Question 3- Economics or Racism

I think the intentions behind the slave trade were purely economical for both England and America.

Liverpol, England was where the slave trade origniated between US and England, because they would ship voyages that transported slaves from Africa to the Carribean and the Southern US. They traded for cotton and tobacco with the US and rum and sugar with the Caribbean. According to Reuters article on Slavery- Britain faces up to shameful past, by Paul Majendie, in one decade alone from 1783-1793 Liverpols slave trade profits from the sale of more than 300,000 slaves topped 12 million pounds. Now for the US this meant trading goods, and in return recieving slaves to help keep producing the goods, to in turn help their profits as well.

All parties involved were benefiting from the slave trade, economically, it was not about race, rather it was a matter of using people to make money.

Now a days, Liverpol and the US have to face this dark past, and for all selfish reasons they did what they did. Majendie says, " The idea of white racial supremacy, which had been introduced to justify the desire for profit, became central to Europoean attitudes. This created the foundations for racial prejudice which still exists today."

Steven Spielberg's Amistad film about slave trade sparked national debates about slavery in the US.

Slave owners were only thinking of their own selfish needs of money, and labor, but if economic means were the reason for this then what about the slaves? What about their wages, how do we think that affected them?

Painter talks about this on page 92 when he asks whatslavery costed the slaves, it costed them income, wealth, no ability to acquire property, and without wages, savings or property, they could not send anything home to their families back in Africa.

So I think slavery was driven by economics, but eventually, it empowered this supremecy that developed into racism, that since blacks were once owned by whites, that somehow that gave them the entitlement to always have that power, which is wrong.