Racism

Reality Built on a Myth

Lovchik

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532648243
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Race and separate races of human beings do not exist. They are a myth. Yet, racism is very real. Because racism is the namesake of something that does not exist, there is general confusion about what it actually is. This confusion has served to protect racism, and even reinforce it. By reviewing the entire history of racism, this book shows exactly what racism is: a subjective system of ranking groups of people and the belief that there is a natural social order of those groups. The lie of inferior and superior groups of people originated as a justification for slavery. Plantation owners, lawmakers, and scientists carefully nurtured the myth until long after slavery had ended. It has survived for centuries and continues to be used to separate people. Every white person needs to be aware of that history in order to understand how the myth of race and a hierarchy of humanity lingers in each of us and in all of our institutions.

Part I

Slavery from Ancient Times to the Civil War

1

Slavery

To understand the origins of racism, it is important to look at the history of slavery. Racism didn’t bring about slavery; slavery brought about racism. Slavery has existed since ancient times. But the use of slavery in this country was unique in its magnitude and in the color divide that existed from the start, when people of European descent began importing people of African descent as slaves. That color divide was then exploited to justify and protect the whole system of slavery. The process of pitting white workers against black slaves was the origin of the racism of today.

Ancient Slavery

In ancient times, warfare was often a matter of conquest. When one army was defeated, their territory and its inhabitants were taken over by the victors. There was no way to repatriate prisoners of war, so they were made slaves.7 Ancient slavery took many forms, but generally there were protections for the rights of slaves and often the slaves were allowed to eventually become accepted members of society.8

It was not until the development of large-scale agricultural production, which created a need for many laborers, that raids to capture large numbers of slaves began. Sugar production was very labor intensive and lent itself to the creation of plantations with many slaves. Sugar plantations began in the islands of the eastern Mediterranean,9 and were then copied by Europeans on Cyprus and the islands off the coasts of Europe and Africa.10 This development was the first step in the process of enslaving people—not as a necessary result of wars, but specifically as a source of free labor.

Moral Justification For The Slave Trade

Slavery from warfare was common and generally recognized as a necessity. The only moral issue was the treatment of the slaves.11 With the advent of slavery solely for free labor, some began to see a need for moral justification for the raids. The premises that captives were people who were only capable of performing slave labor, or that they were barbarians who needed to be civilized, were sometimes used as that justification.12 For Europeans especially, the conversion of the captives to the religion of the raiders provided the best moral justification.13

That was the situation in 1455 when Spain and Portugal had developed shipbuilding to the stage where they could venture farther from their homeports and begin exploring the west coast of Africa. In that year, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull, Romanus Pontifex, reaffirming that, by his authority, all rights to the explored and conquered lands of West Africa, and the captured “enemies of Christ,” belonged to King Alfonso V of Portugal. The section of the papal bull itemizing the rights previously granted reads as follows:

We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso—to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery . . . .14

Another section of the papal bull recapped some of the explorations and conquests undertaken by Portugal under the authority of the earlier letters and, as the following excerpt shows, makes it clear that the justification was the conversion of captives to the “Catholic faith”:

Thence also many Guineamen and other negroes, taken by force, and some by barter of unprohibited articles, or by other lawful contract of purchase, have been sent to the said kingdoms. A large number of these have been converted to the Catholic faith, and it is hoped, by the help of divine mercy, that if such progress be continued with them, either those peoples will be converted to the faith or at least the souls of many of them will be gained for Christ.15

Though the objective was conversion, the reference to “perpetual slavery” suggests that conversion wouldn’t necessarily lead to freedom. And while enslaved Africans were taken to Europe for various uses, and many were converted as indicated in the papal bull, most were taken to the islands of the Atlantic: the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verde Islands to provide free labor for the sugar plantations that were being established there in the latter half of the fifteenth century. This was the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade that ultimately spread to the Americas.16

Slavery in the Americas

Thirty-seven years after Romanus Pontifex, when Christopher Columbus sailed west to the Americas under the sponsorship of the Spanish king, his discoveries led to a similar dispute between Portugal and Spain regarding the rights to those newly discovered lands. To resolve that dispute, in 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull, “Inter Caetera,” by which he awarded Spain the rights to all those lands “together with all their dominions, cities, camps, places, and villages, and all rights jurisdictions, and appurtenances”17 west of a line “distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde.”18

“Inter Caetera” did not resolve all issues between Spain and Portugal, so they entered into their own independent negotiations. In 1494, they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, changing the line to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, and specified that Portugal was entitled to all newly discovered lands east of that line.19 Pope Julius II confirmed the treaty in 1506 in a papal bull, “Ea quae.”20 The treaty became the controlling agreement regarding claimed ownership of the Americas by European nations, with Spain claiming all except a portion of South America; that territory was claimed by Portugal and named Brazil.

While it is clear from the papal bulls that conversion of non-Christians was the justification for those ventures, history is also clear the real purpose was financial. The purp...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Slavery from Ancient Times to the Civil War
• Part II: Racism from the Civil War to the Present
• Part III: The Present and Future
• Bibliography