Human Cargo Analysis

Could a connection be made to things I have learned elsewhere?

Two of the essays we have read in class, The Trail of Tears by Dee Brown, and Human Cargo: From Africa to America, by Ira Berlin, both deal with the mistreatment of racial minorities, those who were here before the English, and those the English dragged across an ocean to be slaves. The Native Americans and the Africans are completely different peoples, but the oppression set up centuries ago forms connections between the two.

The displacement of southeastern Cherokees is a tragedy, and the factors that went into it are even more so. Brigadier General Winfield Scott, on May 10th 1838, issued a proclamation. The very end is the most striking for me: “The blood of the white man or the blood of the red man may be spilt, and if spilt, however accidentally, it may be impossible for the discreet and humane among you, or among us, to prevent a general war

and carnage” (Brown 158). This is classic manipulation, basically saying that if anyone was hurt, it would be impossible to stop a war, and there was just nothing anyone could do about that. He also implies that not all of them are “discreet and humane” and adds white men as an afterthought. He doesn’t care about the Cherokee people, he cares about getting them off valuable land. Their culture and the history of that land matters nothing to him, and this is also prevalent in the mistreatment of Africans, beginning in the slave trade.
In the slave ships, the power of the white crewmen over the African captives destroyed any fragment of their society. As Berlin puts it: “...other critical social distinctions lost their meaning, as the complex hierarchies and webs of dependencies that gave form to African societies were swept away”. Without the intricacies of their heritage and culture and their humanity, taken away from their homes, the African captives had nothing, and were seen as nothing. Once again, their value was reduced to only what could be gained from their exploitation, instead of having the integral value of a human life.
The forced migration the Africans and Cherokees went through were actually very similar in general overviews.

Africans were taken from their homes and held in slave ships for an indeterminate amount of time, in despicable conditions, and at least one in seven Africans died on the trip (Berlin 48). The Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, from children to elders, walked through cold weather, with disease everywhere, and an estimated one in four tribe members died on the way (Brown 167). Disease and mistreatment were everywhere in their journeys, along with cruel conditions and overcrowding. Now, both groups of people are discriminated against, put at higher risks, and paid less.

Connections can be drawn between the mistreatment of two racial minorities centuries ago, because they went through similar struggles then and today. This is important to remember, because then the origins of white supremacy and institutional racism can be analyzed. Plus, as the quote from George Santaya goes, those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat

it.