America Mendoza
WGST 290
Response paper one
For my response paper I chose to write about David Walker even though my presentation
is about Du Bois they both made great commentary on the topics they wrote about. Walker
“Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World” was really profound and made you think about
what made him demand the people of the world to try to listen to how inhuman slavery actually
is even in the preamble he discuss about how people rather be ignorance and have the labour of
slavery but they forget that God knows the truth that even though these people praise him and
talk about being a kind person that they still do atrocities that no one should go through but since
they have faith it doesn’t matter because they are being saved. As he begins with the articles, he
talks about how even though you were a slave you still are being in shackles to the white men
and woman because they have power over you and don’t see you as equals which is true because
no matter what they only us them as object nothing more they didn’t even consider them
humans. “They think because they hold us in their infernal chains of slavery, that we wish to be
white, or of their colour but they are dreadfully deceived we wish to be just as it pleased our
Creator to have made us, and no avaricious and unmerciful wretches, have any business to make
slaves of, or hold us in slavery” This quote was very impactful to me because it made me think
about how can he every imagine someone wanting to be white and what comes with it but for
him it was more about wanting the freedom the right to do what ever they please but as he
continues to talk he writes about the creator making them darker than the whites but they
wouldn’t do the same atrocities that the whites did to them. He continues on how he would find
it amusing that the southerner and westerner would talk about the barbarity but would not see
what they are doing is wrong because they are being backed up by faith which for them they are
seen as the savoir but even before the slavery in the US they were slaves in other parts of the
world but did they receive same punishment like the Africans who were colonized and forced to
give up their children and were made to breed so they can have more slaves of course not
because the difference between the slaves of romans and Africans was the colour of the skin.
Towards the end he makes another quote which I thought of fondly “The whites have always
been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking
after power and authority.” Which is true because if Africa did not get enslaved, they would be
the powerhouse continent in the world but the stripped them from any resource and left them to
be dead even now you can see the effect of colonialism after four hundred years of the events of
slavery. Can you really see the whites as human beings because to them the colour of your skin
does not make you human you are an object and tool that they can use and once you have no use
for them anymore they can toss you away and start all over because they will always want to
have power the right to enforces these set of rules that we have to follow and never stray away
from what they want us to actually receive true equality for all.