If Africans did manage, in many instances, to re-create and transmit African cultures in the New World, one cannot forget that these slaves still faced exceptionally difficult times. That they might have formed families, socialized with each other, developed self-help organizations, and the like did not take away from the fact that slaves were usually highly exploited. Even when they were more privileged, they were still blocked from full participation in the greater community. Under such conditions there are always people, both exploited and privileged, who see no way to change or improve their overall lot under the normal rules of the system. These people sought to go beyond the circumstances imposed upon them by slavery and demand more than their masters or rulers were willing to give them freely.

These discontented people were the resisters, rebels, or runaways. Each in his or her own way and according to his or her own means sought to alter the system and its rules. For some, it was a way of bargaining for better conditions, for themselves or for their group; for others it was a way of seeking to empower themselves, to break free, or to determine their own destiny; and for a few, a means to turn the tables on their masters and rulers.

Scholars analyzing resistance have generally approached it in several conflicting ways. Historians fired by cultural nationalism, for example, have seen the rebel slaves as seeking to recover African culture and values or to resist racism and deculturation.