Slavery

Question 1

What do we mean when we say race is a social construction?

Answer 1

The systems and concepts of the classifications of a culture link “signs” (skin color, gender, clothing, self-presentation) to meaning.

All cultures construct meaning around difference

Meaning – made not from what things contain in their essence, but made from how they relate to other concepts and ideas in society.

the meaning is relation- blackness is defined against blackness

meaning is historical and ever changing (signs can get new meanings attached to them)

Question 2

Essentialism

Answer 2

the opposite of social constructionism

Essentialism and Race: people of different races are fundamentally different from each other in important ways due to biological or genetic causes.

differences as always meaning the same thing.

FALSE

Question 3

Did Europeans see the first black people to arrive in 1619 as slaves?

Answer 3

The first people who arrived in 1619 were understood to be indentured servants from Africa not enslaved people, understood to be people who could convert to Christianity and become free.

Question 4

Social Constructions are not:

Answer 4

a choice: its collective; we’re born into a society that classifies people by race and attaches meaning to those classifications.

a political position (denying is a political position)

the same thing as “stereotypes”: Stereotypes are one symptom of race born as a social construction, it is the much broader social system.

Question 5

If race is a social concept why does it have tangible effects?

Answer 5

BECAUSE we invest meaning in race, there are real differences in how people have experienced their own lives in racialized bodies. (But those differences could be otherwise/have been otherwise).

Question 6

What are three means that were commonly used to justify race as essential?

Answer 6

RELIGION did the work of trying to establish race before science, polygenesis in the 19th century (Black people were descended from Ham)

Percentages of one’s ancestry that the LAW could measure that would make someone black, (blackness can’t be measured in blood),
in the context of ancestors, but we don’t have pictures of those ancestors and they way their race would be recorded in a census would be heavily biased into recording them as black in order justify slavery.

SCIENCE

Question 7

Inconsistencies in early constructions of race

Answer 7

One-drop rule (one drop of black blood would make you black), no mixed racial category for european and black individuals.

But a person of mixed indigeneous and white heritage could be mixed, white or indigeneous.

Partus Sequitor Ventrum
Slavery followed a matrilinial line even though English society was patriarchal.

Race was constructed differently in other colonies (Spanish vs British racial categories)

Question 8

Why does race as a category works different around blackness then it does around indigeneity ?

Answer 8

Settler colonialism and slavery!

They didn’t want people with one drop of indigenous blood to continue to be indigenous in the way that African ancestry marked people forever, they wanted indigenous people to disappear (marry with and have children with Europeans so that they have claim to the land) the settlers are turning themselves into the indigenous by erasing them in family lines.

The one drop rule of blackness and partus sequiter ventrum ensured that black people would all remain slaves regardless of how much white blood they possesed, this ensures a steady stream of labour while preventing any children of slave owners with black women from laying claim to their land.

Question 9

Strategic Essentialism

Answer 9

refers to a strategy that nationalities, ethnic groups or minority groups can use to present themselves. While strong differences may exist between members of these groups, and amongst themselves they engage in continuous debates, it is sometimes advantageous for them to temporarily “essentialize” themselves and to bring forward their group identity in a simplified way to achieve certain goals, or to oppose the levelling impact of global culture

Question 10

What created a need for racial categorization?

Answer 10

Settler colonialism + Slavery

Question 11

Were there “Indians,” “whites” and “blacks” in 1450?

Answer 11

No! the people that they would use define themselves haven’t been met yet.

Question 12

What were the important differences that societies invested with socio-cultural meaning before 1492? (who in the in group and who is In the out group)

Answer 12

Religion
Language
Kinship

Question 13

What is colonialism?

Answer 13

Europeans come in search of wealth so they can compete each other better as empires in European, using colonialism to build armies and wealth.

Land theft
-Extractive colonialism: taking resources (gold)

-Settler colonialism: settling families on the land

Slavery – new forms, capitalism (Portuguese trade)
-Rather than settling permenantly in Africa they begin to kidnap people and take war captives,

• initially the Europeans are fitting into a preexisting African trade of war captives and enslaved labour but that had been a product of other conflicts.
• The portuguese realized the money to be made from the slave trade, encouraging their contacts on the African west costs, leading to wars that were just meant to kidnap people and sell them into slavery.

Question 13

What is colonialism?

Answer 13

Europeans come in search of wealth so they can compete each other better as empires in European, using colonialism to build armies and wealth.

Land theft
-Extractive colonialism: taking resources (gold)

-Settler colonialism: settling families on the land

Slavery – new forms, capitalism (Portuguese trade)
-Rather than settling permenantly in Africa they begin to kidnap people and take war captives,

• initially the Europeans are fitting into a preexisting African trade of war captives and enslaved labour but that had been a product of other conflicts.
• The portuguese realized the money to be made from the slave trade, encouraging their contacts on the African west costs, leading to wars that were just meant to kidnap people and sell them into slavery.

Question 14

Who did the Europeans initially think they would use for labor in the new world?

Answer 14

Indigenous people (but they resist, and Europeans don’t have the upper hand, they’re dependent for their own survival in many cases on the generosity and making peace with indigenous groups until 1700 or even after in many parts in north America.)

• They brought in the European poor (indentured servants) for labour. They signed and indenture (a contract that said they would work for seven years in exchange for the cost of the passage ticket).
• initially that same form of indentureship is applies to African people even though they did not consent to being brought across the Atlantic.

Question 15

In the beginning, between 1600-1650, do the North American colonies use a lot of African labor?

Answer 15

Not a lot of African labour being used because the trade hasn’t developed yet, the colonies in north America have not gotten large enough or permanant enough yet, their not stable yet.

Question 16

So, what happens? How does slavery become a racial institution? How does race become the index of freedom?

Answer 16

Labor demands and practices change; mortality rates change

Black people are asier to enslave:

• Black people had no connections, they are traumatized, they are in a strange land.
• As people survive longer you get a class of indentured white servants who have become free and want their own land.
• Overtime it becomes easier and more lucrative to use black bodies for labour than European bodies for labour (black people have been able to survive the physical and mental difficulties of slavery and then have children who can do the same).
• They are much easier to enslave through pure violence than native people are, who will just run a way.

Because they did not consent African indentures tended to be longer than European indentures. The first seeds of racial difference.

Question 16

So, what happens? How does slavery become a racial institution? How does race become the index of freedom?

Answer 16

Because they did not consent African indentures tended to be longer than European indentures. The first seeds of racial difference.

They are understood not to be permenantly enslaved but a person whose labour could be bought for a certain amount of years form the person who had paid to send them across the ocean. Makes sense because people don’t live very long in the new world.

Eventually it does make more sense to by a lifetime of someones labour as life expectancies increased.

Question 17

What is The Middle Passage?

Answer 17

Trip from Africa to the Americas.

African captives, kidnapped against their will are packed into these ships.

Men are packed tightly below decks, women are sometimes chained above deck.

They survive a journey that is sometimes between 6 weeks and several months.

They are likely fed and watered once a day like livestock.

The mortality rates are incredibly high because there is no value attached to these people as people by the Europeans trading them.

Depending on a disease outbreak and nutrition you may lose 20-40% of people on board.

Traumatic journey of captive people from Africa to the New World.

They are first sold to the carribean were they are seasoned on a sugar plantation. Seasoning involves: seeing if they survive exposure to new diseases, breaking their spirits, introducing them to the violence of slavery.

After being seasoned they are worth more in South and North American markets because they are more likely to survive the next five-ten years.

Question 18

What is The Royal African Company’s Triangle Trade? How did the slave trade develop?

Answer 18

The slave trade was begun by the Portuguese (14th century) moving things from the gold coast to europe. It becomes more lucrative and popular.

With the beginning of Europe’s American colonies in the carribeans and north America we begin to see this triangle trade.

Slaves to the islands; brazil; north America; they grow the raw materials that Europeans will manufacture (Partially processed in the Americas)

The manufactured goods are traded in Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Question 19

European justifications for slavery

Answer 19

Wealth (broader context of economic policy change, “God’s extension of His favor to us”

• Conquering inferior groups; superiority
• Christianizing pagans (Ravaging of European disease on indigenous people is somehow a sign that they should be there and not them)

Question 20

Important legal decisions around slavery?

Answer 20

the length of time one would be a slave (differentiate africans and Europeans when it comes to labor context)

the free or slave condition of children of slaves (first time slavery becomes heritable)

the impact of Christianity on a slave’s status (it isn’t Christian to enslave other Christians that ends early on)

the legal restrictions regarding slave testimony (if it is impossible for enslaved people to speak on their own behalf or testify against someone else you’ve dehumanized them in a fundamental way, denied them of the same rights as someone else)

Legal fictions that you could treat someone as property, a bag of cotton or a bar of gold is essential to upholding the regime of slavery.

Slavery was legal, what is legal and what is not legal is not a sign of what is moral or ethical.

Question 21

By _ _ _ _ slavery has become a racialized institution.

Answer 21

1725

Question 22

Slavery is Social Death

Answer 22

To be enslaved is not to work for free, to be enslaved is much more thoroughly dehumanizing than that.
Frustration of:
-Not owning oneself
-Not being recognized under the law/social contract/religion as a human being.
-ex:
Enslaved people cannot get married because they cannot enter contracts.

Enslaved people cannot stay with the new families they make. They don’t own their children and can be moved or taken away.

If you kill or rape someone’s slave that is crime against the Slave’s owner not the enslaved person.

Question 23

Early resistance and its forms?

Answer 23

There was collective resistance to slavery at every point of the triangular trade at any given time right from the beginning.

Revolt in south Carolina ends the attempt at colony there. (1526)

Community is saying we have a social identity, a form of resistance (marriage, families, kinship).

Throwing themselves over the side of the ships.

Question 24

In _ _ _ _ who is lynched for lying with a black women

Answer 24

1630; Hugh Davis

white people lower themselves when they pursue relationships with people of African descent,

Question 25

Who became the first ensalved person?

Answer 25

1640 – John Punch became a “slave for life”

Question 26

In _ _ _ _ Virginia began taxing the labor of African American women

Answer 26

1643 tax on labor of African women (Stevenson’s essay in FHS) (distinction between who’s a worker and who’s a wife)

Question 27

In _ _ _ _ a law outlaws manusmission, followed by a law the following year that slaves cannot…?

Answer 27

1691 law outlaws manumission (no more setting slaves free; no free black people should be allowed, enshrines black people as property)
1692 law slaves cannot own property (makes it impossible for slaves to free themselves)

Question 28

By _ _ _ _ free people of color cannot…?

Answer 28

By 1723, free people of color cannot vote or own guns, and are differently taxed (descendants of free blacks; the colony invests in race as a major marker of social difference; classification and meaning)

Question 29

So, by about 1725, the “transformation” to racial slavery (race as social construct) is complete. What does that look like?

Answer 29

stricter regulations on slave behavior (how many can gather; own property; vote; where they can be)

slave patrols and slave-catching activity increase (white militias originate here)

laws to control or drive out the small but growing number of free blacks (three white people to vouch for you and but bonds for you)

free blacks in the North face increasing discrimination

Question 30

Race enters the social order

Answer 30

God
King
WHITE Men, by rank
WHITE Women
WHITE Children
WHITE Servants
AFRICANS and AFRICAN AMERICANS: enslaved and free

The presence of enslaved peoples in the colonies alters the identity of everyone else in this list, it makes them white.

The white men and women in the middle of the social order are empowered by racial slavery to become more mobile they can move up in the ranks socially in a way they could not have done in Europe where aristocracy is tied to land ownership.

Native people are assimilated into white families or they are outside the social order, they can’t be forced into the social order en mass.

The social order would be different in different European colonies.