Campaign Fliers Featuring Lynching Left on Cars at Predominantly Black Church in NC

Here's something interesting that happened last week here in NC in the midst of voting season that I thought some of you might find interesting! Obviously these campaign fliers were in poor taste, I was just curious to see what everyone else might think about it.

http://www.wral.com/nc-campaign-flier-has-background-lynching-photo/14099374/

Chapter 8 Antislavery

This chapter focuses on the idea of antislavery and its players. Smedley starts us off by talking about the individuals who were against slavery. We are shown how many people are against the idea of slavery because of the thought of someone being owned by someone else and controlled. They felt as thought society had advanced and therefore the emphasis of the Bible and mythology backing of slavery was unjust.

Europeans and people in England thought that the baptism of slaves were their moral duties as Christians and therefore supported the idea to help convert them to Christianity since the Africans were looked at as heathens. With many New England colonist liking the concept of missionary work this would be supported by many. In 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign lands was established and held slaves on many of its several plantations.

Previous to this, the Quakers were very vocal in their ideologies about slavery and their anti slavery involvement. This could be met with criticism because many of the Quakers had slaves themselves. In 1650 George Fox the leader of the Quakers considered slavery inherently evil and repulsive. Many viewed the issues with slavery as a recurring issue because children were seeing the treatment of slaves and would refer to them as nothing less than animal property. Thomas Jefferson in 1787 spoke on this issue saying that children would see these acts and replicate them. John Woolman also thought that these children would refer to the negro as inferior because of their upbringing and think that all blacks were like this (dirty workers who were property).

I ran across an interesting article this morning titled, "7 Things I Can Do That My Black Son Can't". A white man that has a biracial son is worried about what his son will have to face if he grows up with a darker skin complexion. Check it out.

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/7-things-i-can-do-that-my-black-son-cant-99408985077.html

Race: The Power of an Illusion Part 3

              This section of the film discusses more how race has historically developed into what we see today. Again there is this mention that Race is a category that comes with a set list of values, moral, and etc., but there is no biological difference between individuals due to Race. The markers of race like skin tone are what create these social meanings and are the generalization most people have about certain races.

              It mentions also that during the immigrant rush, those who came to America had to adapt and fit into a racial category that they may have never used before entering the U.S. When the first Immigrants arrived, there were the groups who had to endure the hardest labor, and also lived in the slums; this gave an image of immigrants socially being at the bottom. They were worked for lower wages so companies wanted them, but at the same time these same companies feared immigrants. Later this idea was seen as natural biology, if you were born in that group you earned that type of lifestyle for better or worse.

              With the immigrants they were also separate categories for Whites, separating Europeans into smaller groups ranking them in a hierarchy system. Some groups like Jews, were not viewed as fully white but still here placed higher than non-Europeans like, Asians, African Americans and Mexicans.

              One Idea that I never realized was that this idea of “The Melting Pot” was actually used in a way to allow these other European immigrants to mold together to become known as the ‘White American’. This melting pot actually never included those from non-European descent. So how come people try not to correct this meaning that seems like a common view about America being a melting pot?

              Now for those who were not Europeans, the court decided who could be classified as white. Certain groups of immigrants tried to petition the court to be declared white. Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant tried this, in his petition he mentioned that race should not matter in becoming American; instead it should be based on Beliefs.  Unfortunately Ozawa was denied his petition and mainly because the court claimed science showed him as not being White.  Bhagat Singh Thind in 1923 petitioned that Indians where included in the Caucasian classification, he even had scientific backing but the court reasoned that science was not actual proof. Here is where we saw that the court changed their views for Ozawa, who they used science to consider him not white but for Thind science was denied. When both cases where denied many rights were taken from both Japanese and Indians.  

              The video also mentioned that the original Social Security denied farm workers and labor workers who most were non-whites. Mexicans and Blacks, who were still working for lower wages. Also in 1930 the Federal Housing Administration was created allowed people to get loans to own homes. New communities began developing and here is where we see the development of these suburbias and that became a new component of the American Dream. Black G.I. who returned from WWII returned back hoping for the same opportunity for housing from the FHA, but most were denied. In fact the FHA warned that 1 or 2 non-white families in suburbias could lower the property value of homes. Less than 2% of these mortgages went to non-whites.

              Instead most non-whites remained in their original homes but a claim of urban renewal was going to fix these neighborhoods but most were taken down but never reconstructed nor renovated. Black busting, was a scheme used when housing in suburbia areas became more accessible to non-whites. Black busting was used by retailers to play the fear in whites to sell their homes for less than their values because of the increase of non-whites in their neighborhoods and most people did. This is what caused an economic problem for the housing retailing business since most whites sold their homes and moved into other areas away. Even know certain homes in certain surburbia areas will have a higher selling cost than those with more racially diverse neighborhoods.

                In fact one major thing that is seen today that still emphases this separation of races is the net worth that has grown over time separating the rich and the poor. Even in fact with Blacks who are more economically stable, they would still be earning less than someone who was white and had basically all factors of their life the same. This shows the legacy of racial inequality that has been in the U.S. since a long time.

              Finally colorblindness is not the same as equality. Those who try to ignore color as being an issue or try to claim it doesn't exist is just a naive way of thinking about this. Inequality of opportunity may have been improved over the years but there is still this economic and social inequality that has been here since generations. So the only way to stop this idea of race being a huge factor in our lives is to try to get past it, instead of seeing it in this color blind attitude.

Breaking News!

In case anyone was interested in what the media was saying about Michael Brown.

Michael Brown Official Autopsy Results are In; Will this Finally Stop the Protests? 

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/10/22/breaking-michael-brown-official-autopsy-results-are-in-will-this-finally-stop-the-protests/

Evidence supports officer's account of shooting in Ferguson

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-evidence-supports-officers-account-of-shooting-in-ferguson/2014/10/22/cf38c7b4-5964-11e4-bd61-346aee66ba29_story.html

Daily Show Interview with Bill O'Reilly

   I saw this on the Daily Show and thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8raaT7SRx18&feature=player_detailpage

Good title for this: White Priveleged Male Denies White Privelege

   

Anemone's Notes on Chapter 6

Comparing Slave Systems: The Significance of “Racial” Servitude

While race and slavery are closely connected in the North American context, we have seen that slavery existed in the Old World for thousands of years without a trace of race ideology.  Slavery also developed differently in Latin America from the situation we are familiar with in English North America, and we also know that racial ideology is distinct in these two regions of the New World.   This chapter seeks to unpack these historical developments centering around issues of slavery in the Old and New World in order to gain a better understanding of the development of race ideology in N America.

The Background Literature and the Issues of Slavery

The historians Frank Tannenbaum and Stanley Elkins developed the thesis that different institutionalized forms of slavery in N and S America led to different structures and ideologies of racial difference.   These historians focused their attention on supposed “cultural-historical” differences between English and Iberian colonialists as the root of these differences.  Other historians have looked to economic and ecological differences – rather than to cultural and historical factors – in their attempts to explain the differences between how race and slavery were institutionalized in English North America and Latin America.  One major difference between Old and New World slavery was that only in N America were slaves explicitly and legally denied their humanity. 

The Nature of Slavery

Typically, the nature of slavery includes two opposed notions: the slave is both property (a thing) and a person (a conscious human being).  “All slave-owning societies have had to deal with the paradox expressed by this question.”  Smedley argues that on p. 127 that  “”race” evolved in the Judeo-Christian society of North America in large part as one way of dealing with this dilemma, by defining Africans and their descendants as something less than fully human, or as a form of human being different from and inferior to whites.”  Smedley than argues that, in her view, slavery was more than an economic system, and that its most important aspects are “the social and human relationships”…”it is the consequences of slavery for human social systems and social relationships that matter”.  She then (on p. 127) goes on to enumerate a series of other factors of anthropological interest that relate to slavery as more than mere economics.

A Brief History of Old World Slavery

Very ice discussion of the importance of kinship in human societies, and the slave’s place as an “essentially kinless people”.  This section is of great interest to an anthropological analysis of the role that slavery can play in society, with interesting material from the ancient historian MI Finley.  On p. 130 the anthropological notion of “bridewealth” is discussed and how it relates to a notion of people as property.   Thus in the Old World, “slavery evolved, then, in traditional societies where the concept of “rights-in-or-over-persons” was part of a nexus of understandings, customs, and beliefs about human relationships”  (p. 130).  We learn here too that in many traditional Old World societies, slaves could be incorporated into the family or other kin unit (p. 131).  On page 135 Smedley discusses the brutalization of both slave and slave-holder that the institution creates (something that was referred to by some of the slave-holding Founding Fathers).  On p. 135 et seq., the ancient Roman distinction between common or civil laws and the laws of nature is seen as illustrative of how even slaves in the Old World were considered to have natural rights that superseded any civil or property laws or statuses, and the influence of these considerations on the concept of the slave as a person (in addition to being property).  The contrast between the rights attributed to slaves in the Old World and their status in the New World is very illuminating. And reflects the fact that (p. 137) “of greater importance is the fact that Old World slavery never developed as “racial” slavery.”

Colonial Slavery Under the Spanish and Portuguese

Basic difference between Spanish conquest and English colonization of the New World is discussed, as is the development of the caste (castas) system of social and ethnic distinctions was transported to the New World and modified to include “mixed blood” and other “types” in the New World that resulted from intermarriage between conquerors and the conquered.  Interesting material here on miscegenation and the development of “whiteness”, hypodescent, “pigmentocracy”.  Very nice summary of this section on p. 144.

Uniqueness of the English Experience of Slavery

Discuss the many ways in which the English in North America came up with a very different form and institution of slavery compared to what we have just read about in the Old World and in Latin America.  Harris’ idea of “hypo-descent”  and its relationship and influence on the development of race and race relations in North America.

The Significance of Slavery in the Creation of Race Ideology

The dehumanization and denial of basic human rights to slaves in the New World forms the basis for the eventual dehumanization of slave races.  See p. 151.  Final summary of how “slavery was seminal to the creation and development of the idea of race in the North American colonies” with 4 points made on pages 152-153.

Chapter 9 – The Rise of Science and Scientific Racism

Chapter 9 discusses the emergence of science as an intellectual endeavor and its role in defining races and racial interactions.  Smedley reminds us that the major source of knowledge and explanation of the world up until the late nineteenth century came from biblical interpretations made mostly by the male sector of the church. It was the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century that prompted scholars to question these dogmatic interpretations, advancing modern science into empirical research and experimentation. Smedley also points out that both naturalistic and super-naturalistic knowledge play a part in our worldview perceptions and both are found in all human societies. In support of sound knowledge and understanding, today’s modern science theoretically excludes the supernatural in support of empirical knowledge, independently and objectively acquired by following a systematically set of standard procedures and methodologies.

The exclusion of the supernatural raises the question on the idea of a single creation, or is there more than one creation in play? The debate over empirical knowledge and the deep rooted spiritual concepts on the origins of human existence places all people, including those newly discovered people resulting from exploration and trade expansion, into the great human family. It is the scientists who attempt to identify and classify the newly discovered human beings.

Sub-chapter Early Classifications of Humankind describes the process of classification and the people most influential in creating the classifications. Carolus Linnaeus established four groups: Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus, and Europeaeus. Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon is credited with introducing the term “race” into the natural sciences. Buffon was more interested in explaining human variety and not so much in their classification. He saw humankind as one species. Buffon reasoned that climate was the “chief cause of the different colors of men.” Johann Blumenbach, a professor of medicine, working within the single-origin framework was responsible for the theory of monogeneses, the argument that degeneration, caused by climate, food, and living habits, accounts for the external differences among human groups. Blumenbach’s division of humankind was based on the major regions of the world: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach, Buffon and Linnaeus also imposed aesthetic judgment on the physical features of different people. This was also a time of increased African-Atlantic slave trade and the conquest of the Native American. Do the conditions of the African slave and the Native American during this time promote the idea of a superior civilization, setting up the later concept of racial ranking?

Sub-chapter The Impact of Eighteenth – Century Classifications discusses the consequences of the classifications.  Smedley suggests that the fundamental error in the classifications was the assumption that human species was divided into clearly demarcated subgroups, or subspecies, that the scholars who produced the classifications were Europeans who had never seen a savage, and that much of the information came from untrained ordinary people preoccupied with other interests and purposes. Scholars in the American colonies were also aware of the debate over human classification, and were already engaged in the hard currency of racial ideology, something that Europeans had yet to experience, and polygenesis, the theory of multiple creations, resurfaces in the debates on philosophical theories.

It was French philosopher Voltaire who suggested that the major variants of humankind were separate species, created at different times. He believed that Africans and Indians physical characteristics and their social behaviors were sufficient evidence to classify them as species distinct from Europeans. Voltaire’s commercial interests infer that Voltaire had a vested interest in maintaining the colonial system of slavery, and the slave trade. He was supported in his view of separate origins of the races by Henry Home (Lord Kames).

Chapter 9 concludes with several questions for debate. I suggest the latter question goes to the heart of the chapter: Was classification merely a product, or by-product, of the growth of science, or were there deeper, hidden meanings in the desperate attempt to ascertain the different places in nature of various peoples?

This just in, Ebola and race.......

I hope you all enjoy the video I posted below. It seems to touch base on some of the things we have already discussed in class and will probably be discussing. All you have to do is click on the link. 

Ebola and Race

Art by André Carrilho

Morgan Freeman Interview

Chapter 10 - Growth of the Racial Worldview in Nineteenth-Century America

   Chapter 10 explores the contributions of science to the idea of race in America.  One scientist who helped solidify the folk beliefs about race was Dr. Charles White, who wrote "An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man", in which he concluded that Negroes were not human and each race was a separate species. 
Polygeny Vs. Monogeny: the Debate Over Race and Species-
    The debate was based on religious beliefs and whether God created one species of human that later degenerated, or several separate species from the outset.  People had already decided that Negroes were inferior, and were using religion to bolster that belief.  Scientists also began to support this belief.  In addition to Dr. White, Dr. Samuel Morton wrote about race differences; he used measurements of skulls to back up ideas of racial differences, then connected morals and intelligence to the physical traits.  Dr. Josiah Nott and Dr. George Glidden wrote "Types of Mankind", which was very influential to both the general public and several generations of students.
The Unnatural Mixture
    Ideas about interracial relationships and the resulting offspring began to turn negative by the 19th century, and laws were enacted to outlaw the relationships, which were considered to be unnatural and sinful.  The children, by use of hypo-descent, were accorded the status of the lower status parent. 
Scientific Race Ideology in the Judicial System
    Dred Scott Decision - Chief Justice Taney ruled that Negroes were not citizens and never could be, and that they had no rights. 
    Plessy vs. Ferguson - addressed segregation
    This section addressed the irony of slavery in a country that prided itself on being a democracy.  Most people were glad to believe that Negro slaves were inferior to the white race, because it provided an excuse for the enslavement, and allowed the whites to continue to make money and gain power through enslavement.  After the acceptance by the scientific world of evolution, the arguments about racial inferiority were made in scientific rather than religious terms.
White Supremacy
    Race began to be a more important factor than class or nationality when classifying a person.  Whites had begun to conquer or colonize large parts of the world, which seemed to back the view that whites were superior to other races. 
    Robert Knox - "race is everything"
    Dr. John Van Evrie - "White Supremacy and Nergo Subordination' - believed that whites were responsible for all successful societies in the past and present
 Immigrants and the Extension of the Race Heirarchy
    Whites began to racialize other groups, such as the Chinese and Japanese, or any group that was a threat to "white purity".  Many believed only whites could create and preserve democracy, and enacted laws denying certain rights to groups who were not white; they also began to restrict immigration.  By this time, the concept of white superiority was so much a part of the country's worldview that the few who didn't believe in it would rarely dare say as much.
    The effect of science on the racial worldview was important for two reasons: it validated racial differences, and it provided evidence which helped shape future laws and beliefs.  People were very willing to accept the scientific findings on racial differences because the findings supproted what they already believed, and because the scientists were supposedly working without bias and using scientific data.   People also wanted to believe that the differences were real to legitimize or excuse their poor treatment of minorities, and to allow them to continue to exploit these minorities.

 

Anemone's Notes on Chapter Five

The Arrival of Africans and the Descent into Slavery

This chapter begins with an interesting summary of the brilliant African-American historian John Hope Franklin’s work that documents the historical fact that Africans were members of the crews of many of the earliest Spanish and Portuguese ships that explored the New World in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.   Hope also noted that “Negroes did not accompany the English on their explorations in the New World”.  The contrast between the English and the Iberian experience with Africans is again made here, as is the point that the role of Africans in the exploration of the New World has been mostly ignored by mainstream (=white) historians.

Francis Drake’s experience with the “Cimarrons” of Central America suggests that the earliest interactions between the English and Africans were not yet marked by the ideology of race and racism, and the historian Winthrop Jordan similarly argues that the English did not, at first, “prejudge(d) the Negro as a slave”.   Africans were different in many ways, in both biological and cultural traits, but “the earliest records do not suggest the more virulent image of savagery that was to come much later”.  But the English were quick studies and, following the example of 100 years of Spanish and Portuguese enslavement of Indians and Africans, they “showed little reluctance to ultimately accept Africans as slaves”.

The First Africans

The first African laborers were sold to the inhabitants of Jamestown in 1619 by a passing Dutch trading vessel.  In the coming decades Africans began to appear in New England and other parts of the colonies.  With the development of the tobacco industry in the late 17^th century, a steady stream of African workers and servants began to appear.  It seems clear that at this early stage, before slavery had been formalized into the legal structure of the colonies, African servants/laborers are better considered to have been indentured servants than slaves.  Beginning in the latter part of the 17^th century, economic, legal, and social changes began to harden the status of Africans into permanent chattel slavery.  See the last paragraph in this section (p. 97) for a nice summary of these changes and the role they played in the social construction of race.

The Descent into Permanent Slavery

Many historians have debated which came first: racism or slavery?  Both sides have interesting arguments.  Carl Degler and Winthrop Jordan are two of the prominent proponents of the position that the English were predisposed to be racist towards Africans even before they practiced the enslavement of Africans.  Jordan especially argues on the basis of linguistics, suggesting that language predisposed English towards racism.  Other historians argue that from an originally ambiguous position, the status of Africans in the New World gradually but inexorably deteriorated as the institution of slavery developed in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries.  See Gary Nash’s description of “the descent into slavery” on p. 102.

Was There Race Before Slavery?

Jordan’s and Degler’s arguments for the origins of racism prior to slavery are critiqued in this section in the work of several historians.  Fredrickson finds little evidence that Africans were treated any differently from white servants before 1680.  Much historical evidence seems to support this position, that racism was not significant prior to the development of the institution of slavery.  Much evidence exists to suggest that intermarriage was common among the lower social classes during this period.  Free blacks were more similar in many respects to free whites of the same social class than to blacks of lower classes.  Smedley clearly sums up the argument in the last paragraph of this section on page 105, in which she supports the idea that racial antipathy was not in evidence in the late 17^th century, before the systematization of chattel slavery.

Why the Preference for Africans?

Classical reasons to enslave people in the ancient world did not really apply to Africans, so historians have asked why were Africans enslaved? Africans were neither taken as prisoners in war, not did they have land that the Europeans coveted.  They were usually agriculturalists with many trade specializations, rather than being nomadic herders.  They were of course heathens, but in all these other respects, they don't necessarily fit the mold of typical candidates to be enslaved. So why were they preferred as slaves?  The question is posed in this section, and answered in the next after stating that the answer “is complex and perhaps best understood in the broadest historical context, encompassing economic and material explanations along with those cultural and historical variables that are so important in human lives but, under recent trends in scholarship, are much too often ignored.

The Problem of Labor

The English needed labor to work the “abundance of rich lands” they were attempting to expand into, and the Indian population was “insufficient and ineffective as slaves”. So they turned to the poor and criminal classes from Britain, especially Catholics.  Vagabonds, destitutes, and convicts formed the ranks of the indentured servants, who were treated terribly but at least their term of service was not indefinite (or inheritable).  The historian Theodore Allen’s work is heavily cited in this section in arguing that the “chattelization” of English labor “constituted an essential precondition of the emergence of the subsequent lifetime chattel bond servitude imposed upon African-American laborers”.  Slavery was seen as a cheaper solution to European indentured servitude as more and more Europeans outlived their period of servitude and became free.  The growth of this unruly class with few opportunities for advancement in society led to social unrest, and to a very dangerous situation where white and black servant realized common interests: Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 being an exemplar.  See what most frightened the planters at the bottom of page. 109 and the quote from Allen on the top of p. 110.  Other reasons that Africans were preferred as slaves…unfamiliarity with the country, linguistic and cultural differences, physical differences, immunity to Old World diseases, familiarity with agriculture. For all these reasons they were cheaper and easier to enslave than other Europeans or Indians.

A Focus on Physical Differences and the Invention of Social Meanings

Theodore Allen’s very important 2 volume The Invention of the White Race is discussed in this section.  Allen argues that the institution of slavery and its application to only those with black skin for the first time allowed white Europeans of all social classes to identify a set of common interests in distinction to those of blacks.  In this way, poor and lower class whites began to identify with rich, upper class whites and to eschew connections or sympathies with other down-trodden members of society with whom they did not share skin color.  Blacks deserved their slave status because they were heathens and inferior to whites, and in this way the social meanings of racial differences began to be formalized.  Allen argues that this new racial ideology functioned as a “social control mechanism”…”by dividing the laboring class along color lines, by allocating privileges and rights to poor European freemen, and by abrogating the rights of Negroes and by relegating them to permanent bondage, the bourgeois plantation owners diminished the possibility of the kind of “class warfare” that Bacon’s Rebellion had portended”.   Thus was born a racial consciousness that linked white people, poor and rich, laborers and landowners that, in effect, “created” the white race.

Anemone's Notes on Chapter 4

The Growth of the English Ideology about Human Differences in America

Earliest Contacts.

The history of English exploration and colonization of the New World in the 16^th century: conflicts with the Spanish, and interactions with Natives.  Lost Colony of Roanoke (1587) and the first permanent colony at Jamestown (1607). What were their first impressions of the locals, and how did they interact with them?  Smedley describes two contradictory views of the Natives that were held by the English…can you describe them?  And when were the English inclined to view Indians in one or the other manner, according to the historian Gary Nash?  Explain Kuperman’s notion about an “English theory of human nature’ and how this influenced the manner in which the colonists interacted with the natives.

The Ensuing Conflicts.

Who were the first English colonists…what kind of people were they, and how were they unprepared to live in the New World?  Describe some of the “inevitable results” of the “extreme English contempt for the native population”.  What ideas did the colonists use to justify their barbaric, and at times genocidal, interactions with Native Americans in this period?  Any similarities with the English experience with the Irish?

The Backing of God and Other Justification for Conquest.

This section describes the theology and worldview of the Puritans and suggests that they played an important role in the brutality and discrimination with which the colonists treated the Indians.  Do you agree that religious justification for mistreatment of people is something that is still with us in the modern world?  Explain.  Historians (like Nash, Canny and Jordan) struggle to understand the seeming paradox that…“Christian values regarding human behavior…had little impact on the minds, morals, and consciences of the settlers”. The English wanted Indian land…how did they use the concepts of natural rights and civil rights to justify their taking of Indian lands?  Again, any similarities or connections to the English experience in Ireland?

The New Savages.

From the English perspective, Native Americans were New Savages, in comparison to the Old Savages with whom they had hundreds of years of experience and conflict, the Irish.  Many of the early explorers and colonizers of the new World had experiences or interests in Ireland (e.g., Raleigh, Cabot, Drake, Gilbert, Grenville et al.).  Describe the ways in which Native Americans were seen as similar to Irish?  How do you think we can explain the phenomenon of “civilized” English “going native”, both in Ireland and in the New World?  Feel free to speculate on this question.

Chapter 5

     The regular approach to history written by English speakers is challenged in the review of the discovery of the New World. We take a look at major milestones in the past through a magnifying glass. Prior to the New World , the only individuals who had not had substantial experience  with black persons was English speakers. At that time black persons had already had trading relations with the Portugal. There were already Africans in Spain and Portugal.

     After being able to go and enter into trading enterprises in Africa and be so prosperous, some English persons pushed for  more power as a result. They saw that the Africans worked on their land: "why not have them come work my homeland so that I can be prosperous everywhere?" Traders saw another profit because they knew others would pose the same idea. The Portuguese and Spanish were already shipping slaves. The English wanted to be ahead, so they pushed further and turned North America and Caribbean colonies into major imports. They came late, pushed hard, and became big in slave trade as a result.

     At some point the identity of traded objects was shifted onto the workers of that object (cargo). The Africans were striped of their freedom of choice and stamped as profitable cargo. Slave. Because Africans were seen as savage, they were seen as less human. In this the English saw them as animals that, like  any other animal at that time, could be be used in anyway possible to make their English life easier.