Abandonment and Dismemberment: something torn and new

This lecture was about the slave trade, and how our ancestors were ripped from our homeland and abandoned in an unfamiliar land. The speaker went into detail about these two topics, elaborating on how the slaves were uprooted from their homes, treated as mere property, and shipped across the ocean. They were socially and mentally dismembered, and many physically dismembered. Various parts of what made Africans were stolen from them, aside from their humanity. Those shipped across the ocean were torn from their families, their religion, and culture. After being torn from everything they knew, the Africans were then abandoned in a new world, bought, sold and worked as chattel, and supplied with the bare minimum to live. Many of the Africans were also ripped of their will to fight. The sense of abandonment loomed large over the slaves, and suppressed their resistance. Being stranded in unfamiliar lands, the slaves were unable to do much to improve their situation. I feel as though the Africans remaining in Africa also felt a sense of dismemberment, having their brothers and sisters shipped across the Atlantic. All in all, the lecture was about how the slaves were forcibly removed from their homeland, and forced to adapt to a hostile environment in unfamiliar lands.

Jonathan Newton