A World Leader And International Superpower - 1752 Words

As a world leader and international superpower who asserts the need for global relations rooted upon human rights and democracy, the United States of America has yet to confront the quandary of how to come to grips with its own past and its most heinous historical injustice, the American slave trade. Due to the United States government essentially sanctioning slavery, I strongly believe that reparations for each and every African-American in the form of monies, land, and/or resources would be the first step in the healing process of this unprecedented time in American history, but also would serve as a firm reminder to any would be â€Å"oppressor† that there will be serious consequences for that type of behavior because all life, not just†¦show more content†¦In America, other than the unfathomable wealth their free labor produced for other, the importation and consequential enslavement of the Africans would be the dominant factor in the resettlement of the continent s after the catastrophic decline in their native population. The transatlantic slave trade essentially laid the foundation for modernized capitalism as we know it today, creating inconceivable wealth for corporations, business enterprises, and families in America and Europe. The trade assisted to the overall industrialization of Europe and created an inter-connected Atlantic world that was made up of Western Europe, Western Africa, the Caribbean islands, and North/South America. Consequently, the staggering impact on Africa of its participation in the creation of this capitalistically driven modern world was unfavorable to say the least. The continent of Africa loss a tremendous part of its strong, healthy, sturdy population, which played a significant role in the societal and political crippling of its infrastructure that left them vulnerable, in the nineteenth century, to colonial exploitation and domination. According to Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro from the book Black Wealth/White Wealth: A new perspective on racial inequality â€Å"D isparities in wealth between blacks and whites are not the product of haphazard events, inborn traits, isolated incidents or solely contemporary individual