Call and Response, The Riverside Anthology of The African American Literary Tradition suggests that Black America was a second entity within the United States because of the twenty abducted slaves arrived in the United States before the famous landing of the white people on Plymouth Rock. The twenty kidnapped African slaves were indentured servants in Jamestown, Virginia in the year of 1619, but Plymouth landing did not take place until 1620.This entity is still true today. African Americans make up a separate nation within the United States. African Americans even through today receive treatment that still displays a societal division with immigrants receiving better treatment than African Americans.
Colonialism is for power and resources. It occurs when people take over another sect, area, and/or colony that are occupied by a less dominant culture of people. The less dominant are subjected to change, enforced to incorporate the dominant ones system of government, religion and language, education. The less fortunate who are forced to acquire a new culture, through the loss of their own, become subject matters of a first world power. In the 1600`s it usually consisted of human and natural resources, but also included strategic means.
The ideological difference between slavery in Africa and that which was practiced by European countries in the 16th and 17th centuries: Europeans thought bondage was natural and perfect condition for certain races. There was an idea that the darker a person and race was meant inferiority through mentality and morality allowing them to become slaves. It was assumed blacks had no soul and if they did that eternally hell was already placed upon them. The 17th century was a savior to the slaves, so those who transported the slaves to the United States. The slaves would be saved through Christianity; therefore the Europeans saved the damned who where not mentally or morally able to do so by themselves. Religion played a key role in slavery. Interpretation of what God wanted the Puritan society, the chosen one`s had to enforce the word of God to stop people from running amok. John Saffin said, “It would unchristian for true believers not enslave Africans because they were nothing but brutes.”
Africa`s slaves were usually the result of battle or war, but the slaves became part of the tribe that enslaved them. The slaves could own slaves. The slaves did not do more work than a free person of the tribe. Slaves could not eat with the free. They were not stripped of all their rights or dignity as in the United States.
The Chain of Being Theory is based on the idea of the established order of the universe as a pyramid-shaped chain. The pyramid from top to bottom went God, angels, humans, beasts, fowl and finally bugs. This theory believed that within this divine social ladder, the Anglo- aristocracy was second only to a king and the rest of the white people were placed in restricted class levels not to be promoted. Lower –class white women and men were in most cases indentured slaves, but usually all women and children were at the bottom of the ladder or pyramid. Africans were a rung below them. Winthrop Jordan believed this led to black people being the link between animals and humans. Calvinists allowed this theory to justify brainwashing the new emerging members of societies white middle class that Africans were God`s last chosen.
Trickster tale is a folktale in which the weaker less powerful thing through wisdom or wit outsmarts the thing in power.
