While reading the slave narrative by Olaudah Equiano, and in light of the packet we received in class on Thursday, I can't help but keep wondering WHY the Africans, of all people, took the brunt of this imposed slavery system. I know we mentioned the colonies of the English there, but could there be another reason?
I found this article basically outlining minority work in the US. After browsing through it, I realized that Africans were NOT the only ones forced into slave labor, although often they are the only ones considered when the topic of 'slavery' is brought up. However, can the flow of underpaid Asian immigrants into the US during the gold rush, or even the underpaid Hispanic population in the United States currently, really be considered fair working exchange? In a way, we haven't evolved completely away from the basic principles of slavery: unfair compensation for work, and poor working environments.
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Interesting question. While Africans aren't the only ones historically who have been force into slave labor, the transatlantic slave trade was the first and only of its kind in that it isolated a particular group and perpetuated an economic system through their enslavement. And the kind of "labor force" (vs. slavery) your article cites for Asian Americans, Mexicans and Mexican American is distinct in that those groups did not become part of such a far-reaching, long lasting system of true enslavement. Nonetheless, as the article suggests, the correlation between the abuse of immigrant laborers --often non-European--remains an important point.
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