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American Ego to Imperialism and Fear- What is the cause of race? It is a common question people have asked themselves for over a century and our country, the United States, have been troubled about this problem, racism, before the country itself was born. Racism has caused many innocent people to feel miserable and inferior to others, regardless of his or her ability. The common response as the culprit of the cause of race is slavery, which the first of them were brought as early as 1619 to the Americas.
True, slavery had caused clear differentiation between the free man and captured man, but is slavery really is the culprit of racism? Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and the civilization from about a millennium ago had slavery, but all of them did not have an exact idea of segregating people by their race and skin color. So, what is the exact cause of racism? The answer lies in these significant events in the history of America: the slave trade throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the new laws in the rising colonies and Bacon’s rebellion.
We cannot talk about slavery unless we talk about slavery which it was the Atlantic lave trade that made the basis of racial discrimination in the United States. Since “by 1619, a million blacks had already been brought from Africa to South America and the Caribbean, to the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, to work as slaves” (Zion Chapter 2), it was a natural flow to have slaves in the new settlement of Jamestown.
Back in 1619, people in Jamestown were in need of manual labor with less food, because they “crazed for want of food, they roamed the woods for nuts and berries, dug up graves to eat the corpses, and died in batches until five hundred colonists ere reduced to sixty. ” (Zion Chapter 2) So, they brought in blacks from Africa to work as slaves. Although we cannot say that this ultimately caused racism in the United States, this was the first “black slaves” that were brought to the America.
If the Englishmen in Jamestown were to survive, live, and settle by themselves, all the African descents may not have to suffer in the United States for the next 300 years. Although at this point all the other countries such as Portugal and Spain, have the potential to make the concept of racism since they too incorporated slaves in their abort force, but the actions after this had made the United States to make racism. “When in 1640 three servants tried to run away, the two whites were punished with a lengthening of their service.
But, as the court put it, “the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life. ” Also in 1640, we have the case of a Negro woman servant who begot a child by Robert Sweat, a white man. The court ruled “that the said negro woman shall be whip at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the forenoon do public penance or his offense at James city church… (Zion chapter 2) This unequal, unfair treatment between blacks and whites appeared not so long after the first slaves were brought. This is different from other countries. Africa, for example, also had slaves but the concept of them were different. Howard Zion introduces Basil Davidson in his book Cause of Race-American Ego to Imperialism and Fear- By TFH TTFN TFH harsh servitude, but they had rights which slaves brought to America did not have, and they were ‘altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the
American plantations. ” (Zion chapter 2) So, it was only an American “custom” to differentiate between people’s skin color and treat people as “true” slaves. The new laws and court cases against the blacks have differentiated America from the other countries, and these consequences initiated the Bacon’s rebellion, which had finalized the concept of race. Bacon’s rebellion occurred because of the conflicts between the low-class frontiersmen against the rich plantation owners and Virginia government.
Because the frontiersmen wanted to expand their land out, Just like the ICC plantation owners, they asked the Virginian government to eliminate Indian threats, but they refused to do so. Angered low-class men organized a rebellion with the frustrated servants and slaves against the government and the rich plantation owners. Although the rebellion brought unity between white servants and frontiersmen and black slaves, the aftermath of it had caused the discrimination towards blacks to be a harsher, devastating gap between blacks and whites.
It was only after the rebellion where the Virginia Assembly set laws that “[n]ogres were rebind to carry any arms, while whites finishing their servitude would get muskets, along with corn and cash… White servants were allowed in Virginia to Join the militia as substitutes for white freemen. ” (Zion chapter 3) Even though Bacon’s rebellion had not directly affect the racial segregation between the people of the United States, it triggered both the fear of poor whites and black slaves uniting and the fear of blacks over numbering the whites, which had made the difference of race more distinct by law.
Howard Zion asks, “[t]his unequal treatment, this developing combination of contempt and oppression, feeling and action, which we call “racism”??was this the result of a “natural” antipathy of white against black? ” (Zion chapter 2) The answer is no. The blacks were Just a victim of the growing imperialism of expanding land and the overwhelming fear of overthrow; both created by the whites. Race was created not only from the excessive usage of slavery, but the imperialism that caused slaves to be present in this country and fear that slaves’ ability to overthrow whites.