Why were blacks chosen to be slaves?

Question

Were blacks ever recgonized as regular people? This is just my personal opinion. Why are blacks so against one another. It seems as though they have attitudes or something or maybe its just the city i live in. Chicago, IL.. PLZ CAN ANYONE ANSWER THIS FOR ME. OH AND BY THE WAY IM BLACK MYSELF...

Answer 1

Blacks were not the only race chosen to be slaves. Many natural citizens of different countries were stolen from their homeland and brought to different countries to be used as cheap of free labor. The commonality here is that due to their color and culture these people were considered to beneath their captors, or their captors chose to believe that native Africans were ignorant and not able to care for themselves, or wouldn't care for themselves without being made to because they are lazy.
I would not say all blacks are against each other but in many cases it does seem that blacks at least here in America do not support each other. I believe that this can be attributed to when we were slaves there was a hierarchy to slaves with some slaves (most light skinned) being allowed to live in the house and serve the family directly, being valued more than their dark skinned brethren. I do believe that black people often today do not get along with each other, I think it is more important to focus on changing this than focusing on the negativity that exists between blacks. There a people that are perfectly happy with blacks focusing on their differences, and problems than blacks unifying.

Answer 2

I actually just studied this in class last week...

Africans were chosen as slaves because the Portuguese had just explored West Africa during the Maritime Revolution...They were easy to capture and send through the Middle Passage on the Triangular Trade. The Portuguese hired Africans from rival tribes of the ones they were trying to abduct to help capture the future slaves. Portuguese gave there helping Africans firearms, textiles and food. Unfortunately, for awhile in the Americas African slaves were considered 3/5 of a person.

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The successful plantation systems that were implemented throughout the Americas were clearly a direct result of the slave trade. Colonizers often made native people do forced labor before the height of the Atlantic System and the Triangular Trade. Basically, the Europeans had the slaves do jobs that they themselves did not wish to take part in. The rise of plantations led to a larger market for slaves, which would devastated the Empire of Songhai in West Africa, especially. Without access to slaves, it is possible that European economies may never have been able to sustain themselves. Plantations were so successful that plantocracies were implemented in the West Indies. To a slave master, it was only expected of an African to get over seasoning, adapting to a new envornment, quickly so that could work incredibly hard on the fields. France and England developed some colonies for the sole purpose of developing plantations in the Caribbean, which would be a hotbed for purchasing an “affordable” African. In conclusion, the demographic of many nations, America in particular, would be a lot different today if it were not for the profitability of sugar plantations, which clearly led to the rise of slave trade.


People should just respect one another equally regardless of race. We have seen the ways in which intolerance had devestated many peoples in the past. This is just like the people who say Barack Obama is not really black because his father was born in Kenya and his ancestors did not go through the slave trade. The bottom line is that this should not play a part in anything!

Answer 3

At one time persons(usually white but also black) wanting to get to the New World would hire themselves out as indentured servants. A person or family would pay their way and the indentured servant would work off the fare as a servant. But some of these people would disappear and the family would not get any of their money back.
Many Africans were given as slaves after a battle between tribes. Most were taken against their will. Because of their dark skin they were easy to spot if they tried to run away since there weren't any Africans already here.
Can't answer the latter of your questions because I see people of ALL races and nationalities guilty of this offense.

Answer 4

Very simple answer; First, blacks weren't chosen to be anything, it was circumstancial. Secondly, blacks have attitudes and problems because of the slavery period. Slavery ripped away all black peoples knowledge of family, culture, traditional african language, life philosohpies, etc. Today, problems with blacks exist because our black culture is 200 years old (which is young) and started from chaos (which was slavery) and still trying to recover.

It's no accident that my father is a coke head who sells drugs and my mother is a naive child with no sense of anything, and I don't even know who my grandfathers are, and my aunts and uncles are all drug atticts and sellers, or in jail. Black culture completely screwed up, and so the positive is that some people are actually starting to rebuild a sense of family, etc, but thats a very small amount. The culture still needs time to grow.

The result of blacks who don't grow have attitudes, cause senseless trouble, are in jail, cause crimes, etc. One example is the person who responded right below me, just look at the illogical bad attitude just because you asked a sincere question.

EDIT: And who ever gave me thumbs down is clearly retarded, and a coward since they will hide and click the thumbsdown button without being brave enough to prove what I say is wrong. They can't, thats why they say nothing. Keep hiding coward.

Answer 5

Blacks were'nt " chosen" to be slaves. It was a common practice in Africa at the time for competing tribes to raid each other and sell the captives to the arabs as slaves. The arabs took advantage of this and sold the slaves to other groups who believed in slavery, but it must be noted that the original slavers were the Africans themselves.Slavery is still practiced in Africa , In Ghana you can purchase a healthy 5 year old boy as a worker for about $600 american dollars. In the Sudan black muslims regularly raid christian settlements and carry off slaves, in Somalia slavery is still tolerated. Slavery has never really been wiped out in Africa and still is culturally tolerated.

Answer 6

Unfortunately, the people of Africa were easy targets of slave traders..they had little or no defenses, lived in clusters, and were easily kidnapped, shipped, and used for manual labor. It mattered not to those who were in the trade...African's lives were of no value until they reached an auction block.
If you take a journey back in time, you will find so many atrocities committed in one form or another, you will be ashamed of the caucasion race....The same people invaded, invaded, and then invaded Muslim lands, killed all they could in the name of their god (it was for money, not for a god). And in fact, all atrocities committed in the past have been for the sake of greed. Good luck

Answer 7

Actually the answer on the Top of me is not all Fact some of us were kidnapped and Guns to our heads by the WHite pirates who envaded our land we were shakled like dogs and our Women were Raped,beaten,Salt water thrown on our backs and brought where they wanted to take us and the cruelty during slavery means something and some want to erase it just as what the individual to spaces above me his I.D states conservative which I am not surprised or even worst in here!!!

Answer 8

well they were chosen as slaves because they were cheap labour...I don't think that the people bringing them over on the boats ever thought of them as human. That's just my opinion. I'm white and I find the whole idea of slavery abominable.

Answer 9

Here's some history for you ***. When white folks were colonizing and settling America they tried to enslave many types of people before they bought over African slaves. They tried to enslave whites (indentured servants). This didn't work well because the Europeans weren't physically able to carry out hard labor. It was also problematic for whites to enslave someone that looked like them. Then they tried to enslave the native Americans, they too were not built for such hard labor, plus European diseases were killing a lot of them off. In addition, it was easy for native Americans to escape captivity because they knew the land really well. Then they went for the black slaves, we were the survivors and it worked out well for the white man trying to settle a land and use free labor to do it. That's how the African slave trade came about. Now for some modern day blacks, they tend to be angry. And when your angry it's easy to transfer attitude and anger to someone that looks like you. It's like you hate you boss because he treats you like ****. But you can't tell your boss off because you need your job. So you take you anger out on you children because it's the easiest thing to do. Well that how some blacks are, it's easy to take frustration out on each other, because we are more comfortable w/ our own. Hope that makes sense. but don;t let it get you down, there are a lot of positive blacks in America.

Answer 10

My social studies teacher said that africans were already enslaving one another, and once europeans came, they started selling slaves to the europeans. Slaves were normally captured members of less powerful tribes.