Watching PBS

As I explored the PBS web site, I discovered the readings regarding African American slavery in America. First of all I would like to ratify that when PBS talks about the “Europeans” it should be more specific. Europe is a big continent and the people that created the problem of slavery in this country were mostly Protestants from England. Hungarians, Polish, Czechs, Ukrainians, Greeks, Norwegians for example had nothing to with it. For example the fact that the slaves were introduced to Protestantism and not to Catholicism or orthodox Christianity is a big sign that the colonialists and slave owners were mostly English. One time a Porto Rican girl that told me that “Europeans represent in the eyes of many African Americans and Latinos the DEVIL, because of what they did”. This is why I think we should be more careful and specific when we talk about the “Europeans”.
Anyway, I was not born and raised in this country. Which means, obviously, that I didn’t receive my main education in the American system , and so I didn’t specifically study the history of this country. I studied 3000 thousands years related to history of my own country instead. Obviously I was aware of some of the facts regarding the origins of the United States, the struggle to free the colonies from the English tyranny, and the issue of slavery.
However it was obviously an abstract notion until I came to live in the United States and it took me years to be aware of what racism and the racial conflicts meant in this country. I was not born and raised in a nation with problems of segregation and slavery so I had no idea of how they influenced the culture and the behavior of people. Like I said it took me a long time to be able to comprehend how race impacts people’s thinking and behavior in this country.
I used to walk in the Bronx completely unaware of how people were staring at me since I was the only “white” person around…I could not comprehend what it meant for them to see me walking around their African American neighborhood.…The issue is that I could not see or perceive the invisible boundaries of racial prejudice….I could not see it in people’s gaze…or what it meant to cross over them.
Exploring the PBS web site was remarkable because it gave me a chance to explore more in depths the matter of racism in this country. One of the major issues I could never quite understand was how the problem of slavery became a predicament based on skin color. I didn’t know how it began, until I came across one of the PBS readings which explain how the right to enslave the Africans started and how gradual and progressive it was. As a foreigner I believed that the problem of slavery was created fast and with few objections. Going through the web site I red instead that it was slow and many people rebelled against it. I also red that at the beginning it was not an matter of slavery but of “servitude”, very close to the Greek and Roman ancient concept of slavery. In those times slavery was considered temporary servitude, something that could end and could not be passed from generation to generation. That is how the English could resolve the problem related to owning African prisoners: they were servants and not “slaves”.
I found the following passage extremely significant. It states that “Traditionally, Englishmen believed they had a right to enslave a non-Christian or a captive taken in a just war. Africans and Indians might fit one or both of these definitions. But what if they learned English and converted to the Protestant church? Should they be released from bondage and given "freedom dues?" What if, on the other hand, status were determined not by (changeable) religious faith but by (unchangeable) skin color?
In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to legally recognize slavery. Other states, such as Virginia, followed. In 1662, Virginia decided all children born in the colony to a slave mother would be enslaved. Slavery was not only a life-long condition; now it could be passed, like skin color, from generation to generation 1665, Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland and leased a 300-acre plantation, where he died five years later. But back in Virginia that same year, a jury decided the land Johnson left behind could be seized by the government because he was a "Negros and by consequence an alien." In 1705 Virginia declared that "All servants imported and brought in this County... who were not Christians in their Native Country... shall be slaves. A Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ... shall be held to be real estate.”
I was blown away by what I red, I could not believe it! Already the concept of slavery based on religious belief was foolish enough, but the way it radically changed based on skin color was really mind-blowing. I finally got some of the answers I was looking for. Other passages were truly revealing as well. Another thing that actually struck me was the reading about the “rules of ownership” that I read on page 176 of the text book. I reflected upon what it meant to be considered a “thing or a property”, almost as an inanimate object, a machine. I thought of all the punishments that were inflicted to maintain those rules and what they did to the collective human spirit of those people and the generations to come. I really don’t know how the slaves managed to build families or the resemblance of a “normal life” in the middle of all of that…. Of course another topic that struck my attention was the methods that were used to transport the prisoners from Africa to America... I red how some of them stopped eating, let themselves die, or preferred to be thrown in the ocean, instead of living that hell. I would have probably done the same.