Slavery
European colonizers used race and racism as tools to control people.
Enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples provided 97%[1] of the free labor that resulted in this Nation’s great leaps and bounds to prosperity. In order to keep the institutions of labor (work) free, colonizers, slave traders and European nations collectively denied the humanity of over 4 million African and destroyed the land and homes of 60 million Indigenous people; forcing them into servitude, stealing their languages and forcing their descendants into oppression.
Racism as a tool developed from just a blunt and violent object, into a more complicated set of pincers. It became an explanation (an effect, a scapegoat) for the brutal assault on Non-European people. Instead of beating and raping, racism was used to carefully and conscientiously damage and bruise. Racism even uses the people it oppresses to oppress others. Ultimately racism oppresses white men and any who use it as a tool
The enslaved in labor institutions (Jim Crow, tenements, slavery, [capitalism,) were forced on African men, women and children. White people at the heart and on the margins of these crimes grew more detached the more they learned to use the tools of the trade. Suddenly the very men who were most disconnected from their repercussions were making decisions on behalf of all of society. And suddenly society was looking very dark.
At the same time that violent slavery was going on, a violent disturbance happened in the moral character of white men. They rationalized their behavior with the tool of racism[2]. By denying humanity to some, they ultimately lost a part of their humanity as well[3]. White families were blind to the atrocities around them. They choose in every instance to refuse to recognize the similarities between their own characteristics and African characteristics. They chose to ignore or rationalize the violence. They allowed slavery to happen around them.
If racism were to take the form of an actual tool it would be a double edged sword. Those who wield it in power ultimately cut off their own hands. Whiteness is given power if it agrees to forget about capitalism and sexism. So in the end the white people are working for capitalism and imperialism that have their demise all planned.
The system of racism stops white people from having genuine connections and stops them from knowing the truth about capitalism and whiteness. Rather than acknowledging the technical value of skills like basket weaving[4], farming[5], irrigation, mining, Iron work[6], and hand tools the European colonizers slowly began to question why the various peoples of Africa and the America’s didn’t have guns and advanced weaponry. The European colonizers enslaved and demonized African customs even as they learned from and capitalized off of them. This could have easily gone the other way- Africans could have adopted the Europeans into their settlements and we would be in a totally different place. African nations used culturally and geographically relevant tools, weapons, systems of farming.
African peoples were very advanced for their time period. Africa produced a plethora of advanced civilizations. The most notable of these is the Nile Valley civilization[7]. West Africa brought rice to the Americas[8].
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[1] This is an educated guess, this kind of information isn’t heavily researched.
[2] Don’t underestimate how important this is. To understand racism today we have to look at what happened in the past. To allow this same rupture in moral fiber to happen again is to allow racism to win.
[3] “The conquered subject satisfies the master’s needs by its labour. The master’s self-certainty rests on the activity of a dependent, dominated being. By conquest, the master has made himself dependent on a dependent being. – mutual dependence is the truth of this relation.” – http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/master-slave-commentary.htm
[4] http://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/04/low-country-sweet-grass-basket-weaving.html
[5] http://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/35929
[6] http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1979.206.223/
[7] http://africanholocaust.net/news_ah/africa%20before%20slavery.htm
[8] “Rice has been cultivated in West Africa for at least 3000 years.” – https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/4146.pdf
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