Distraction in the Slave Industry

Throughout the history of America, the slave industry used the tactic of distraction to diminish the immorality of the slave trade. For example, in Robert Hayden’s The Middle Passage he describes the captains of slave ships to use “bright ironical names” (51) such as “Jesus, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy” (48). These slave captains used these cheery and completely false names to distract citizens of America from the horrors that occurred on these slave ships and on the southern plantations the slave ships were traveling to. Another tactic of distraction was included in a book titled The Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson. In this document on the economy of the south Jefferson describes slaves, or rather all colored people in general, to be “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (3). He writes further to say that colored people are to be regarded as “different species of the same genus” (Jefferson 3). These opinions written by Thomas Jefferson created a notion in the minds of many that slaves were mentally and physically below blacks and not even in the same branch of humanity as whites were. This belief distracted people from the reality of the inhumane treatment of the enslaved because they were no longer considered people and were not given the same level of human rights as the rest of the American community, and the violence against them was pushed to the side. Therefore, leaders of the slave industry distracted the public with false information to hide the immorality of slavery.