Racial Solidarity and The Colonization of North America Essay

The Spaniards treated the natives as slaves and attempted to erase their culture and family allegiances. They demanded more work from the Indians by enslaving them. They suppressed the natives and threatened them by trying to stamp out traditional Indian religious practices. After being treated so badly by the Spanish, in 1680 the Indians revolted and killed many Spaniards, cut the

“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” - American philosopher Abraham J. Heschel. A world with no definition of race is a tough concept for some to grasp. Yet many centuries ago the world existed as so, long before the foundation of race. Race is not natural or innate, despite popular assumptions, it is a social construct created by people to separate mankind.

Race is still an open topic in America and in the world, as it has always implied differentiation, inequalities and division among human beings, and has been the basis for some of the most tragic events in history.

From the first settlement of America in 1607, throughout its colonization, and through the Revolutionary War, American citizens owned slaves. They worked in the fields, provided domestic help, performed heavy manual labor, and white settlers depended on them to get the work done. But after these settlers freed themselves from the tyrannical clutches of the British government, many turned their focus to freeing the men they owned. From 1776 onward, American attitudes toward the institution of slavery changed. As the country slowly expanded westward, the opposition of slavery came to the forefront of the nation’s minds, drawing on economic and social ideas, like that of David Wilmot and the American Colonization Society, and on moral implications,

Columbus never even walked on what we now call the United States of America. Where ever he did land, he was motivated only by his own greed. Columbus came for the gold, spices, and slaves. In his diary, he mentioned gold 75 times just in the first two weeks, alone (Katz 13). Indians who weren’t able to find gold, were punished by having their hands cut off. Most slaves died en route to Spain. Many Indian females were taken as sex slaves, some as young as nine and ten years old. Columbus forced cooperation from the Indians by disfiguring them and using them as examples. Even worse, he used hunting dogs to tear the Indians apart. Many natives committed suicide, and murdered their own children to save them from such a horrible life. Those who survived the voyage were worked to death. Still, another huge portion of these Indians died from disease brought over by Columbus and his

While trying to adapt Native Americans to European customs, Columbus and his followers took advantage of the Indians. The Spanish burned the Natives sacred objects and would not allow them to practice their own religions. They also abused the Natives, enslaving them, taking land from them, and raping their women. Because of the conquistadors quest for gold and other riches,

During the sixteenth century European pilgrims migrated across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in North America. North America had just been introduced to the Western Civilization. The America’s were home to the indigenous people, that were made up of several tribes that were called Indians by the early settlers. Together the Indians and settlers began to thrive. Growth and development in the new world was made possible by the abundant amount of natural resources.

In the PBS documentary, we learned that that race and freedom were developed together. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley points out a problem our founding fathers faced: “how can we promote liberty, freedom, democracy on the one hand, and a system of slavery and exploitation of peoples who are non-white on the other?” (1:04:43). Our past presidents rationalized this contradiction by declaring that blacks and other races had a natural inferiority to whites. Such reasons were used to justify America’s political goals for power and money that benefit the white society at the expense of others. Omi and Winant claim that “the introduction of slavery… presupposed a worldview which distinguished [whites] from ‘others’.. . to explain why some should be ‘free’ and others enslaved, why some had rights to land and property while others did not” (1). The enslavement of Africans led to the ideology of white supremacy which builds up a political system that privileges white people over “others”. Granting opportunities only to whites widens the social difference along racial lines. This historical attitude toward racial difference has determined the way most of us currently view the world.

When the Europeans arrived in the Americas they were looking for riches, spices, and new trade routes to India. When they found this new world and the Native Americans that lived there, they deliberately mistreated them. Looked at as obstructions, the Natives were driven from their land and homes and pushed west. Europeans that encountered the Native Americans had different ideas about them depending on their political and religious beliefs but none were positive. Those ideas ranged from pity for them as non-Christians to be converted (Doc. A2) and treated as children to a lower status of human to be taken advantage of for profits. The Natives were forced to mine precious metals, and farm sugar cane and tobacco. They were not viewed or treated as equal persons. They were considered part of the wild land to be conquered, enslaved, killed, and beaten into cooperation.

Though they needed the laborers for their resources, the indigenous people and imported slaves that worked for them were dehumanized and mistreated for the colonist’s greed.

There is a myth that the European/Caucasian race have never been enslaved. The fact is that Arab slave traders owned all race of slaves. What differs between the groups of black and whites, is that after whites had been enslaved and during stuck together and from that overcame and rose up above the circumstances. Blacks on the other hand both during and after slavery never came together collectively for the betterment of the race. Blacks mainly are still affected by a plan that was put in place to ensure blacks never came together. This process was created by Willie Lynch in a letter and speech he delivered in 1712 on the bank of the James River in Virginia. You can see that the letter still plague the black community today.

When most people in America think about racism and where it started, they might think of the days of the Middle Passage when people from Africa were brought over on slave ships. They might also think of Colonial America when blacks were being separated from their families and sold to the highest bidder. However, racism started hundreds if not thousands of years before that time of Colonial America. To think of a possible solution for racism in 2015 is honestly very hard. Coming from the point of view of a natural born Jamaican female, and with the racial tensions in America coming from Colonial times, it is hard to come up with a solution. With the eruption of more publicized racial problems within at least the last two decades from Rodney

Winthrop D. Jordan author of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812, expresses two main arguments in explaining why Slavery became an institution. He also focuses attention on the initial discovery of Africans by English. How theories on why Africans had darker complexions and on the peculiarly savage behavior they exhibited. Through out the first two chapters Jordan supports his opinions, with both facts and assumptions. Jordan goes to great length in explaining how the English and early colonialist over centuries stripped the humanity from a people in order to enslave them and justify their actions in doing so. His focus is

Why would anyone want to go through the trouble of colonizing? The English had such motives that compelled them to leave their motherland. It was for the reasons of seeking freedom, seeing there was nothing in Britain for them, and success accessed by other nations.

Because the Indians and Spanish lived in different areas in Latin America, the Indian culture and society did not change significantly. Or did there society change?