Why Racism Slavery racism developed simultaneously Historian Winthrop

Why Racism?

Slavery & racism developed simultaneously Historian Winthrop Jordan called it an “unthinking decision. ” “Slavery and ‘prejudice’ may have been cause & effect, continually reacting upon each other, dynamically joining hands to hustle the Negro down the road to complete degradation. ”

Oxford English Dictionary “Deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul; Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister, foul, atrocious, horrible, wicked; Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc. ”

William Shakespeare “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!” Macbeth (1606) “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night, ” Sonnet 147 (1609)

William Blake “My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light. ” Songs of Innocence, The Little Black Boy (1789)

Edmund Morgan “It was not necessary to extend the rights of Englishmen to Africans because Africans were ‘a brutish sort of people. ’ And because they were ‘brutish’ it was necessary ‘or at least convenient’ to kill or maim them in order to make them work. ”

The Middle Passage The forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas Ships could carry as many as 400 slaves 15% died at sea 5% ended up in what would become the United States