To Be A Slave Quotes

My Three Quotes from To Be A Slave

• "The number of lashes is graduated according to the nature of the ease. Twenty-five are deemed a mere brush, inflicted, for instance, when a dry leaf or a piece of boll is found in the cotton, or when a branch is broken in the field." This quote made me feel a lot worse about the slaves' conditions. These white slave owners would do anything to pick these slaves apart. They made sure that everything the slaves did was perfect, and if it wasn't they'd do anything to find little mistakes and details in order to get these slaves in trouble or to be able to punish these poor slaves. pg. 72 
• "It was rarely that a day passed without one or more whippings... The delinquent whose weight had fallen short, was taken out, stripped, made to lie upon the ground, face down wards, when he received a punishment proportioned to his offence." This quote made me furious that these slaves have to be punished if their actions don't meet up to their owner's expectations. It makes me mad that since these white owners only care about money and power, as well as themselves. They don't think twice about punishing them, they don't even care about the pain that they put on these slaves. All they care about is the growth of his business and would do anything to make more money.
• "Without a name of his own, the slave's ability to see himself apart from his owner was lessened. He was never asked "who's nigger are you?" The slave had no separate identity. He was always Mr. So - and - so's nigger." This shows that slaves didn't have a true identity, instead they were labeled as a white person's property. They aren't allowed to have a name or an identity. Instead originality and freedom were taken away from the slaves. Instead they were forced to live without a separate identity."           

Some of the stories from To Be a Slave that I've been going back and forth with is the story of the babies being thrown off of the ship, once after the slaves were captured and taken on the ship. These babies were taken from their mothers and thrown in the ocean to die, due to the fact that the ship owners knew that these babies wouldn't make it out alive. I can't help but constantly think about how the mothers felt when their child was taken away without their consent. It makes me constantly think that so many innocent lives were taken away because people wanted to enslave Africans just to grow their business. One story from ROOTs that has stuck with me, is the story of the black slave who were hired to capture slaves were out to capture people of their own kind. I think that this stuck to me because before watching the tv show, I never knew black people would do this thing to their own kind. This scene told me that many white people forced/encouraged many Africans to turn against their own race, and capture them to benefit the whites as well as the ones hired.