The text of many of these topics can be found below the photo. For any content not shown, please request from me directly at — [email protected]. In American history race and the oppression of minority groups is the central theme that must be faced if we are to fully understand our past and promote reconciliation. At the very least we must acknowledge this difficult past and, if we then feel moved, to try to spread our understanding and remove obstacles that still exist to full equality of opportunity for all Americans.
Slavery and its legacy are still with us and will be until we face up to this part of our history and deal with it in a constructive way. If one criticizes or condemns the support of and practice of slavery, they must admit to one of the following three scenarios: They might well have been owners of enslaved people or they might have been like the majority who silently accepted and did not criticize it or they might have been part of that growing minority such as the Quakers who spoke out against it, at risk to their life and laid the foundation of the abolitionist movement which led to the Civil War.
The idea of race is an invention, a social construct. It was put forth in writing and then publicly espoused in Europe as early as the s to justify the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade in which Africans were forced against their will on to European slave ships and brought to the Americas.
The central race idea was that people of color were inferior to Caucasians, to white people and therefore it was acceptable to enslave them. Thus, the idea of whiteness was invented. Many other books also document this fact. When European settlers began their migration to North America in the s, they had been propagandized by racist writings into believing they were superior to other races.
This new form of slavery, pioneered in Barbados before being imported to north America, was a life-time sentence, often broke up families and was brutally enforced. It was far more deadly than old world slavery which did not break up families, was less brutal and held out the possibility of working toward freedom. This practice would reap huge fortunes for the few and its deadly legacy is the cause of many challenges that face the world today. The first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia in and soon slavery had become an established institution in the south.
