People, in their pathological NEED to insist that slavery has no long term effects, have never once considered the impact of being sold on an auction block. I wrote a paper in grad school examining the impact of
being sold for $1000 when the person next to you is sold for $100. How
does that effect the self-esteem of each slave? How does it warp your
sense of self if you feel proud to be sold for
the highest amount, to feel like the best nigger on the block? What
about the slaves who were sick and old who were sold for $10 or as
add-ons in a two for one deal? The entire system of slavery warped any
healthy sense of self we might have had. Africans who were enslaved did
not speak the language, they had no concept of the Western monetary
system was so they weren’t burdened with the same debilitating and
unhealthy trauma. Once a slave was born in this country, once his
parents were born here, they understood from as early as possible that
they were a possession, a thing, an animal with a pricetag. Parents
passed down their beliefs to their children and the messages of the
plantation are still with us. We STILL see light skinned women as more
valuable. We still see dark skinned men as more valuable. We are still
mentally enslaved.Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky were slave
breeding states. Slaves were bred like livestock to be sold to Southern
states to pick crops. What impact did that have on the slaves who were
breeding slaves, those whose jobs it was to produce children to be
sold. Women were raped by the slave owner or forced to breed with the
biggest buck in order to produce the darkest field slaves. Think about
how that damages the psyche of a woman, of her children. Think about
how horrific slavery was before you say, “Slavery was in the past, let
it go.”