How White People Got Made

[JaneyVee]

It started in the late 1600s in America, but like so many scams, it spiraled out of control until it had a life of its own.

Not long after Europeans started arriving on the east coast of North America and the Caribbean Islands they found themselves rich in land but desperate for labor to work the land. The answer they struck upon was importation of bond labor, initially mostly Irish. The Irish had not been considered fully human under English law for centuries, and they ended up in plantations and working sugar under the Caribbean sun. The easy part of importing Irish (and Scottish) slave labor was that they were right next to England. The downside is there wasn’t enough of them for the amazing amounts of land laid before the eager English settlers, and thus the Atlantic slave trade with Africa was born. This is the story we hear in school, but the abridged version we get, intentionally or not, hides the scam of it. Initially the bond terms of convict, Scotch-Irish, and African labor was a set period of time, at the end of which they received bond money and their freedom in this new land. In fact, not that many bondsmen and women lived to be free, but some did, and established themselves as a mixed-race, free peasantry of the new world. If you’ve ever wondered where the free blacks of so many stories of early America came from, a large number were the families of freed African bond laborers.

As time went on, the labor needs of the land holders continued to grow, and desperate to cultivate the land, they were loathe to let go of their bond servants and the bondsmen and bondswomen’s children (whom they kept in bondage for a legally defined time as well). In the mean time, a growing American peasantry was proving as difficult to govern as the European peasantry back home, periodically rising up in riot and rebellion, light skinned and dark skinned together. The political leaders of the Virginia colony struck upon an answer to all these problems, an answer which plagues us to this day.

The Virginians legislated a new class of people into existence: the whites. They gave the whites certain rights, and took other rights from blacks. White, as a language of race, appears in Virginia around the 1680s, and seems to first appear in Virginia law in 1691. And thus whiteness, and to a degree as well blackness, was born in the mind of America.

As of the 18th century whites could not be permanently enslaved as they sometimes had been before, and black slaves could never work their way to freedom. The whites were told this was because God had made the blacks inferior to the whites, just as the whites were inferior to the superior classes that owned property. It’s worthwhile to remember that they didn’t give whites political rights, they didn’t give whites the vote — that would not happen then nor at the revolution and independence. Whites didn’t get the vote until the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Property owners, both of land and slaves, were the only ones who could vote. That included black land and slave owners until various states passed laws in the early 18th century to take their franchise away.

This plan worked gorgeously. It broke all efforts of the majority of people, African or European, to fight for civil and political rights in America against a landed class that literally ruled everything. It reduced a portion of the people to the status of the negro slave, and gave the poor but now white people a precious and entitled inch to stand above the permanently enslaved on the social ladder. The next thing the politicians did sealed the deal: they paid poor whites a bounty for runaway slaves, and often made them overseers for slaves, turning every poor white in America into a prison guard against the people who had once been their neighbors and allies.

The rest: https://medium.com/message/how-white-people-got-made-6eeb076ade42

[olddots]

1. upsetting

And very true .

[JaneyVee]

2. Amazing how this dynamic is still playing out today.

This is basically what the rightwing peddles in terms of divide and conquer. Its why they continue to get poor whites to vote for them; fear. As long as someone is lower than you on the social ladder, you won't be the bottom. Yet, in terms of socio-economics they have alot more in common with the bottom 99% than they do with the top 1% they keep choosing to protect.

[bluesbassman]

6. Multi-level marketing at it's finest.

Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos perfected the pyramid scheme in the fifties and sixties with Amway, and the Repubulican party made it part of their sales pitch most effectively during the Reagan years.

The vast majority of registered Republicans will never escape being part of the 99%, but the Republicans have brainwashed them into believing that their policies will enable them to become 1%ers. Dumbfounding.

[noiretextatique]

12. Lyndon Johnson said it best

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man. He won't notice you're picking his pocket.
Hell give him someone to look down on and he'll and he will empty his pockets for you.

[olddots]

3. thankyou for the link

A great find thanks again

[Anansi1171]

4. Tremendous K&R-nt

[Nye Bevan]

5. Washington and Jefferson were racist hypocrites.

"All men created equal", while they owned hundreds of slaves.

[Skittles]

7. you'll notice the omission of women as well

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. That phrase was considered extreme in a time when there were people who believed God made them King.

[ReRe]

8. History tells a story

Thanks for this excellent read.
"How can we know where we are going, if we don't know where we've been."

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. Some claim white people were here first with a white Adam and a white Eve made by a white God.

[Electric Monk]

11. on a white cloud...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. Makes ya wonder what they've been smokin'.

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. With the Slave Trade starting in the 1400's

It seems rather odd that the Portuguese would be putting African Slaves to work on their sugar plantations. But it would take almost another 250years before this would be recognized in Virginia?

Seems to me the Rich had been exploiting slaves before Columbus ever figured out there was significant land mass between the Azores and India. While most of the early White's to come to this continent were like all other immigrant groups. The best and brightest of the lower class. Who like the Pilgrims were financed by big money in Europe for their chance to exchange 7yrs labor for 100Acres, if they lived.

on edit

22 January 1510: the start of the systematic transportation of African slaves to the New World: King Ferdinand of Spain authorises a shipment of 50 African slaves to be sent to Santo Domingo.

For ref

2 April 1513: Juan Ponce de Leon becomes the first European to reach the coast of what is now the United States of America (modern Florida).

[Bluenorthwest]

15. Virgina was not even established as a colony until 1607

A handful of people.