all men are created equal??

Question

why was it not slavery but freedom and the nation that "all men are created equal" that created a moral contradiction in colonial american, and how did race help resolve that contradiction?

Answer 1

Claiming that all men are created equal while you're keeping slaves and stealing land from indians brings rise to certain questions, doesn't it? If all men are created equal, what right did the europeans have to enslave blacks? If all men are created equal, what right did the europeans have to kill Indians and steal their land? If all men are created equal, what right did the Europeans have to restrict the imigration of Asians into America?

If all men are created equal, a european has no right to restrict, subjugate, or attack members of other races. Creating races allows one to make a neat distinction. By saying that white people, males of european descent, are manly men, and that they are different from "blacks," "reds," and "yellows," you effectively deny these other races of being men. If they are not "men," then the phrase all men are created equal does not apply to them. You can then consider them to be inferior in any way necessary to justify cruel actions made against them.

Watch some movies about people down south, and you will notice that the blacks are almost always referred to by the whites as "boy." and never as "man." Why? because all men are created equal, and the whites do not consider the blacks to be equals.

Answer 2

The term race just by the nature of its exsistence gave us a PRECIEVEABLE inequality, because we could attach certain generlizations to them based not on the individual (this is were they found the loop-hole) but by their race. This way they were not brecking the "all men are created equal" because other races were not seen as being men...... true stuff, this is also why as long as we precieve a reality were race exsistence there well always be racism. It is a causty of human symbolism that for ever term created other terms are made in its place. Race "ism" its the application of race. So technically as long as it exsist, we are all racist (people who pratice raceism, by appling race to there lives, is a racist, we all do this brother, if you ever used a race term, white, black, even african american, hints at race and therefor is rasist) ...... to what extent is the individuals choice.... such is the nature of things.....

Answer 3

the problem was that southern delegates lived on plantations and made their livelihood off of slaves, and they were able to convince enough people that their whole economy needed slavery to survive for far too many years. when the north became more industrialized these ideas had less relevance and that's a main part of what led up to the civil war.