Someone said, "White people were slaves, too!"
Where This Comes Up
For some reason, people want to argue if slavery was racialized in the United States. Sometimes, people arguing in bad faith will use this as a "gotcha" in a conversation.
When This Started
I have seen this claim online and from my in-person, informal research but I have seen it frequently enough that I felt including it would be worthwhile. If you have seen this claim in any scholarly work, please let me know in the comments below.
What Part Is True
White people served as indentured servants in a situation similar to slavery. Conditions in indentured servitude could be as bad or worse than those of slavery and there is no doubt that white laborers were abused.
Why It's Complicated
- Here's at least once instance of mixed race people being referred to as "White and Black Slaves." English is an imprecise language like that.
- Because children of enslaved women took the status of their mother, there were enslaved people who one had a single Black great-grandmother (or even great-great grandmother!) and all white male ancestors. They often looked white.
- There was a case of a German immigrant who was enslaved because she was believed to be mixed race... except there's a chance that it was actually a woman pretending to be a missing German immigrant.
- The freedom ascribed indentured servants versus slaves can be seen in runaway ads. Ads for runaway servants acted as a way to blacklist that servant for future employment; ads for slaves were for their capture, return, and punishment.
- The primary difference between indentured servitude and chattel slavery in the United States was recognition as a person.
- In chattel slavery, a person had no right to her children, her home, even her name.
- In indentured servitude, servants retained things like their name and their children. They could enter contracts like marriage and they could testify in court.
- Around the Civil War, things that Confederates called things they didn't agree with "slavery." Taxation was a popular one. This newspaper suggested that giving up slaves is in and of itself a form of slavery.
- There was a fear that abolition of slavery would mean the enslavement of white people.
- The bottom line is that slavery in the United States was inherently racialized. It was called African slavery. It was about the subjugation of a race. White laborers were abused but their abuses were outside of the institution of chattel slavery.
Who Talked About It
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition..."
"...Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro."
Comments
Post a Comment