As if to continually reinforce the inherently incongruous idea of the inhumanity of beings clearly human, slave owners brutalized their slaves in the most inhumane of ways. Sometimes, it was to browbeat the last ounce of labor out of physically and mentally exhausted people. Just as often, if not more so, they did it simply because they could. The lowest white men of England — discarded prisoners and psychiatric patients, and misfits unable to fit into Britain’s polite society — whipped, burned, castrated, raped, and murdered African slaves simply to assert their superiority over something.