Nowadays, there are many opinions about the impact of slavery on people. Some people believe that slavery is something from the past and can never return. Still, some people think that slavery as it cannot be dead and continues influencing people in a variety of ways. Reece and O’Connell (2015) underline that history is “centrally involved in place development” (p. 42). People cannot neglect their history if they want to enjoy their present.
Slavery is the period that cannot be forgotten, and the relations that were developed between people during the slavery period influenced the way of how people treat each other today. In this project, it is offered to analyze the history of slavery and identify the ways it impacts contemporary society. Slavery may be alive today though in different forms it was alive in the past centuries, and people should take responsibility for how slavery could impact their relations and development only in case they consider the experience of their ancestors.
Foner and Alba (2010) say that the legacy of the past may help to shape the experience and reaction of people in the present. The fact that people support the idea of the legacy of slavery influences considerably the ways of how the world of politics and economics can be shaped. Still, the problem is that not all citizens appreciate the history and try to ignore some facts in order to escape the challenges of the past.
Therefore, the legacy of slavery turns out to be a problem for many people with different tastes and interests, who have to live in the same communities. The legacy of the past is “bound up also with the concept of collective memory, the forms and effects of which are the subject of a large interdisciplinary literature” (Foner & Alba, 2010, p. 800). It means that people cannot come to the same conclusions in the present, even if they had the same history. Still, it is their choice, and people should respect each others’ opinions.
Besides, to comprehend how slavery from the past influences contemporary society, it is necessary to understand what different groups of people may learn about it. For example, the citizens of Southern America consider their own experience of how people should fight against slavery and protect their rights during a long period of time. The representation of slavery offered by the middle-level teachers influences the development of literacy and historical thinking as two main skills that children have to balance (Bickford & Rich, 2014).
Slavery has a considerable economic impact on society. A number of developed countries got the benefits from the slave trade in the past and gained recognition in the present. African countries were used as the cheap and natural sources of slaves for rich communities. Europe and West America were eager to buy more Black people to do their work and develop their countries, and Black people had nothing to do buy abandon their native lands to survive under the rules of rich people. Today, there are many countries, including the USA, where Black workforce remains to be cheap, and the impact of slavery can be observed just in another form it was in the past.
In general, the slavery of the past could be hardly found in the same forms in the present. Still, the idea that some people such as racial minorities could be slaves (servants) for other people is alive. Even if the USA or other European countries introduce themselves as inequality unbiased societies, slavery has its impact and cannot be neglected.
References
Bickford III, J. H., & Rich, C. W. (2014). Examining the representation of slavery within children’s literature. Social Studies Research and Practice, 9(1), 66-94.
Foner, N., & Alba, R. (2010). Immigration and the legacies of the past: the impact of slavery and the Holocaust on contemporary immigrants in the United States and Western Europe. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52(4), 798-819.
Reece, R. L., & O’Connell, H. A. (2015). How the Legacy of Slavery and Racial Composition Shape Public School Enrollment in the American South. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(1), 42-57.