SLAVERY ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The Transatlantic Slave Trade was an intricate activity of kidnapping and auction of Africans in millions to European traders. This took place along the coast of West Africa from where they were taken to what was referred to as the New World. Here, they would be forced to provide labor as plantations or as domestic servants. Slavery had always existed in Africa and elsewhere prior to the involvement of Europeans, though in a different context. Individuals were enslaved due to reasons like being captive of war, criminal, or escaping famine. Enslavement had the possibility of extreme brutality, but slaves had a social and economic value as they were prestigious and gave status to their owners. They were considered as human beings and belonged to the society.
On the contrary, the slaves vended during the Transatlantic Slave Trade were viewed as chattel for exchange. They were only worthwhile in monetary terms. Consequently, the enslaved Africans were habitually tortured like being chained, branded, whipped, branded, and even beaten (Osorio, 2013). This was the beginning of human rights violations. Some were deprived of their names, a fundamental entitlement—those who got transported through the middle passage hardly ever returned to Africa. During the passage, the overcrowded and filthy environment, combined with the brutality handling and insufficient food, led to massive deaths. The survivors were worked to their death. Plantation owners were initially unconcerned about this as they could buy more slaves (Rhoades, 2005). The Slave Trade, with its colossal death rates and prevalent brutality, was amazingly legalized for like 350 years. The chattel of human beings was legitimized, and those profiting would influence to reinforce the slavery establishment. The complete infringement of all human rights was apparent. The vast majority of Britain either ignored or actively endorsed the trade. Trying to change this attitude seemed, at the time, an impossible task.
The foundations of the slavery legal framework became entrenched with a racial framework within which Africans were legally perceived as lesser human beings. The legacy of racial inequity can be traced back to the Trans-Atlantic trade ingrained in race-generated laws, policies, and customs that were established and disseminated a racial caste-structure. The prejudice from government policies, public and private lending practices in the housing market denied the African families homeownership. Segregation was enshrined as a general policy where ownership was available only for middle-class American families in New York (Williams, 2010). The policies’ underwriting principles encouraged redlining by categorizing neighborhoods as per jeopardy level. The standardized white neighborhoods were deemed as the safest investments. This technically eliminates black access to homeownership by the government’s discriminatory appraisal system. Other black families that pursued homeownership within these confines were targeted by predatory real estate practices that sucked wealth out of communities (Appel & Nickerson, 2016). In 2016, 71% of white households owned their own homes compared to 45% of black and Latino families. This is referred to as redlining, which is a leading cause of a host of enormous social consequences, including residential vacancy, high unemployment, poverty, that persist till today. Besides the limited access to homeownership and wealth creation among racial minorities, the multigenerational socioeconomic impacts of redlining have been exposed by many researchers. Redlining is viewed as discriminatory credit rationing and a central cause of urban decay and disparate economic outcomes that exist today.
References
Appel, I., & Nickerson, J. (2016). Pockets of poverty: The long-term effects of redlining. Available at SSRN 2852856.
Osorio, E. C. (2013). Saintly lives:(Anti) imperial and transatlantic discourses in Colonial Hispanic-American poetry and painting (16th-to-18th-century New Kingdom of Granada and New Spain). The Pennsylvania State University.
Rhoades, D. (2005). There Were No Innocents: Slavery in the Old Northwest 1700-1860.
Williams, O. (2010). Slavery in Albany, New York, 1624-1827. Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 34(2), 154.