The Politcal and Economic Origins of Systemic Racisim in the United States

“In Barbados, as in Virginia, the historical foundations of race and slavery can be traced back to the struggle between the planter elite and a labor force of bound servants and African slaves who resisted oppression.” - Edward B. Rugemer, from “The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century”

A couple weeks ago [on my Tumblr] I attempted to provide a unifying solution to the question of “why are things so fucked in 2020?” and I provided what is, I suppose at least on the surface, an economic answer: capitalism. I then briefly attempted to show how the blind pursuit of profit, engendered by our own economic system, is in fact the very heart of many of our contemporary crises, from climate change to racism. 

This week I want to focus on racism. I’ve been doing some research with my favorite search engine (JStor) in order to clarify, for myself, the vague memories of what I learned in college in regards to race and American history. So, if you’ll forgive my arrogance, I would like to propose what I would posit to be the formula for modern racial oppression: a social elite’s desire for profit + human ignorance + vulnerable populations = systemic racism.

It may seem like an obvious statement, but I think a lot of people would like to chalk up White Supremacy to white ignorance alone, which is dangerous. If you think racism comes solely from the masses of white people just not knowing any better, then the solution is simple and obvious: educate the racists, make them see the error of their ways and thus eradicate racism with a single, equitable blow- oppression be gone! 

We tend to see racism as a disease. I would not deny that racism is, in some cases, comparable to a sickness. However, you could just as easily look at it as a tool. This shift in perception, in turn, alters how you analyze the whole situation. If someone has a sickness you ask if there is a cure. If someone is using a tool, you ask yourself why they’re using it, how they’re using it and what the effect of that use is. The problem with our conceptualization of racism is that we look at it as an inevitable aspect of nature (like a disease) and not as something consciously produced (like a machine). Racists then universally become victims (since they’re sick) who need to be healed because they are hurting, instead of oppressors who need to be stopped from hurting others. 

Certainly, there are racists (particularly the poorer ones) who are victims of their own ignorance- but this cannot be said for all of them. White Supremacy is profitable and we can never forget it. Everyone cheers when a disease is cured, but try to take a valuable tool from the hand wielding it and you can expect a fight. So, in the interest of preparation, let it be said: modern racism is not simply the result of human nature run amok, it was created and improved over time by amplifying and codifying our tendencies to tribalism in a manner that primarily benefited a small, economic elite. In short, racism was and is the tool of the bourgeoisie. 

With that being said, I would like to illustrate this by briefly providing a few notes on the origins of racism in the United States of America. In order to do so, however, I must speak about places outside of the U.S. as well. The United States started out as an English colony, and learned how to successfully oppress and exploit African human beings from the other English colonies who paved the way before them: Barbados and Jamaica. Jamaica largely borrowed its laws concerning slavery from the English colony of Barbados, and South Carolina borrowed her slave laws from the colony of Jamaica. Human exploitation has always been a global business.

So with no further ado, I present a brief account of the origins of modern racism (I will provide a bibliography for all this information at the end of my post): 

• The English settled in Barbados in 1627. By 1640 they had cleared much of its forests and began cultivating indigo and cotton. Later they would expand into producing sugar. 

• At first, most of this labor was done by white indentured, landless servants in the service of wealthier landowners. This labor source was occasionally supplemented by people of African or indigenous American descent, but they did not yet supply a majority of the labor.

• Indentured servants were treated poorly, especially after sugar production began in earnest. They were given inadequate food and lodging and routinely beaten. In fact, conditions were hard enough that in 1634 they attempted to organize a rebellion. 

• In 1636 the Barbados Council resolved that “Negroes and Indians, that came here to be sold, should serve for Life, unless a Contract was before made to the contrary.” From the start, we can see that there was some form of racialization at work here. However, it was still vague and incomplete: not all Africans or “Indians” would theoretically be bound for life, and the primary division in society was largely between the “free” and the unfree, the latter including both white and Black laborers. 

• Whenever a colony began to seriously invest in a profitable crop (like cotton or tobacco), they usually ended up requiring more labor than what the flow of European immigrants could provide. As demand increased relative to supply, the cost of indentured servants grew as well. This led many planters to turn to slavery in order to solve their labor issues. 

• Meanwhile, in 1649, “rebellious servants formed a conspiracy to ‘cut the throats of their masters’ and ‘make themselves not only freemen, but Masters of the Island.’ According to one contemporary source, this rebellion involved the whole island and most of the servants; 18 people were executed.

• In the 1650s increasing numbers of Africans and “undesirables”, such as the Irish, were being sent to the colonies. According to one of the servants' accounts, they could be bought and sold to planters, beaten at pleasure, slept in styes and ate nothing but potatoes and drank nothing but water. The enslaved Africans were treated, of course, no better.

• By 1655 many enslaved Africans and Irish servants were out in rebellion.

• There were definitely distinctions in the ways servants and slaves were treated, but many of the laws passed by the Barbados Assembly did not actually distinguish between the two groups and “treated indentured servants and African slaves in the same act.” (Rugemer)

• The legal term for the economic elite was “masters”. Regardless of their ethnic origin, no one who served another was “worthy of a master’s civility.” (Rugemer) Both servants and slaves were treated by the law as property that could be seized to satisfy debts, thus being placed in the same category as cattle and horses. 

• The inhumanity with which their laborers were treated, however, caused the masters problems- not the least of which was rebellion. In order to better order their society, in 1661 the Barbados assembly set down two methodical and exhaustive pieces of legislation. They were titled: 

• “An act for the good governing of Servants, and ordaining the Rights between Masters and Servants.” and

• “An act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes”

• As you can see, both servants and slaves needed to be “governed” by their masters (I wonder who watched the watchmen?), but under these laws only servants were recognized as having rights. Also, the word “Negro” was codified into being interchangeable with “slave.”

• The acts went further in describing the distinctions between the two groups. Both slaves and servants were, naturally, labelled as criminals. Rebellion against oppression, as opposed to oppression itself, has always carried the stigma of criminality. Africans, however, were further described as “heathenish, brutish and an uncertain dangerous pride of people” who required harsher laws “for the benefit and good of the colony”.

• “The law defined Africans by pointing out their dark complexions, by asserting offensive cultural characteristics, and by animalizing them as dangerous, exotic lions who needed to be caged.” (Rugemer)

• Presumably, “the barbarism of Africans precluded them from the possession of rights as the English understood them.” (Rugemer) The 1661 Slave Act did not attribute any rights to slaves whatsoever.

• White “informers”, including indentured servants, were expected to alert the authorities to any unauthorized movements of the enslaved off of their plantations. Slaveholders or overseers who failed to capture and whip a runaway slave were fined; this was not the case for servants. 

• “The law aimed to compel Europeans to control the movements of Africans through the threat of a hefty fine. And with the use of informers, a group that included indentured servants, the law created an incentive structure for all Europeans, free and bound, to monitor their neighbor’s management of enslaved Africans.” (Rugemer)

• The 1661 act provided a financial incentive for whites to capture a runaway slave by offering a bounty of a hundred pounds of sugar.

• Thus, the laws passed by the Barbados assembly in 1661 raised the status of (soon to be known as “white”) indentured servants and codified their rights even as it lowered the status of African slaves (the two acts were passed within three days of one another).

• It’s important to note, however, that at the time the Barbados assembly divided their laborers into “Christians” and “Negroes”, a distinction which worked because they believed Africans did not have the capacity to become Christian. “Whiteness” had yet to fully evolve into its present meaning.

• Meanwhile, the colony of Jamaica was experimenting with slavery as well. In 1681 they passed their own versions of the Barbados servant and slave acts, with only a few differences between them. 

• Around the same time, Quakers (members of a fairly radical Christian denomination) began inviting Africans to their religious meetings and initiating the process of conversion in earnest. As could be expected, this upset the slave masters, who tried unsuccessfully to stop this from happening.

• The slave masters reasoning should be clear: if Africans were to become Christians, the cultural differences that necessitated those “harsher laws” and differential treatment would begin to fade. The problem with the earlier distinction was therefore exposed: it was unsustainable to differentiate on the basis of culture and religion because “Negroes” could convert.

• A moral solution, of course, would have been to emancipate converted slaves...this was not done for obvious reasons.

• By 1684, Jamaican law had begun to use “white” instead of “Christian” to identify their European laborers. Religious conversion would not compromise their labor source.

• A byproduct of this change is that Black subjugation was no longer justified on the basis of cultural differences but on the innate racial, and not the religious superiority, of “white” people.

• In 1691, the South Carolina Assembly adopted Jamaica’s revised 1684 Slave Act as their own, with only a few slight differences.

• South Carolina’s assemblymen were, nevertheless, innovators as well. Under South Carolina law, for example, a runaway would be branded for a first offense. A second offense, however, would require a woman to lose an ear and for a man to be castrated. The inspiration for castration was the cattle-rearing practices of slave-owners and implicitly identified African laborers as simple beasts of burden.

• “Severe whippings, the slitting of noses, the slicing off of ears, and ultimately gelding [or castration]—all of these punishments had the same aim, the bestialization of black people and the consolidation of racial slavery.” (Rugemer)

• In the continental United States, as in the Carribean, “White servants had rights, and after freedom, options. Blacks enjoyed neither.” (Main)

• The inhumanity of African laborers was maintained even when they bore the children of their masters: “Like other British colonies in the New World, Maryland reversed the usual English custom in which the condition of children normally followed that of the father. Many white men, therefore, came to treat their own [mixed race] children as property, denying them all claims on themselves as a parent. Illegitimate white children could press no claims under English law, either, but they were born free. The zealous protection of property rights so characteristic of English society, with its rigorous insistence on the sanctity of contracts and patrilineal priority, here seems to have gone awry. Racism and greed combined to override English justice.” (Main)

• In the earliest years of slavery on the American continent, indentured servants and slaves dealt with similar overlords and encountered similar material conditions. They were divided, however, by differences in status within an ideological system that privileged whiteness and condemned Blackness. Indentured servants, despite their oppressions, generally chose their lot and could find freedom after a set period of service. African laborers, being reduced to the status of chattel, had neither consolation. 

• “The most burdensome legacy of enslavement, surely, was its hopelessness.” (Main)

There are few general observations that should be made about the developments that I have outlined here. The first is that the only real agency within this story is held by a small economic elite. The legal and ideological tenets of systemic racism were adopted by the common masses of white people, but they were engineered primarily by and for the benefit of wealthy landowners. Actually, in the early days of the continental American colonies, it was only a small portion of landowners who could afford slaves in the first place. The second observation that one should make is that systemic racism was not a spontaneous event. Rather, it came about only after colonial elites passed legislation that increasingly dehumanized their African laborers and justified that dehumanization by highlighting and exaggerating their “otherness.” 

The development of racism then allowed for three very important things. The first and most obvious result is that the total dehumanization of people of African descent allowed for their unlimited economic exploitation without any regard to their existence as human beings. Of course this benefited the “Masters”, or the only ones actually able to afford slaves, more than anyone else in colonial society. The second result was the pacification of a once rebellious white labor force. Surely, indentured servants and landless whites still lacked political will or agency after the codification of racial hierarchies and they still suffered at the hands of their overlords. Despite this, their newfound “whiteness” offered them some sense of dignity, if not some social mobility, and ideologically connected them to the “master” class. The final effect was the weaponization of the white working or servant class, as they were financially and legally incentivized to assist the master class in the oppression of their African laborers. 

These three effects of early systemic racism can still be seen today. Whether it is through Black prison labor, Mexican field labor or the government revenue generated by the court fees of people of color- one can see how vulnerable populations are still economically exploited to fill the bank accounts of twenty-first century economic elites (sometimes referred to as the “1%,” though that numerical value may be too small). One can also see how appeals to patriotism and ethnocentrism ideologically binds the “white” working class to those who in actuality oppress and exploit them, and how they are made to feel closer to billionaire CEOs than to struggling African and Latino Americans. Finally, it is apparent how conservative rhetoric, and even the “colorblind racism” of white liberals, mobilizes and incentivizes whites to silence minority led movements for equality and equity. 

It is not the billionaire, or the millionaire class that attacks and suppresses protesters or holds “counter-rallies” at BLM protests. The super wealthy do not don police uniforms and enforce an inequitable form of order in communities of color. The foot-work of oppression is done by the white working and middle class. The political legitimacy of racist politicians, and in extension their policies, is supported by working and middle class whites who would actually gain more by aligning themselves with the causes of their non-white neighbors than by those who wouldn’t even dare to live in the same neighborhood as them. In short, the white working and middle classes are very often still weaponized against people of color.

The functions that racism fulfills today are largely the same as the functions it fulfilled centuries ago. Racism may not be profitable to society as a whole, but it is certainly useful and profitable for powerful elements within our society. Is racism a sickness? Perhaps, and perhaps we should seek to cure those afflicted. Racism, however, is also a tool, and we must seek to disarm those using it and heal those who have been struck with it. It is my belief that this will not happen without a significant fight, but it’s a fight that is well worth it. The same elites who manufactured racism manufactured capitalism, our modern class divisions and the destruction of our environment. The fight to end their hegemony is a battle to undo their ideological programming and to gain political agency. It is a battle to cure the disease and disarm the oppressor. I can think of no other battle more worth fighting.

Bibliography: 

1. Rugemer, Edward B. “The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2013), pp. 429-458. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429

2. Main, Gloria L. Tobacco Colony, Life in Early Maryland, 1650-1720. Princeton University Press, 1982. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zvk1d

3. Galenson, David W. “White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in Colonial America.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 41, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History(Mar., 1981), pp. 39-47. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2120891