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Reflection Of The African Slave Trade

753 Words4 Pages
Andre Da Costa
U44965992
02/28/16

First Exam Essay Portion
For the first half of this semester we considered the African diaspora from the 1400s until the 1800s and through assigned readings I believe that the slave trade had a big impact on the black experience. The main impact that stood out to me through the reading was the identities of the African people and how it was stolen from them while the Atlantic slave trade was happening. The statistics that the readings for this semester really opened my eyes on the struggles the Africans had to deal with. Through those statistics you can see how many of the African slaves had their lives changed and renewed. The first reading from this semester that shows that the blacks had their identities stolen from them through the slave trade was the Saltwater Slavery book written by Stephanie Smallwood. In the book Smallwood demonstrates the African slaves perspective through the Atlantic slave trade where she wrote about the slaves and their lives in the New World. In this part of the book Smallwood demonstrated how these Africans had no identity in the Americas, the slaves lost everything from their past and had no way of getting back to it. With their ancestors long gone and unreachable these African slaves also where unable to raise children of their own in the new world. Smallwood also shows to the readers that these African slaves where robbed of their identity not only from their old homes back in Africa but
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