xoxodede
Superstar
Totally agreed.
People likening it to a non-paid/paid internship. Nah.
You have to read "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route" by Saidiya Hartman - it's on Ghana -- but it's similar to Nigeria's servants/slaves.
Many Ghanaians Have Another View of Slavery, Due to Their Family Enslaving:
What I discovered was that when Ghanaians, at least those of the elite classes in the south, thought about slavery, they envisioned a “distant cousin from the north” washing clothes and preparing meals in a well appointed home, the pretty slave wife of their grandfather, or the foreigners in their village.
They exulted in the wealth of slave-trading ancestors, if only because it was less humiliating to have been a merchant than to have been a slave. “People pride themselves that their great-grandfathers rather kept slaves, and were not among the numerous slaves that abounded,” as one man explained. “To be called a slave is an insignia of shame.” The dishonor of the slave had persisted, as had the dignity and self-respect of the affluent and the powerful. The regret was that the wealth had not lasted.
In Elmina, they lamented, “In those days we were rich, but now we’re poor. The Dutch boat has left Elmina.” Few dared to mention the slaves chained in holding cells or taken off the coast, and if they did, they explained that African traders didn’t know how badly the whites treated the slaves across the water.
Others called the Atlantic slave trade the European trade, insisting that the West alone was to blame. It sanitized the whole ugly business and permitted them to believe that they were without scars.
Kofi, an assistant curator at the castle’s museum, confided that it was difficult for him to think of slavery as a terrible fate. “There were slaves in my family,” he told me. “My grandfather owned slaves. I never thought much of it. They were treated no differently than anyone else.” I doubted that Kofi believed this, but he supposed that I was gullible enough to accept it as the truth. The terror of slavery, he tried to convince me, had been confined to the Americas.
Terror was what I took for granted. My own understanding of slavery and Kofi’s could not have been more contrary. Which wasn’t surprising since he was the son of a slave owner and I was the daughter of slaves.
In Ghana, kinship was the idiom of slavery, and in the United States, race was. The language of kinship absorbed the slave and concealed her identity within the family fold (at least that was the official line), whereas the language of race set the slave apart from man and citizen and sentenced her to an interminable servitude. But, as I found out, the line between masters and slaves was no less indelible, even when it wasn’t a color line.
What I discovered was that when Ghanaians, at least those of the elite classes in the south, thought about slavery, they envisioned a “distant cousin from the north” washing clothes and preparing meals in a well appointed home, the pretty slave wife of their grandfather, or the foreigners in their village.
They exulted in the wealth of slave-trading ancestors, if only because it was less humiliating to have been a merchant than to have been a slave. “People pride themselves that their great-grandfathers rather kept slaves, and were not among the numerous slaves that abounded,” as one man explained. “To be called a slave is an insignia of shame.” The dishonor of the slave had persisted, as had the dignity and self-respect of the affluent and the powerful. The regret was that the wealth had not lasted.
In Elmina, they lamented, “In those days we were rich, but now we’re poor. The Dutch boat has left Elmina.” Few dared to mention the slaves chained in holding cells or taken off the coast, and if they did, they explained that African traders didn’t know how badly the whites treated the slaves across the water.
Others called the Atlantic slave trade the European trade, insisting that the West alone was to blame. It sanitized the whole ugly business and permitted them to believe that they were without scars.
Kofi, an assistant curator at the castle’s museum, confided that it was difficult for him to think of slavery as a terrible fate. “There were slaves in my family,” he told me. “My grandfather owned slaves. I never thought much of it. They were treated no differently than anyone else.” I doubted that Kofi believed this, but he supposed that I was gullible enough to accept it as the truth. The terror of slavery, he tried to convince me, had been confined to the Americas.
Terror was what I took for granted. My own understanding of slavery and Kofi’s could not have been more contrary. Which wasn’t surprising since he was the son of a slave owner and I was the daughter of slaves.
In Ghana, kinship was the idiom of slavery, and in the United States, race was. The language of kinship absorbed the slave and concealed her identity within the family fold (at least that was the official line), whereas the language of race set the slave apart from man and citizen and sentenced her to an interminable servitude. But, as I found out, the line between masters and slaves was no less indelible, even when it wasn’t a color line.
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I'm not sure if osu caste system still exist but I know a few Nigerian families who have house maids on deck here in America.
when I see someone try to throw that in.
