In the South, farming was the economy. Farming was not only the means of income for families, but also a way of life. This was the only way the Southerners knew how to live. They have been doing the same thing for almost two hundred years now, they did not know any better. Anyways, along with farming (especially on large plantations) comes slavery. The Southern States needed slavery to thrive economically, but why could they not pay these people? Why did they have to treat the Slaves with so much disrespect and treat them as if they were incompetent? I'll tell you why, because the Southern Slave Owners were ignorant. They were not educated in the cultures and traditions of the Slaves. The Slave Owners viewed these people as savages. They thought that all these people were good for was labor intensive work. They were wrong. Slaves were just as competent as the Slave Owners. The North recognized this in the Slaves. They fought for the Slaves and their rights. Slaves are people too... right?
Tatiana, it's interesting how you write about the dependency they had on slaves, and then question whether or not they were really necessary. Slaves did the work that no one else really wanted to do, which is pretty unfortunate. They are people! With proper education, they could have become a larger part of society. Hmm. Maybe the owners were afraid of that... Or they just had a major inferiority complex.
ReplyDeleteHi Tatiana, I agree with many of your points, especially the aspects about ignorance of culture, the root of most racism. However, they probably did not pay slaves because they were in need of inexpensive labor, and lots of it; those fields were big.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tata. As long as the owners can still have profits, they don't care about others especially slaves who they regard as a lower class. I think in the beginning, probably because the slaves got lazy and they began to beat them but slowly became a tradition. Also, history does tell us to, that the less education people have, the more arrogant they are.
ReplyDeletePlantation owners didn't pay slaves because of the need for inexpensive work. They didn't give a salary to slaves on their plantations because slaves weren't even thought of as human beings, merely things. Plantation owners exploited the fact that the slaves weren't considered actual men and women and used them for cheap, large scale labor that resulted in profit. Also, I don't believe that the punishment of being scourged was due to the fact of the slaves being 'lazy'. The labor the slaves had to do was unbelievable and some slaves even ended up dying or committing suicide to evade it. They might have been beaten because they weren't able to meet the expectations of the plantation owner. Not meeting that expectation was not because the slaves were 'lazy'.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't it be argued that Slavery killed the economy in the South because it took away hundreds of jobs for working class whites?
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