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In the early days of slavery in the United States a great deal of effort was invested in the creation of the illusion that the de facto slavery of the eighteenth century was, in reality, an institution which called itself “indentured servitude.” A very real institution of “indentured servitude,” in fact, had existed in the seventeenth century during the colonial era in America. As such, many Black and White individuals came to the new world under a contract arrangement where they voluntarily agreed to work a specified number of years for a particular person in exchange for the cost of one’s passage “faire” to the colonies. Many of these individuals served their period of indenture and became free men and women in their new land.

By 1715, however, Maryland and Virginia, after several gradual increases in the respective periods of indenture prescribed for new arrivals, legislatively decreed that henceforth the period of indenture prescribed for Black people shall be increased to life. For nearly one hundred years this de facto slavery masqueraded under the guise of indentured servitude. This charade was necessary because the orthodox Christianity that was practiced during this period of time maintained the absolute view that a Christian could not enslave another human being without automatically condemning his own soul to Hell. Slavery was damned by God.

With the invention of the cotton gin in 1792, and the consequent evolution of an absolutely vicious institution of slavery that was held together only by sheer physical coercion, it became necessary for the South to abandon its myth of “indentured servitude.” The philosophy of Race which eventually emerged from this seeming economic and political necessity is based primarily upon the arguments first presented in a book of essays entitled Arator, written by John Taylor of Caroline Plantation in Virginia and published in 1814. The major points of Taylor’s philosophy are:

1. Ancient Greece and Rome had societies found on slavery and produced the greatest civilizations known to man.
2. The Slave States produced many men of great distinction, such as Washington and Jefferson.
3. The baseness and poverty of the slaves’ condition makes it necessary that wise men of good character provide for the necessities of their life. Left to their own devices, slaves would be incapable of providing for themselves and would be blight upon the society of free men and a burden to the public dole (welfare).
4. Slaves are morally degraded and mentally inferior.
5. The viciousness and servility of the slave character excites the humanitarian sympathies of the White Masters and enhances the latter’s virtue and charity.
6. The vicious and servile manner of the slaves’ character renders them equal to an excitable horse, and when well treated, just as a horse, can be made to like their condition of servitude.
7. Slavery cannot be abolished by law because it is based on the God ordained absolute inequality of men.

The philosophy of John Taylor, while so obviously wrong to us today, met with near unanimous acceptance and support of White America in the early eighteenth century. The underlying premise of this philosophy was that Black people (slaves) were not human beings (as defined by White people) and that this inferiority, therefore, justified their slavery. Indeed, the mythology of race which emerged from this philosophy frequently called itself, “the will of God.”

The creation of this philosophy of race had a direct and immediate negative impact upon the relations between White and Black people, bringing to and end the substantial progress made during the “era of good times.” In 1817, the African Colonization Society was created by Black and White men who believed that the national acceptance of Taylor’s philosophy of race meant the end of social justice for Black men in America. The ACS founded the nation of Liberia as a homeland to enable former American slaves to return to Africa, and thousands did just that.

Among White Americans who morally could not accept the racism offered by Taylor, the seeds of opposition were planted most firmly in the formation of the Abolitionist Movement. For many of those who aligned themselves with the Abolitionist cause, their zeal for the abolishment of slavery was no less intense than their determination to abolish the philosophy of race upon which slavery was built.

Ultimately, the uncompromising conflict between these two bitterly contested philosophies led to the Civil War and numerous “racial” outbursts since then. In whatever guise, racism requires the belief that all human beings are in equal.

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SYG 2000
SYG 2010
Hurley

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As a part of the first truly monumental sociological scrutiny of American society, Gunnar Myrdal directed that great classic study of American Racism which was aptly named An American Dilemma.

One of the most telling and significant of the studies included in this tome concerns the rank order of discrimination. Myrdal had survey teams, under the direction of Arnold Rose, ask white Southerners to list, in order of importance, the things that they thought Negroes wanted most. Here is the overwhelming consensus of that rank order as determined by the nearly 5,000 interviews in all parts of the South and the regions known as the “Border States:”

1. Intermarriage and sexual intercourse with Whites
2. Social equality and etiquette
3. Desegregation of public facilities, buses, churches, etc.
4. Political enfranchisement
5. Fair treatment in Law Courts
6. Economic opportunities

The most curious thing about this Rank Order is that when Rose’s survey teams approached Negroes, they listed the same items as did the White people, and in roughly the same percentages by placement order, but with one extremely important difference: The listed these items in exactly REVERSE order!

Twenty years later, Arnold Rose sent survey teams throughout the South and asked that same questions once again. The sad thing of it is that he got exactly the same results, in terms of the rankings themselves from both Black and White people as they did in the first study. The only encouraging finding of the second study was that the percentages of individuals attributing these values to each category changed substantially, even though the order itself remained the same for both samples.

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For more information concerning the sexual aspects of racism see Calvin C. Hernton,Sex and Racism in America, New York: Grove Press, 1966, and/or Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory, New York: Pantheon Books, 1970.

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SYG 2000
SYG 2010
Hurley

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Racism is the set of beliefs that:

1. Mankind can be divided into groups based upon physiological and/or ascriptive characteristics.

2. The differences between the physiological and/or ascriptive characteristics inherent in all members of one group are so substantially different from the physiological and/or ascriptive characteristics of all members of another (all other) group(s) that these differences are inherited from succeeding generations biologically and that these differences are innately racial in composition.

3. The difference between each racial group is so substantial as to make each group inherently unequal in terms of their relative performance of mental, physical and psychological skills.

4. The inherent inequality of each racial group is so substantial as to transcend numerous areas of competence and performance thereby requiring that one race be conceived of as innately superior to all other races which are therefore innately inferior to the superior race.

5. If more than two racial groups are conceived of they, most often, will be viewed in a hierarchical fashion with all such racial groups arranged in an ascending- descending order which ranks all racial groups from most superior to the most inferior.

6. Because of the forgoing justifications, those of the superior race(s) are supposed to have the “Natural Right,” “God-given Right,” or “Scientific Right” to dominate, segregate and discriminate against all members of the inferior race(s).

7. The consequences of the domination, segregation and discrimination against the inferior race(s) produces behavioral and social outcomes that reflect their minimal opportunity and inequality.

8. The differential of behavioral and social outcomes between the superior race(s) and the inferior race(s) is, almost invariably, cited by those of the superior group as proof of their superiority and the subsequent inferiority of the deprived race(s).

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