450 years later, yet we still enslaved. To first address the impact of slavery on today's
society, you must understand why slavery happened . Slavery was not only started because of
the economic need but.the belief of superiority. The white race saw vulnerable people and
decided to exploit them for their own gain. Even though the 13th Amendment said slavery was
illegal, the United States used segregation and Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans
oppressed and enslaved. Slaves built this country, and several iconic structures such as the White
House, a symbol of freedom and democracy. My question is, ¨How is this country the land of the
free but the people who built this country are not free? Slavery was a way to oppress African
Americans, which is still seen today. Slaves were punished by very gruesome beatings. The
punishment slaves received were for rebelling and also for white slave owners to have a sense of
dominance. For so long being treated as inferior, African Americans began to adopt the
perception of inferiority which is evident in Beloved. Slavery was a horrific experience that
The characters in Beloved think and act a certain way due to the traumatizing impact
slavery had on their lives. Beloved by Toni Morrison, is a novel that illustrates the traumatic
experience of slavery from ex-slaves viewpoint. Beloved is based on a true story of a female
slave Margaret Garner. Garner killed her two-year-old daughter instead of having her sent back
to slavery under the fugitive slave law. The main character of the novel, Sethe, uses her voice to
describe the pain of being slave.The novel demonstrates the reality of being a slave which is seen
in Sethe’s action of killing her daughter. Slavery as a whole had an effect on Sethe, which is
demonstrated through her mental health. On page 102, Morrison states ¨Slave life. had busted
her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue, she had nothing left to make a
living but her heart¨(Morrison 102). Slavery had so much of a painful psychological impact on
Sethe that she was willing to disobey her ethics to kill her own child because of the fear of
having to be a slave. Morrison also uses Paul D as a representation of the mental impacts slavery
had on men.Throughout Beloved, Paul D struggled with finding his identity as a man. Morrison
states ¨All the awful memoirs he put into the tobacco tin lodged into his chest¨(Morrison 133).
Slavery has caused Paul D to bottle up all his painful memories and emotions into the tobacco
tin. The aftermath of slavery was life-changing to Paul D as he suffered from PTSD. Overall,
Beloved exposes the existence and conditions of slavery in a nation that tries to disguise that
Another account of the psychological impact slavery had on slaves is Frederick Douglass.
In his narrative, he curses himself for being educated and wishes he was uneducated like the
other slaves because he felt that he would never be able to get his freedom. As a result, Douglass
started to feel caged in by his desire of being a free-man. Slavery had mental impact on slaves
Even after abolishing slavery, African Americans were still enslaved and impacted
socially. In Beloved, Morrison uses Denver to show the impacts slavery had on slaves. Even
though Denver was not a slave, the past experience of her family enslaved her. Denver was a
antisocial person, she did not associate with anybody. The effects of slavery caused Denver to
not develop social skills and also caused her to not to experience life limiting her growth as a
human. Also, the damaging impact of slavery on African Americans were still felt with the
creation of Jim Crow laws and segregation. Jim Crows laws were a way to enslave African
Americans by allowing segregation in public places such as schools, restaurants, and public
transportation. White people used Jim Crow laws as another form of slavery to reasserted their
dominance by rejecting African Americans their basic rights such as the right to vote.
After slavery, African Americans were impacted financially. Even though African
Americans were granted freedom and the ability to make their own living. Southern States uses
black codes as a clever way to economically limit freed slaves, forcing African Americans to
stay working on plantations because southerns fear that African Americans would become too
strong as a whole.As a result, they used black codes as a way to keep African Americans inferior
to them. Later on in time, white people also used housing discrimination as a tool to keep
African Americans from buying houses in white neighborhoods and preventing them to build
generational wealth which is part of the reason why African Americans lived in poverty areas
today. Bouie states ¨ Unlike their white counterparts, who in the 1940s and 50s, could take
advantage of the G.I. Bill, blacks couldn’t obtain conventional financing or subsidized loans.
Contact lending was the only option, and it amounted to large scale wealth theft¨(Bouie, How
We Built the Ghettos). This shows that even after slavery, African Americans were still not free
by the use of house of discrimination because they were denied their basic rights of owning
property.
In today's society, I and fellow other African Americans are still impacted from slavery.
Many cruel parts of slavery such as hanging, beating, and killing are still seen in today society
from white supremacist groups and police killings of unarmed African Americans. Meek Mill, a
famous rapper, said in his song about the struggles of being an African American man ¨ White
man kill a black man, they never report us¨(Meek Mill, ¨Young Black America¨).This lyric is a
reference to the killings of African Americans by police officers. This lyric shows that the impact
of slavery is seen today from the violent actions of white people killing innocence African
Americans. Also Tupac, a famous rapper, once said in his about police brutality, ¨They got me
trapped, can barely walk the city streets.Without a cop harassing' me, searching me, then asking
my identity Hands up, throw me up against the wall, didn't do a thing at all I'm telling you one
day these suckers gotta fall Cuffed up throw me on the concrete¨ (Tupac ¨Trapped¨). Both of
these songs are used to show that roots of slavery are still seen today with the violent killings of
economically. The impact of slavery is still felt today with police brutality and white supremacist
groups. In Beloved, the meaning of the novel was to show how slavery had a dehumanizing
effect on slaves. Morrison used Sethe and other characters as a tool to emphasize the painful and
forgotten parts of slavery. it is very obvious in the novel that slavery threatens the psychology
and spiritual world of individuals and causes horrific and brutal consequences. The meaning of
Beloved i s to illustrate the brutal aspects of slavery in a way that slavery will never be forgotten.
We the the people must first acknowledge slavery to ever move forward as one country for the
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