Stereotypes of Southern Slavery

Paper Summary:

In allowing slavery in America's south, the government also explained the grounds for it. The slaveholding government's reasoning behind the different laws were all based on the supposed biological inferiority of slaves. This paper shows, however, that blacks were in no way biologically inferior. They, like most people throughout time, were a product of their environment, an environment founded on ignorance and fear that kept power in the hands of slaveholders. It was these adverse conditions that led to both slaves' resistance and their slaveholders' biases. The paper examines how these stereotypes can be reasoned through slave resistance of the slave regime as an attempt to survive.

From the Paper:

"With an insufficient diet it was either go hungry or steal. Those two being the only choices, it was a very easy decision. The slaves saw stealing from a master as taking and that was not morally wrong because it became an important way fill empty stomachs. It was out of this necessity that slave culture formed into one in which "the artistry of deception became a source of personal satisfaction as well as a status among ones peers". The idea of cheating a white person, whether it was in revenge or to get food for your family, was not seen as wrong. However, thievery and deception were not taken lightly; this was a situation where "to be accused was to be convicted"."

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