Noel hypothesis sociology

4 The Developmeml 0f

D0minant-Min0rity {;roup Relations in Preindustrial America

The Origins of Slavery

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

- Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) ex~slave, abolitionist, orator, author

Washington, D.C. 1883

F com the first settlements in the 1600s until the 19th century, most people living in what was to become the United States relied directly on farming for food, shelter, and other necessities of life. In an agricultural society, land and labor are central concerns, and the struggle to control these resources led directly to the creation of minority group status for three groups: African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans. Why did the colonists create slavery? Why were Africans enslaved but not American Indians or Europeans? Why did American Indians lose their land and most of their population by the 1890s? How did the Mexican population in the Southwest become "Mexican Americans"? How did the experience of becoming a subordinated minority group vary by gender?

In this chapter, the concepts introduced in Part I will be used to answer these questions. Some new ideas and theories will also be introduced, and by the end of the chapter, we will have developed a theoretical model of the process that leads to the creation of a minority

147

Healey, Joseph F. 2012. Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Sixth Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

w008cxk

Highlight

148 PART 11 THE EVOLUTION OF DOMINANT-MINORITY RELATIONS INTHE UNITED STATES

group. The creation of black slavery in colonial America, arguably the single most significant event in the early years of this nation, will be used to illustrate the process of minority group creation. We will also consider the subordination of American Indians and Mexican Americans-- two more historical events of great significance-as additional case studies. We will follow the experiences of African Americans through the days of segregation (Chapter 5) and into the contemporary era (Chapter 6). The story of the development of minority group status for American Indians and Mexican Americans will be picked up again in Chapters 7 and 8, respectively.

Two broad themes underlie this chapter and, indeed, the remainder of the text:

1. The nature of dominant-minority group relations at any point in time is largely a function of the characteristics of the society as a whole. The situation of a minority group will reflect the realities of everyday social life and particularly the subsistence technology (the means by which the society satisfies basic needs, such as food and shelter). As explained by Gerhard Lenski (see Chapter 1), the subsistence technology of a society acts as a foundation, shaping and affecting every other aspect of the social structure, including minority group relations.

2. The contact situation-the conditions under which groups first come together-is the single most significant factor in the creation of minority group status. The nature of the contact situation has long-lasting consequences for the minority group and the extent of racial or ethnic stratification, the levels of racism and prejudice, the possibilities for assimilation and pluralism, and virtually every other aspect of the dominant-minority relationship.

THE ORIGINS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

By the early 1600s, Spanish explorers had conquered much of Central and South America, and the influx of gold, silver, and other riches from the New World had made Spain a

fill powerful nation. Following Spain's lead, England proceeded to establish its presence in the Audio Link 4.1 Western Hemisphere, but its efforts at colonization were more modest than those of Spain.

Slavery and Africa's By the early 1600s, only two small colonies had been established: Plymouth, settled by pious Cultural Achievement Protestant families, and Jamestown, populated primarily by males seeking their fortunes.

By 1619, the British colony at Jamestown, Virginia, had survived for more than a decade. The residents of the settlement had fought with the local natives and struggled continuously to eke out a living from the land. Starvation, disease, and death were frequent visitors, and the future of the enterprise continued to be in doubt.

In August of that year, a Dutch ship arrived. The master of the ship needed provisions and offered to trade his only cargo: about 20 black Africans. Many of the details of this transac- tion have been lost, and we probably will never know exactly how these people came to be chained in the hold of a ship. Regardless, this brief episode was a landmark event in the formation of what would become the United Stares. In combination with the strained rela- tions between the English settlers and American Indians, the presence of these first few Africans raised an issue that never has been fully resolved: How should different groups in this society relate to one another?

The colonists at Jamestown had no ready answer. In 1619, England and its colonies did not practice slavery, so these first Africans were probably incorporated into colonial society as indentured servants, contract laborers who arc obligated to serve a master for a specific number of years. At the end of the indenture, or contract, the servant became a free citizen. The colonies depended heavily on indentured servants from the British Isles for labor, and

w008cxk

Highlight

w008cxk

Highlight

w008cxk

Highlight

w008cxk

Highlight

Chapter 4 The Development of Dominant-Minority Group Relations in Preindustrial America 149

Livingstone (1874, p. 62).

Drake ( 1860, p. 28). Library of Congress, Prints and Pholographs Division, LC·USZ62·30818.

To provide labor for American plantations, slaves were kidnapped from their villages in Africa and marched to the sea, a journey that sometimes covered hundreds of miles. They were loaded aboard slave ships and packed tightly below decks. The "Middle Passage" across the Atlantic could take months.

this status apparently provided a convenient way of defining the newcomers from Africa, who -sl were, after all, treated as commodities and exchanged for food and water (see Exhibit 4.1 for 11111 a map of slave trade from Africa). Video Link 4.1

The position of African indentured servants in the colonies remained ambiguous for History of Slavery several decades. American slavery evolved gradually and in small steps; in fact, there was in America little demand for African labor during the years following 1619. By 1625, there still were only 23 blacks in Virginia, and that number had increa~ed to perhaps 300 by midcentury (Franklin & Moss, 1994, p. 5 7). In the decades before the dawn of slavery, we know that some African indentured servants did become free citizens. Some became successful farmers

150

Exhibit 4.1 The African Diaspora

PART II THE EVOLUTION OF DOMINANT-MINORITY RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

North Amcrfcu

~ Amcricu

Mrio.slave Tnldetothe. ""-leas 1eoo to 1800

T.J:IEAFRfCAN DlAS.P@RA

NOTE The size of the arrows is proportional to lhe number of slaves. Note that the bulk wcnl 10 South America and that there were also flows lo Europe and Asia.

SOURCE From Williams. Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, 1 E. © 1998 Gale, a part of Ccngage Leaming. Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions.

and landowners and, like their white neighbors, purchased African and white indentured servants themselves (Smedley, 2007, p. 104). By the 1650s, however, many African Americans (and their offspring) were being treated as the property of others, or in other words, as slaves (Morgan, 1975, p. 154).

It was not until the 1660s that the first laws defining slavery were enacted. In the century that followed, hundreds of additional laws were passed to clarify and formalize the status of Africans in colonial America. By the 1750s, slavery had been clearly defined in law and in custom, and the idea that a person could own another person-not just the labor or the energy or the work of a person, but the actual person-had been thoroughly institutionalized.

What caused slavery? The gradual evolution of and low demand for indentured servants from Africa suggest that slavery was not somehow inevitable or preordained. Why did the colonists deliberately create this repressive ·system? Why did they reach out all the way to Africa for their slaves? If they wanted to create a slave system, why didn't they enslave the American Indians nearby or the white indentured servants already present in the colonies?

Q:

w008cxk

Highlight

w008cxk

Highlight

Chapter 4 The Development of Dominant-Minority Group Relations in Preindustrial America

The Labor Supply Problem

American colonists of the 1600s saw slavery as a solution to several problems they faced. The business of the colonies was agriculture, and farm work at this time was labor-intensive, performed almost entirely by hand. The Industrial Revolution was two centuries in the future, and there were few machines or labor-saving devices available to ease the everyday burden of work. A successful harvest depended largely on human effort.

As colonial society grew and developed, a specific form of agricultural production began to emerge. The plantation system was based on cultivating and exporting crops such as sugar; tobacco, and rice on large tracts of land using a large, cheap labor force. Profit margins tended to be small, so planters sought to stabilize their incomes by keeping the costs of production as low as possible. Profits in the labor-intensive plantation system could be maximized if a large, disciplined, and cheap workforce could be maintained by the landowners (Curtin, 1990; Morgan, 1975).

At about the same time the plantation system began to emerge, the supply of white inden- tured servants from the British Isles began to dwindle. Furthermore, the white indentured servants who did come to the colonies had to be released from their indenture every few years. Land

151

1

' Journal Link 4.1 · New World Slavery

was available, and these newly freed citizens tended to strike out on their own. Thus, landowners who relied on white indentured servants had to deal with high turnover rates in their workforces and faced a continually uncertain supply of labor.

TOBESOLD&LET Attempts to solve the labor supply problem by

using American Indians failed. The tribes closest to the colonies were sometimes exploited for man- power. However, by the time the plantation system had evolved, the local tribes had dwindled in num- bers as a result of warfare and disease. Other Indian nations across the continent retained enough power to resist enslavement, and it was relatively easy for American Indians to escape back to their kinfolk.

This left black Africans as a potential source of manpower. The slave trade from Africa to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America had been established in the 1500s and could be expanded to fill the needs of the British colonies as well. The colonists came to see slaves imported from Africa as the most logical, cost-effective way to solve their vexing short- age of labor. The colonists created slavery to cultivate their lands and generate profits, status, and success. The paradox at the core of U.S. society had been established: The construction of a social system devoted to freedom and individual liberty "in the New World was made possible only by the revival of an institution of naked tyranny foresworn for centu• ries in the Old" (Lacy, 1972, p. 22).