Content Warning: This article mentions predatory behavior.

Mrs. Waffle was perhaps the weirdest teacher I ever had. Her daughter was in her class. One time she made a joke about her daughter’s boyfriend moving to Oregon which made her daughter cry. You could say she really had a “hand-on” teaching style. Once when she wanted to talk to me, she massaged my shoulders while she talked. Another time when we were working on a computer thing, she was interested in something I was talking about, so to use my computer, instead of sliding it over to her, she just slipped her arm between mine and basically hugged my arm and it was super awkward. And she basically does that for everyone.

Over December: My teacher Mrs. Waffle didn’t really grade much of anything. We only had like 8 or so graded assignments. But nonetheless I had a 94.28%, a 66/70. I had never gotten an A in English before at all. My school only recorded the overall semester for college. So I hadn’t even gotten an A in any individual quarter, all Bs. So I was proud that this would be my first A.

Thursday, January 5^th: The first day of school after winter break. At night I checked my grades again to see if any of them had been locked in. When they get locked in, it just shows the letter and no percentage. I got a C on the exam, so no chance of getting an A for the semester. When I looked, it displayed B [%]. When I clicked on the grade, there were no additional assignments added. I checked multiple times, adding up repeated; maybe my math was wrong. But no matter how many times I looked it over, I always ended up with 66/70 – a 94.29%. So I decided to talk to Mrs. Waffle tomorrow.

Friday, January 6^th: At the beginning of class, I went to talk to Mrs. Waffle about the grade. I told her that my grade displayed a B, but I calculated an A based on the assignments. I asked if it just didn’t show some assignments, or if there was some mistake. She then held both my hands together as she talked to me, which is just so… ugh, feels so weird. She said she was sorry and would look into it and change it.

Thursday, January 12^th: I had been checking my grade all week, disappointing more and more as it didn’t change. I decided to talk to her again tomorrow.

Friday, January 13^th: No change. Again I talked to her before class. I told her my grade still hadn’t changed and asked why that was. She immediately held my hands again saying she forgot. Then she wrote some gibberish on a post it note and put it on her bulletin board to help her remember.

Monday, January 16^th: No change. My grade still hadn’t changed. So once again I went to talk to her. As I started to walk toward her, she clearly knew what I was going to ask. I didn’t say a word as she held my hand and started to explain. She said her uncle had died over the weekend and she couldn’t bring herself to do anything. It was a real “not like this” moment, y’know? Because it’s like I wanted to be mad at her, but just couldn’t bring myself to be mad. So I said I’m sorry, I understand.

Tuesday, January 17^th: No change. I think that Tuesday was a day we didn’t have English because of an assembly or something, and I didn’t want to bother her that soon anyway.

Wednesday, January 18^th: No change. Pretty normal day. I went to her, told her my grade still hadn’t changed. She held my hands as she apologized again, and said she would take care of it. Nothing new.

Thursday, January 19^th: No change. She was busy at the beginning of class, so I didn’t talk to her then. At class my friend next to me was cold, so I let her borrow my jacket for the class. At the end of the class, she gave it back and I had to put it back on again. So as I walked up to her I was putting my jacket on, so my hands were not available. When I started to talk to her, she went right for my hands, but haha! They were busy, can’t hold them. Without skipping a beat, she put her hand on my shoulders. She kept apologizing, saying she was sorry. Then she said “It’s not anything to do with you, I love you, I’ll try to fix it”. As she said “I love you”, she transitioned her hands from my shoulders to CUPPING MY FACE. It was so incredibly awkward, so I got out of there as fast as I could. 

Friday, January 20^th: No change. I was still too weirded out to want to talk to Mrs. Waffle. I took my chance and asked her while I was behind my desk with her on the other side. Once again, she apologized a lot and held my hands. But after yesterday, I was more than fine with holding hands. She wrote my name or something on her arm to help her remember.

Of course, throughout this whole thing, I’d been telling this story to a lot of my friends. After talking to my friend Gerry, I came up with a poorly thought-out but great idea. So today, I took it into action.

At about 7 p.m., I sent her an email. The subject was “My Grade Still hasn’t Changed”, with the body simply this:

She got back to me fast – within a couple of hours. She replied “I’m not sure where you are looking or that it will.” Oh, no. I’m in trouble. The message is a little confusing, but my interpretation of it is: “I don’t know what you’re looking at, and I’m not sure it will change” -> “I’m not gonna change it because you were rude.” I sent this poorly thought out email and now she hates me. So I spent the weekend thinking through things and asking friends and family for opinions on what to do.

Sunday, January 22^nd: I decided to go with the apologetic and informative approach. I drafted this long email, explaining the whole situation, linking a picture to my grade and assignments, including my calculations and everything. I even ended the email with “Love, Nathan” in hopes of appealing to the side of her that’s infatuated with me. She got back to me within an hour or two again, with the reply: 

“Trust that I have the best in mind for you <3”

What???? What does this even mean? Is it like, “trust that I have the best in mind for you, but I’m just a forgetful idiot”? Or is it more of a “trust that I have the best in mind for you, but I’m not changing your grade because you don’t deserve it”? Heck if I know.

Monday, January 23^rd: No change. After consulting with others who were equally as confused as I, I emailed her back: “Does that mean that you will change it?” I expected her to get back within a couple of hours like before, but no response.

Tuesday, January 24^th: No change. I went to talk to her again. I asked about the email and if she was going to change it. She said that there was something wrong with the system and that it was already finalized in one place that she couldn’t change and had been trying. But there was another place that she could change it, and that she had, but it might not show up on the website. So I left, thinking: this reassures me basically not at all. But I gotta wait for the report card to know for sure.

Tuesday, January 31^st: I have a friend named Kevin who I have known since 1^st grade, and know really well. But this semester, we didn’t have any classes together. But we did have one thing, we passed each other when walking from our lunch bell to 6^th bell. We would meet up, walk with each other and talk for about two minutes, probably less, each day. For the past couple weeks, I had been telling this story two minutes at a time, picking up where I left off the previous day without any refresher. Today I finally finished the story thus far, explaining that I was now waiting for my report card to come. Confused, Kevin asked “it came last week, you didn’t get it?”

So when I got home, at dinner, I asked my parents if my report card came, and my mom was like “oh yeah it came last week, I didn’t think you cared.” Any other semester, she was totally right. She pulled it out of the filing cabinet. I took a look, scanning for the second quarter. English: B. The time for patience had long passed. I emailed my counselor asking to talk to him after school one day.

Wednesday, February 1^st: I went in to talk to my counselor after school. I explained to him that my grade was not what it was supposed to be. I told him I had been asking my teacher to change it for the last few weeks and she still hasn’t changed it. He logged on to his thingy, and found my name. He took out a calculator and typed in the numbers. He said Nathan it’s an 85%, that’s a B. For a moment I lost all color, and feared the worst. Had I really been wrong? After all this time? No way. I had checked this over so many times. My math isn’t wrong. I told him it’s definitely a 94.29% and please check again. He typed the numbers on the calculator again. “Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s a 94%.” I guess that’s why he’s a counselor and not a math teacher (don’t take offense to this, counselors are perfectly smart people and Mr. Sweeney was great, he just made a simple mistake). He told me he’d change it now and get a new report card to me sometime soon.

Tuesday, February 7^th: No word from Mr. Sweeney. So I feared the worst. He’s just like Mrs. Waffle. He’s never gonna change it. I’ll have to go farther up the chain. I went in to talk to him after school. I walked in and asked about my grade. He said, “Ah, Nathan, I’ve been meaning to email you. Here’s your report card”. I took a look, scanning the second quarter. English: A. Finally, change.

I wake up to the sound of my rock n’ roll inspired alarm blaring out the tunes that get my day started. Rolling out of bed, I begin to make myself look presentable for the many zoom calls and trips to the dining hall that I will be taking today.

As I open the door to head out for my favorite meal of the day, breakfast, I , by force of habit, check my pockets to make sure I have everything. “Key, wallet, phone- what am I missing….” tends to happen often. Nowadays, I can’t forget to grab a mask and have it on properly until I gladly consume my entire container of home fries and eggs. Leaving with my fish-patterned mask, I head downstairs and out of West Hall seeing the same people that I encounter daily. With a “Hi” and an air wave, I let them know of my intention to greet them and receiving a similar gesture, I assume with the same ecstatic feeling.

Inside the CC, I swipe my ID, ask for some of the day’s food specials, and try to engage in small talk with some of my favorite dining staffers. I assume their reactions and facial expressions to our conversations and wish them the best as I head to my every-morning spot. Sitting, I remove my mask and expose my excitedness to my fellow household members as I take in the view of my meal. They, way more than any others, get to see and understand my almost consistent facial reactions. I wish I could share them with more people. I wish more people could share theirs with me.

Still, if you see me around- whether it be over zoom or on campus- there is no need to assume what I’m thinking. I’m excited to be here. Everyday as I wake up, hearing that same alarm sound, I grow exponentially happier at the thought of where I am. I look forward to holding the door open for someone and love watching people do incredibly cool things outside. I love everything about out school. I love Olin.

More than ever, I think its important to express yourself outwardly because it is so hard to assume what someone else is trying to convey behind their mask. Make it known how much you love your project team meetings! Exclaim why you cannot do without the garlic knots in the dining hall! Project how much you love having access to unlimited Zoom meetings! People need to know how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, and how you’re doing. So let’s stop assuming that others assume you’re “doing well today.” Let them know.

Warning: The following article wrestles with a difficult topic in American history, and that topic contains some horrid depictions of human suffering.

This article is a continuation of the Revisiting American History Series, where every month, I revisit a section of American history with a critical eye for the different groups of people involved in that history, telling stories not of America as a collective group pursuing a national interest shared by all of its individuals, but as a variety of groups all with competing interests. While this series typically does not delve deeply into current events, I hope that it does help put a lot of conflict rampant in America today into context. I’m mainly following along with A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, rereading, annotating, and distilling the content into quick summaries for you here. Remember, any story from history contains bias. Howard Zinn is not exempt from that bias and neither am I. Also, if you ever want more information or perspective, I highly recommend reading the book for yourself!

This article focuses on an exploration of the different groups involved in the institutionalization of racism through human trafficking (slavery) in America’s early colonial period. I purposely use the words “human trafficking” and “slavery” interchangeably, as I’ve become a little too used to talking about “slavery” as just a fact of history, rather than a disgusting treatment of human beings. By using the wording of “human trafficking”, I hope to return to the people abused by this system some of their humanity, and myself a reminder that these were, in fact, humans, just as you and I.

A Black American writer from the 1900s, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619:

Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea… The flag she flew was Dutch; her crew a motley. Her port of call, an English settlement, Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. She came, she traded, and shortly afterwards, she was gone. Probably no ship in modern history has carried a more portentous freight. Her cargo? Twenty slaves.

We can trace the origins of human trafficking in America back to this first ship. Racism has been embedded into America’s history since its infancy. While some historians think the first black people to arrive in Virginia were considered servants, like the white indentured servants from Europe, the strong probability is that even if they were listed as “servants”, they were seen differently, treated differently, and ultimately, were slaves.

To understand why the American colonists were so open to human trafficking as a means of acquiring labor, we have to understand the conditions in which they made that decision. The first white settlers of Virginia were utterly unprepared for the harsh challenges associated with making a new life for themselves in America.

Many Virginians had suffered through the “starving time” from 1609-1610. By 1609, the population had grown to five hundred colonists from the original one hundred founders. At that point, the colony could no longer support its massive population. Colonists went from eating one small ladle of barley per meal to roaming the woods for nuts and berries, and eating the corpses of those less fortunate. As the Journals of the Burgesses of Virginia, a document from 1619, recounts the story:

… driven thru insufferable hunger to eat those things which nature most abhorred, the flesh and excrements of man as well as of our own nation as of an Indian, digged by some out of his grave after he had lain buried three days and wholly devoured him… one among them slew his wife as she slept in his bosom, cut her in pieces, salted her and fed upon her till he had clean devoured all parts of her head…

By the end of that “starving time”, starvation had reduced five hundred colonists to sixty.

After enduring that traumatic experience, the Virginians were ready for a way out. They needed labor to grow corn for their own subsistence, and tobacco for export. They had just sent out the first batch of tobacco out in 1617, and found it quite profitable. They needed food, and they needed money.

These colonists were searching desperately for a source of cheap labor. There weren’t enough white servants to do the work, and they came with a massive downside. Once their contract expired after a few years, they would have paid off their debts for the voyage to the New World. At that point, a servant was no longer a source of free labor, but just another mouth to feed. The free white settlers in the colony were primarily skilled craftsmen, with a few even being “men of leisure”, who were not so inclined to work for John Smith, who had to organize them into work gangs and force them into the fields for their survival.

In their search for gold in the Carribean, the Spaniards slaughtered and enslaved the Arawaks. Why didn’t the American colonists do the same to the Native Americans in their search for cheap labor? The fact of the matter is that the desperate and starving American colonists were no match for the resourceful Native Americans defending their home. 

Edmund Morgan, writer of American Slavery, American Freedom, a book from 1975, focuses on the frustration and dissonance these colonists must have faced, enraged that even though they had superior firepower, and a supposedly superior way of life, they just couldn’t win against the natives. As Morgan writes:

If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians [Native Americans]. You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages… The Indians [Native Americans], keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did… And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much… So you killed the Indians [Native Americans], tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields… But you still did not grow much corn…

For all of their pain, suffering, and violence, the colonists gained nothing. Their aggression against the natives resulted only in more of their own suffering. The colonists’ own hubris and arrogance made enemies of the natives who were knowledgeable in survival and might have otherwise helped the colonists survive. Unfortunately, this relationship only grows more strained as America’s history marches forward.

At this point, the colonists were focused on survival, and they needed labor. Unable to get the necessary labor out of the servants and freeman among them, or the natives nearby, they turned to the human trafficking of African peoples.

Even if the institution of slavery had not been regularized and legalized in the colonies at this point, it would be difficult to presume that those first black people forcibly taken to Jamestown and sold to colonists as objects, were anything but slaves. By 1619, a million black people had already been brought from Africa to South America and the Carribean, the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, to work as slaves. Europeans had branded African people as slave labor for a hundred years by this point.

Since slavery had existed in the African states, Europeans sometimes tried to use it as a means of justifying their own slave trade. However, that’s not quite a fair comparison, as the “slaves” of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe. According to Basil Davidson, author of The African Slave Trade, points out that while African slavery was a harsh servitude, the humans enslaved were “altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations.” One observer from the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa noted that “a slave might marry; own property; himself own a slave, swear an oath; be a competent witness and ultimately become heir to his master… An Ashanti slave, nine cases out of ten, possibly became an adopted member of the family, and in time his descendants so merged and intermarried with the owner’s kinsmen that only a few would know their origin.”

While African slavery isn’t something to be praised, it is altogether far different from American slavery, which was lifelong, morally crippling, desctructive of family ties, without hope for a future. What made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history was the combination of the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture, and reduction of the slaves to less than human status, where white was master, and black was slave.

These African people who had been ripped from their land and culture were in an especially vulnerable position in America. The colonists were in their own European culture, and the Native Americans were in their own land and culture. The African people had to fight with sheer extraordinary persistence just to hold onto whatever they could of their heritage of language, dress, custom, and family relations.

Oftentimes, these African people were kidnapped in the interior of Africa, forced to march to the coast, sold, shoved into pens with people from various African tribes, and shipped off to be sold in the European mainlands or one of its colonies. These marches were death marches, sometimes reaching one thousand miles. The enslaved people were shackled around the neck, and marched under whip and gun. Two of every five of them died during these marches. John Barbot, at the end of the seventeenth century, described the cages on the Gold Coast.

As the slaves come down to Fida from the inland country, they are put into a booth or prison… near the beach, and when the Europeans are to receive them, they are brought out onto a large plain, where the ship’s surgeons examine every part of everyone of them, to the smallest member, men and women being stark naked… Such as are allowed good and sounds are set on one side… marked on the breast with a red-hot iron… The branded slaves after this are returned to their former booths where they await shipment, sometimes 10-15 days…

Olaudah Equiano, c. 1745-1797 , an African man who survived through the slave trade and escaped in 1766, describes his experience seeing a slave ship for the first time in his autobiography. 

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried aboard. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me… Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country.

Given the opportunity, many of these people chose to jump overboard and drown themselves rather than continue their suffering. Olaudah Equiano describes one such incident as follows.

One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea: immediately another quite dejected fellow, who, on account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more would very soon have done the same if they had not been prevented by the ship’s crew… two of the wretches were drowned, but they [the slavers] got the other, and afterwards flogged him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery.

One of every three African slaves died overseas. Despite the horrific nature of human trafficking, the huge profits, oftentimes double the investment made on one trip, justified the act in the eyes of the slavers. 

By 1800, ten to fifteen million Africans had been forcibly transported to the Americas as slaves, representing perhaps a third of those kidnapped from Africa. As Zinn puts it:

It is roughly estimated that Africa lost fifty million human beings to death and slavery in those centuries we call the beginnings of modern Western civilization, at the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries deemed the most advanced in the world.

And thus, the stage was set for the history around race in America. Remember that when we talk about racism and our modern day understandings of race in America, this was where it started. I don’t believe this to be the roots of racism across the world, but it’s certainly the roots of racism in American culture. This article helps illustrate why human trafficking based on race become so integral to American history from its roots, and begins to explore what this actually meant for the African humans caught in the midst of this system.

Next month, I plan to focus on the history surrounding African American resistance to slavery, and the instutionalization of racism as a means of suppressing class conflicts. As the institution of slavery spread thoughout the colonies, so did resistance to the oppression of the black and white lower classes alike. Fearing widespread civil unrest, the landowning elite of America found means of suppressing both while giving up as little as possible in return.

Sources:

1.  A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

I’m citing this source again because of how extensively I’ve used it to write this article. Many pieces of this article are either direct quotes or paraphrased paragraphs from Zinn that aren’t explicitly called out. Part of this is due to his unique style of writing I hope to capture in this article, how well he articulates certain ideas, so that I can be certain I’m not misrepresenting any facts presented by Zinn, and to not disrupt the flow of the writing.

2. The Interesting Narrative Of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written By Himself.

This was an incredible autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, c. 1745-1797, an African man who survived and escaped from slavery. He wrote his autobiography specifically to advocate for the abolition of slavery in Britian, and he recounts his journey across various parts of the world and his experience as an African slave.

3. American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan

I mainly checked the date the book was published to provide more context to Zinn’s quotation from the book.