Slave Narrative

While I was thus employed by my master, I was often a witness to cruelties of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves. I used frequently to have different cargoes of new negroes in my care for sale; and it was almost a constant practice with our clerks, and other whites, to commit violent depredations on the chastity of the female slaves; and these I was, though with reluctance, obliged to submit to at all times, being unable to help them. When we have had some of these slaves on board my master's vessel, to carry them to other islands, or to America, I have known oar mates to commit these acts most shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men. I have even known them gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old; and these abominations, some of them practiced to such scandalous excess, that one of our captains discharged the mate and others on that account. And yet in Montserrat I have seen a negro man staked to the ground, and cut most sbockingly, and then his ears Ccut off bit by bit, because he had been connected with a white woman, who was a common prostitute. As if it were no crime in the whites to rob an innocent African girl of her virtue; but most heinous in a black man only to gratify a passion of nature, where the temptation was offered by one of a different color, though the most abandoned woman of her species.One Mr. D--- told me that he had sold 41,000 negroes, and that he once cut of a negro man's leg for running away. I asked him if the man had died in the operation, how he, as a Christian, could answer for the horrid act before God? and he told me, answering was a thing of another world, what he thought and did were policy. I told him that the Christian doctrine taught us to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us. He then said that his scheme had the desired effectÑ-it cured that man and some others of running away.

In Olaudah Equiano's narrative of his life as a slave to a white man in the West Indies, he relates the lack of equity between Blacks and Whites. The fact that a white man can rape a black girl and recieves no punishment befuddles him, when a black man and a white woman have willing procreation, the black man is tortured and eventually killed. He feels that this is a terrible bomination against God.

Dear Diary,
I saw one of my brothers, Reiu, get sold today. His master seemed to be friendly, his slaves were well fed and were similar to cabin boys on the big canoes that brought us here. I was sold to an other man, he looks like a raving boar of a man. His slave, my new brothers and sisters, have many scars, and have a hungry look about them. I hope this is not real and that he is actually a nice person.
From,
Ufeka

Essential Question
How has the American Dream changed over the years? And how does this change reflect community values?

The American Dream for the black people is to be freed from the hands of the slaveowners that keep that freedom from them, as Mr. D does to Olaudah Equiano. The white man, however, has the dream to become wealthy, and this is accomplished by having slaves to do thier work. These two peoples dreams conflict, causing the American Dream to become a contest of power between the white and black communities. This reflects the communities values by having freedom from the white man for the black community, whereas the white community is focused on power over another, here in the form of slaves.