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A Summary Of Racism In America

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Chapter 2:
1. The root of racism in America is the historical events and coincidences that lead the first shipment of blacks to Virginia to be used as slaves. From there a whole culture emerged of techniques and justifications to explain why blacks were slaves and inferior. It all started when a shipment of servants in 1619 came to a place of starvation and anger with its people desperate for labor to grow corn for their substance and tobacco for their profit because they couldn’t or simply didn’t want to. They couldn’t force the Indians to work as their slaves because the Indians were too resilient and they had a “home court advantage” so to speak and white servants were not sufficient. So, when a load of black servants came in they used them …show more content…

The Africans were torn from their homeland and families- with spirits broken and all hope lost in this new and confusing world, they were a lot less resilient than the Indians. They did still rebel and try to escape though, but the Indians couldn’t be as easily captured or enslaved in the first place as this place was their homeland and they knew it well. The white settlers were always jealous of the Indians as they thought themselves as superior but could not survive the land nearly as well even with their fancy weaponry from Europe. That angered the settlers and eventually lead them to give up on trying to enslave the Indians and turn elsewhere for forced labor.
3. Slavery in Africa was more of a serfdom than the slavery that is well known today from Europe and America’s history. Slaves in Africa had rights even though they did experience a harsh servitude. And a communal attitude from Africa’s tribal history lead them to be treated better than the slaves in the Americas and Europe. Slavery in Africa did not have the same frenzied drive for an immeasurable profit from capitalistic agriculture like in the Americas and, most importantly, slaves were not seen as subhuman due to the difference of skin color like they were in the …show more content…

At times some whites were involved in slave resistance and rebellions. The fear was that unhappy whites who were poor would join together with the black slaves to overthrow and destroy the existing order and system. Before all of this white and black indentured servants were treated equally bad and there was a cooperation among them. The rich plantation owners knew this was remembered though it was attempted to ingrain racism into everyone’s thinking. They feared the poor whites would turn against them so they subtly started to treat them better trying to persuade the poor whites that they were both working towards a common

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