African American History Paper Essay

Dr. Hardy’s view is that if you really want to understand slavery and know its full legacy and meaning you have to work with blacks. Dr. Hardy felt that even though slavery was so long ago we still feel the suffering and sorrow psychologically. According to Hardy, â€Å"talking about slavery may evoke feelings of shame and humiliation or anguish and rage in African Americans, while it tends to bring up shame, guilt, and denial in White people.† Dr. Hardy believes that even though slavery happened so long ago today both black and whites have negative feelings when the topic of slavery is brought up. The documentary that we watched in class called Africans in America: the terrible transformation is about slowly but surely piece by piece African Americans became enslaved in the US. Now to tie these together is very difficult. They are similar yet different subjects. The major topic that ties them together is slavery. What is most critical to understand especially when we consider the video Africans in America: a terrible transformation is that the Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery in America were invented to pull poor people, black and white people apart to keep them fighting one another making blacks and whites begin resent each other. I agree with Dr. Donald H. Matthews when he pointed out, in his book Slavery was â€Å"a violation of one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization, namely, that one should never treat a subject as an object.† When we watched the PBS documentary Africans in America: the terrible transformation I learned about how slowly America was evolving into a country of slavery. Before life wasn’t perfect but it was decent not everyone was equal neither. Even not all white people were equal the classes were rich and poor. The blacks and the poor whites were on the same level/class and they began to fight though like I said earlier. There aren’t many differences between the documentary and the book that Dr. Hardy wrote but I can name a couple. The documentary looks at the past and how it evolved. While the book looks at the future/present and how we are affected now. Even though these very different they bring together the same idea that slavery has a big effect.