In America, the topic of race is the ultimate “wedge” issue. Any discussion of race is bound to create controversy. While we grapple with it daily, it is curious that few, if any, understand the pseudo-science that underpins the concept of race.
Racial grouping is not a biological construct. It is a social-political concept designed to justify the treatment of one group as superior to another group of humans. How else could so-called civilized people enslave and treat other humans as animals or chattel property? To treat another human being as a “thing” to be despised and exploited requires that the “thing” never be accorded the status of human being. Africans, stolen and purchased from their villages, were deemed to be sub-human, without souls.
Ironically, it was the people trafficking in this dastardly business of slavery who were the ones without “souls.”
Sadly, even the religious leaders of the time were both complicit and supportive of this “peculiar institution.” It didn’t help that the enslaved people looked different: Their skin tone was darker and they spoke in strange tongues. The enslavement or re-capture of Africans in America was made possible, in large part, because of the color of the slaves’ skin. Native Americans and poor whites, while initially subjected to slavery or indentured servant status, were difficult to keep in bondage.
The Native American, as with many Africans, stubbornly refused to accept this fate — sometimes choosing death over enslavement. The white European often escaped and blended into larger society under cover of “white skin.” The use of skin color as an escape advantage was, weirdly, the beginning of “white skin privileges” in America. But having “black skin” in America was the modern-day equivalent of wearing a GPS ankle monitor. Like today’s ankle monitor, black skin was a homing device to keep track of slaves with the audacity to contemplate a run for freedom.
Because of their skin color, freed slaves living in Northern states had to prove that they were “legally free.” Often, slave hunters ignored the proof and kidnapped free blacks to sell them back into slavery. Returning to slavery was the nightmare that haunted free blacks. Slavery was neither genteel nor romantic. The idealized plantation with the columned front porch of the mansion was a concentration camp. Housing for the slave prisoners were small tight quarters with rock hard sleeping accommodations.
Slave prisoners were forbidden to learn to read or write. And any white person conspiring to teach a slave prisoner to become literate faced sentences ranging from fines to prison time. Beating a slave prisoner to the point of disfigurement or death for “crimes” ranging from moving too slow or rolling their eyes the wrong way was commonplace. The beating or shooting death of a slave was neither investigated nor discouraged.
Clearly, during over 250 years of slavery, black lives did not matter. Poor whites, whose living conditions were horrendous, could only thank God that at least they weren’t black. Being poor and living in wretched conditions for the white tenant farmer was still better than being black.
Even after slavery legally ended, a bundle of Jim Crow laws further enshrined the principle of “white skin privileges.” Black men were often incarcerated for vagrancy because they did not have a certain prescribed amount of money in their possession. Once arrested (there was no due process), they were sent to jails and made part of work gangs that local sheriffs leased out to local white businesses at minimal costs.
Today we are grappling with the aftershocks of an inhumane system of dehumanization, exploitation, and discrimination. Successful blacks today are akin to the “free blacks” of yesteryear. The burden of proof that they are different from their inner-city brothers and sisters lies with them. White skin privilege is so embedded in our society and culture that the beneficiaries of these opportunities honestly are not aware that a significant part of their lifestyle is at the expense of others. “Fish,” as they say, “are last to be aware of the presence of water” — until they find themselves gasping for oxygen on land.
Kwame Salter is an Oak Park resident and an occasional columnist for Wednesday Journal.
