Topic: The Effects of the Transatlantic Slave trade in Africa

The theme is from the Human Rights and Global Justice section of It Begins
with our Questions, The Humanities as a Call to Action by Allen C. Paul and Claire
Peterson. I find this section interesting because during the transatlantic slave trade,
people were stripped off their freedom and some slaves even fought back the
traders to regain their freedom. The specific reading is from Always, Darkness
Visible by Aharon Appelfeld, who highlights his personal experience at the
concentration camp during the holocaust.
I often imagine when there will be no territorial boundaries limiting people
from moving across borders or when one will not be judged based on his or her
color, race, origin or beliefs. Endless stories of hardships and mans inhumanity to
man has always given humanity a course for concern. One of such stories is the
Aharons experience during the holocaust which he states, The Jew was not
condemned because of his old or new beliefs, but because of the blood the flowed
in his veinsand the needs of the hungry and thirsty body reduced one to
dust. People who had been doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors only
yesterday stole a piece of bread from their companions and when they were caught,
they denied and lied (226).
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The transatlantic slave trade took place during the 17 and 18 centuries
between West and Central Africans and Western European slave traders. Some of
the slaves were captured by slave traders in coastal raids and brought to Americas
to be sold to their masters. They worked in plantations, mines, construction
industry, and as domestic servants. They and their offspring were legally the
property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were slaves. As
property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labor, and were sold
at markets with other goods and services.
After the slave trade was abolished, the Africans continued in the trade, buying
their fellow Africans to work in their farms or serve as domestic servants. This has a
great impact in communities of some parts of Africa today that some people are still
considered as slaves. In Ibo land in Nigeria for example, they are commonly called
Osu. They cannot be community leaders or partake in any traditional activity
simply because their fore-fathers were bought as slaves. They intermarry among
themselves or out of their community and they are not allowed to build near the
master of their fore-fathers. These are people who are your neighbors, who speak
the same language with you, yet they dont have the same rights like you. Though
slave trade was abolished more than two centuries ago, the effect is still felt in
some communities in Africa.