Black Slave Owners

There was a group in our Freshman Seminar class which did their presentation on Black slave owners. I found this to be an interesting topic since it addressed an issue that I had never thought about and had not even been fully aware of. I knew bits and pieces about Black people who owned slaves. Most of what I knew and believed included that they worked to free their own families and, if they did have other slaves, they would at least treat them properly since these people were of the same race as them. I found it interesting to learn that these slave owners treated their slaves the same way that white slave owners treated their slaves. They bought these people and beat them when they behaved in a negative way. There were Black slave owners who basically bought slaves for their own profit, no to help their people. I find it to be disconcerting that these people would treat their own people like this, since it would have been better to have some form of solidarity in the face of racism and mistreatment. This presentation was really able to open my eyes and even made me question most of what I learned in the past. There could have been other roles that Black people in the United States had with putting down the people of their own race, with the issue of slavery. It was an interesting topic that I would actually be interested in looking into more myself, some day.
Shayna McCormack