1630: Western Notions of the “Black Race”
Slavery was supported by Western thought, which portrayed Black skin as inferior.
Bust of Aristotle. Puritan preachers in New England based their view of racial hierarchy on his teaching.
Source: Wikipedia
The shift in labor source represented more than an opportunistic seizing of the human “property” that the Atlantic Slave Traders would bring to the East Coast. The almost casual shift from poor white laborers to enslaved Black laborers came from deeply entrenched Western racist ideas that perceived Black skin as inferior to white (Kendi, 2017, p. 17).
This distrust of Black skin was reinforced by Puritan preachers in the New England colonies who had “learned rationales for human hierarchy [from Aristotle] and … began to believe that some groups were superior to other groups… Puritans believed they were superior to Native Americans, the African people, and even Anglicans—that is all non-Puritans” (Kendi, 2017, p. 17).
PBS vide on “What is the origin of race?”
This view of race was reinforced by religious teaching.
Painting by George Henry Boughton, “Pilgrims-Going-To-Church.”
Source: Wikipedia
Puritan preachers in the North argued that racial hierarchy was “biblical.” As evidence, they cited the story in the first book of the Bible where Noah cursed his son Ham. The reasoning shared by influential preachers went something like this: “[T]he Negroes were the children of Ham, the son of Noah, and … they were singled out to be black as the result of Noah’s curse, which produced Ham’s colour and the slavery God inflicted upon his descendants” (Kendi, 2017, p. 21).
The “curse theory,” as it was known, validated the existence of a God-ordained hierarchy between the races – the white man represented the chosen leaders of mankind and the Black represented those cursed and inferior.