Homework 3

I would say obviously that racism played a big role in starting the slave trade and aided it in keeping steam over many years. Selling African Americans like property and using them to further the growth of slave owners plantation farms and economic prosperity was what lead it into an economic gain. I feel however that this led into the economics playing a larger role after this had been going on for some time. Slave owners knew that African Americans were important in producing agricultural commodities and supporting the food economics as they produced much of the cotton, sugar, hemp and tobacco. They also knew that they could get African Americans for cheap labor. This never fully erased the fact that racism was there, because if the slaves were not black I feel that this probably never would have happened. The slave trade hide this by making it an economic endeavor. We all know that African Americans played a big part in making America what it is today and much of how we got to where we are at. If racism was never a part of this, then I don't believe that the slave trade would have ever started and continued for as long as it did. So overall, I feel that both racism and economics were apart of the slave trade and that the slave trade was more influenced by economics over the years.