International Proletariat 2

Slavery,Race and Ideology ion the USA

In 1992 when the US and Europe was celebrating quint-centenary of Columbus's "discovery" of of America, which had already discovered thousands of years ago with advanced civilization, I had written an article, "Celebrating 500 years of Slavery". If development of cities is any criterion of civilizational development, the city of Aztec had 6.5 times population as compared to the most developed city of the Europe, Madrid. I will recollect here some of the major points. 1. Race is not an attribute of biology nor is any eternal idea that has traveled to us through generations. Race is not an idea but an ideology which is created and recreated in our everyday experiences. During the civil war, both, the opponents and supporters of slavery concurred on one point that the blacks were slaves due to their own deficiencies. 2. Till 1720s, Virginia boom, production in America was not based on slave labor, as the hunted Africans and not acclimatized in the new environs and did not live long, so were costly. It was based on English indentured labor with the same color of skin. They were treated not very differently than slaves, just that their children were not forced into indenture.They were put on stake in gambling and exchanged. When the freedom due neared they were tortured and many of them starved to death. There were few suppressed revolts. It is only by the middle of 18th century when slaves had acclimatized and started living longer and with bad news reaching back home, supply of indentured labor dried up, slave labor became the basis of production and the ideology of race was created to justify slavery. 3. A popular text book of American constitution (Winthrop) went to the extent of interpreting 3/5 Clause of the constitution to claim that the founders of constitution considered 3 whites= 5 blacks. The fact was that the slave owners of America wanted representation on behalf of their slaves with no taxes for them and others wanted them to pay taxes for them and no representation. A compromise was reached by introducing this clause that they will have 3/5 times representation and taxation on the total number of their slaves. In fact the writers of the constitution had statue of liberty in one hand and the purse of slave trade in another. (To be continued) Let us debate this, if not inconvenient. .