The other way around. First there was slavery - then changes in law and custom to justify mass slavery (Racism).
Disagree.. White folk needed to be convinced that the black man was inferior (racism) and better off being a slave in America than free in Africa (more racism) before they enslaved anyone. Justification usually precedes deeds. At first, this worked a bit as the first slaves were brought directly from Africa with no discernible language (to the whites) and very strange customs. It was easy to fool themselves into thinking slaves were sub-human.
This of course back fired when American born slaves learned English the same as white kids and showed intellect and emotions that ran the same gamut as whites. They could laugh at jokes, hug their children, cry with joy and deeply mourn their dead.
Uh-oh... The response to this was to keep blacks from learning to read and write which, if allowed, would cast long and hard doubts as to the supposed inferiority of the black man.
This is how the seed of the anti-slavery was sewn. Once whites saw that blacks could read, write, sing, play music, write poetry, worship God the same as they, those with conscience knew in their hearts that the slaves were human and deserved to be free just as the Declaration had declared.
It is bad to drink Jobus rum. Very bad.
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bethebestforthejob
10 years ago
Disagree..
All right; consider the history and evolution of
Virginia Slave Codes (1705 onwards)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p268.html It was easy to fool themselves into thinking slaves were sub-human.
Slaves never thought they were subhuman. According to
Hari Jones http://www.c-span.org/video/?317361-1/africanamerican-civil-war-espionage-part-1 it was the other way around (if at all!). I really recommend yo read/listen to the links I provided so we can continue the discussion.
Don't explain with malice what you can explain with stupidity
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littlegeorgie
10 years ago
To a certain extent, you're both somewhat right.
The original major "official" justification that put the first seeds of American chattel slavery AND (just as importantly where this particular debate is concerned) Native American conquest into the ground was "The Papal Bull of 1493". (Though it should be noted that by that point there had already been African slaves in Europe for over 50 years.) Because it essentially declared ALL non-white, non-Christian races to be "savages". And it led directly to an all-out race by the nations of Europe to claim the lands and resources of these "savages". (Including a small group commonly referred to as "the Pilgrims".) Furthermore, deeming it "God-ordained" to conquer and subjugate (and when necessary, annihilate) the non-white, non-Christian races already living there. So, the slave codes themselves, though over 150 years later, are thus very direct outgrowths of this God-LESS, genocidal racial, mindset that this original Church decree created. So in that sense, yes, the justification most definitely did come first.
Yet it is historically indisputable that blacks and whites did coexist in the original colonies for the first several decades of their existence. You are quite correct that those decades did really happen! But nonetheless, based on that original Papal decree (and what it was justifying whites to do to "savages" all around the western hemisphere), there are very clear historical signs that it was virtually inevitable that that coexistence would be short-lived. There was simply no way that the dichotomy of treating non-white natives as absolute savages and blacks as somehow human was going to continue for very long. Thus the sudden transition from indentured servitude and coexistence to full on chattel slavery in the mid 1600's, following Bacon's Rebellion. The justification that the Pope handed them on a silver platter, for why they were in America in the first place, eventually won out!
The very reasons for Europeans coming to "the New World" in the first place made long-term racial coexistence with "savages" a virtual impossibility. And the Pope declaring that white supremacy was God-ordained in the New World made justifying chattel slavery virtually inevitable too.
Declaring all non-whites "savages in the eyes of God" and the foundational justification of astronomical violence toward those "non-humans" that came with that declaration definitely came first. In fact, history has definitively shown that whenever humans aspire to commit mass genocide, it REQUIRES that its perpetrators MUST first find a contrived way to see their victims as non-human. Always! Justification first.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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Trax-3
8 years ago
Yet it is historically indisputable that blacks and whites did coexist in the original colonies for the first several decades of their existence. You are quite correct that those decades did really happen! But nonetheless, based on that original Papal decree (and what it was justifying whites to do to "savages" all around the western hemisphere), there are very clear historical signs that it was virtually inevitable that that coexistence would be short-lived.
Sorry, but what the hell has the Pope or his decrees to do with the English colonists in Americas. The Pope was worse than the Devil himself to those people.
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!!!deleted!!! (47421091)
10 years ago
Justification usually precedes deeds.
That's it in a nutshell. Humans have the most amazing capacity to justify anything if they want it bad enough, from buying a pair of shoes they don't need to committing a holocaust.
Whites needed to believe that these "coloreds" were inferior before they could buy them and use them as slaves. If that isn't racism, what is?
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