seapeoples

Well, here's a phrase we never thought we'd read. "Porn for the Whole Family," for the uninitiated, is a photographic endeavor by Brian Steinhoff, exploring the images that maintain a visceral sense of shock and awe, even in the internet ag...

In Uoeno, Cocc Pistol Cree raps about her monetary conquests over melancholy beats. I didn't say her $1000 weave and $1000 handbag stem from a long term wealth as these items seem to not come from a stable source of income. She insinuates that she is a stripper, or has stripper friends, and turns tricks but these occupations are under the radar of the men that are paying her, or whose money she is stealing. What is interesting about this rap style is that it is both an empowering "take that!" female anthem and melancholy "real talk" type of commiseration. Cree's style reminds me of Mac Bre-Z (https://www.facebook.com/MacBreZDaKandiLady). I think it's a very emotionally appealing combination of sounds. 

The Slave Ship outlines multiple human aspects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade using the point of view of the slave ship captains, sailors and slaves with special attention given to the cruelty enacted against the enslaved African peoples. The ways in which the sailors and especially the slaves were tortured by the slave ship captains are discussed repeatedly and in great detail. A sense of enslavement is obviously discussed in regard to the often kidnapped African slaves but is also placed upon the sailors who are also entrapped in a kind of indentured servitude due to debts and/or social circumstance. Captains were cruel sadists who feared the slave revolts and resistance that were often bravely orchestrated by the enslaved despite the impossibly complicated odds that were set against them as the entire middle passage was designed to prevent such trends.

Rediker’s main point is that the slave ship was a monstrous machine of terror designed to benefit few by reaping gross profits and supported by a large mass of xenophobic peoples from Europe and the New World as well as traffickers in Africa. Many unfortunate people were snarled by this machine as it was very powerful and thrived on the misfortune of others. Merchants and the traffickers of Africans went out of their way to propel this machine’s path of destruction and greed but the machine exists as an entity worth studying of its own accord. This is largely due to its display of the evil side of capitalism.

There are five additional main points that Rediker illustrates in The Slave Ship and the importance of all are supported most effectively. These five main points are: 1. terrifying torture, 2. kidnapping of the trafficked, 3. racist ethnocentric xenophobia, 4. the dangers of capitalism and 5. illustrations of the “main players.” Joined together, these five points support the concept of the slave ship being a monstrous instrument used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade that deserves unique attention to its power.

Rediker likens the slave ship captain to terrorists. There are plenty of examples of torturous incidents inflicted upon the enslaved by the sailors and especially the captains of the slave ships. One remarkably disturbing example is when Captain Harding, “killed one (enslaved African) immediately and made the others eat his heart and liver”. Alongside the “punishments” that only the sadist captains devised, were standard forms of torture implemented with instruments of torture found on all slave ships including the cat o’ nine tails whip, an assortment of shackles and the speculum oris. These methods mixed with the pestilence of the lower cabin kept the enslaved in a sickened state of despair that often drove them to suicide and attempted suicide. One enslaved man “had ripped open his throat with his own fingernails” in order to escape the slave ship’s terror.

It becomes apparent that many of the African victims of enslavement have been kidnapped and have not become enslaved in any other sense that may have been deemed appropriate by African standards of the past such as punishment for a grave crime or being a prisoner of war. Rediker must make the distinction between African forms of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade in order to avoid a “two wrongs make a right” argument not in favor of trans-Atlantic slavery but as an excuse for the heinous nature of it. That being said Africans were integral instruments in the transport, or traffic, of the African kidnapped from the interior of Africa to the coastal trading regions. In turn, “enslavement and shipment created a deep and enduring rupture between African commoners and ruling groups, which in turn had enormous implications for cultural and political practice in the Diaspora”. African forms of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade were so different in their degree of inhumanity that they could probably carry a different name and not be unified by the singular term “slavery.”

It is no secret that Europeans at large during the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade held racist, ethnocentric and xenophobic views towards Africans at large. This fact is one of the largest impetuses of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A sense that enslaving the Africans was in actuality saving them from themselves and their savage ways was a viewpoint that ran rampant in European and New World culture. Olaudah Equiano experienced both sides of this story as he was kidnapped, trafficked, bought his freedom and then assimilated into British society to afford a certain degree of its benefit. Although his account of the slave ship was one of fear and despair, he in time considered himself British and even took part in perpetuating slavery until he pursued his abolitionism with a high degree of vigor. While enduring the middle passage, Equiano considered the Europeans to be every bit as savage as the Europeans did the Africans and he wasn’t alone in this sentiment as it was held by many slaves on the ships. This role reversal illustrates an apparent irony the reader sees obviously today. The Europeans were flat out wrong about the supposed savage nature of the Africans and time turned the tables on those assumptions of the past.

One of the biggest reasons the monster slave ship's existence was possible was because of capitalism. There would be no reason to enslave Africans without the function and reward of monetary value that still presently operates. Seven powerful European entities including "American, British, Danish, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish" reaped the rewards of millions of enslaved African’s labor. During the difficult process of enslavement, 5,900,000 Africans perished. In the New World alone, $316 million dollars "worth" of African slaves garnered the benefactors of slavery 3.3 billion dollars worth of profit with a grand total of 2,500,000,000 hours of back breaking work. Without monitoring labor practices to the point of employing slavery, capitalism grew to encompass the inhumane for one very important reason: making money, and lots of it. Capitalism was conceptually a fair game in the era of trans-Atlantic slave trading as it allowed anyone with enough cash to become a merchant but it depended on the unfairness imposed upon the African slaves. Without capitalism there may be another system in its place that is as or more unfair but the capitalistic societal structure and monetary system that allowed the trans-Atlantic slave trade to exist is none the less extremely unfair in its trans-Atlantic slave trade manifestation.