Tag: racism

Slavery has existed since the first civilizations, though the kidnapping of Africans and their brutal enslavement in the Americas has been the most brutal. Past civilizations have allowed people to sell themselves into slavery to pay back debts and slaves have often been allowed to earn there freedom over long periods of time (I do not have sources for these claims, except to say that I have learned of them during my previous education). Within the brutal system of American slavery, slaves had little or no legal protection, could be bought and sold as slaveholders pleased, work brutal hours in even more brutal conditions, and be punished for malfeasance through torture. I believe that part of what allowed these slaves to be brutalized, as never before in history, was the omnipresent racism that slaveholders both participated in and used as a tool for the subjugation of blacks. Patricia Reed, in “Margaret Morgan’s Story: A Threshold between Slavery and Freedom, 1820-1842, documents what I believe to be an inevitable consequence of this racism-supported slavery: the legal marginalization of free blacks.

Wade argues that Pennsylvania laws were ineffective due to their weakness. I wonder, however, how strong those laws would have had to be in order to have prevented the encroachment of slavery and slave catchers upon border and other nearby states. For example, in the United States, which has inherited the English Common Law principle of the presumption of innocence, blacks were slaves until proven free. Why did southern states not require a proof of ownership before allowing blacks, like Morgan and her children, to be sold to slaveholders? That might have prevented their kidnapping and enslavement, but rather they lacked the adequate documentation of manumission, and therefore could not prove their freedom. I argue that to do so would have highlighted the initial kidnapping from Africa. Indeed, if it is unjust to kidnap a black family from Pennsylvania, why would it be more just to kidnap them from the African coast. To ask such a question would be to undermine the fundamental justification of slavery–that blacks were inhuman, and could therefore be enslaved at will.

Though abolitionists and northerners in or near border states were rendered ineffective by the laws and customs of nearby states, I was saddened to learn of the ways in which their own racism hindered their abilities to aid free blacks. For example, Reid mentions that “Pennsylvania state laws had stripped free blacks from bringing criminal charges against whites in court” (372). By granting blacks status as second-class citizens, rather than slaves, Pennsylvanians had acknowledged their belief that blacks did not deserve the full protections of the law. From there, it is a slippery slope to being unable to prevent their enslavement at the hands of unscrupulous slave catchers.

As an American in 2013, I argue that this phenomenon–bigotry with partial acceptance–is not over. In the Davidsonian, my freshman year, I argued that Davidson’s Presbyterian tradition was incompatible with homosexuality, and that we should therefore abandon the Presbyterian tradition. The responses I received were interesting, and I learned several things, but the one that stuck with me the most was that many people believed in accepting gays and lesbians, but that to engage in homosexual activities was still a sin. Not only do I disagree, but I believe that such splitting of hairs is not beneficial to any disfranchised group. To love someone, to include them and accept them, you cannot reject part of their identity. I believe that such rejection fuels homophobia today, and that such racism and exclusion of blacks from the courts and other political processes is what allowed Margaret Morgan and her children to be brutally re-enslaved so long ago.