Transcription
What was it about these people who they called Negroes that made them the chosen ones to play the role of slaves in America? What was it about them that made the English decide to use them as a primary source of labor for their colonies? Was it their skin color? Was it their culture? Was it a matter of availability? Or was it a complex combination of all of these, in addition to other circumstances, that caused the Negro to be the chosen one for slavery in America?
Now, to understand this, we're going to have to go into this book here called "Race in North America" by social anthropologist Dr. Audrey Smedley. And so, to do that, we're going to go in here on page 105, where it says this: "The answer to the question why Africans is complex and perhaps best understood in the broadest historical context, encompassing economic and material explanations along with those cultural and historical variables that are so important in human lives, but under recent trends in scholarship are much too often ignored."
What seems absent from the calculation of many recent historians of this phenomenon is the recognition and the inclusion in their analysis of the historical penchant, or repeated tendencies, that the English had long displayed toward extreme ethnic chauvinism, independently of any contact with Africans and Indians. And so, this is going into the English culture and mentality that was developed before they came over to the land of what we now call America. They had a strong sense of identity, and many of them, especially the ruling class, they believed themselves to be superior to all people on the Earth, right, including other Europeans.
So, Dr. Smedley is saying that recent historians are not zooming out far enough to consider the broader context, and they seem to be ignoring the fact of the English having been extreme ethnic chauvinists. And we'll see why this is important as we continue reading here. Here we go.
"Certain conditions pressing a negative evaluation of Africans were present even before Englishmen arrived on the coast of North America. By the 16th century, the English had developed belligerent or competitive relationships with virtually all other groups with whom they had any contact. Their animosity and willingness to treat others inhumanely has already been documented in the descriptions of the relationships they established with the Irish and the Indians."
And the Irish were amongst the people whom the English hated, and they viewed as the enemy. And so, the English labeled the Irish as the "savages" and they tried for many years to conquer them and to control them. And so, as a matter of fact, let's go on this book right here. It's called "The Invention of the White Race, Volume One" by Theodore Allen. And let's go on here to page 55 to get a primary source on the account that the English left on their sentiment towards the Irish.
So, this is what it says: "In 1367, the English government convoked an Anglo-Irish Parliament at Kilkenny to cope with the degenerate English phenomenon, which was described in the following terms: 'Now, many of the English of the said land, forsaking the English language, fashion, mode of writing, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies, and have also made diverse marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies aforesaid.'"
And so, these were the English people living in Ireland and being converted into the ways of the Irish, and they were taking on the Irish ideas, customs, and mannerisms, right? And the English rulers, they didn't like this because they viewed the "wild Irish" as the enemies, just like it just mentioned.
Now, let's put this book down and let's go back into "Race in North America," where she continues saying this: "Even before the established settlements in the New World, the English had developed a view of the world composed of unequal groups, at the bottom of which were the savages."
And so, these were the ideas in the mind of the English before they came to America. They already had a concept of what a savage was, which they applied to the Irish. And basically, a savage was anyone who didn't have customs and a culture that was similar to what the English had, right?
"Let's continue. This pattern of inhumane treatment of the non-English peoples encompassed not only their long-standing conflicts with other Europeans but a cultural-induced belief in their own superiority that reflected extreme ethnocentrism, and shortly would be nourished by a new-found and at times fanatical Anglo-Saxonism. What seems strange is that most Englishmen did not immediately identify the Africans as wild men or savages. It was not until the 18th century, at least in the written record, that widespread English attitudes towards Africans mirrored popular evaluations and stereotypes of Irishmen and Indians. The same negative language and anti- primitivistic characteristics of savagery that had been used to refer to the Irish and Indians were then widely applied to Africans and greatly amplified in the next century, when they begin to ramp things up and conceive all types of ideas to make the Negro consciousness fall to the very bottom of the pit."
Let's continue. "Then this is the broader context in which we must look for answers explaining English attitudes towards the Africans and their offspring. But there are also some very specific circumstances that are far more revealing about why English colonizers, long imbued with notions of liberty and righteousness, turned to a system of black slavery."
And pay attention because Dr. Audrey Smedley is about to provide some very important keys that are going to unlock the understanding as to why Africans, or who they called Negroes, became the chosen one for the system of slavery in America, right? So, pay attention as we go on the journey. Here we go.
"Consider the circumstances of English expansion." And she's talking about the English expanding their territories, and specifically expanding into the North American territories. Let's continue. "Faced with an abundance of rich lands, what was lacking for the successful exploitation was the labor to fully cultivate or explore them for mineral or other forms of wealth."
Now, what was the problem that the English faced? It was the labor. Now, keep this in mind. Let's continue.
"Following earlier precedents, English settlers throughout North America attempted to coerce the native populations into the kind of controlled labor that they perceived would be most profitable. When the Indian population proved to be insufficient and ineffective as slaves, the English turned to importing impoverished men, women, and children from the streets of Liverpool and Bristol, or to rounding up peasant Irishmen and Scotsmen conquered in warfare and shipping them off to provide labor for the early settlements, especially the sugar plantations in the West Indies."
So, the native population was found to not be a good source of labor, remember that? That's the problem that the English were facing during this time on these newly colonized lands. And since the natives could not be relied on to solve this problem, what did the colonizers do next? They began importing servants from Europe. All the ones that they can get their greedy hands on, the ones that they deemed to be the lower class citizens. They rounded them up and they shipped them over to the New World, right, to work the land and to toil in the blazing heat. And I hope you don't think that the colonizers were going to do this type of work. They don't do this type of work, right? They do the intellectual work, the thinking work, and they create the environments to where the other people get out there and do all the physical work, right?
Let's keep going. "In fact, the wholesale shipment of Irishmen into servitude in the New World became an acceptable option for disposing of them. And in the English mind, what better way to use the people that they don't like than to ship them off to work in the foreign lands, right?" And work they did, right? Many of them were worked to death.
And Dr. Winthrop D. Jordan, he talks about it in his book "White Over Black," and also uh Lon Bennett Jr. he talks about it in his book "The Shaping of Black America," where he states in there that two-thirds of the European workers, they died in the first year, um, or within the first year of this earlier settlement period, right?
Let's continue going. "The English knew that slavery was not illegal under international laws, so it did not matter who the slaves were, so long as they were not proper Englishmen, Protestants, and civilized. Englishmen were involved in the Irish slave trade to the West Indies beginning in the late 1620s, long before they became the major carriers in the transatlantic slave trade in African slaves. The largest number of Irish were brought in during mid-century when Oliver Cromwell had instigated his scorched-earth policy against the Irish. The choice, as he saw it, was to exterminate or expel them."
Throughout this period, there was no reason to predict that the African Atlantic slave trade would ultimately supplant the white vagabonds, destitutes, and convicts with the ultimate supply of black labor. Moreover, it did not matter that the English had no immediate experience or recognition of slavery in British law as a human institution. Slavery was widely accepted as legal and appropriate for some people. For the English plantation owner, what was needed was a docile work force over whom he had absolute authority, who could be put to work for no more than minimal keep, and who could be treated as property, such as livestock.
And that's what the English were looking for to solve their labor problem. They needed to use humans in the same way that farmers use livestock, right? And in order to do that, they had to believe in their mind that the people were no different than these types of beasts, right? And this goes into the creation of a certain mentality that is required in order to do this, right? And they had it.
Let's continue. "The English attempted to put this kind of system into practice with European labor even before the Africans figured significantly in the equation. By the second decade of the 17th century, which is in the 1600s, the colonists had already established a plantation system with separate, substandard, and miserable servant housing, poor food, whippings, and maiming for punishment, and forced gang labor."
This is the process of creating people who function like livestock animals, right? Let's continue. "In the 1620s, claims Theodore Allen, some colonists already acquiring wealth from tobacco had transformed the immigrant European labor force from tenants and wage laborers to chattel bond servitude in Virginia."
And who were the ones doing this? It was people who strictly had the goals of profits on their mind, and people who could care less about human beings. Now, there's nothing wrong with profits, right? That's not the case. But when people take this goal and they take it to the extreme to where they're willing to do anything and everything to get it, then that's how you get the recipe for disaster, right? That's how you get people coming up with the idea to turn people into pieces of personal property, right? And some of the English elite, they were willing to do this and willing to do it without losing one second of sleep.
Let's continue going. "Opportunities for such profit-generating activity were realized after the 1622 attack by the Indians on Jamestown that killed off nearly a third of the small colony's population. The survivors from outlying areas fled to the better protected town, abandoning their fields and forest lands. During the chaos of the next few years, numerous unoccupied and unclaimed lands were taken over by members of the small elite, and they began to use coercive tactics to force laborers and servants to work these lands."
And this is what you call the definition of being corrupt, right? Here we go. "The unexpected drop in the price of tobacco during the 1620s exacerbated the situation, compelling tobacco producers to constantly seek reduction in the cost of labor. Their preference was for bonded laborers who did not have to be paid wages for the most part."
The institution of bonded or indentured servitude, though not unknown in Europe, was an aberration from traditional English laws and customs. Whereas English servants contracted to serve for a year and were paid wages, indentured bondsmen were obligated to serve a stated number of years, usually four to seven, without pay, to work off their debt. Moreover, they could be, and frequently were, bought and sold, maltreated, abused, and even brutalized with impunity, meaning without any penalty.
Morgan, in his detailed study of the Virginia colony, gives convincing evidence that servants in Virginia were generally degraded and treated as objects. This is still talking about the Europeans at this time. "Virginians dealt in servants the way Englishmen dealt in land or chattels. White servitude," he claims, "came closer to slavery in the tobacco fields of Virginia than anything hitherto known by Englishmen."
Such degradation, Frederickson notes, was tolerated by the English and colonial governments because of their own conviction that the poor deserved no better. And these were also the ideas they held because it served their interests to think like this, right? Let's continue.
"Because the death rate was so high, most of the usual young servants never lived out their debenture to acquire freedom. So, lifetime servitude had already become a reality for many. For those who survived, there was little or no land available, primarily because of wealthy colonists in their desire to increase tobacco profits had already laid claim to all lands not under Indian control."
And this was part of the land grab. And Dr. Anthony Perro Jr. he talks about this in his book "Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society, 1660-1740," where the money-hungry elite were using their political position to allocate hundreds, no, thousands of acres to themselves, right? And they took most of the land, which became the root of a later problem with some of the freed servants who were expecting to have land after they were freed, right?
Let's continue. "The demand for indentured laborers, not only for the production of tobacco and corn, the principal food, but for the defense of the settlement, the crafting and maintenance of the tools and equipment, and other laboring chores, increased."
And so, the English elite needed more workers, or more servants, to work the land and to take care of more of these tasks at hand. And understand, right now, we're leading up to why, or one of the reasons why, the African, or who they call the Negro, became the chosen one for slavery, right? We're leading into some of the major keys right now that are going to unlock a portion of this understanding. So, pay attention as we continue going. Here we go.
"England, with a surplus of labor during the first half of the 17th century, which is the 1600s, was anxious to siphon off the excess poor, convicts, vagabonds, captured Irish, and homeless Scots in English to the colonies."
One of Allen's major theses is that this turning to heavy usage of bond labor, which he calls chattelization of English plantation labor, constituted an essential precondition of the emergence of the subsequent lifetime chattel bond servitude imposed upon African-American laborers.
And so, Theodore Allen is saying that the English experiments with these earlier European servants, this is what set the stage for the next level, or it gave the example for the next level of transformation of the the Negro into a piece of chattel property, right? Which is an idea, it's an idea that people believe in, and it becomes a reality, right? Understand that.
Let's continue. "He provides supporting quotations from a number of other historians, among them Eric Williams and Lon Bennett, who claimed that the major features of black slavery were first tried out and perfected on white men and women, providing a proven ground for the institution that was to come."
Uh-oh. Now look at that. Thousands of people were conscripted or forced into this labor system. By mid-century, more and more were living longer and becoming freed men and women, and this soon became a problem. Freed men demanded land and other prerequisites of their free status. They wanted to find out where the land was at, right? Where is all this land at? Because you have to understand, during that time, having access to land, that was the gateway, especially in the South, that was the gateway to gaining wealth, right? But what happens is, they found out that these elite planters, they snatched all the land, right? And these newly freed people, they didn't like that, right?
Let's continue going. "This was just one of the circumstances that compelled English colonists to try to develop a more permanent and cheaper labor force. Morgan's analysis of the early Virginia colony provides the kind of cultural-historical context out of which we can better grasp the process of transformation to a slave society in the Chesapeake region. Unlike the New England colonizers, Englishmen in this rough and disorderly world set out to exploit other people, including one another, with few scruples about it."
And so, the southern English colonizers, they didn't care, right? They had visions and they had dreams of profits, right? And they were willing to do just about anything to anyone to realize those dreams, right? And to make that money.
And so, she continues writing this: "The colony contained an increasingly large number of rebellious and unruly young men, predominantly unmarried, freed after serving their years of indenture, and on the make. But Morgan claims that in fact, there were fewer opportunities for them to make their fortunes than history has portrayed, and they formed an unhappy cadre of idle, restless drifters who caused more than a little trouble and embarrassment to the colony leaders. Eager for action, frustrated by those who tried to control and exploit them, these drifters were more than willing to rebel against the colonies' elite. The tragedy was that they took out their frustrations on a population relatively easy to hate with impunity: the Indians, who became the scapegoat for their ire. Not only did they often physically attack Indians, but they demanded of the colonial government the right to move neighboring Indians off more and more land and to confiscate it for their own private use."
And so, they wanted land, and they weren't getting it. And they initially took out this frustration on the natives. But when this didn't work out that well, this is what eventually happened.
"Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 prompted wealthy planters to realize clearly the dangers posed by the dissatisfied laborers, according to Allen and Parent. This rebellion was one of a number of acts of opposition that threatened the colonial government. Although originating in the anti-Indian agitation during the winter of 1675 through 1676, part of the significance of the rebellion lay in Nathaniel Bacon's leadership of certain county planters in opposition to the policies of the Governor William Berkeley."
And Governor William Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive out of the natives, uh, in Virginia. And this is what happened next. With hundreds of volunteer militia attacking Indians and internal disputes within the wealthy planter and ruling classes, by May 1776, there was a complete breakdown of law and order. And so, the society was beginning to crumble, and chaos ensued, right?
Here we go. "The rebels turned their grievances against the government because of the perceived corruption, abuses of power, and imposition of unfair taxes."
And so, they had enough of the foolishness and the foolery and the baboonery. And instead of continuing to attack the native tribes, they turned their attention to these elite people and these corrupt leaders, right, who were stealing all the land, and they were unfairly taxing all the people, right?
Here we go. "Various factions demanded more equitable distribution of land, less focus on the monoculture of tobacco, greater land and resources for cattle ranges, and into the patronage system that dominated the fur trade, and a host of other measures. Among the strongest demands was freedom from the kind of chattel servitude that oppressed the servant class. In 1676, bond laborers began to join the rebellion in masses, which was made up of both Negroes and European members."
And this is what they did. In September, they burned Jamestown to the ground, right? They flamed it and they cooked Jamestown until it was extra crispy. Here we go.
"What most frightened planters was that the rebellion brought together several thousand poor working-class men and women, the majority of the colonies' population, including both white and black servants."
Now, here's the key. The problem that frightened this elite class was that this large group of rebels, it consisted of members from the slave and the lower labor class, right? Which demonstrated to this to the elite group that these people had an ability to unite together for a common cause. And that common cause was to dethrone this elite group of people and the system that they were setting up, right? Which was obviously problematic in the eyes of this elite group, right?
Let's continue. "It was this threat to the system of bond servitude that that engaged the planters and their supporters in responding to the rebellion, meaning that they identified the problem and they got together with other people for the support of finding a solution. And can you guess what the solution was? In a bit, we're going to go over it and find out. So, pay attention."
"Production in the tobacco industry required a survival and disciplined labor force. And now, this labor force virtually ceased to exist with bond laborers deserting and joining the rebel forces. All social order broke down. When the British sent an expedition to put down the rebellion, its leader, Captain Thomas Grantham, had to promise freedom to the bond laborers, about 400 English and Negroes who constituted the rebel army."
Now, this was in 1676. And what did the captain refer to them as? 400 English and Negroes, right? Not white people. They were called English. The transformation had not taken place yet. But this event of the Negroes and the English joining together is one of the events that triggered this transformation of turning the English into white people, right?
Now, here we go. "The significance of this," says Allen, "is that 128 years before William Lord Garrison was born, laboring-class African-Americans and European Americans fought side by side for the abolition of slavery. In doing so, they provided the supreme proof that the white race did not then exist."
And again, this is 1676, where there was no legal recognition of anyone called white people at that time, right? They were called English. And when did this legal recognition take place? In 1681, in a Maryland law, right? That's when it started clicking in the mind of the English ruling class, right, that they needed to improve the social control strategy that they had.
Now, let's continue. "The rebellion dissipated, some say it was put down, having been weakened by the death of Bacon. But the Royal commissioner sent out by the British government noted that the population at large was sullen and that the vast majority had supported the rebellion. Social stability had not yet been achieved. As late as 1698, the governor of Maryland reported that nearly 400 bond laborers, mostly from Africa, had arrived, as well as 600 or 700 bond laborers from Europe, chiefly Irish. He feared that if that trend were to continue, the two groups might join forces in both Virginia and Maryland and make great disturbances, if not rebellion."
And that's what he feared, right? He didn't want these two people to join together and rise up because they were rising up against them. And that's not what they wanted. And that's not the reason why they brought them over to the colonies. They brought them over to the colonies to labor the land, right? Not to rise up and to rebel, right? So, something had to be done about this.
Let's continue. "Such fear was expressed on other occasions, and Allen believes that it lay at the heart of the conscious decision to develop a strategy for social control that would also ensure the presence of sufficient bond laborers to promote the production of tobacco and other goods in increasing quantities."
Which is going into the entire purpose of creating the white race, right? Theodore Allen talks about it in uh in his book "The Invention of the White Race," that the white race was being used as a social buffer between the slaves and the elite, right? The white working class, they were to act in this role of the buffer, right? The middleman, and provide some source of of protection for the elite group, right? Because the social structure before that time was basically the small elite group managing these large group of workers, right, with no real middle zone or buffer to protect them. So, the white race was used like pawns in the game to uh uh to fulfill the role of this middle buffer zone, right?
Let's continue. "At the end of the rebellion, the planters were greatly strengthened, especially when armed ships from England arrived. Now, the colony leaders could restore the masses of rebellious workers who were continuing to plunder and loot to their proper places, which is at the bottom."
Now, watch this. "The answer to many of the problems came increasingly to be seen as permanent black slavery. The defeat of Bacon's Rebellion," says Allen, "cleared the way for the establishment of the system of lifetime hereditary chattel bond servitude, which means the Negro serves, and then the children, and the children's children serve too. That's hereditary lifetime servitude, right?"
Right here we go. "But this was not the sole cause of the changes that were to come. Several developments, perhaps unanticipated, led to the growing preference for Africans as laborers, and indeed to the fashioning of the institution of slavery for Africans only in the West Indies, as well as on the mainland."
"Quite early in the contact period, Europeans began to realize that the native populations were a poor source of potential labor. For one thing, the Indians had little or no immunity to the Old World diseases that Europeans brought with them. Ordinary children's diseases and respiratory infections, from the common cold to tuberculosis, had a fatal impact on the indigenous populations, many of whom succumbed rapidly or became weakened to the point of incapacity. In fact, between disease and warfare, the Indian population was drastically reduced, and in some cases, particularly on the Caribbean islands, eliminated entirely."
"Moreover, the surviving Indians, after capture, were still on their own territory, and often individuals or groups would escape and disappear into the hinterlands. In most cases, these runaways would never be recaptured, and this posed a major problem for plantation owners."
You see that? So, they were very susceptible to disease, and they were familiar with the terrain, right? Which made them a poor option for the goals that these ruling class people had in mind, right? Which to keep someone permanent and to work the land for a long period of time, right?
Let's continue. "Enslaved Indians had communities of support among their own people, and the threat of Indian attacks to recapture their own tribes people was constant. Besides, Indians were dealt with as whole societies, not as disconnected individuals who had no social identity other than that provided by their owners. Trading and other agreements, though often breached by Europeans, also acted as a bar to the wholesale enslavement of Indians. Added to this was the fact that, except in some of the Southeastern regions, none of the Indian groups represented large populations. The native peoples of the Eastern coastal areas of North Carolina were thinly scattered, so that even when conquered, they did not supply sufficient labor to meet the demand. Indians were also needed as trappers to satisfy their growing demand in Europe for furs."
"Most of the natives of the regions settled by the English were food collectors or simply horticulturalists. Although the Eastern woodlands and Southern Indians grew some food crops, their techniques and customs did not allow for substantial or continuous supply production. When some Southeastern tribes, such as the Creeks, Cherokees, and Chakas, did take up settled farming lifestyles, they were able to establish treaties with the whites that prevented efforts to enslave them."
"On the tropical islands where Europeans had established plantations early on, food cultivation was little known among the native populations, who quickly succumbed to ravages of disease and warfare. English willingness to use fellow Europeans as forced labor in the West Indies was not an insignificant precursor of their massive involvement with African slaves. European servants came under the same restrictions as all servants and slaves, and they were often treated worse than others. The Irish, particularly, were a rebellious lot, right? They were the ones who were said to be wild and rowdy."
Here we go. "Their comparatively high linguistic and cultural homogeneity allowed them to plot mutinies and insurrections, in several of which they were successful. Often, they went over to the side of the French or the Spanish in their battles with the English. Alliances also experienced in Europe and based on their common Catholic faith, support from these co-religionists was often critical to the success of some Irish rebellions."
That they were threatening to the English planters is evidenced by the report that English officials armed their black slaves rather than trust the Irish. But adding to the angst of the plantation managers and owners was the the fact that the Irish, who, as we have already seen, had been primarily pastoralists, meaning people who uh deal with flocks and pastures and livestock, knew nothing about intensive agriculture, meaning growing crops in small spaces, the tropical environment, or techniques for the cultivation of tropical plants, right? They didn't know about these things. They knew about livestock and herding sheep, right? They didn't know about growing grains and growing cotton, which is what the people needed them to to know, right? Intensive agriculture. So, this was frustrating to the planters, right?
Here we go. "Not unlike the Indians, to which they were so frequently compared, the Irish, as the English had constantly said, would not submit to the kind of agricultural work which feudalism had demanded, right? The Irish weren't having none of it, right? And they had many of their ancestors for many centuries that heavily resisted the English attempts to go over to Ireland and dominate them and to get them to change their ways, and they weren't having it, right? Not even when they got shipped over to the land."
Let's continue. "The Indian tended to escape or die. The Irish either resisted work discipline, tending toward idleness, or they rebelled. There were other factors about the Irish that diminished their value as a controllable and powerless labor force. Individual Irishmen could escape and blend in with the free white population in the ports and other towns, especially on the mainland. Plantation owners soon determined that the expense and difficulties of recapturing these runaways were not worth the bother. Planters also thought of the Irish as having a dangerous nature. Irish servants frequently engaged in drunken brawls and thus quickly gained a reputation for aggressiveness and violence. Predictably, they often turned on their masters."
Lio has concluded that Irish servitude became either impractical or burdensome to the planters. "The Gaelic insurrections caused the English to seek to replace this source of survival labor entirely with another source: African slaves."
Here we go. "White indenture servitude was never certain or predictable. For upwards of 70 years, it had been the dominant source of labor, but it was self-limiting. The treatment of European servants was subject to criticism abroad, and economic and social developments in Britain soon diminished the supply."
Uh-oh. "White servants were products of European cultural values, and many knew that certain laws protected them in their servitude, even if they happened to be convicts. In the latter part of the 17th century, 1600s, the number of newly arriving indentured servants began to diminish, in part because of a general population decline in England and the opening of new job opportunities in the homeland. They were never again significant as a labor pool in the exploitation of the colonies, either in the West Indies or on the mainland North America."
"The advantages of African labor over that of either the Indians or the Irish were very obvious to English plantation owners by the mid-17th century, as they had been earlier to the Spanish and Portuguese. The supply of African slaves increased to meet a growing demand for labor, and the cost to the planters of purchasing a slave for life soon fell below the cost of a European servant. Perhaps more striking, as revealed in the records of the early West Indian planters themselves, was that the Africans initially were considered a civilized and relatively docile population whose members had knowledge of and experience with tropical cultivation and were accustomed to discipline, one of the hallmarks of civilized behavior, as well as working cooperatively in groups."
And so, they weren't as wild as the Irish. They were considered much more docile, and they had much more experience with growing or cultivating the land and growing crops, and also working together, right? That was the mindset that she said that uh they were reported to have, right? Which demonstrated uh just one of the aspects on why they were more desirable um to be slaves to the English mfs, right?
Here we go. "Their knowledge of tropical agriculture alone made them desirable as workers. Africans had had experience of growing tobacco, corn, sugarcane, and cotton in their native lands. These crops were unknown in Europe, and the colonists soon realized that without Africans and the skills that they brought, their enterprises would fail."
"A factor of equal importance was that Africans had natural immunities to Old World diseases, an ecologically adaptive feature they shared with their masters. Africans in North America were also in a strange land with no place to hide and no powerful European friends or allies to support them in their cause. They were essentially alone and without external political support. Accordingly, individual planters began to hold some Africans in servitude indefinitely, conscious that they were encountering no moral or legal resistance to the practice."
"It was the clearly recognized vulnerability of Africans, along with the positive features, that led colonial leaders to prefer Africans and to demote them to the status of permanent slaves."
And so, it's as if everything lined up perfectly at that time for the Africans, or who they called the Negroes, to fill this position as a slave in the hands of Europeans, right? And so, they were knowledgeable of agriculture, very knowledgeable. They were also resistant to those diseases. They had a very obvious difference in skin complexion. They could easily acclimate to the climate, right? They couldn't simply escape into the foreign land and find protection. And there was a cheap supply of them ready for sale coming out of the hand of groups of African slave catchers, right? Understand.
And when this is all considered and coupled together with the English ideas of establishing a slave society that is based on physical features, then it makes sense as to why the English would then choose to drag, drag the Negro down into the pit, right, of permanent slavery. And when the hand is dealt in this manner and the pieces of the puzzle fit together so well, then we know that we're working with the dealers of destiny and the forces of fate. And the fate of Negro consciousness is to rise out of the pit and evolve into an advanced new consciousness, right? And this is why the Negro was chosen to become the slave.
So, hopefully, this has given you some light so you can find your way on the path. And I want to thank you for watching all the way into the end. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I'll see you in the free world.