Yes, I’d Like that Broken Vase in the Window

I’ve been reading Roots lately.  I’m up to the part where Kunta’s been bought, but not yet renamed Toby.  I don’t get it.

I’m not talking about the whole slavery thing.  Slavery was around long before the first black man was taken out of Africa.  All you need do is look through your Bible to find stories of slavery stretching back almost to the dawn of man.  African tribes even had their own slaves.  I’m not trying to get into the whole morality of slavery thing.  Cultures change, ideas of what’s right and wrong change, whatever.  What I don’t understand is this whole boat thing.  How on earth did these slave ships make any sort of business sense?! 

The traders thought of these people as chattel, so we’re speaking in terms of ‘stuff’ here.  - Again, I am not getting into that whole moral debate. – Now, when a tradesman is transporting stuff to sell, stuff that can be valuable, he’ll want it to arrive in sellable condition, not destroyed.  What the vampire is the point of beating and killing your merchandise?!

If a goat seller at the local fair has goats… you know what, forget the goats, we don’t even need to be talking about live animals; it could be any products.  Say I have a computer parts store (I’ve been hanging around Mr. Trizzle too much).  Am I going to do around dropping all the pieces on the floor, drop-kicking them, bashing them into the walls whenever I get mad, leaving some barely working and others needing to be thrown out?  No.  Am I going to cut the casing on the wires open to expose the inside copper pieces and figure the buyer can just patch it up with some black tape later?  No.  Of course not.  I’m going to store my goods in a way that protects them, with minimal cost to me, so that I get the most value from them.

I just don’t understand why these slave traders, who went all the way to Africa, who risked their own lives and plenty of investment money to capture people from their homes would then show complete and utter disregard for the well-being of those captured on the journey back.  Not because of any moral sense of obligation or the humanity of it – we’ve been told time and again the slave traders didn’t regard their captures as human – but because of the pure illogicalness of not taking care of such a large investment.

We know the traders didn’t have compassion; they don’t seem to have had much logic either.  I bet even Posner* couldn’t explain this stuff!

 

*Posner’s a judge in IL, and one of my least favorite because the man things people act as machines.  He’s of the law & economics field where everything is explained as rational choices and cost-benefit analyses.  I know lots of people, and I only know one who goes through life that way, but he thinks he’s part Vulcan, so not sure he counts.