Racism and Slavery

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that racism can exist and foster an environment and an attitude that sanction an institution like slavery. However, slavery itself can and has brought out the worst in people, including undiscovered feelings of supremacy over another race. It discusses how slavery has engrained in people's minds the thought that since such a practice is allowable and even easy to maintain, it must be right. The paper concludes that this concept may imply a new idea that slavery encourages racism, in as much as racism establishes slavery.

From the Paper:

"In investigating this concept, we turn towards the past United States enslavement of black people. This particular institution of slavery seems to be aligned perfectly with and idea of dual causality. Its establishment was based in economic possibilities, and was fostered by a division among races. The first element mentioned finds its roots in the Renaissance and Commercial Revolution of Europe. With the rise of towns, the increased centrality of interests in commercial activities, the focus on capital strength, and the fall of feudalism, Europe reinvented its societies to become much more competitive, and focus its attention on individual's prosperity. From England specifically, came the already established aristocrats who ventured to the open land of America to expand their wealth. To do so required a cultivation of the land. Agriculture was the main venue towards wealth, however the already wealthy were not going to perform their own labor. As such, people of lower social statuses searching for greater prosperity, who ventured to the open America, found an opportunity to prosper, by becoming an indentured servant to the wealthy landowner. These servants, who were primarily young white men, would work for a sustained period and at the end of their required servitude, they would be granted land of their own."

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