Racism

"I…took the little sufferer in my lap. I observed a general titter among the white members of the family…The youngest of the family, a little girl about the age of the young slave, after gazing at me for a few moments in utter astonishment, exclaimed: 'My! If Mrs. Trollope has not taken her in her lap, and wiped her nasty mouth! Why I would not have touched her mouth for two hundred dollars'…The idea of really sympathising in the sufferings of a slave appeared to them as absurd as weeping over a calf that had been slaughtered by the butcher.""

"It is not within the limits of this thesis to fully account for how much of the preoccupation with slavery that came to dominate European thought was directly tied to reflection on and opposition to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how much was residual from the common knowledge that the history of Western civilization was (and is still) largely a history of enslavement. However, according to Graeber, slavery as a concept was widely looked down upon across Europe prior to the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade; the church opposed it; and by the time Portuguese and Dutch merchants found the opportunity to kick-start a modern human slave trade on the western coast of the continent of Africa, slavery proper had otherwise vanished from European culture, save the persistence of wage labor and indentured servitude, often indistinguishable from more explicit forms of slavery (Graeber, 250, 346). There was also opposition to the enslavement of Africans, resulting in the prohibition of slavery within certain European national borders. But we can at least see that anxieties about the enslavement of the modern self were grounded in material realities. If one could not pay one‟s debts, one could be rounded up and shipped off to the New World in indentured servitude (Graeber, 2011). An enslaved man was a man who was “dead to world.” Lost to society."

"Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and like the old form of personal slavery it demoralizes both slave and slave-owner, only much more, for it frees the slave and the slave-owner from personal, human relations with one another."

"As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual."

"The foundation of American economic prosperity rested on the labor of four to five million black slaves. In fact, the suffering inflicted on Native and Black Americans has not remained confined to those two races, but has become part of the collective American painbody. It is always the case that both victim and perpetrator suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality. For what you do to others, you do to yourself."

"The men and women who created this first great sugar boom in the world lived well. Many stories are told of the opulence of the planters in old Brazil, their tables laden with silver and fine china bought from captains on their way back from the East, doors with gold locks, women wearing huge precious stones, musicians enlivening the banquets, beds covered with damask; and an army of slaves of many colours always hovering."

"I am a poor, ignorant man . . . but I have heard of the Declaration of Independence, and have read the Bible. The Declaration says all men are created equal, and the Bible says God has made us all of one blood. I think ... we are entitled to good treatment, that it is wrong to hold men in slavery."

"What had been drapetomania became depression. ... Modern man runs away from a life that seems to him a kind of slavery."

"Slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty."

"The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words."

"Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man for ever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery."

"The accursed system of slavery will fall, as did Satan from Heaven."

"There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion; in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose 'corner-stone is slavery'. But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence."

"I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims."

"It remains to point out the advantage of a knowledge of this doctrine as bearing on conduct, and this may be easily gathered from what has been said. The doctrine is good, (1) Inasmuch as it teaches us solely according to the decree of God, and to be partakers of the Divine nature, and so much the more, as we perform more perfect actions and more and more understand God. Such a doctrine not only completely tranquilizes our spirit, but also shows us where our highest happiness or blessedness is, namely, solely in the knowledge of God, whereby we are led to act only as love and piety shall bid us. We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direct slavery; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom. (2) Inasmuch as it teaches us, how we ought to conduct ourselves with respect to the gifts of fortune, or matters which are not in our power, and do not follow from our nature. For it shows us that we should await and endure fortune's smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity... (3) This doctrine raises social life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbor, not from any womanish pity, favor, or superstition, but solely from the guide of reason, according as the time and occasion demand... (4) Lastly, this doctrine confers no small advantage on the commonwealth; for it teaches how citizens should be governed and lead, not so as to become slaves, but so that they may freely do whatsoever things are best."

"If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing, over the whole authority to one man."

"Slavery originated in force, by the stronger against the weaker party, and not by natural right; that it is maintained and upheld by oppression and wrong, and against the law of nature. This usurped ownership in man is not that kind of property which is recognized by the general consent of mankind. The advanced state of civilized society does not recognize the right of one man to own another man against his will. The inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is conceded to all. The right of every man to himself, to enjoy the fruits of his own ingenuity and industry, are among the natural rights of every person made in the image of God."

"'The people of the South', says a contemporary, 'are not fighting for slavery but for independence'. Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy, a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland... Our doctrine is this. WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the ground work."

"Vis tu cogitare istum, quem servum tuum vocas, ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!"

"You have among you many a purchas'd slave, Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them."

"Base is the slave that pays."

"What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now... It’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people... We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes. We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”"

"Grotius and the rest find in war another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back his life at the price of his liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both parties. But it is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no means deducible from the state of war."

"From whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: “I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.”"

"The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?"

"Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his own only from them; and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to see what they have left to preserve."

"Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition. If then there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition."

"It is utterly impossible for us, as finite beings, with the utmost stretch of the imagination, to conceive the depth and immensity of the horrors of slavery."

"Although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave."

"While the rest of the western world followed an historic trajectory dedicated to abolishing slavery and bringing an expanded meaning to the concepts of human rights and participatory democracy, the south marched off in an opposite direction. The Confederacy was a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal, and that the government's job is to preserve and ensure that inequality."

"For the prime design of society is the extension of the operation of law, and the equal treatment and protection of the citizens. Slavery, therefore, being the negation of law, cannot arise from law, or be compatible with it. As far as slavery prevails in any community, so far must that community be defective in answering the purposes of society. And this we affirm to be in the highest degree the case of our colonies. Slavery, indeed, in the manner wherein it is found there, is an unnatural state of opression on the one side, and of suffering on the other; and needs only to be laid open or exposed in its native colours, to command the abhorrence and opposition of every man of feeling and sentiment."

"If the Negroes, numbering one-eighth of the population of these United States, would only cast their votes in the interest of the Democratic Party, all open measures against them would be immediately suspended and their rights as American citizens recognized. But as to the real results of such a state of affairs, and speaking in behalf of those with whom I am conversant, I can only say that we love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery. Consequently, we hope to keep clear of the Democrats! I say to the entire membership of the Democratic Party, that upon your hands rests the blood of the loyal men of the south. Disclaim it as you will; the stain is there to prove your criminality before God and the world in the day of retribution."

"Poor Daniel was lame in the hip, and could not keep up with the rest of the slaves; and our master would order him to be stripped and laid down on the ground, and have him beaten with a rod of rough briar till his skin was quite red and raw... This poor man's wounds were never healed and I have often seen them full of maggots…He was an object of pity and terror to the whole gang of slaves, and in his wretched case we saw, each of us, our own lot, if we should live to be as old.""

"War is bad, heaven knows, but slavery is far worse. If the doom of slavery is not sealed by the war, I shall curse the day I entered the Army."

"I have never been in favor of the abolition of slavery until since this war has determined me in the conviction that it is a greater sin than our Government is able to stand... It is opposed to the Spirit of the age, and in my opinion this Rebellion is but the death struggle of the overgrown monster."

"Slavery usually engenders an interesting discussion because it’s a highly emotive conflict—people have a hard time feeling neutral about it."

"Faced with the nightmarish conditions of the voyage and the unknown future that lay beyond, many Africans preferred to die. But even the choice of suicide was taken away from these persons. From the captain's point of view, his human cargo was extremely valuable and had to be kept alive and, if possible, uninjured. A slave who tried to starve him or herself was tortured. If torture didn't work, the slave was force fed with the help of a contraption called a speculum orum, which held the mouth open."

"Slavery isn't a uniquely American sin, but rather one of mankind throughout the course of history."

"In America, the Democratic Party thinks slavery is 'indispensable to good government', and is 'the normal condition of one seventh part of the people'."

"If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish."

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case."

"It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own."

"The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth."

"When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape — that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving — that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed — that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family — girls my daughters’ age — runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists — that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world."

"It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name — modern slavery."

"The speculation that the slaves did not reproduce themselves has been most strongly urged by Adolphe Landry, “La Depopulation dans l’antiquite’” Revue historique 177 (1936), 1, 5. A modern sociologist speculates in much the same way, with a little hard evidence, that slave conditions in the American South led to an aversion to childbearing and to careless killing of infants by parents who had not desired them (Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, New York, 1941, p. 103). On the other hand, in the somewhat more humane conditions of the Old South, the American negro population increased considerably over the number brought in by the slave trade (Robert R. Kuczynski, Population Movements, Oxford, 1936), pp. 6-7; Marcel R Reinhard, Histore de la population mondile de 1700 a 1948, Paris 1949, p. 346). There is no law that slave populations must decrease. On the liberal manumission policy and on the large number of children of slaves who had become free men, see Tenney Frank, "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire," American Historical Review 21, (1911), 698-699. The laws Aelia sentia and Fufia Caninia appear in gaius. Institutes 1.18, 42-47, in vol. II of Foontes iuris romani anteiustiniani, ed. Salvatore Riccobono et al. (Florence, 1941-1943), hereafter cited as FIRA. As far as the slave owners were concerned, it is argued by Landry that slave pregnancy meant interruption of work, and because of particularly inadequate care, infant mortality among slaves must have been even higher than the high general rate. Moreover, child-raising meant expense. Thus, if the slaves were easily obtainable by conquest, economic considerations were against breeding them as a deliberate business. On the other hand a healthy slave child was a valuable possession, outweighing the cost in underemployment of his mother, and the Lex Aquilia recognized his value by giving the owner a right to damages if he were injured (Digest 9.2). One small piece of evidence on slaveowner attitudes in a period late in the Empire when Rome was very weak is a sermon of Caesarius of Arles. He suggests that a slaveowner would be shocked at her slaves’ using contraceptives (Sermons 44.2, CC 103:196)."

"The leaders and scholars of Jesus’ time had first enslaved themselves to the law. This not only enhanced their prestige in society, it also gave them a sense of security. Man fears the responsibility of being free. It is often easier to let others make the decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law. Some men want to be slaves. After enslaving themselves to the letter of the law, such men always go on to deny freedom to others. They will not rest until they have imposed the same oppressive burdens upon everyone (Matt 23:4,15)."

"I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year."

"If the trade is at present carried on to the same extent and nearly in the same manner, while we are delaying from year to year to put a stop to our part in it, the blood of many thousands of our helpless, much injured fellow creatures is crying against us. The pitiable state of the survivors who are torn from their relatives, connections, and their native land must be taken into account. I fear the African trade is a national sin, for the enormities which accompany it are now generally known; and though, perhaps, the greater part of the nation would be pleased if it were suppressed, yet, as it does not immediately affect their own interest, they are passive. {...] Can we wonder that the calamities of the present war begin to be felt at home, when we ourselves wilfully and deliberately inflict much greater calamities upon the native Africans, who never offended us?. "Woe unto thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled."

"We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."