Was There a Purpose to Slavery?

This media item I found came from me searching the keyword slavery. After watching “The Story We Tell”, I now have a new interpretation of how slavery started and the intentions behind it, thus I wanted to continue looking for more sources about early slavery in the U.S. I came upon this website that is titled “The Purpose of Slavery” and I found some connections to the video.

To begin, this website starts off by explaining that one justification for slavery comes from the bible. This was not mentioned at all in the video. In fact, the video’s main argument why some whites found slavery acceptable was because “scientifically” the blacks we made to be slaves. This argument was weak and not well supported. The whites tried to come up with anything they could so they could justifiably keep slaves but they came up empty. However, this website does mention that blacks were a preferred slave over whites because they tended to have more physical endurance. Also, this website mentions the second reason for slavery was greed. This is obvious and does not justify a legitimate purpose of slavery. So overall this website has some things to compare as well as some things to contrast with the video “The Story We Tell”. With few legit reasons for slavery, too bad it had to last for so long. I think that this website is a great follow up to the video and also offers more reasoning behind some white people’s validation for black slavery.

Copy and paste this link to check out the website about the purpose of slavery and see for yourself how it compares and contrasts to the video.

http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/slavery/erica.html