blog post #2

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”Racism has been a big obstacle that faces people since old times until today and despite all the attempts to nullify it, but it’s a lasting problem that will never end until the end of humanity I believe. The reading is talking about the US before becoming democratic through black people. In August 1619, only 12 years after the English colonized Jamestown, Virginia, The inhabitants of Jamestown purchased 20 to 30 enslaved Africans who were stolen by the pirate from a Portuguese slave ship. They were the beginning of the american slavery. The reading states an important event which is the middle passage, which is the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. it contained 12.5 million africans and about 2 million of them didn’t make it through the tortuous voyage. Furthermore, before the worldwide slave trade was abolished, 400,000 enslaved Africans were sold into America. When they were slaves, they showed the colonists how to cultivate rice. They produced and harvested cotton, which was the most valuable product in the country at the time(50% of all American exports and 66% of the world’s supply). The reading alo talked about how they amassed great fortunes for white individuals everywhere and the slave trader from Rhode island who profits from the stolen labor of black people helped the nascent nation pay off its war debts and found some of the country’s most prominent universities. The text also states the declaration of independence and that some of white mens didn’t believe in its approval that says that all men are created equally. Enslaved persons were treated as property, which might be mortgaged, exchanged, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift, and ruthlessly disposed of, and although Jefferson and his fellow white colonists recognized that black people were human beings, they devised a network of rules and practices that insured that enslaved people would never be viewed as such. But black men didn’t give up on their rights and they helped the country live up to its founding ideals to save everyone else’s rights, not only black people’s . For example, Crispus Attucks, a slave fugitive who died in the American Revolution.  Jefferson never tried to abolish the slavery but then he’s blaming England’s king for forcing the slavery. But then With independence, the founding fathers were no longer able to blame Britain for slavery, it became the nation’s sin.                                                                                                                         Gordon wood agrees with NIkole Hannah Jones on demonstrating the importance of lavery in the history of the country but he criticized Hannah-Joness’ essay by stating  that he spent his career studying the american revolution and cannot accept the view that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”