One quote that I found to stand out to me was “That slave owners could not have fully dehumanized these men and women, because they were first and foremost people, is important, but it’s worth recognizing that slavery’s objective was to make them both present and absent simultaneously —to enslave someone was not necessarily to efface that person entirely but to render him or her a ghost.“ This was such a powerful quote because I believe it shows how slaves were seen in this time. They were seen as a ghost their voice was not heard. They effectively silenced a group of people. They made sure that slaves were not allowed to speak their mind and that they did as they were told. This quote shows and explains what slaves seen as a whole no presence just ghosts. I also saw a word that I did not know, the word efface this also made this quote stand out to me more. Efface meaning is to erase, so I believe that in the ending part of the quote the author is saying that the goal was not to erase slaves presence. The goal was to make there presence be unknown and untraceable like a ghost. Meaning all of the important things that individuals discuss and agree upon as a society was not to be discussed with slaves and that they would not get a voice to effect change on any of the problems that our society faces. It made me think about how many voices today are still silenced. And that many people to this day do not have the ability to effect change on problems that they should have a say so in. I believe that it is important to see that today the same problem is faced today. It is very important that we do realize that although we are in a different time it is important to understand history as it seems that a lot of the problems faced in history continue to be problems we face today.
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