Education for Race Conversation

Before anyone can began to discuss racism and truly have an open dialogue about over 357 years of oppression, they must first be willing to have their feelings hurt and be willing to hurt another person feelings. This conversation will never advance if we adhere too tightly to being politically correct. Now with that being said, there is always a way you can make your point without being harsh or abrasive. It’s the difference between hurting someone’s feeling intentionally or unintentionally.

We began with the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The transatlantic slave trade was essentially a triangular route from Europe to Africa, to the Americas and back to Europe. On the first leg, merchants exported goods to Africa in return for enslaved Africans, gold, ivory and spices. The ships then traveled across the Atlantic to the American colonies where the Africans were sold for sugar, tobacco, cotton and other produce. The Africans were sold as slaves to work on plantations and as domestics. The goods were then transported to Europe. There was also two-way trade between Europe and Africa, Europe and the Americas and between Africa and the Americas. Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in Britain on 25 March 1807.

Slave Labor continues it’s growth

A 1662 Virginia law affirmed slavery and promoted it by saying that the status of the child followed the status of the mother, which meant that enslaved women gave birth to generations of children of African descent who were now seen as commodities, basically slaves for life. The law also secured wealth for European colonists and generations of their descendants, even as free black people could be legally prohibited from bequeathing their wealth to their children. At the same time, racial and class hierarchies were being coded into law: It could be argued that because of Bacon’s Rebellion, in which free and enslaved black people aligned themselves with poor white people and yeoman white farmers against the government, more stringent laws were enacted that defined status based on race and class. Black people in America were being enslaved for life, while the protections of whiteness were formalized, which could be considered as the birth of “white privileged” in America.

The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 takes center stage

The Virginia Slave Codes were a series of laws enacted by the Colony of Virginia's House of Burgess's regulating activities related to interactions between slaves and citizens of the crown colony of Virginia. The enactment of the Slave Codes is considered to be the consolidation of slavery in Virginia, and served as the foundation of Virginia's slave legislation.

These codes effectively embedded the idea of white supremacy into law by the following devices:

• Established new property rights for slave owners

• Allowed for the legal, free trade of slaves with protections granted by the courts

• Established separate courts of trial

• Prohibited blacks, regardless of free status, from owning arms

• Whites could not be employed by blacks

• Allowed for the apprehension of suspected runaways

The law was devised to establish a greater level of control over the rising African slave population of Virginia. It also served to socially segregate white colonists from black slaves hindering their ability to unite.

Even the Constitution played it’s part

The United States Constitution, ratified in 1788, never uses the words “slave” or “slavery” but recognized its existence in the fugitive slave clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) and the three-fifths clause. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise reached among state delegates during the June 11, 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. It determined whether slaves should be counted and, if so, how slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxing purposes was important, as this population number would then be used to determine the number of seats that the state would have in the United States House of Representatives for the next ten years. The compromise solution was to count three out of every five slaves as people for this purpose. Its effect was to give the Southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free people had been counted equally. The compromise was proposed by delegate James Wilson and seconded by Charles Pinckney.

Congress chimes in

Congress created the Custom Service on July 31, 1789 and made it a part of the Department of Treasury (September 1789). The service assisted other agencies in the enforcement of the slave trading laws that were passed between 1794 to 1820.

Lest we not forget The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened provisions for the recapture of slaves, and offered them no protection in the justice system. Bounty hunters and civilians could lawfully capture escaped slaves in the North, or any other place, using little more than an affidavit, and return them to the slave master.

Bounty Hunters were eventually deemed a form of law enforcement which may explain why abolitionists were warning escaped slaves to run from police and because those hunters only needed an easy to obtain affidavit, they would some times grab free blacks and transport them back if the escaped slave could not be found. With no avenue to prove his/her innocence and freedom they were trapped and the courts would be of no help either. So now we may have a slight understanding why very little trust is given to law enforcement and our courts. It was suggested to run and black folks have been running every since, for over 357 years now.