Taylor\u2019s piece on the Chesapeake in Chapter 7 definitively traces the emergence of racism in the early colonies.\u00a0 Beginning with an account of the class tensions among settlers in Virginia, the chapter exposes the subjugation of people based on social status rather than race.\u00a0 Among the four levels of hierarchy in society\u2014the king, the provincial government, the county court and the family household\u2014there was an underlying class order whereby the few land elite at the top controlled an enormous portion of the wealth.\u00a0 White landowning men retained a great deal of patriarchal power in the household and also governing power in the community.<\/p>\n
The labor necessary to sustain a reasonable crop production for these landowners was dependent on the class of white indentured servants.\u00a0 The cost for a white indentured servant was significantly less than that of an African slave.\u00a0 Therefore, in the beginning of the 17th<\/sup> century, white indentured servants were almost exclusively the laborers of tobacco and maize farms in the Chesapeake colonies.\u00a0 However, the short terms of these servants (usually only a couple of years) were sufficient to pay off their passage from England to the New World.\u00a0 When the servant completed their term, they were often granted \u201cfreedom dues\u201d which were settlement packages of land.\u00a0 Therefore, the name servitude is an apt way of distinguishing this type of work from slavery\u2014which became a lifelong period of service around the second half of the 16th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n Due to greater incentives to remain in England, namely higher real wages, the demand of servants in the Chesapeake region went unfulfilled.\u00a0 The farmers had to look elsewhere for laborers and quickly found an alternative in the slave trade.\u00a0 I thought the inclusion of Anthony Johnson’s story provided an effective preface to the drastic change in race relations.\u00a0 This often-overlooked account of a black slave-owner becomes quickly overshadowed by the subjugation of black people in America to a position below even the lowest classes of white colonists.\u00a0 The shift in the servant class, as Dana mentions in his post on February 9th<\/sup>, permitted all whites to be unified based upon skin color.\u00a0 In using the word \u201ckinship\u201d, Dana seems to illuminate the traces of a central divide contributing to the Civil War.\u00a0 As I expect to see in the later part of this class, many supporters of the Confederacy were united as kin in this acceptance of racism and slavery.\u00a0 Furthermore, Taylor reminds us that racial solidarity accompanied the growing inequality among whites Virginia.\u00a0 To a certain extent, this sense of unification by race diminished the common class white colonists\u2019 concern with class disparity.<\/p>\n This reading provides a very nice foundation for our study of slavery in this class.\u00a0 As Taylor mentions, \u201cA dark skin became synonymous with slavery, just as freedom became equated with whiteness\u201d (Taylor 157).\u00a0 As simple as this observation may seem, it is very telling of the emergence of a new people placed under subjugation. \u00a0Also it is interesting to trace the underpinnings of racism in America back to this change in servitude caused by a strengthening English economy (see above\u2014real wages increase).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taylor\u2019s piece on the Chesapeake in Chapter 7 definitively traces the emergence of racism in the early colonies.\u00a0 Beginning with an account of the class tensions among settlers in Virginia, the chapter exposes the subjugation of people based on social status rather than race.\u00a0 Among the four levels of hierarchy in society\u2014the king, the provincial … <\/p>\n