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Why Is Slavery Still Relevant Today

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Recommended: Brief history of racism

Why do we learn about slavery in school, when no-one alive today has experienced slavery? Why do we learn solely about a single form of racism which is not applicable to anyone today, when there are many issues which would educate our youth on racism in modern society, and actually apply to us? I believe that racism would be severely reduced in our society if we are taught about relevant forms of racism in modern society, such as the conflicts in Zimbabwe and Israel, as opposed to the over-studied, stereotypical and irrelevant topic of slavery. Slavery, although horrific, is almost certainly never going to come back, however there are many race conflicts which actually apply and could be stopped if the New Zealand youth learned more subtle …show more content…

This isn’t the story of some slave 150 years ago, or some prejudiced race in the mid-1900s. This is happening today, in the very world we live in, which is what I believe makes it so powerful and impacting. For me, I found it reasonably easy to pass over the underlying racism themes while learning about slavery, because it wasn’t relevant to me, or anyone I know. Learning about racism such as in Zimbabwe does hit close to home for a lot of people; I had a friend in my cricket team whose family had to flee Zimbabwe. That kind of modern racism does actually have an effect on people, and needs to be publicised and eradicated, both in extreme cases such as in Zimbabwe, and in less extreme, but still unacceptable cases such as in New Zealand. I believe that studying a novel such as The Cry of the Go-Away Bird in English or Social Studies would open up the eyes of our youth to racism, and would help eliminate it in the future, especially when relating to modern racism, citizenship and land ownership, and would help significantly in exposing and abolishing

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There is still such a false concept floating around about slavery, even in the twenty-first century. I enjoy reading articles and documents, like the ones provided for this essay, to properly give me an idea of what slavery was like when our ancestors were around. Slavery, even today in schools, is not taught how it should be. Many people, especially in the South, try to ignore slavery as if it never existed, when it is definitely a part of our history. I think there is a falseness, on both ends of slavery, that many people do not talk about; these documents showed me just that.

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