There are things you hear about that are just so foreign that you can't possibly wrap your head around them. You grow up hearing about atrocities like the Holocaust and slavery but they're almost always in the context of history lessons, movies or museums- things that never quite strike home. Even my frequent visits to Georgia have failed to make me really realize how messed up the concept of slavery is. Then I read this article on CNN Money. for some reason this paragraph had more of an impact than all of the histories lessons I've ever read:
"Records revealed that the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company owned at least 162 slaves, Wachovia said, and that the Bank of Charleston accepted at least 529 slaves as collateral on mortgaged properties or loans. The Bank of Charleston also acquired an undetermined number of people when customers defaulted on their loans."
When customers defaulted on loans they gave the bank people. How on earth did anyone think it was right for a bank to acquire human beings? Sometimes all it takes is to see something in a different context to realize how horribly messed up and real it was.
What got me was that after the invention of the Cotton Gin, a slave could be purchased for $1,000 to $1,500 dollars (think of how much that was worth in the 1800's). However, if next week you decided to purchase a bride in China who had been kidnapped from her home, you would only be obliged to pay about $500.
It's seems to me that even long after slavery has been abolished in the West, humanity is still sadly undervalued around the world.
Posted by: Janice | June 03, 2005 at 09:22 AM