Racism in the United States

Racism in the United States has been related to the issue of slavery, since the blacks in American society are nearly all descended from slaves brought to this country beginning at the end of the seventeenth century and only freed from slavery at the end of the nineteenth century. What followed was the development of a racist society, with whites setting themselves up as if chosen by God while blacks were increasingly viewed as inferior in every way, good only for manual labor and requiring white as overlords for their own protection. Many Americans probably believe that the problem of racism has been virtually eliminated from American life, though there is ample evidence to the contrary. We have not yet seen the end of racism, but we can look back to the beginnings of black and white racism in the period of slavery as discussed in The African Slave Trade by Basil Davidson.

Davidson traces the development of attitudes on the part of European settlers not only toward black slaves but toward the Indian encountered on the frontier. The slave trade developed at the same time as Europe began exploring new realms and encountering new peoples, and it was necessary for the white European to develop some philosophical attitude which placed himself and the "noble savage" he encountered in the wild on some sort of scale. The idea of the noble savage would give way to the view that the savage was simply inferior, but in the beginning explorers like Charles Wheeler saw the savage a

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quirer could have known even in 1910--was precisely the reverse. For the kingdoms of the Congo had preceded the Portuguese; and the Portuguese in truth destroyed them (101). Davidson discusses the slave trade from the point of view of a European examining the damage done to Africa. He is not considering the effects on the slaves themselves so much as on the continent from which they were taken, and he finds that the consequences of the trade were devastating to Africa, in no small part because of the racist attitudes developed in white settlers there causing them to create as much devastation in the environment as they had done in the population. Indeed, there was actually some gain from contact with Europe, especially in agriculture as the ships from South America introduced new and useful crops that would become of importance to Africa (277-278). The slave trade itself drove European attitudes as they came to see the people of Africa not as people but as commodities to be capture, bought, and sold. Davidson says explicitly that the trade and the bitterness and contempt it brought laid the foundation for future legends of "savage Africa." In the eighteenth century, interestingly, there was more tolerance and acceptance of

Category: History - R