Guest Performance: How Racism is a Founding Principle

I came across the following and thought it would be a great contribution to the overall themes of the Founding that this blog has put forth. 

Submission written by Jocelyn Haley

AmericaHypothesis: The question addressed here is about why white Revolutionaries did not extend freedom to African Americans – the Founders wrote that “all men are created equal” but they did not develop a society like that. Why? Were there real cultural reasons or was it just hypocrisy? What is the role and meaning of racism in this decision?

I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications.

Thomas Jefferson – Notes on Virginia

Why slavery was maintained during the age of “liberty and justice for all,” the American Revolution, can be argued on a technicality that the Founding Fathers of United States were not hypocrites when writing “all men are created equal” into the Declaration of Independence. That technicality depends on how the statement is interpreted, and if put into historical context the inherent racism suggested by the continuance of slavery is actually worse than what appears to be hypocrisy and a disconnection of our presumed national values. Assuming the declaration was originally promulgated that “all men are created equal,” with slavery already prominent, by default that did not include slaves – African or otherwise. Considering the Founders complete hypocrites on the matter is implying that at some point they considered blacks as equals to qualify the statement. If anything the addition of that part of the Declaration was to further the agenda of keeping blacks, and most likely all women, inferior in the white man’s America. Substantial evidence points to the fact that the Founding Fathers did not mean for the document to be understood in the universal meaning that subsequent generations want to interpret “all men.” In the century prior to the Declaration, when indentured servitude ignited America’s economy and was replaced by African slavery, assumptions of blacks caused a racially biased society by the 1700s and resulted in the Declaration of Independence denying blacks the same rights given to men – white men. Racism was not made from the release of this proclamation, or even from slavery alone, but a systematic marginalization of people occurred because there were already cultural matters in place that led to the circumstances of a contradictory form of freedom at the founding of the United States, which was allowed to continue on into perpetuity.

Even though slavery is now viewed as morally unjust, the practice of owning people for the sake of labor and profits had already been justifiably instilled in the culture of the 1700s. Slavery was developed to fill the demand for workers as more plantation economies developed and time became money. People of the 1700s were more concerned with what was thought to be a cheaper, more efficient and a more productive way to financially sustain their profits. Immigrants came over by the hundreds with anticipation of owning land which presented the opportunity for profit through the means of indentured servitude. With this normative in society, certain laws and habits were formed into the general public, one of which was the acceptance of owning another human being. For these owners, the problem with servants was the rights and the contracts of the indenture and the support they had from the courts, an issue later seemingly remedied with slaves. Indentured servants were not required to work past their contracts and were granted freedom when they paid their dues of four to seven years. Once freed, servants often were allowed to own land, some of which whom had the promise of receiving it within their contracts. This increased the demand for labor and began straining the economy. Slaves were a more renewable source, could be owned for the entirety of their lives and were without rights or support from the courts. Rights and protection being given to immigrants looking to settle in on the new land while slaves were forcibly taken from theirs and given none is evidence to the sad truth that America’s founding fathers knew by 1776 how freedom was defined -- that it came with protective rights and the fact they didn’t want slaves to have either. 

The sudden switch from the use of white indentured servants to the enslavement of African Americans birthed a negative perception of race and the release of the Declaration of Independence solidified these views. At the beginning of the 1600s, English law didn’t recognize what we now think of slavery, which therefore caused a small number of Africans brought from the Caribbean to Virginia to gain a path to freedom through indentured servitude and, afterward, gain subject’s rights, which included owning land and slaves or English and African servants. However, that path was a short won and soon ended, along with the success of the tobacco market by the 1660s. Only a third of the original profits of tobacco was coming in when a legislator shared that blacks can produce it more efficiently than whites. With gentry power increased, other men in power assumed it to be true causing a more race-conscious society as they imported more Africans to work the lands. Legislators began differentiating people more so by color than religion and by the 1670s blacks were being prohibited from certain rights such as owning guns, owning English servants or joining the militia. Soon after, the labels “black” and “slavery” were interchangeable. Slavery was fully acclimated in American culture by the 1700s. Within a lifetime when the Declaration of Independence was created, blacks were already seen to be undeserving of rights and freedom.    

The Declaration of Independence was drafted to proclaim freedom from Great Britain but the new United States wasn’t officially freed until the final victory of the American Revolution through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Regardless, with the document in place Declaration as the ideological foundation of the nation, the Founding Fathers made it clear they were aware of the importance of freedom in one’s life. Most people have heard the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as it is stated in the Declaration of Independence. The document defines and elaborates what freedom looks like on a general scale and explains how liberty should be lived. The introduction of the document elucidates freedom, self-definition and self-determination, not as a privilege but as a right - an inalienable human right, a right that can not be taken away by man, a right of such significance that it was even more important than waging war or making the nation great. The statement declares that the people are in control ahead of the government and that when it becomes ruinous of the ideal of protecting individual rights on a collective front, the people have the right to change it, or end it, then replace it with a new government that better supports their “safety and happiness”. The Declaration asserts that these changes can not be made for insubstantial or impermanent causes, and so the writers of the statement described circumstances that would suffice to replace or change the government; especially in naming “despotism” as an instance where it is the citizens’ “duty” and right to make the governmental change. The right to liberty is the right to be free from bondage, exploitation, usurpation and oppression by someone in authority in order to pursue happiness in life - the very opposite of slavery.   

         In wanting separation from Great Britain for the good reasons listed in the Declaration of Independence, former colonists, now Americans, was were given the opportunity to create their own foundation of values and culture instead of being held to those of Great Britain- to redefine the meaning of America. Alas, due to a race-conscious belief being embedded into their values they made the choice to dehumanize African Americans by continuing to define them as inferior to man. With a larger racial divide, whites remained prominent as the majority race in America. Those beliefs stemmed from indentured servitude going from wrong to inhumane by taking away the rights of people and justifying it later all for the sake of creating a financially successful economy by using cheaper, exploitable labor. The Declaration of Independence was a document representative of freedom, and considering that slavery was already prominent by the time it was written, there’s reason to believe the writers of the document intentionally didn’t extend that freedom to blacks. Therefore, the Founders aren’t to be considered hypocrites, but just misinformed and selfish. They were misinformed about racial differences and encouraged them throughout the course of slavery, producing racism. It was the desire to remain culturally and economically successful above blacks that got in the way of them challenging how they handle “outsiders” of their ethnicity. Considering they saw blacks as useful, yet beneath them, it would have been a huge depletion of money, power, pride and racial superiority for whites to allow the freedom and success of blacks.