[Music] i am a romantic i love love i love affection i love passion the problem however with romanticization is that it causes the truth to oftentimes evaporate into myths and untruths for instance i'm also very passionate about the middle passage and middle passage studies the middle passage was that oceanic space between west africa and north america the caribbean and brazil it was the second leg of the transatlantic slave trade the most horrendous movement of human beings in the history of the world and so when i was in high school i didn't learn about the transatlantic slave trade i didn't learn about the middle passage and the truth of the matter is you probably didn't as well and even if you did it was probably very impotent why because it's been romanticized it's the horror of the trade was taken away from our history books and so today i'd like to demythologize four myths about the transatlantic slave trade the first myth is africans all look alike the second africans chose to come to america the third myth is africans in diaspora do not belong here and the fourth myth is that the middle passage was not that bad africans don't all look alike i know that because oftentimes even though i am african-american i have dark skin and i have dreadlocks i am oftentimes assumed to be jamaican or west indian i remember one time i was going into jamaica and as i was walking down the runway on my way to get my luggage i hear this person hollering in the background roster yo rasta the assumption was that because i have locks then i'm rastafarian rastafarian is a rastafarianism is a religion that has its origins in jamaica and one of the tenants is smoking weed and you guessed it this guy assumed that i was a rastafarian and wanted to sell me some weed so when he approaches me and he makes the offers i declined it and i say to him no my brother i don't need the weed because i brought my own well just kidding i didn't bring my own and i'm not rastafarian and all africans don't look alike and that's because these men and women on slave ships came from different ethnic groups they were fulani they were ashante they were yoruba they were mandinga and they all not only did they have different languages but some of them had different cultures they were not the same and likewise african americans and people of african descent are not a monolith we're not all just alike number two africans chose to come to america there's no indication that these maybe two brothers were standing on the west coast of africa saying you know what i want to go to america and be a slave i want to give up the freedom here i want to forget all the languages that i speak i want to see my father's soul then my mother abused and my sister assaulted i want to become the brunt of all sorts of racist epithets and jokes that's not what happened our four parents were ripped from their communities from their villages they were stolen and brought here i remember i was doing an article on the middle passage and i came across this narrative about a nine-month-old baby that was brutalized and murdered on the ship the name of the ship was the blackjack and the captain's name was marshall and so the baby is crying because we don't really know because it texts us and tells but we do know this that while the baby's crying and and not eating the captain begins to beat the baby with a cat nine tail now a cat nine tail was a instrument of punishment was about maybe nine and a half ten inches long had nine pieces of leather at the end and oftentimes they would tie knots in it so that when it struck your skin if it was ripped backward pull your skin off so imagine now this captain beating this nine-month-old baby who's crying at sea possibly because she's colicky and and and he beats this baby with this cat and ninetale then ties a three pound log around her neck and he accidentally dropped the baby the baby's neck is broken and she dies and then the captain calls the mother and wants the mother to throw this baby overboard and when she refuses to throw this baby overboard the captain flocks the mother and throws the baby overboard anyway neither the baby nor the mother chose to come to america and likewise most of our ancestors did not choose to come here myth number three africans in diaspora don't belong here when we hear that statement it's a dog whistle is we live in a culture now where people are telling other people of color to go back to the country from which they came the a priori assumption behind that statement is that black people have not contributed to the american culture when in fact we built most of the buildings here if you if you know anything about harvard university princeton university yale university they were built by black people they couldn't attend but they built the buildings nine of the first presidents of princeton held slaves while they were in office the first 13 presidents of the united states held enslaved people while they were in office the transatlantic slave trade was a horrible experience and so when these people came here we did contribute myth number four the middle passage wasn't really that bad well slave ships were torture chambers and oftentimes because of the fear of the unknown the fear of the brutality many africans committed suicide there are people who jump overboard as a form of resistance they felt if they took their own lives that they self-murdered they would prevent their captors from using their skills and talents you may remember the blockbuster movie the black panther the the the the the antagonist eric killmonger he makes this statement he'd rather jump overboard and die in the sea like his ancestors rather than be a slave can you imagine death over slavery that you would rather take your life than be a slave and yet that's what happened the brutality was so bad that when a slave ship called to marlborough 100 people were thrown overboard because of an insurrection another slip called the brillante 600 africans were chained to the anchor and the anchor was dropped to the bottom of the ocean and these people died at sea there's another ship called the kent where the captain not only beat and brutalized 49 people but he shot them he hanged them and then mis dismembered their bodies and threw them in the ocean that's what it was like to be on the slave ship many of these men and women were whipped so badly that they even bled to death some of them were thrown overboard as shark bait to prevent insurrections and yet if we understand it from an african perspective suicide was possibly a form of triumph dr derek bell former professor of law at harvard says that triumph is not always in the toppling of a system sometimes triumph is in the doing it's in the resisting it's in the martyrdom that triumph prevails when the oppressed take the power back from the oppressor so it's important that you understand this and you can share this with your friends one that africans and african-americans have fought in every single war since we've been here in 1619. we have contributed economically technologically and spiritually to the growth of this country and every other group that came here from the british to the spanish to the germans to the irish they came here on their own but as for we for us for us african americans we were brought here involuntarily we were stolen from our homes and we did not come here by choice thank you