False Sense of Freedom

 Zachary Myers

11-17-22

Engl2016

Final Essay on The False Sense of Freedom for African Americans

      This will be an Essay on the false sense of freedom for African Americans. I will be using evidence from Equiano and In The Wake. There has been a false sense of freedom for African Americans in this country since slavery. They were forced to come here to be sold into a life of misery as a slave. Once slavery was abolished, they were set “free,” which was not true at all. They were denied pretty much all rights. The men eventually gained some, and the women were much later. They are even still treated lesser in today's world, from mortgage rates to schools in black neighborhoods. They are not the same as others. I am writing this essay to highlight this repression of people and that something needs to be done.

           Equiano was captured as a child and sold into slavery. He was treated terribly as were most slaves. As stated, “He describes the history of the 44 years of his life up to now, a story that to be sure comprises many experiences that are bitter and an affront to all human feeling”.  Equiano wrote this book hundreds of years ago, and people are trying to say he is not even from Africa. As stated, “ the eighteenth-century author might have been born in South Carolina rather than Africa, as Equiano himself states in The Interesting Narrative, a scholarly firestorm erupted over the question of this former slave’s place of birth. This is not the first time Equiano’s origins have been questioned. Equiano himself sought to refute claims published in late eighteenth-century English periodicals that he had been born in the West Indies.” There were even people back then telling him he was not born in Africa. This is absolutely ridiculous. Here it even tells of Equiano having to purchase his own freedom. “ He eventually purchased his own freedom, and his account of an extraordinary series of experiences and adventures can be independently corroborated at many points.” How many people do you know that are white that did this? The worst part is that these people's ancestors are still not completely free today. People and governments keep them down.

          There are also many examples of these acts in In The Wake. There is one instance where one hundred and thirty-two Africans are killed. “Sharpe reminds her reader that the British ship Zong, which became famous because its crew threw 132 African persons overboard to save water and claim insurance, was initially a Dutch ship called Zorg.” This was a mass killing of African people who were treated as property, not even people. This is absolutely heinous. The treatment of people today is literally killing them. The main way this is happening is through police brutality. Here is a prime example, “On December 30, 2017, Erica Garner, a Black Lives Matter activist and daughter of Eric Garner, who was killed by police in Staten Island, New York, died of a heart attack at the young age of 27.1 Garner’s tragic and untimely death exemplifies the immense burden that being black in America has on African Americans. Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being interrogates that burden by addressing issues of citizenship, racial violence, and black mortality.” This shows how two innocent people were killed with one bullet. We have got to make a change in this world, or it will just keep getting worse. I do not know how much more of this we can take as people. We need to make the change that everyone feels equal and are also treated that way.

 

 

Citations

Admin, Equiano. Olaudah Equiano. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.

Blackburn, Robin. "The True Story of Equiano." The Nation. 29 June 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.

Horton, Dana. "Dana Horton, "review of in the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe (Duke University Press)"." Lateral. 15 Jan. 2022. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.

Okoth, Christine. "Christina Sharpe, in the Wake: On Blackness and Being." European Journal of American Studies. European Association for American Studies, 18 May 2018. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.

Olaudah Equiano: The Problem of Identity |. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.

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