The Invisible Scar: The Effects on Black People

Slavery was more than the imprisonment of the West African people. It was more than a system in which the blacks were treated as possessions, and were forced to work on the plantation. Slavery was ruthless, gruesome and it left a nasty scar in the history of black people. Slavery was traumatic as Gilda Graff described it and mentioned how the Africans were carelessly uprooted from their land which led to a complete disruption from their language and customs (135). It is not an easy history to absorb. The images and details can numb the mind, deaden the senses: taxing the sense of who we are and who we have been (Litwack 24).Even though slavery had been abolished it still did not end the trauma and shame to which blacks were subjected. According to Graff, Litwark mentions how the abolishing of slavery led to many shameful events such as the Jim Crow (a rigid pattern of racial segregation), lynching, disenfranchisement, an economic system –sharecropping and tenantry—that left little room for ambition or hope, unequal educational resources, terrorism, racial caricatures and every form of humiliation and brutalization imaginable (136).Today, the unfortunate legacy of the past has not evaporated. The scar still remains in the hearts and minds of many people. It has influence the way they think and it has been connected totheir behavior such as domestic violence and the alteration of their appearances.

Why is the number of reported domestic violence in the Caribbean so high and sometimes fatal?Regional statistics have shown that between 2002 and 2008, in the Bahamas 17 per cent of deaths/homicides in 2007, were as a result of domestic violence (Jones).What causes the anger and rage that exist in the relationship between a man and a woman? Does slavery has anything to do with it? In the article "The Shadow of the Whip"Merle Hodge explains how Caribbean societies have been born out of cruelty, destructiveness and rape. She further explains that the violent and horrific history of black people has not disappeared. It is noticeable in the relations between adult and child, black and white and between man andwomen (111).It can explain why there is so much violence in many relationships in the Caribbean due to the violent history that have severely scarred many societies. Hodge points out the effects of slavery on the Caribbean people. She implies that slavery still exists today, it affects the way they think, it affects their behavior, and it explains why they do certain things.She also mentions how violence is initiated by the man who feels as if he's not in control; so his way of regaining control is to use violence (112). She explains that the feeling of loss of control derived from slavery days when the African men were taken from their place as head of the tribe and were ruled over their master. However, the violent behavior of black people is not the only example of the effects of slavery.

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