Equiano Reflection 2:

         The most important thing I learned from our class discussion this morning was how some slaves were put in a  position of power. Equiano was put in the position of an overseer, or in this case a driver. An driver means the same as an overseer except an overseer was a white man in charge of the slaves, and the driver was an enslaved black man who was in charge of the slaves. An overseer and a driver had to make sure that the slaves were doing their jobs to their fullest capacity. If they were doing everything to the overseer or the drivers liking then they would be beat by the overseer and/ or driver respectively. The drivers were given this position of power over their fellow slaves so try and increase productivity. The white men thought that if the slaves were being watched over by one of their fellow slaves then they would be more willing to work harder. It was a form of encouragement and incentive. The white men put in their heads that if they continued to work really hard then they could maybe become a driver one day. It was a sense of false hope. And to raise the stakes of the driver, they were also given a gun. The ultimate form of power.

            This really interested me. Why would the white men give certain slaves a gun. Were they not afraid that the slave would turn on them and kill them? One would think that when a slave would be handed a gun, he would want to get revenge on the people who were beating and torturing them. The slave would want to get out of there as soon as possible. But they don't. They follow the orders of the white people to watch over the slaves for them, and they do it without hesitation. Why would they do this? It was brought up in class that it could possibly be a form Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome is when a person starts feeling sympathy and/ or empathy for their kidnappers. In this case it would be sympathy and/ or empathy for their masters. They feel as though their masters are their family now. They don't want to harm them or leave. This is all that they know at this point. They would not know how to cope with life if they were out on their own.

            There was a question that was asked, or more like a question someone still had, that is still in my head. We had been talking about how we may not have slavery any more, but there is still racism everywhere. The question is how do we change and how do we start to change? This immediately sparked an answer. One student said that people would simply need to get their shit together and work towards equality. A start, I think, would be to correctly teach history in high school. I was told that Texas school system wants to only teach about the happy things that happened in history. That means they wouldn't teach about slavery, the Holocaust, or any other terrible events that happened. It is important to learn about these events so we can more easily understand certain people so we can see where they are coming from. If you delete someone's history, then there can never be an equality.