Explain how the prejudice based on skin color grew in the colonies and led to the legalization of enslavement.

Answer 1

The first thing you need to know is that slavery had been going on for centuries before the colonies.Most every conquering civilization, including the Greeks and Romans, used slaves as a part of their cultures. They did not distinguish between skin colour, they just used the captured population from any other culture that they conquered. By the time of the colonies, religious fervor and preachings which cited that Jesus was a white man and therefore holy, those sentiments were corrupted into ALL white men/women were holy and pure, and any other colour of skin was less. Once those beliefs were in place, it was a small step to realize that if a darker skinned person wasn't pure, they must be ruled over by the holy white people, and what better way to do that than to use them as slaves! So, the colonists came to these shores with the idea that slavery of darker skinned people was acceptable. Many darker skinned island inhabitants were labled barbarians, were believed to be without religion, and therefore systematically enslaved, Black slaves were brought into the colonies from early on, and as the colonies grew and farms replaced forests, what better way to farm them then to use slave labor. Since everyone was doing it almost from the beginning, it was only a natural step to allow slavery to be legalized, thus giving rise to the huge southern plantations, and spurring on the economy of the original colonies.

Answer 2

There has always been pejudice based on skin colour no matter what country you choose to talk about.

Obviously in the colonies the white Europeans believed that they were the superior race as historically Europeans had dominated all the lands which they had invaded. This quite naturally led them to believe that their race was superior.

Slavery is an ancient custom certainly not confined to the colonies and in fact was practiced by many populations who enslaved their own people after victory in battle or any number of reasons. It was merely carried on in the colonies as that's just the way things were done in those days. It's pointless to judge their way of life with that we have now....apples and oranges.

Answer 3

Slavery was never legalized. It is such an old practice that making it illegal was actually the more radical step in human history. Prejudice based on skin color actually grew out of the fact that Europeans were buying most of their slaves from Africa, though some European groups were enslaved also, like the Irish. Amerindians were not considered good slaves because they tended to die from exposure to foreign pathogens. In this case the practice created the culture of racism, not the other way round.

Answer 4

The first record of African slavery in Colonial America is of a Dutch ship which brought twenty blacks recorded and sold them to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 as indentured servants.

The transformation from indentured servitude to racial slavery happened gradually. There are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. By 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant to slavery.

Three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes — a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th century Virginia. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude — one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the black man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."

Several Viriginian statutes with regard to slavery were enacted prior to 1660. One, Act XX, dated March 1642 involved the curtailment of marriage between slaves and non-slaves as well as slaves to each other. Subsequent acts were passed the following year assigning a punishment to runaway slaves.

The transformation had begun, but it would not be until the Slave codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed.

Answer 5

The simple answer is - religion. The Bible and other major religious bases have passages that promote fear and mistrust towards other races and that promoted the leaders of the communities to easily guide their congregations into a feeling of superiority, just because of their religious beliefs.

Answer 6

The white colonists believed that those who were not white were racially inferior to them.