Essay Example on 1619: The Start of Slavery in Virginia: Inferiority and Racism

Slavery in Virginia can be dated back in the year 1619 after it was founded as an English colony. During that year, most slave traders engaged in the business of transporting Africans in slave ships and took them to provide cheap labor in the various companies in Virginia (Johnson, 2004). For a long time, different cultures, especially the whites, have viewed Africans as inferior individuals. For instance, according to Trevor Noah who was born and raised by a white father and a black mother, he was in the middle ground since half of the family felt that he was superior while the other half thought that he was inferior. All these aspects reveal how individuals were racially categorized in the United States. Slavery in Virginia made most Africans to undergo harsh treatment from their masters. Several years later, Virginia passed various slave laws that allowed any free man to own a slave. Since the passage of the law, millions of Africans and their descendants were converted into tools of profit, sensations and possession (Frankenberg, 1989). A large number of the enslaved Africans worked in the farms, especially tobacco plantations. The labor provided by the Africans laid a foundation for the growth of the European agricultural sector.

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The passage of the Virginia slave law is a clear indication that Africans were divided according to their race. The adoption of the law increasingly differentiated the individuals of African descent from those of European descent (Schwarz, 2010). According to the rules, they outline that Africans are hereditary slaves; as a result, most of the whites have more power over the blacks. Most of the Africans were deprived off their legal rights to own property. From the law, it is evident that race is conceptualized in a biracial manner. The enactment of the statutes further led to the Africans being mistreated by their servants. For instance, some of the slaves were maimed or killed by their masters for working in a slow manner (Frankenberg, 1989). Clearly, from such acts, the lives of people from African descent did not matter to the whites. Conclusively, the passage of the Virginia slave laws resulted in dividing the whites and Africans based on their race. Race, according to the regulations, is viewed as a social construct whereby societies create both formal and informal laws on how the different races should be treated.

References

Frankenberg, R. A. E. (1989). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness.

Johnson, W. (2004). Time and revolution in African America: temporality and the history of Atlantic slavery. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840, 197-215. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hLZNdK7aIk4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA197&dq=Slavery+by+walter+johnson&ots=iNzTWootui&sig=mfpmORK-h12zyI-OXsgM_Hatww8&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Slavery%20by%20walter%20johnson&f=false

Schwarz, P. J. (2010). Slave laws in Virginia. University of Georgia Press.