"they were brought here in chains, their women raped..." (Suketu Mehta in Time) and the men lynched and babies ripped from their mother's arms, too?

"What's more African Americans are not in a bad way because of a lack of racial pride or a problem with their impulses.  Their challenges as a community trace back centuries; , they were brought here in chains, their women raped and their families deliberately broken. "
-Suketu Mehta, in Time magazine, "The Superiority Complex" ((February 2, 2014).


and all the men lynched and the babies ripped from their mother's arms, too?


I think Mehta falls into the reflexive mode of so many commentators.  No one knows if  frequently (or systematically) beaten, or even, worse lunched or raped, before the Emancipation Proclamation.  He assumes the very worst, along the lines of  "12 Years a Slave" or "Roots."

This is emotional reasoning, not comprehensive or factual evidence.

But historically speaking, there were no studies or statistics from that era to be able to say whether the terrible incident were common--widespread--or relatively uncommon.  There were, of course, some eyewitness accounts, in other words, anecdotal evidence.  And the novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."   

But that does not constitute a case that many, if not most, slaves were treated not just harshly but to what would amount to torture.  Or that all the plantation owners and their white task masters were sadists.

There were no or even semi-humane humane plantation owners, according to the theory enounced by Mehta.  Even if they treated their livestock humanely, they could not have been anything but bestial and wicked in their dealings with their slaves (a condition not even condemned in the Bible and one that was just below the condition that the serfs in medieval Europe had been subject to).