African Americans During The Age Of Exploration - 1568 Words

During the Age of Exploration, Africans did not designate themselves as Blacks; however, Europeans used the term â€Å"blacks† to differentiate themselves. At first, there were a number of competing images of Africans, eventually those images crystallized into a small set of overly simplified, negative stereotypes widely shared in the west (Battle Wells, 2006). Early on, Africans were regarded on a relatively equal level to the Europeans. However, by the end of the eighteenth-century images of Africans as inferior were being used to justify the slave trade. Further complicating the characterization of Africans was the broad spectrum of definitions concerning Black identity. In the United States – after the age of exploration – Black was†¦show more content†¦The continent experienced the loss of a large part of its able-bodied population, which played a part in the social and political weakening of its societies that left it open to colonial domination a nd exploitation. In the nineteenth century, the flow of slaves began to slow due to the British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which banned imports of slaves into British colonies, and the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1837, which abolished any use of slave labor within the British colonies (Nunn Qiann, 2010). As much as we would prefer for it not to be true, skin tone complications of the past still afflict the psyche of present-day America. The American social hierarchy places people of mixed-race ancestry below whites but above blacks, while additional social stratifications along color lines are simultaneously taking place within the nation’s multiracial groups, according to a Johns Hopkins University sociologist’s study of U.S. Census data (Bennett, 2011). The idea that light-skinned blacks hold a higher standing than dark-skinned blacks is still a large point of discontent in the black community. Using data from the National Survey of Black Americans, it was found that blacks with lighter skin had higher socioeconomic status, had spouses higher in socioeconomic status, and had lower black consciousness than those with dark skin (Hughes Hertel, 1990). A 2006 University of Georgia study showed that employers prefer light-skinned black men to