remembered that their slaves were human beings, guilt (perhaps stemmed from their deeply religious nature) would have prevented some of the horrors that happened. Therefore, the slave owners must dehumanize themselves. Slaves must be dehumanized if they are to be successfully enslaved. Human nature requires that you fight back when enslaved, that you don’t quietly accept torture and sexual abuse, that you yearn for freedom. The slaves were not allowed to do any of these things. How could they, not only as slaves but also as people, bear to live while being oppressed to such a degree? For slaves to be oppressed and carry out their lives in bondage, they have to give up their human nature, their humanity, to survive. Seeing those people lose this then causes their owners to dehumanize themselves for causing that pain. It’s a vicious cycle that ends badly for all parties involved. Slavers and slaves dehumanize themselves because they lack the ability to handle the horrors of slavery that occurred around them.

  3. Cassie D

    Slavery was one of the most influential processes in history. I believe that everyone involved in the process of slavery was affected and dehumanized. In terms of the slave, you would have to be dehumanized to be successful as a slave. Naturally you fight back when attempted to be controlled, you don’t accept torture or beatings, and you want freedom when you feel chained down. A slave was allowed to do none of these actions and have none of these feelings. As a slave you weren’t allowed to use your natural instincts or feel your natural emotions. You would be required to act as if you weren’t human at all if you wanted to live; dehumanization. For the process of slavery to function successfully the slave owners would also be required to become dehumanized. Slave owners often beat, raped, starved, and emotionally abused their slaves. Human nature doesn’t allow you to do these actions and feel no sense of guilt about them. The slave owners would have to be dehumanized to subject their slaves to these actions. Slave owners had to think of their slaves as property rather than human beings. For slaves and slave holders dehumanization was a required process to accept the horrors that surround them due to slavery.

  4. Samantha Z

    Although I think both statements are true, recalling the specific examples in the book, I feel the trend “slavery brings on the dehumanization of a person” is more accurate (in more ways than one). You can enslave someone without having to dehumanize them, but, dehumanization almost always comes shortly after the enslavement of a person. In order for slave-owners to justify the slavery to themselves (and others) and to keep slaves naive and oppressed, they have to think of the slaves as less than human (aka animals and/or property). In the book, Douglass often talks about severe punishments for slaves trying to become educated. Taking away even the basic human right of knowledge not only made slaves feel unequal, but kept them from being aware of what goes on in the outside world (so they feel as if there is nothing else out there except slavery). Douglass’ experiences with Sophia Auld are perfect examples of how slavery dehumanizes not only the slave, but also the slave owner. Douglass describes her as a very kind woman when he was first a slave to her. She taught Douglass the alphabet, him being her first slave. After a quick lecture from her husband on how slaves have to be treated only as servants and are illegal to educate, she turned sour. She progressively became meaner and meaner and forbade him to learn anymore (he did anyways). The way Master Auld spoke about salves to his wife (using racial slurs I might add) not only showed his (previously existing) dehumanizing thoughts toward slaves, but also the development of Mrs. Auld’s as well. That trend is very easy to see (dehumanization of slave by owner), and I’ve mentioned it a few times before in this response. However, something else I found out is in dehumanizing slaves, the slave-owners themselves are dehumanized. They morph from normal, caring people into something equivalent to monsters, blind to morality. When you see yourself as better than someone (much more a whole race of people) it is really you that is no longer human. At that point you are more of a beast than those you accuse of such, especially to the “property” that you “own”. The poison of the slavery system seeped into and dehumanized almost everyone involved in one way or another.

  5. Cooper D

    I believe that slavery brings on the dehumanization of a person in many bold, and profound ways. One of these such ways is that once you are captured as a slave and put through the trials of slavery you start to not even thing of yourself as a person anymore. The act of enslavement is also a problem because to have the mindset that slavery is good, you have to look down on people as less than people which you should never do. And by dehumanizing slavery we are also dehumanizing ourselves because of the unspeakable things the people did to slaves who they felt were less than human. As a result of this slavery became more and more cruel because young white people were being exposed to the horrors in their childhood so by the time they grew up and inherited slaves, they could inflict even more damage to the slaves. The progression of this just makes people even more likely to dehumanize slavery and slave labor in general. As a side effect of this the South is more likely to want to continue slavery because they don’t see any flaws with it. The South by dehumanizing slavery also results is use of the bible to rationalize slavery, other holy books and widely taught things were used in this manner. Finally, in the end I believe that the South woke up and realized that slavery was terrible and should be ended once and for all.

  6. Parker T.

    Slavery affected everyone involved. The act of enslaving a person brought on dehumanization, not only to the slave, but also to the slave owner. For slavery to be successful, the slave owner must dehumanize themselves so that they do not feel the guilt that they may have felt when they treated slaves the way they did. Slave owners beat, starved, sexually abused, and made slaves’ lives absolutely miserable which did not only dehumanize the slave, but also caused the owner to treat their slaves strictly as property and not as an actual human being. Once slave owners started to think of their slaves as nothing more than a source of income, it became easier for them to treat slaves with the brutality that they did. Slaves had to become dehumanized as well. Any person, no matter what, can live with being enslaved. In order for slaves to give up their lives to slavery, they had to let go of their hopes of freedom and any mortality that they had. Slave owners became dehumanized by simply watching slaves go through this process of giving up their life. Throughout this course of dehumanization, both slave owners and slaves themselves tend to shatter their sense of humanity. The dehumanization of both sides never ends positively.

  7. Shannon Smith

    Even though I agree with both of the above statements in which it could go either way; I think that in order to enslave a person you must dehumanize them first. In cases such as the Middle Passage, captured Africans were forced to go through physical, mental, and emotional trauma on the very continent where they were taken. The dehumanizing effect happens before the chains of bondage or even the realization that they were to be slaves was put upon them. Before they are captured, these people had dignity and a sense of identity for themselves. They have their own beliefs and cultural identity which is robbed away from them as they go through a number of abuses from the white man where they no longer have a sense of being a human being. They feel as they have been reduced to a mental, physical, and emotional state where they are animals which must therefore justify cruelty of slavery itself. Even when they are slaves on American soil, there must be a constant dehumanizing effect which must occur in order to successfully keep them at a naïve state of mind and to produce a profit. Also, I think that dehumanizing others has an effect on the slavers. The slavers must think of the slaves as nothing but property or discard them like animals in order to inflict abuse upon those subjects. If they were to think of the slaves as human beings, that would give the slavers a since of guilt where they would not be able to be successful in enslavement and to produce a profit for the next harvest. Their minds would have to become to the point where they would allow themselves to afflict such harm on other human beings and where it would become normal to them. The slavers, therefore, dehumanize themselves by inflicting pain and abuse on others because of what there mindset would turn into. Both groups in turn, would go through a dehumanizing effect in order to cope and deal with enslavement of themselves and others.

  8. Max C

    When we discuss dehumanization of slaves and slave owners and if slaves dehumanized slave owners or slave owners dehumanized slaves, I believe it goes both ways. To make yourself “dominate” over another human you need to have some kind of edge and to slave owners they used pain and power to show the slaves who was “in charge”. When Americans, the British, and Europeans went into Western Africa to trap Africans they used weapons such as guns and ropes to try and assert their dominance. This caused a dehumanization of slaves because it showed other Americans, and Europeans that they could use a simple gun to be better than an African. This “privilege” also caused laid-back slave owners to dehumanize. There’s a famous saying “If you give someone an inch, they’ll take it a mile” and I think this is what slave owners did. Husbands, slave traders, even sometimes wives brought in slaves to their home where it was sort of foreign to the owners of the house. They were introduced to the idea of owning a human being and because you gave them this license to have this opportunity, they were opened to a new way of life. This granted them the chance to become dehumanized because of slavery. So overall, to enslave someone you need to dehumanize him or her, but you yourself can get dehumanized by owning a slave.

  9. alex ross

    I think that you need to dehumanize someone in order to enslave them. If you think about it, if you view the people you are enslaving as inferior people, you end up convincing yourself that is okay to own them and sexually abuse them and treat them like animals because that is really all they are to you, animals. And when you convince yourself that the people you are doing this to are lower than you, that can make it “justified” and you can do whatever you want to them. The slave-owners would probably never enslave their fellow white people, because they are also “civilized” humans like yourself. I also believe that by dehumanizing another person, it makes the slave-owner dehumanized. For example, the slave-owners are for the most part Christian, and adultery are strictly forbidden in the bible. However, since they believe slaves are less than human, it is okay to sexually abuse them, making the slave-owner the one who is “less than human”. Slavery destroyed the moral fiber of the southern society. It made previously unthinkable sins a daily occurrence. But because the slave-owners were able to twist their minds to make themselves believe that slaves were inferior people, it therefore justified it for them and made it so they could corrupt their society without even realizing it.

  10. Tim B

    Slavery brings about the dehumanization of slaves. At first, slavery may have needed to fit a specific economic need. As the slavers enslaved people, they needed a way to justify their actions, so they started to say that the people that they had abducted and enslaved were intellectually inferior but physically superior, creating an illusion that they were specifically designed to be slaves. This repetition of fallacy lead to people beginning to imply that it was a given and challenging it would go against common sense. Not only did this allow non-slave owning citizens to be perfectly fine with this, but it also enabled the overseers and owners to be cruel to their slaves and think nothing of it until the immense amount of beatings, whippings, and rapes become habitual events that is enjoyed by the masters and overseers. By bringing about the dehumanization of slaves, people comfortable with these processes further revealed the dehumanization of themselves. To dehumanize slaves in the eye of the public would also allow for more severe laws and policies to be created against the slave community that even further caused their perceived humanity to shrink. Still there are lingering effects of this today as race is a very large problem in America. Albeit not quite as large as the problems from 150 years ago, but still a lingering problem that no one seems to want to deal with.

  11. Ellie Chapman

    I believe the statement “enslaving leads to the dehumanization of a person,” is more accurate than the statement that a person has to the dehumanized in order to be enslaved. People can be enslaved with out being dehumanized, but it is almost guaranteed that after they are enslaved, they soon will be dehumanized. Not only after enslavement does the slave owner begin to look at the slave as less of a person, but commonly, the slaves looked at themselves as less than a human. In order for a slave owner to profit from their slaves, they must dehumanize the slaves that they owned. Slave owners sexually and mentally abused, whipped, and starved their slaves in order to profit from them. After the slave owner sees his slaves as property, opposed to a human being, it is easier to treat slaves as nothing more than a source of income. Not only does the slave become dehumanized in the process of slavery, but the slave owner can also become dehumanized. Slave owners began to see themselves as more powerful knowing that they had power over their slaves just because of their skin color, they began to think that just because they had the whip in hand, they were better than the slaves.

  12. Jack G

    I 100% agree that slavery dehumanized both the
    slave and the slave owner. As odd as it sounds the slave owner was dehumanized on a great scale because of the terrible and beast like things they did to their slaves. In order for the slave owners and the overseers to do such terrible things to their slaves they need to literally dehumanize themselves in order to do the extremely bad things to the slaves. The act of dehumanization goes both ways, while the slave is becoming dehumanized by being treated like an animal by the owner, the slave is kind of indirectly dehumanizing the owner. The slave is dehumanizing the owner because the owner is putting himself in a place where he needs to have the higher ground or the “edge” over the slave so the owners needed to show dominance through violence, “breaking” of their culture, and cruel and unusual punishment which is basically the act of dehumanizing themselves. In some ways dehumanization is racist because they are treating people differently because the color of their skin. So, I ask a question, would slavery have existed if Africans had white skin?

  13. Grace Sleder

    Slavery causes dehumanization, effecting both masters and their slaves. Slaves were not considered people, they were property which their masters ruled over like animals. Slavery caused incoming slaves to be dehumanized in order to get the most work out of them. To break slaves, slaves were separated from their families, beaten, were taught to be paranoid and other horrible methods were resorted to. The act of owning people changes and dehumanizes a person. “My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door, – a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never a slave under her control previously to myself… That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon”(Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, 19). As a slave, Frederick Douglass witnessed how owning people caused dehumanization especially through one of his female masters. This woman completely changed when she was given Frederick to work for her, even the “kind” people lost their humanity while drunk on the power of owning human beings. Slave owners would feed on the emotions they took from their slaves, masters would dehumanize their slaves to work them harder. Slave owners would whip their slaves and sexually assault them for twisted personal gain as well as to make them slaves feel inhuman.

  14. Miriam Goldstein

    A group of people needs to dehumanize another in order for any form of systematic oppression to take place.. In the case of slaves like Frederick Douglass, their whole race had been dehumanized. Occasionally, there were people who viewed individual slaves as people, like Mrs. Auld, but soon enough they had the humanity squeezed out of them by the power they held over slaves. Eventually, not just the slaves were dehumanized but the enslavers were as well. In situations of oppression, when one group is oppressed, they dehumanize their oppressors and most of the time, so does history. Most of the time, history represents people who owned slaves as caricatures of cruelty, which does not give an accurate representation of them. I am not saying that these people weren’t wrong in what they were doing, only that a caricature does not properly represent any group of people. Take Scarlett O’Hara, from Gone With the Wind for example. She owns slaves. She is not what I consider a good person, but not just because she owns slaves. She’s narcissistic and selfish and just kind of mean. A person who owns slaves can be awful, but that awfulness can be unrelated to them owning slaves.

  15. Daniel Anderson

    I believe that dehumanization is the human mind’s coping mechanism for slavery, thus slavery can exist before dehumanization occurs. When you look upon another human and see them in a state of misery brought on by the denial of their rights to personal liberty, you have to take pity on them and feel as though you must help them to regain the freedom that has been taken from them. This means that in order to keep a slave and not have any of these emotions, the slave must be viewed by the slave master as a “something “and not a “someone”. Whether this is done on a conscious on subconscious level, the results are the same. The slave master will inevitably view their slaves as nothing more than a good to be bought and sold. All this separation in the mind of the slave holder is necessary in order for them to be able to live with the act of merely holding a slave. This process of dehumanizing the slaves also dehumanized the slave holders, maybe even more so than the slaves themselves. By creating an artificial mental and emotional barrier towards other human beings, the slave holders become less human. They lose, at least in part, their ability to sympathize with others and gain both a taste for power and a compulsive desire for control over others. Slavery turns what could’ve been the purest of souls into the some of the most wicked and vile creatures to ever walk on the face of the Earth. One such example is Mrs. Auld who, as Douglass describes, underwent a transformation from an angel into a demon. It is for these reasons that slavery can exist only when the men who hold slaves are no longer men themselves.

  16. Allison Lammers

    I believe that the dehumanization of a slave and the owner had to take place before the slave was owned. But it also took place in the duration of time that a person owned a slave. Owners had to have a certain mindset that made them not think of slaves as a real person so that they didn’t have any emotional attachment or feelings of guilt and remorse for what they were doing to the slaves. The first thing that made the slaves dehumanized was the fact that their identity was basically stripped when they often changed their name and made them go by a more basic less unique title so they didn’t feel special or like themselves in any way. Another example that I found that was from Frederick Douglas’s story was the fact that children were often taken away from their mothers and sold to other owners at a young age. Much like animals are taken from their moms and sold away a young age as well. This shows how they treated slaves not even like real people but animals. The owners respect for them was so low; which was shown by how much they beat them, and sexually and verbally abused many of them. Overall slaves were physically and mentally broken down in this process and every day were becoming increasingly dehumanized as well as many of the owners themselves.

  17. Zach H

    To me, it seems like dehumanization and slavery are so closely related in this case that they cannot be separated, and one cannot be called a cause for the other. On the one hand, slavery most definitely led to the dehumanization of those who were forced to endure it, that fact goes without saying. What with the way slaves are treated on plantations, as well as the way that they were acquired by slave owners, dehumanization was a focal point of the entire institution, regardless of whether the slave owners would admit it or were even aware of it. Yet on the other hand, dehumanization is virtually a necessity in order to own slaves. A slave owner had to dehumanize the slaves in their mind in order to blind themselves to the horrors that they were committing on a daily basis. Perhaps that is a very Northern, idealistic viewpoint, the viewpoint that slave owners had to pull the wool over their eyes in order to do what they did, and perhaps it is incorrect, but at the same time it is a much less revolting viewpoint than the alternatives. But regardless of whether slavery resulted in dehumanization or if dehumanization resulted in slavery, dehumanization was a double-edged sword. The slave owners were themselves dehumanized by the institution, yet in a vastly different way than their slaves were. While they were not beaten, or raped, or treated like animals any more than other white men at the time, they were looked upon differently by those individuals who did not own slaves. Particularly after works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought the South notoriety for the horrors of slavery, slave owners were viewed as cruel, brutal taskmasters with little regard to the wellness of their “property”. To me, that sounds the slave owners walked the line between human and beast, and I would not be surprised if more than a few had crossed that line.

  18. Olivier Rochaix

    A group of people must first be dehumanized in order to truly enslave them. This is because dehumanization is, sadly, an important selling point of slavery. There are very few people who want to feel “rotten” or “evil”, so they delude themselves into believing that it is well within their rights to enslave them. Not only do the oppressors use dehumanization to justify slavery, but they also raise their image. A slavers mindset is often depicted as them believing them better than the enslaved, as well as the slave being a lower life form. When dehumanizing others, we do it to ourselves in a way that we become monsters in the eyes of others and gods in our own eyes. The stark contrast in how people dehumanize themselves and how they do it to others, is really the reason why the slaves’ treatment was so cruel. Dehumanization also gave justification to the horrendous actions performed by slave holders. A common excuse for the beating of slaves was that since they weren’t intelligent enough to understand a scolding, they had to be beaten like animals. Dehumanization is why people were capable of living with themselves in the age of slavery.

  19. Vickie L

    The dehumanization of a person can’t be simply brought on by the idea of slavery; it is the people’s actions and response to slavery that causes the dehumanization of a person. Because slavery existed, people were more influenced and encouraged to bring about the dehumanization of a person in order to enslave them. The dehumanization of slaves by slave owners also makes the slave owners dehumanized because it is an inhuman act done by a person who once had the chance to have qualities of being a morally and compassionate human. You do need to dehumanize a person in order to enslave them because to enslave a person is to take away their rights to freedom and choice, which are human qualities that will give a person the title “human”. In Fredrick Douglass’s narrative, Mrs. Auld was introduced as a good-spirited, kind, compassionate, and generous women who saw Douglass as an equal human being. However, Mrs. Auld changes her personality drastically after being scolded by her husband that Douglass not one of them and should be limited to his intelligence and should only have enough to carry out their orders. Mrs. Auld’s reaction to her husband’s words was the cruel and not respectful treatment of Douglass. Mrs. Auld is an example of a person who changed because of influence from society’s reality of slavery and by possibly her fear of the harm a slave can do to her family. She saw her change as the “right” change for herself. Mrs. Auld saw Douglass as a kind person but didn’t want to accept that he had a different status in their society until she was told off by her spouse. Surroundings change us every day in every way. Everyone human being in this world have similarities and differences, why should the color of a person decide their status in life? It is wrong to beat someone white then and now and it is wrong to harass some white then and now, but blacks were an exception because people saw wealth could be easily earned by cheap labor done by slaves. Our greed and quick judgment of others can get to the best of us. Everyone wants the easy way out, that’s why we have shortcuts. People saw slavery as a shortcut to quick wealth. By having cheap labor, they become richer and this quick wealth brings more greed and this greed can make them inhuman or dehumanized unless they were to change their ways. They knew how it would feel to be treated the same way they were treating their slaves, but because of society’s acceptance of slavery, they saw it as a double lottery that would feed their greed. This is why people who dehumanize others, dehumanize themselves. As you take away another person’s human qualities, you are taking away your own.

  20. Paige B

    Slavery was injurious to all who owned or was involved with slaves. To make someone a slave you would have to degrade them before they could ever be your slave. The rule that you have to brutalize someone before you could enslave them also could be the same for the owners. If the slave owner where keep their humanity they would realize how wrong it would be to keep slaves. All slaves are beat (for no reason), sexually abused, and starved. Many slaves’ owners found it cheaper to kill their slaves of starvation and get new ones then theirs. If any of the slave owners had mortality they would not have beat, abused, or starve the slaves that they owned. The slave owners thought of slaves as their property and nothing else. They showed no feeling toward their slaves. The slave owners must dehumanize themselves and make the slaves dehumanize themselves. Many slaves fought back when enslaved to keep their freedom, so they don’t have to accept torture and sexual abuse. For slaves to be burdened, they are made to give up their civilization, to survive. Seeing people lose their civilization causes their owners to dehumanize because they were because the unbearable pain the slaves went throw day to day. Slave owners and slaves both are made to desensitize themselves because they are unable to control the horrible things that are caused by slavery.

  21. Jacqueline H.

    In order to enslave any human dehumanization has to occur. It is not possible to treat anyone so terribly while thinking of him or her as a human. This dehumanization occurred in the very beginning when the triangle trade was still functioning. Slave traders would ship over slaves in these slave ships treating them worse than livestock. These people were not thought of as humans they were thought of as products; something they could buy and sell that would obtain a profit for them. So from the very beginning slaves were never thought of as people, and it just continued to get worse. Slave owners treating slaves heinously then led to the dehumanization of themselves. Need for power and dominance over slaves overwhelmed some slave owners and eventually led to them acting inhumane. For example, Fredrick Douglass’ owner in Baltimore who was initially not awful to Fredrick overtime became cruel and mean to him, for what seemed like no reason. Fredrick didn’t change his slave owner changed. Fredrick’s one master who was known to “break slaves” is another example of not only dehumanization of the slaves, but of the owners as well. This master prided himself on the fact that he could break a slaves spirit. No human being should ever act like that, and no human being should ever treat another human being in that way. Sadly this was a common occurrence at this time period. Slavery led to the dehumanization of every person involved in it.

  22. Joey D

    I think that dehumanization is the most natural step to deal with the enslavement process. Not that I sympathize at all with slavers or abusive slave owners, but the only way I feel a typical human being could cope with putting another human being through such torture is to dehumanize them, to tell yourself that they do not experience emotion like you do, or to think that this is the way ‘it’s meant to be’. Otherwise, one’s sympathy would take over and make it impossible to put the slave to work. Douglass tells about how slaves were seperated from their parents “before the child has reached its twelfth month,” (Douglass, 2). Without dehumanizing slaves and viewing them as nothing more than property, or viewing blacks as inherently fated to be put to slavery for the glory of white Americans, a slaver would surely imagine what it would be like to be seperated from their mothers, and be unable to go through with it. It is the dehumanization, that is, believing that blacks are bound to slavery and viewing it as part of the social order, which makes slavery possible for humans. This disconnection from the idea that black slaves have emotions is what makes it possible for white men to enslave and brutalize others without being crippled by guilt.

  23. Max Robinson

    Ever since humans roamed this earth, people have always hated what is different. This hatred is bread from the lack of knowledge about another race or culture. In other words people don’t like what’s different because they are scared of what’s different. In my opinion people can be dehumanized with or without slavery, however slavery constantly encourages dehumanization because the institution of slavery is based upon one man being better than another man because of skin tone. In a lot of cases slaves have been dehumanized before they were technically slaves like in the middles passage where thousands of men were stolen from their villages and thrown on a boat with terrible conditions. I think dehumanizing people is much easier then enslaving people. You can dehumanize someone with your words but to enslave someone you need to have resources, like the white men who came to Africa. In my view the only difference between a slave and a slaveholder is the slaveholder is the one with the weapons. Whether you are a slave or not is a matter of what you’re born into. Slavey also encourages dehumanization of not only the slaves but also the slaveholders. Owning slaves in the South is a constant reminder that people aren’t equal, therefore with slaves a man starts to develop a false bravado that dehumanizes him into something greater than he is

  24. Lexie Seidel

    During the time of slavery, it was one of the darkest and hardest times in America. There was constant fighting between North and South, Republicans and Democrats, and abolitionists and slave owners. I believe that to participate in slavery and enslave another human being, there needs to be some form of dehumanization. In the South, it was such a trend to have slaves, that some people didn’t need to dehumanize the newly bought slave, they just got them to say they had them or to do work that the new master didn’t want to do. In Frederick Douglass’s book, he talked about the mistress that taught him the alphabet. This woman seemed to think of Douglass as more than an uncivilized race, she seemed to think of him as more of a small child, not bright, but still human. Once the master found out what she was doing, he quickly halted it. After this, the mistress became more and more abusive, and Douglass wrote that she eventually became worse than the master. He wrote that he could be sweeping or walking to his next chore and she would hit him on the head, and start yelling at him to clean or walk faster. Therefore, slavery brings on the dehumanization of the race to the owner.

  25. Caty H

    In my opinion in order for slave holders to be able to good slave holders they felt they had to dehumanize slaves. I think that slave masters saw slaves as an inferior race which at the start was good enough for enslavement, but when slavery truly became a part of the south and they could see and hear the slaves screaming, dehumanization became more prominent, perhaps with an illogical rationalization about these individuals being more like animals. I think there was subconscious realization in the slave owners, that the slaves might be human. With that came guilt, so to make themselves feel better they degraded slaves and very soon after that the guilt was replaced by indifference and hate. Slavery at that point was a torture cycle, slaves had to endure mental, sexual, and physical abuse, and owners had had to deal with the emotional turmoil of treating slaves like property. Slavery made both races less than human only one was in chains while the other held a whip. Why did this ever happen, why does it still occur, what kind of human do you have to be to treat another human with such disdain? Perhaps people are afraid and that causes them to behave badly. It is indeed a vicious cycle that continues today.

  26. Amelia P

    Slavery is the cause and effect of many things. One of these being the dehumanization of slaves and slaveholders. I think the answer to this particular question about slavery is that slavery both brings dehumanization of a person and the dehumanization of a person to enslave another. Its not natural to treat a human being, just like yourself, like an animal. One must go against their natural instincts to do so. And, obviously, the person being treated like an animal will be dehumanized, and instead, feel like an animal. Of course, at this time period, whites were superior to blacks so it seemed slightly more normal to treat the blacks the way they did. However, as a result of the harsh treatment they inflicted on their slaves, they became less like humans and more like pack leaders, telling the rest of the animals what to do. Like I mentioned before, its not natural to treat someone who is basically the same as us differently than you would treat yourself. Its the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would want done to you. But we ignored that rule, as religious as people were at the time of slavery, and treated others as animals. It takes a certain will to go against your natural instincts and treat another human as a pig. It was this certain will that dehumanized the slaveholders, and resulted in dehumanizing the slaves.

  27. Jilly W

    I believe before you enslave a person you must dehumanize them because if you can get yourself to believe they are not human then enslaving a person is no different than having a horse pull your carriage or a cow plowing your crops. Slavery was probably the cruelest thing all throughout American History because not only did it go on for over a hundred years, but also the people were whipped and beaten, sometimes even killed because they did not do as they were told. Another reason it was so horribly cruel, was because it was not a few people letting it happen, it was an entire country. I believe that if you are as cruel to these people as the southerners were you would’ve either had to be a psychopath or have never seen the slaves as human. I do not think that it is statistically possible that a whole country could be psychopaths, therefore the slaves must have been seen as inhuman from the moment they were brought over. I believe that since the slave owners made the slaves seem less than human, and treated them as such, today we see the slave owners as less than human because they did not show sympathy for people thus now we see the southerners as monsters more than we see them as humans.

  28. Andrew Martin

    For slavery to be most effective think that the slaves would have to be dehumanized before their owners do. It is shown in children they just see slaves as another person and it’s their parents or spouse who teaches them to look at and start to dehumanize these people. Then in turn this dehumanizes the owners who begin to look at people who are the same species as them, as animals and can be treated as such. If owners didn’t dehumanize these people on such a large scale slavery would’ve been abolished much quicker and with less violence. Every person has some moral code and if they see slaves as people they might decide to give them rights and their freedoms. The phrase “all men are created equal” from the declaration of independence comes into play here. It is stating how every man should be treated equal and be given rights, but due to the dehumanization of slaves they cannot be seen as men or they would have to be given the rights other men are already receiving. Once the dehumanization of a race is engrained in a culture it is very hard to get it out. In Americas case it led to a civil war until slavery was finally abolished, but even then many southerners still dehumanized blacks and it took until the civil rights movements for the issue to finally start seeing a major upturn.

  29. Anna H.

    I believe that slavery brought on the dehumanization of a person, including both the slave and the slave owner. A slave is dehumanized by slavery because they are serving the master, and therefore are of lower class and worth. Since all slaves were black, all blacks were then seen as of less worth then whites. Slaves were shown as dehumanized in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by being fed mush, and all the slave children running over to the pot of mush to eat, and almost all the time leaving hungry. They were also dehumanized by female slaves being raped, being physically abused by their male owners, and having to have their babies. In his narrative, Frederick was seen as less because many people did not think he could read and write, because slaves were not seen as well educated people, but as filthy workers. The slave owner is also dehumanized, shown in Mrs. Auld throughout the years Frederick worked under her. She started out as a kind and caring person, and treated Frederick Douglass as almost an equal. Then Mr. Auld one day caught Mrs. Auld teaching Frederick how to read, and he got very bad. Mrs. Auld then for the rest of the time Frederick was with the family, was dehumanized. Becoming mean, cruel, and a very harsh slave owner from then on dehumanized Mrs. Auld.

  30. Olivia R

    Dehumanization is the grotesque product of enslaving another human being and it ensnares everyone involved, owner and slave alike. Human beings are not meant to be slaves to other human beings, and so when it does happen it begins to fester and poison those involved. Physically it is easy to enchain another human, yet the emotional action is harder. One would have to ignore all compassion and humanity to cause harm to another. In this a person becomes hardened and cruel. Taking a look at Mrs Auld, she began as a kind woman who loved, but in order to maintain a hold and power over Frederick Douglass, she had to ignore the goodness in her. Over time, she simply destroyed the goodheartedness she was born with and thus her spirit was fully dehumanized as a result of slavery. Slaves themselves were dehumanized by the gruesome oppression and abused they faced. Treated as property, their sense of worth as a person was constantly crushed and it took its toll on them. By dehumanizing others we dehumanize ourselves because we shatter our abilities to feel compassion in an attempt to forget that others deserve to be treated the same way we do. Everyone, white or black, slave or free, felt the violent and inhumane effects of slavery regardless of who they were. By keeping people oppressed and second-class we destroyed slaves’ humanity along with our own.

  31. Jayde A

    For slavery to occur the people being enslaved must be dehumanized. There are two reasons for this; the first being to keep the enslaved people under the enslavers control and the second is for the enslavers to justify their actions against and horrible treatment of slaves. To keep full control and stop slaves from rioting the slave holders would use dehumanization as a weapon to dismantle their slaves feelings of self worth and keep them as submissive as possible. For example when white preachers would give sermons to slaves they would focus heavily on the value of obedience and how that was how disobeying their master was to disobey god. As a practice slavery must be widespread enough to be a social norm or else slave holders would just be considered criminals. Therefore slave holders must believe they hold the moral high ground and to do so they have to dehumanize slaves. Given the bill of rights in our constitution it would have been impossible for slaves to be treated the way they were and withheld those rights if slaves were considered humans. For example during the time right before the civil war when the topic of slavery was being debated among the southern preachers would use passages from the bible to religiously justify slavery.

  32. Jacob B

    APush blog 68
    Jacob Bejune

    Dehumanization is essential for slavery to occur. It is important that the enslaved people must never be thought of as human, only as animals or savages. Then humans can justify owning slaves. It is easy to claim a savage as property, just like how someone owns livestock. The main reasons for early enslavement of Africans was because they were different. Their culture was unique, their skin was different, and they weren’t European enough to be considered human. Therefore, from the beginning slavery has revolved around the fact that slaves were never human.

    By owning another human being a person loses some of their humanity. By refusing to accept that all men are created equal, slave owners then submit themselves to being sub-human. Slave owners represent the type of being who should be enslaved. They are not truly human. Every human deserves basic rights, and should never be deprived of them. People should not be crammed in the hold of a cargo ship for 1 month. Humans would never be auctioned off like cattle. And of course families should never be split apart so children never know their parents. Women would not be forced to be raped by their masters’. The dehumanization caused by slavery affects society as a whole. Regardless of one’s belief on slavery, living in a society that condones slavery means that everyone supports slavery directly or indirectly.

  33. Colin C

    I think slavery brings on the dehumanization of a person. The first reason for why I think this is the example or Mrs. Auld. She is an example because when she first got a slave she was very nice and caring. After having the slave for a while, she turned into a cold monster. She turned into this monster because the power of having slaves went to her head, making her far less empathetic towards slaves as she was originally. I think this concept of having power over slaves going to people’s heads could be applied to the whole south. Southerner white people were born into slave owning, and therefore had power over their slaves. This power caused southerners to believe they were better that the slaves, causing dehumanization. I also think slavery brings the dehumanization of a person because when America first started using slaves, it was because they were more permanent and better in the long run that indentured servants. This shift from “hiring” indentured servants to enslaving people started the dehumanization of slaves because black indentured servants could go free and they could own their own farms, so they were seen as human. Once slavery caught on in America, blacks could not own their own farms in the south or go free, showing they were not seen as human. Slavery leading to the dehumanization of people is an example why we need to be careful about what environment we surround ourselves in.

  34. Jack McCaff

    I believe that you need to dehumanize someone in order to enslave them. In order to enslave someone you need to characterize them as an inferior group of people. This belief of inferiority allows you to enslave that group of people. In order to be that cruel to another human being you would have to dehumanize them beforehand. You would have to be morally weak in order to randomly decide that you wanted to enslave someone. The proper way to make yourself believe that what you’re doing is right is to dehumanize the person you are enslaving before you enslave them. The slave owners had to treat their slaves like animals, in order to not feel guilty about treating them like that, they had to dehumanize the slaves otherwise there would be temptation to treat them like a normal human being. If the slave owners treated their slaves nicely they might not get the amount of money they need to maintain the lifestyle they have. Whipping and punishing slaves in order for them to work harder would not have occurred if dehumanization had not taken place beforehand. If this process of dehumanization did not exist slavery may have never existed. Dehumanization is the key to enslaving any group dehumanization does not come from slavery.

  35. Bethany Mac

    I believe slavery causes dehumanization of the owner but not the slave. Slaves have a lot of heart and truly believe in this idea of freedom. I think the first slaves that were brought over were the most dehumanized any slaves would ever be. The capture, the boat ride and severe whippings had to have taken an effect. But the slaves that lived during the civil war and a little bit prior to that worked to get out. I am not claiming that none of them heard of the boats or experienced something similar, I am saying Frederick Douglass’ mom tried to see him once she was moved. Many tried to escape and make things equal for all. Some got married or had romances with other slaves; none of which could’ve happened if they were dehumanized. Yet the slave owners were beating them, watching them cry, raping them; these kinds of people were the people who were dehumanized during slavery. By trying to dehumanize the slaves, the owners were only dehumanizing themselves, which made them look even worse than they would’ve been and made them more vicious, and controlling then they should’ve.

  36. Nate wagner

    In my view, slavery brought on the dehumanization of a person. The effects of slavery brought on a new mentality of racial superiority from the whites that, in turn, led to the cruel mistreatment and dehumanization of slaves in their possession. The white American farmers/ slave owners already had a preconceived notion from slavery that slaves were not much more than animals, and we’re not indeed human; as a result they were treated accordingly. As we see in Frederick Douglas’ autobiography, slaves were treated as beasts. They were frequently treated less than human; slaves were constantly torn apart from their families like animals, slave women were raped, slaves were whipped like horses for small offenses, and children had to fight for food. The occurrence of slavery changed many white Americans, leading to the dehumanization of not only the slaves but the slave masters. The slave masters became so entrenched in power that their behavior was in a sense not humanly (their violence was sometimes so inhuman, we would have a hard time calling them humans). This is evident in Frederick Douglas’ autobiography from many of his masters. For example, overseer Mr. Severe committed heinous acts against the slaves and did not bat an eye, he had no sense of morals or humanity. This can be said for notorious slave breaker, Mr. Covey, as well. Slavery brought with it a whole new era of cruel dehumanizations against other humans. Slavery will always be a bad mark on our country’s past.

  37. Maya R

    Slavery took a big part in our country’s history it involved many horrible things. I believe that everyone who was apart of slavery was dehumanized at one point or another. The slaves were effected more and in greater ways but slave owners were also impacted a good amount. For slavery to happen a slave owner must dehumanize himself or herself first, so they don’t feel the guilt. Some people didn’t think of the slaves the same way they saw whites, but their were those few who had to force themselves to do what they did and that was a step of dehumanizing. The slave owners had to tell themselves what they were doing was okay. They beat and sexually assaulted their slaves allowing yourself to be okay with doing something like that is dehumanizing him or herself. As a slave you are sold and treated like animals. Not being allowed rights is taking away the thought of them being human. Being bought and sold like an item wasn’t something “humans” took part in. The way slave owners and others thought of slaves had a big part. Incoming slaves had to be dehumanized to get the work done that their owners wanted done.

  38. Caitlin Mc

    A person must be dehumanized first before they are enslaved, as shown in the process of selling the slaves. Before being bought, the slave is immediately dehumanized by the seller and sold as if they were cattle. Also, the buyers go in to auctions already with the mindset of buying property, thus from the get-go viewing them not as humans but something to own. They are also viewed as an investment if they can reproduce and create more slaves for the owner to sell off. It is all extremely appalling and disturbing to view a human being at an animal. Slavery is detrimental to the slave as well as the owner because both are dehumanized in the process. The slave becomes property and animalistic in the owners while the owner becomes a monster, something cruel and unemotional to the slave as well as others. This is because while dehumanizing others the owners hearts become black and they lose their kindness from the effects of slavery. They whip and attack their slaves and these things have an effect on them. They could start out as kind hearted, gentle people but when they become owners of slaves they are turned into cruel and harsh people that view other humans as animals. This also creates a conflict within themselves as they may not feel comfortable owning another human being and this conflict wears on the owner.

  39. PJ Roberts

    I think slavery dehumanizes a person because when they are enslaved they see that someone as being over them as there master and that makes them feel really bad about themselves and makes them feel not human. Plus they are told that they are not human constantly and on a daily basis so that dehumanizes them. Slaveholders also get dehumanized because the things they do to their slaves are just inhumane. A lot of the slave women were sexually assaulted by their slave masters. There were a lot of whippings and stuff that made the slaveholders kind of evil people and really not nice people which I think dehumanized them. I think what happened to a lot of the slaveowners was when they were trying to dehumanize a slave that ended up losing there own humanity. They did a lot of things that they wouldn’t have most likely done if they hadn’t had a slave. I think slavery turned them into very cruel and awful people.

  40. Nate Higley

    I think slavery and dehumanization are very closely related in this situation, slavery definitely led to the dehumanization of the people who had to go through the experience. The way that the slaves were treated on plantations and farms, and the way they were purchased by slave owner’s shows dehumanization was occurring, even if the slave owners would have admitted it or not admitted it. Also dehumanization was pretty much needed to own slaves. I think a group of people has to first be dehumanized in order to enslave them truly. A slave owner would have to dehumanize the slaves in order to make them work properly and hard in the field. The slaves would also be dehumanized so they would listen to the slave owner and not try and rebel or run away. The slave owners would dehumanize but I also believe that the slave owners were also dehumanized by their doings themselves, just in a different way than the way they dehumanized their slaves. The slave owners were not sexually assaulted, tortured by whippings, or treated like animals, but were looked at differently by the northerners or the people who did not own any slaves. So all in all I think dehumanization is a terrible thing but in this situation with slavery, it affected both the owners and slaves in a negative way.

  41. Isaiah J

    I Believe that you have to dehumanize a person to enslave them, mostly because we didn’t see a behavior change from good to bad when slavery started to when it ended, we saw the same attitude towards the slaves from beginning to end. People actually believed that slavery was a God given command to blacks that they were to be beneath whites, or else we would have seen a mix of races working as slaves. Yes, there was indentured servitude, but they were not treated nearly as unfair, and were guaranteed release to start their own lives, unlike most slaves. Think of why it was Africans chosen for slavery in the first place. The whites noticed that blacks were significantly different from them, and they automatically thought them inhuman. This is similar to how the founders of this country noticed differences of the native americans and automatically thought these natives to be beneath them. So what did we do? Took advantage of them to ultimately completely occupy the land that they called home before us. Blacks were taken from their home and the whites weren’t worried about if families would be separated or loved ones killed because they dehumanized the blacks to make slavery seem ok, when in reality the slaves were just as human as the whites.

  42. Mallory S

    I think that we must have already dehumanized black people to enslave them. Slave owners would never enslave someone that they view as an equal to them. To buy a person, force them to work, beat them and assault them, you must have a very distorted image of reality. By dehumanizing these people, slave holders have such a disturbed mindset, that they themselves are dehumanized. When you do such terrible things to a person, like beat them and sexually assault them, without any guilt, you have no right to call yourself a human being because that is so awful that you could ever treat a person that way. These inhuman slave owners must have already had had a dehumanized view on blacks to want to buy people as property and treat them like dirt. You don’t just buy a person and then decide they are beneath you, thats just not how it works. The white people should be the only dehumanized people during this time but unfortunately that was not the case, and the innocent people weren’t treated well but the mean ones were treated great, and got rich. And unfortunately the racist affects of slavery are still seen in todays society. Blacks are still looked down upon today , because it is a like a sickening “tradition” for racist white people to view blacks as dumb, or illiterate, when in fact people sound so incredibly stupid saying such a thing. THis is why i believe, white people had already dehumanized black people before slavery became a thing. Because how could you treat a person you view as your equal, like an emotionless object.

  43. Laura MacLean

    Slavery hurt everyone involved. In order for slavery to take place the slave owner must dehumanize the slave first. In addition they also have to dehumanize themselves. Slave owners are cruel and lack the empathy most humans have. The slave owners abuse them in many ways and force them to work with little food or breaks. If they still had the empathy that made them human it would be impossible for them to do this to another human. They could not see their slaves as people with families and feelings. If they did they would be overwhelmed with gilt. They also might realize how hypercritical they are being because of their religious beliefs. Slaves also have to be dehumanized if they are to be enslaved. It is Human nature to want to fight back when your basic rights are taken away. It is not natural submit abuse. However it was impossible for the slaves to fight back in any way. How could they when they were under constant supervision. Because they had to fight their human nature they almost had to dehumanize themselves in order to survive. The slavers would see this and have to dehumanize themselves further because they see what they are doing. This causes them to be even crueler to their slaves. Everyone involved has to repress apart of themselves in order to deal with the terrible acts going on around them

  44. Emily Lulkin

    I believe that slavery caused dehumanization. I also believe that people didn’t start out this cruel. People didn’t treat others this terribly until they needed a reason to. Many events in history led to the institution of slavery. In America, people needed cheap manual labor and found an easy target in the Africans. They enslaved the Africans and then began to dehumanize them. They gave the Africans no rights and worked them in terrible conditions. Younger generations learned from elders and continued to treat slavery horribly. The institution had become inbred and passed on from generation to generation.
    The act of enslaving someone else cannot happen unless the enslaver is dehumanized. Being dehumanized means lacking humanity. The definition of humanity according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is “the quality or state of being humane; the quality or state of being kind to other people or animals”. Raping, beating, starving, and over working people is not humane. It can only take a dehumanized person to do this to another being.
    I find it interesting that these Christians studied the bible and the Old Testament and learned about the Egyptians enslaving the Jews. They didn’t see themselves like the Egyptians, yet they were doing the exact same thing- enslaving another race and then treating them like they were subhuman. I believe it’s the institution of slavery that causes people to act this way.

  45. Haley L

    I think you need to dehumanize a person in order to enslave them more than slavery brings dehumanization. I think that dehumanization comes first because if you did enslave someone, you would probably think that they were less than you and possibly not even a human. Slaves were brought to the U.S. because they were different from the slave-owners who thought they weren’t human. I think that dehumanization came first because the reason many people were enslaved was because they were already considered less of a person. I think that dehumanization came back to the slave-owners because it changed them so much. If someone who didn’t own any slaves somehow inherited one, it would change them because now they are involved in slavery. Even if before they owned the slave they weren’t a really racist person, slavery forced them to become one. Owning a slave would force the owner to do things that they had never done before like disciplining and whipping the slaves. When slave-owners dehumanized slaves, they dehumanized themselves because having to be so cruel to people would just turn you into a mean person. I think that people were dehumanized before enslaved and that dehumanizing people would dehumanize you.

  46. Will Iverson

    When it comes to slavery, there is an obvious presence of dehumanization involved. In order for those who are free to become slaves, you must be dehumanized first. All throughout the era of slavery, the Africans were discriminated against and not even remotely considered human which is an obvious sign of dehumanization. This continues with the 3/5 compromise, this literally states that Africans are only counted as 3/5 of a person in terms of state population. The process of dehumanization is clearly shown through the behavior of the slaves, most of them willingly or unwillingly submit to punishment of severe degrees and are subject to immense hours of continuous physical labor. Nobody in their right mind would do this kind of work and submit to daily punishment unless they were forced and discriminated by a higher level of society, hence dehumanization. The act of dehumanization also reflects back onto the slave holders and slave traders because of their lack of human nature and compassion towards the slaves. As many female slaves were subject to and sexual abuse constantly by their masters and their held no means of a positive relationship with them shows how inconsiderate and brutal the masters were to slaves. Along with the constant whipping and beatings given to the slaves by either their master of overseer shows the lack of compassion and mercy that they show to the slaves. One who does this is dehumanized themselves because of the extreme amount of human traits that we lack in showing to the slaves that are held.

  47. Nennaya L

    I think in order to enslave a person you must dehumanize them first. When the slaveholders first purchase their slaves from an auction they take them away from their family and break them down mentally in preparation to break them down physically as a slave. When whites from Europe and America first kidnapped Africans they crowded them on top of each other and let them defecate and urinate on themselves. The whites didn’t give them a pleasant journey on their way to America. They dehumanized them. Mrs. Auld taught young Frederick Douglass to read but when she’s put in charge of slaves the dehumanization effect started to come. I believe for Mrs. Auld the dehumanization aspect didn’t occur when she taught Frederick to read because she wasn’t put in a place of power at first. Her husband although dehumanized Frederick and didn’t encourage the reading because he actually held slaves. Mrs. Auld was then put into power and was required to meet her husband standards.

    Slaveholders always upheld deprivation from the beginning by giving slaves holidays off and then bringing them back into the arms of slavery. Whites tried to keep up the dehumanization even after the 13th amendment was passed. If slavery was before dehumanization that means whites at the time weren’t first inhumane and what happened during the Middle Passage was dehumanization.

  48. Sophie Erlich

    After reading about Fredrick Douglas and learning his story and the true terrors of slavery, I believe that I can make an accurate opinionated argument that slavery brings on the dehumanization of a person. When the Africans were in Africa they lived as every day or “normal” people. They were not trained to be inhumane before they were pushed into slavery. They gained the inhumane quality through the experience that slavery brought them. We learn stories about free blacks in the North being sent to the South by slave catchers only because they can. Those people who lived normal lives in America did not have security to protect them from the possibility of this terror. So, these free men with free lives, jobs, and families became inhumane because there was no law to stop it. This inhumane quality definitely comes back to the slave owner. The owner is one person who is turning another person into an inhumane being. This comes to be through physical violence like whipping, sexual harassment, and beatings and emotional terrors of yelling and putting inhumane thoughts into the minds of others. To accomplish these horrifying tasks a person must have to lose the humanity in themselves. To treat another living, breathing, human being like so is deranged and can take life from both the victim and the executer.

  49. Jaxon B

    Slavery is a process that dehumanizes people, both the master and slave, it is not the dehumanization that makes slavery possible. True, there are people with good intentions that had owned slaves but it is impossible for one to own slaves and say that you were doing anything that is natural or human. Slavery, on the master’s part, made them into monsters because they would abuse their slaves because they felt like it. Frederick Douglass highlighted this in his autobiography he wrote. For example, Frederick Douglass was the result of a master who used a black slave woman as something to have “fun” with. Douglass’ father was using his mother as pleasure, just like several other black women that had this happen to them unfortunately. More depressing was the fact that Frederick Douglass wasn’t even allowed to see his mother, and was taken into the care of an elder slave, similar to how farm animals aren’t raised by their mothers. The only time Douglass ever saw his mother was when she would sneak into the cabin that he lived in every once in a while. Also, one of his masters, Mrs. Auld, is said to be a very kind person, but later, because of her management of Slaves, she becomes the complete opposite of her personality. The slavery dehumanizes because the master becomes something that they aren’t, and the slaves are seen as objects as opposed to actual people.

  50. Zaria S

    I believe that slavery leads to dehumanization, in both the slave master and the slave. I say this regarding slavery. I do understand that constant bashing of a person’s confidence and feeling of self worth can make that person need the other’s approval, therefore become a slave for their approval, thus, a slave for the person. Although the slavery regarded in Fredrick Douglass’ book is that of slavery leading to dehumanization. This slavery not only effects the slave, but the slave master as well. As the master strips their slave of confidence by beating, raping, working, and all together oppressing them, the master them self are loosing the very-human qualities of compassion and empathy. They lose touch with the feelings and emotions they were born with, other than hate and anger, which intensifies. Take Mrs. Auld, for example. When Fredrick came to her home, she welcomed him with open arms and happiness. She knew not of the the cruel world that had hardened Douglass along with so many other blacks. In fact, she found it quite odd when Fredrick would treat her as if she was his master. She had even begun teaching him how to read, which is the gateway to all knowledge. It wasn’t until her husband told her the “consequences” of helping a slave that she started her decline into anger and hate. This shows how them taking Fredrick in (enslaving him) led to her dehumanization. In the process of dehumanizing a person, we do the same to ourselves because thats what it takes to effectively hold the power. The master can’t be nice with their slaves if they expect to get the same productivity as a bad master. They, in fact, want the slave to be afraid. No sane person would be okay with being torn from their family to live a life where they’re oppressed every day. So once the master buys them, they have to enforce that power. So in the end, both the master and the slave experience the dehumanizing effects of slavery.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*