Racism Was The Inevitable Child Of Slavery. Slavery Was The Toxic Child Of Greed
Southerners wanted slaves because slave labor was the most profitable business model for plantation agriculture
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Plantation owners and industrialists viewed manual laborers not as human beings but as disposable, biological tools to be acquired as cheaply as possible and, once used up, then thrown away. And they still do.
Slavery Was Adopted Because It Was The Most Profitable Business Model
Make no mistake: Racism in America was the unavoidable, inevitable result of slavery, and slavery was purely an economic choice by the Southern landowners to operate the most profitable business model for plantation agriculture — the use of slave labor.
It was always all and only about money.
The Elite Classes Have Always Viewed Unskilled Laborers As Disposable Biological Tools
From the Pharaohs to the British nobles, to the southern plantation owners, to the men who sent ten-year-old children down into their coal mines, landowners, industrialists, business leaders, the rich, the powerful, the elite — the Businessmen On The Top — have always viewed manual laborers not as fellow human beings but as less-than-human, disposable, biological tools to be used up and then thrown away.
Nobles And Serfs
A noble in feudal times had an estate, but he needed people, serfs, to actually grow and harvest the crops, herd and butcher the cattle, etc. He had no personal, altruistic interest in his serfs. They were merely biological machines that he used to generate his wealth, no different from the oxen that pulled his plows. So long as serfs were physically able to work, they needed to be clothed, fed, and housed sufficient to keep them working the fields.
When a serf or a horse or an ox got too old or infirm to perform their job, then the noble had no interest in feeding or clothing them and, in fact, he would prefer that they die as quickly as possible because a serf who is eating without working is a waste of resources.
Slavery Flourished Because It Was Profitable
Slavery, and its inevitable offspring, racism, began in America with, were promoted by, and were established for the economic benefit of the Southern landowners — the Southern Businessmen On The Top.
From the beginning, the Southern Businessmen On The Top shared the British nobles’ fundamental view that manual laborers were merely biological machines with no inherent value beyond their ability to work the owners’ land.
A slave-labor business model was cheaper than and provided a larger labor pool than the indentured-servant business model and it was more profitable than the sharecropper business model.
The slave-labor business model was simply the most profitable way to grow cotton, rice, tobacco and other plantation crops.
While there were legal and religious arguments against using white slaves, African slaves were physically different enough that the Businessmen On The Top could get away with claiming that black people weren’t really, fully, human and thus all the Christian rules and constitutional pronouncements about God-given inalienable human rights didn’t apply to them.
Slave labor in America did not have its roots in biology, science, law or intellect. If they could have gotten away with it, plantation owners would have been perfectly happy with white slaves, native American slaves, South American slaves, or Mexican slaves, but Africans were the cheapest, most abundant, most readily available and most legally viable slaves.
See my column: Southerners Fought A War For Slavery Because Slavery Made Them Much More Money
For The Plantation Owners, Black People’s Supposed Racial Inferiority Was Just A Cover Story
In America, the Southern Businessmen On The Top’s claims that Blacks were racially inferior, that they were ordained by God to be the White Man’s slaves, etc. were nothing more than rationalizations, excuses to justify a profitable African-slave-labor business model.
Ordinary People Supported Slavery Because It Made Them Feel Superior
For emotional reasons, slavery in America was adopted by and supported by the ordinary Southern people who admired the Businessmen On The Top, identified with them, or aspired to join them — the “Followers.”
Believing the lie that “blacks are an inferior species who are ordained by nature to be the white man’s slaves” allowed white people on the bottom of society to
- Feel special by believing that even the lowest white man was superior to any and every Black man
- Have an identifiable group they could bully and dominate as they pleased
- Fantasize or aspire to own a slave whom they could force to do whatever they wanted
- Feel a connection with the culture, policies and practices of the Businessmen On The Top
In their true chronological order and assigned to their actual believers, the genesis of American slavery was:
- Using slaves from Africa will make us the most money — — Businessmen On The Top
- Black people are an inferior species who deserve to be slaves — Followers
What Do Southerners Do When Slavery Becomes Illegal?
So now the Southern Businessmen On The Top have spent more than a century totally convincing their entire society that black people are not fully human and, in fact, that they are so flawed that they are only fit to serve white masters, and then, suddenly, black slavery becomes illegal.
How are the common white people supposed to deal with millions of former inferior and potentially dangerous slaves living in their communities? They believe all that racial inferiority stuff the Businessmen On The Top have pounded into their heads their whole lives.
The Businessmen On The Top can’t just say, “Opps, forget all that” because they’ve convinced everybody that black people aren’t fully human, they aren’t children of Jesus Christ, that they, in fact, are sub-human, stupid, and potentially violent and savage.
When black people were merely advanced farm animals who lived under their owner’s watchful eye on his plantation they were just “Those slaves who live over there.”
When they left the plantation and could wander around anywhere they liked, Southern white people figured that they needed some way to keep the less-than-fully-human blacks in line.
Slavery Inevitably and Unavoidably Gave Birth to Pervasive, Systemic, Racism
After the end of the Civil War the chains of slavery gave way to the isolation and restrictions of segregation.
Again, there were two reasons for racism and its tool, segregation — one reason for the Businessmen On The Top and another for the Followers.
Why The Businessmen On The Top Wanted Segregation
The Businessmen On The Top wanted to maintain their pool of cheap, docile, powerless workers. To do that they needed to keep the blacks ignorant, untrained, economically restricted, politically impotent and without any alternative but to take any job a white man offered them at any wage the white man was willing to pay.
The plantation owners had been terrified of slaves learning to read and write, and they severely punished any attempt to educate any of their slaves. A slave who could read was especially dangerous.
After slavery became technically illegal, the Businessmen On The Top did everything they could to prevent or discourage black people from obtaining a good education.
An education might end up getting a black person access to a better job than collecting garbage, picking cotton, digging ditches, mowing lawns, scrubbing floors or running the machines in the factories owned by the Businessmen On The Top. Can’t have any of that .
Segregation in the American South, like apartheid in South Africa, was designed to keep black people poor, uneducated, powerless and subservient so that they would remain a pool of docile, captive, subservient, ignorant, cheap labor.
Why The Followers Wanted Segregation
As for the Followers, by now they were so thoroughly convinced that black people were ignorant, dishonest, stupid, dirty, inferior and potentially violent that they figured that they needed to keep black people physically and socially isolated.
- They didn’t want people like that using their bathrooms. Who knew what diseases they carried?
- They didn’t want their sweet, innocent children associating with them and maybe catching some disease or becoming a victim of their suppressed violence, or, God forbid, having sex with them!
- God knew, they didn’t want black people eating or drinking near white people.
- And, of course, you couldn’t let them vote and maybe take the government and the police away from you.
The Southern Businessmen On The Top Are The Descendants Of The Serf-Owning Nobility
The nobles wanted their serfs. The plantation owners wanted their slaves. The coal-mine owners and industrialists wanted their child laborers and impoverished assembly-line workers.
The fundamental reason the American Businessmen On The Top hate minimum wage laws and will do anything they can to neutralize them is that, like the nobles, the slave owners, the employers of child labor, and the factory owners who preceded them, the Businessmen On Top always and fundamentally want free access to an underclass of powerless, docile, cheap, and disposable labor.
The Businessmen On The Top understood and still understand that if you can’t buy a slave, the next best thing is to be able to rent one.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
