As I come to the end this course there are themes that are illuminated in many of the works assigned to us.  Equiano and Oroonoko allows the reader to explore the horrors of slavery and their complicated relationship with the institution . Phyllis Wheatly and Equiano challenged the very deals of colonizers being seen as “savior” and using religion as a tool of oppression. They both appealed to the humanity that is supposed to be in us all. Another theme was that of Anti-colonization vs colonization which was explored in the work of Aphra Behn and Equiano. In Aphra Behn’s telling of an Africans story she comes across as bias. She is seeing the world of Oroonoko through the lends of a white female write; which can be problematic. It is unclear which parts of her book are fabricated and which parts are the truth. Lastly a theme that ran the material about the Transatlantic slave trade were the theme of freedom and whether or not it was a commodity that could be bought or sold.

Africans had a very complicated relationship with slavery and the masters who owned them.  I cannot say that there wasn’t some form of love between slave and masters. Some slaves stayed with the same families for generations and were treated like “family”. Equiano built seemingly successful relationships with his masters and thought he could use it as leverage. He seemed to be under the assumption that if he was good, took in all the culture that was bestowed on him by “amiable” white people somehow, he would be seen as an equal. Equiano was unaware of the inner workings behind the very profitable slavery. NO matter how “good” the relationship was between master and a slave, at the end of the day you were still seen in the eyes of the law as his “property”.  Michael Henry Pascal, a lieutenant in the British royal navy and captain of a merchant ship, even purchases Equiano  as “a present to some of his friends in England” (Equiano 94).  Equiano faithfully serves Pascal for several years and, believing that Pascal’s kindness implies a promise to free him, he is shocked at an abrupt betrayal during a layover in England. Pascal sells Equiano to Captain James Doran, the captain of a ship bound for the West Indies. Dazed by his sudden change in fortunes, Equiano argues with Captain Doran that Pascal “could not sell me to him, nor to anyone else . . . I have served him . . . many years, and he has taken all my wages and prizemoney . . . I have been baptized; and by the laws of the land no man has a right to sell me” (Equiano 177).

I personally saw this idea of the “white savior” come to the forefront of many of the readings.  This idea that Africans needed to be saved and rescued from their barbaric lives and taught how to think and speak. The notion that Western culture is far superior in standards and values, is enforced by the colonizers on the slaves. For example, the story has the narrator reading out to Oroonoko and Imoinda, the stories of the lives of Romans and nuns, as also the riddles of the trinity. Aphra Behn is cleaning putting her thoughts and feelings of Christianity being a religion African’s looked to and admired even though they had their own religious beliefs and values.  Aphra ben is speaking from the point of view of admiration for the Africans but also a sense of pity at their lives.  Christianity was weaponized as both a comfort and a source of oppression for them. Masters used Christianity as a tool that kept slaves obedient and docile. Equiano’s master even used God as the “punisher” and would tell him of the consequences’ he would suffer if he tried to tell lies or deceive him. “God would not love me” was something that allowed masters to dangle freedom in front of them to get slaves to completely submit.  Phyllis Wheatly also appeals to her readers that their race saved them from their “Pagan land” (Wheatly) and immersed them in Christianity and now they are just as worthy of favor in Gods eyes. African “May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” (Wheatly). In this line Phyllis Wheatly appeals to white Europeans by making them realize that Africans were just as worthy of God’s love as they and they rightfully deserved his blessings.

In class we discussed the idea of freedom being something that can be bought and sold.  Front the master’s point of view it can be.  Once you were sold into slavery your freedom, as it were, is taken away, for a prophet.  Many slaves, including Equiano, worked his whole life trusting and believing in this concept. Through the actions of those around him, and things they told him he thought that if he worked hard enough, did everything he was told, and appeased whites, that he could buy his freedom. As we know there is nothing about freedom that can be bought or sold, it is humans that put a price tag on it. There was a constant battle within himself because he knew deep down that he could never truly be free. Equiano knew of freed blacks that and ended up being captured and sold back into bondage. The idea of “freedom” as a commodity only worked one way and with only one race of people suffering the consequences. Not only did Equiano think he could purchase freedom, but he felt he was no different than his white counterparts when he heard of “talk of peace e” (Equiano 49).  When he returned to English it is said that he “expects his freedom” (Equiano 49). Although he saw first-hand how white people treated slaves, especially on his early experiences on a ship, he still knew that freedom was something that every human automatically had from birth. Oroonoko had similar experiences in thinking his freedom was a tangible entitle.  He was betrayed by Deputy Governor Byam, who promised him his freedom only to dish out a cruel punishment instead.  Through the actions of the Transatlantic slave trade Africans had to deal with the contradiction set. Up by white Europeans. Africans knew that at any point they could be sold to the highest bidder, and they represented freedom.

Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. Canning, 1688.

Equiano, Olaudah, and Vincent Carretta. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Point Par Point, 2007.

Wheatley, Phyllis. A Farewell to America. To Mrs. S.W. 1773.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

“When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them;”

1. In this Passage Equiano speaks of being slave being in a “State of War” (Equiano 75). There were many negative stereotypes that slave masters attached to African slaves because they wanted to keep them in a state of inferiority. Equiano witnessed moral atrocities on a daily basis that exhibited a contradiction in how masters viewed the African slaves.  Colonial rulers, through brute force, promoted their economic and religious values; essentially stripping the African slaves of theirs. They wanted the African slaves to exemplify the virtuous qualities that they saw in themselves.  Equiano debunks this delusion and suggests that slave masters are doing nothing more than showing the character of white men through their conduct and example.
2. There is great irony in the way Europeans saw the African People; barbaric, uncivilized, and a people who couldn’t understand culture.  Colonisers kidnapped slaves from a country that had been rich in culture and tradition for thousands of years before their arrival.  Equiano is a subject in the Kingdom of Benen , by way of Eboe , which is now southwestern Nigeria. It is presumed that this pre-Columbian kingdom was and formed by the Edo people, flourished from the 13th to 19th century CE (Cartwright 2020). The kingdom is perhaps best known for its impressive brass sculptures and plaques which frequently depict rulers and their family; they are considered amongst the finest artworks ever produced in Africa.

Cartwright, Mark. “Kingdom of Benin.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 02 Apr 2019. Web. 18 Apr 2020.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,

• “Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country.”

1. In this passage  hyperbole is used contextually to emphasize, evoke. strong feelings and create strong impressions of Equiano’s psychological state during the first moments of his capture. When Equiano says, “if ten thousand worlds had been my own”(Equiano 25) he is speaking to the unique experience of a person who was not born into slavery but thrust into it. Although he details the many injustices, he witnessed throughout his enslavement he is also writing his narrative after the fact. He purchased his freedom in 1766 but still lived under the constant threat of being jailed, murdered or returned to slavery. His statement speaks to the despair, powerlessness and loss of control that he would give up the power to be free in exchange for being made a slave in his home country.
2. Equiano is bringing to light how vastly different slavery in Africa was compared to what he experienced.  In Equiano’s African kingdom a slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement. Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master’s kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. The type of slavery during the Transatlantic slave trade is referred to as chattel slavery. “A chattel slave is a piece of property, and without rights” (Okoye 1980). This kind of slavery was very different because  it was dehumanizing and solely based on the genetic make-up of a person. Generations  of children, women and men were sold were non-human objects to be owned, used and disposed of at will, as was to be practiced by Europeans

Okoye, F. Nwabueze. “Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the American Revolutionaries.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, 1980, pp. 4–28. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1920967. Accessed 20 Apr. 2020.

ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA

Phyllis Wheatley

• “Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”

1. The term was first used in an Atlantic Monthly article titled “Striving s of the Negro People” in 1897. The concept is often associated with William Edward Burghardt DuBois, who brought the terminology to light famously, in his groundbreaking book,  The Souls of Black Folk (1903). W. E. B. DuBois uses the concepts of ‘the veil’ and ‘double-consciousness’ to explain the “peculiar conditions” (Pittman 2016) within which African Americans find themselves in the United States and the specific tools at their disposal to understand and hopefully dismantle those conditions.  Phyllis Wheatly uses this second sight to provide her with a basis for deeper insights into the social realm and the possibility for more effective actions against the systems of domination in place.

Pittman, John P., “Double Consciousness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/double-consciousness/>.

2. When enslaved Africans first arrived in America, some brought religious traditions with them. But the pain of slavery drove many to look for meaning and hope in a new place – the Bible.  Although many could not read the stories of retribution and salvation took a hold of all slaves who heard them. Christianity was a practice the African slaves saw as a salvation but was also a tool slave holders used to oppress them. Although most slaves could not read, biblical stories of salvation and retribution spread like fire. Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament (Rae 2018).

Rae, Noel. The Great Stain: Witnessing American Slavery. The Overlook Press, 2018.

Antwan Weatherington

Professor Rumore

Introduction to Literary Studies 300

22 March 2020

Reading Communities

As an African-American male living in American who is in between two generations I feel that I can see the themes and ideas concerning 18^th century British colonialism from a rather interesting vantage point.  As a person who is in my late 30’s I grew up as a teenager in the 1990s when the country was going through many battles concerning racism. Many of the scars left behind from slavery and the aftermath of reconstruction were being ripped open. In the 1990s,  there seemed to be a reemergence of black pride but with the aggression of a newer generation expressing it through music, fashion, & politics. I can remember having my older relatives around me who lived in this country when being the “right kind of black” was a matter of life or death.  In these times it was either fall in line, keep your head down, or risk you and your families safety. Listening to my elders I know they dealt with racism which morphed into colorism within my community. Family members who were more socially accepted by their own because they were lighter skin, or their hair was of a finer texture than their counterparts. These standards were not created by African-Americans but pasted down to them through colonialism. It was someone coming in and saying who you are, what you are, and what you believe is not correct.  We were systematically fed this message for generations that well after slavery we took on those standards as our own.  Hearing the way in which Behn describes Oroonoko in compared to his other African natives infuriated me. She was indoctrinating to her readers that a certain kind of black is more beautiful and acceptable. Aphra Behn doesn’t seem to think it at all possible that all these features could be coming only from his African heritage when she says “His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat”(Behn 6).

This truly illustrated the contradiction with some abolitionist of that time.  Yes, they didn’t want Africans to be slaves but by no means were beautiful without some European enhancement. It also illuminates my own bias, ignorance, and pre-programming  when it comes to another African Americans features I see in passing. If they do not look like what I think a black person should look like, in my mind, they must be “mixed”. Although this was fiction, it became reality for the African American community and the United States in modern times.  This is something that I see time and time again in media; African-American men & women being told by their own race and others what is and is not beautiful. A prime example of this is an incident that happened between two female case mates of a VH1 show called “Basketball Wives”. A women of  Latin descent  with far more European features  compared a Nigerian young lady with prominent African features to a monkey over social media. It was eye opening to see the response from African-American women who didn’t think she was beautiful either and used other cruel names for her physical attributes.

Although I am not a native new Yorker I can feel the reverberations of colonialism in society today repackaged as gentrification . The term gentrification has many connotations depending on whom you ask and which side of the profit margin your own. I see it as an influx of residents of higher socioeconomic status moving into a low socioeconomic status neighborhood. When I originally moved to New York back in 2000 I lived in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. This area is known for its diverse mix of West Indian, African, Jewish, and African-American populations. Over the last 10 years this neighborhood like many others around the country has been transformed  into an almost unrecognizable, socially acceptable, even “hip” places to live at the expense of long term residents. In thinking back to Oroonoko’s  story told through the eyes of Behn ,where she obviously had preconceived notions about people who she knew nothing about, by saying “He had nothing of barbarity in his nature (Behn 5). Her feeling was something I could relate to, ashamedly, evening being a person of color. The only things I knew about Africa was what I saw in movies and through National Geographic. I thought there was only huts and dirt and no one who spoke English.  The lawmakers, real estate developers are allowed to come into an area and people either have to assimilate into a new way of life or move out. The people aren’t even considered for the value and knowledge they bring to a place they have lived for generations. The men in Oroonoko were described as people who knew they did not know the land and needed the native people as a means for survival. What also happens are the small businesses that have been the vein of that community must fall in line with the new ways of the neighborhood or be forced out as well.  Although this process makes the neighborhood pretty on the outside it causes more of a rift and makes the line between classes that much bigger. This problem is illustrated in Uniting the Kingdom (2007) when it says “ Internal colonialism did little to alleviate the gap between the poor and the rich, instead exploiting that divide (Levine 24)  . The readings in this class have made me open to the experience of validating points of views and ideals that I might not agree with but are an integral part of society that must be unpacked and rediscovered.

This is a picture of my old neighborhood on the corner of Nostrand Avenue & Pacific Street. This bodega is a prime example of what is happening and has happened here.  This store used to have windows boarded up, it was smoky and always relatively dark & dank in this store. In 2019, this is the same exact store only now they are calling themselves “Nature SuperMarket”. This is not to appease the longtime residents but the more upscale clientele that has taken over .

Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. 1688.

Levine, Philippa. The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset. Routledge, an Imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

The first two archival objects I located are bibles titled “Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands”(1808)  and Pro Slavery Bible (1839). The first was published in 1808, three years after the Haitian Revolution ended. Most of the Old Testament is missing, and only about half of the New Testament remains. It is believed  that certain pieces were omitted so that enslaved Africans could not read or be read anything that might cause them to rise up and rebel against their oppressors. It starts off with the creation story, then it jumps to Joseph getting sold into slavery by his brothers and how that ends up being a good thing for him. This directly ties into the idea that many colonists had about slavery ; it being a good thing for everybody. The latter, I was not able to find as much background information but this particular bible looks like a somewhat amended ,more explicit version of the original that came out and was published  in 1808. The first book used religion in a much more clever way so that it wasn’t so obvious to the slave reading it. The more recent version is saying in no. uncertain term obey me or die.  

I found these objects to illuminate a great deal of the religious contractions in both Oroonoko (1688) and Equiano’s (1789) story. During the time in which both these works were written slavery was legal and often times religion was a key component used to  morally justify the atrocities being committed. Behn (1688) uses her opportunity and platform as a female writer to underwrite her political views which are woven into the story through her use of detail. Unlike her male counterparts she feels “Religion would here but destroy that tranquility they possess by ignorance” (Behn 3).  She uses her own point of view as the narrator and she also speaks down against the oppression of Christianity through colonialism and what it corrupts people. Through Oroonoko she says “such ill morals are only practiced in Christian countries, where they prefer the bare name of religion” (Behn 7). In both works you have two Africans of very different charates and ideals about how they wanted to and needed to exist in society. Equiano chose to assimilate and work his way up by learning how to be the best possible slave he could be, but none of that mattered. No matter how well they read, or what kingdom they came from, or how well they knew how to sail a boat, or how different slavery was in Africa, it was their skin in its entirety that made them Slaves.

The 2^nd archival object  is an image of some of the darker side of the Atlantic Slave Trade.  The image shown is of a young African slave women being flogged to death by the ship’s Captain while in transport. The men involved were brought up on charges and found of no guilt.  I chose this image because I pictured how differently Equiano & Oroonoko processed and dealt with what happening around them.  One story I’m very familiar with and more comfortable with which is the story of a rebellion and someone who fought back until the end which was Oroonoko’s.  Equiano took a different approach to being captive, although he went through all the stages one could possible go through when faced with that kind of devastation. His narrative was doing whatever he had to do in order to stay alive, and allowing himself to be smart and cunning rather than let anger and despair get the best of him. Looking at this picture put me in the mind frame of both men and why they might have made the choices they did. When Equiano was captured and put aboard the ship he witnessed horrors that no young boy should ever have to go through. A graphic use of realism where you can almost hear, feel, and smell what’s going on. He witnessed so much death and devastation around him that to stay alive he had to assimilate.

This image also brought forth the kind of world and mindset you had to create for yourself to think that any white person at that time could be your friend, or show your kindness. After witnessing the horrors Equiano saw there were times in the novel where you get the sense he has almost forgotten that he is a slave, and that is is equal among his other male counterparts. The author tried to play up in this harmonist relationship between slave and slave masters. This was something that was a contradiction in and of itself that we discussed in class. I have come to the conclusion that no matter how much I love and might care for something my conscience would not let me own another person. In Equianos story this is a theme that came up quite a bit, especially during his time working on ships.  In his mind, he thought his masters saw him as indispensable, irreplaceable. At one point he he boldy says, at a time where you could be shot dead without cause “ and by the laws of the land no man has a right to sell me. And I added, that I had ,heard a lawyer and others at different times tell my master so” (Equiano 59). One wrong move whenever they got angry at him and you could be sold off.  When he found himself back in slavery later on in the novel I know he thought back to those first experiences on that slave ship as a young boy. He had to come to a harsh reality that he ,like other Africans like him, were no more than property to be bought and sold at will. The amiable treatment that he received from his masters I don’t’ believe was for the slaves benefit but for their bottom lines. If your good to your slave they will work hard for you and you will in turn make more money. Oroonoko on the other hand illustrates something very different if I picture both men looking at the scene of this women hanging and being beaten. With his warrior lineage, Behn describes him as the ultimate martyr rand  as someone who isn’t willing to fall In line. Although from what I can gather from both works the idea of death being better than slavery seems to be a common thread among many Africans , the way In which this was carried out was different.

Top of Form

Date: 1792

Document Type: Cartoon

Source: Library of Congress

Author: Isaac Cruikshank

Source archive: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

GIlbert, and Law. Select Parts of the Holy Bible: for the Use of Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands. Nabu Press, 1807.

American Anti-Slavery Society. Pro-slavery Bible. New York, [1839?]. Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Gale. CUNY – Lehman College Library. 16 Mar. 2020