The Inhuman Humans

Every person walking this earth was born human, and all humans are equal right? After all it was written that all men are created equal so why is it that when Equiano among all other black people were packed onto ships and sent across the world they were treated as less than their white counterparts?

Obviously "all men are created equal" doesn't mean what it sounds like at first, especially not in the time it was written. It sounds like it means every person born human but when we look at The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano  we are shown a large group of people being cut out. Anyone who is not white is not seen nor treated as a human. Instead they are taken from their lives, packed onto a ship like sardines in a can, shipped to another country and even tossed off of the ship to the watery death below when the cargo becomes a problem.

Throughout the week in class we learned that it was even easy to replace slaves in countries like Brazil who were so close to Africa. While on the ships if some of the "cargo" was lost it wasn't even a large burden since they were still making a profit off of those who made it.

Why is it that black people were seen as being not human? While one can assume many things such as it was a justification for owning them as slaves we must look at what information we have. They had a darker skin pigmentation, they were written to be tall and even smell differently than Europeans, and since they hadn't been as in the technological loop shared by Europeans they didn't know as much about the culture and mannerisms of non Africans. They were different and they were seen as less.