us history

Race and Coerced Labor Part II: Motivations and Justifications 9By Audra Diptee As you read, highlight the characteristics that defined

being an enslaved person in the Americas.

Slavery is over, but its legacy remains. Understanding how it lasted so long,

especially with regard to economics, is essential for recognizing the enduring

effects—still, present today—of this inhumane, once legal system.

Defining Characteristic 3: Slavery was motivated by economics but justified in religious and scientific terms.

Introduction

The third defining characteristic of the systems of slavery throughout the

Americas highlights a contradiction. From the first two characteristics, we learned

how the European empires and independent American states enslaved millions

of people of African descent in a system of racial hierarchy and considered them

to be property. Yet, Britain, France, Brazil, and the United States—proud

supporters of freedom and liberty—all used and profited from slavery. How could

they justify this hypocrisy? What really motivated their willingness to enslave

other human beings? Because today's world sees access to equal rights as the

ideal, it is difficult to understand a time when laws were put in place to ensure social inequality. (That's not a typo; inequality was the goal.) To grasp how human beings came to be legally defined as property, we have to make a

distinction between motivations and justifications. The motivations for using

enslaved labor are the reasons why people wanted to use it in the first place. The

justifications are the beliefs that were used to institutionalize and sustain this

form of labor exploitation.

What were the motivations for using enslaved labor? The use of enslaved labor in the Americas was about money. Its sole purpose

was to generate wealth and profits for people at the top of the racial hierarchy.

This came at the expense of the freedom of those people at the bottom of the

racial hierarchy. In this period wealth was generated by producing goods that

were to be sold at a higher price than it cost to produce them. One significant

cost of production was labor. Forcing men, women, and children of African

descent to work for no money meant more profits for those people of European

descent at the top of the racial hierarchy. The enslaved were forced to work in

various settings. For example, sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations in the

Caribbean all relied on forced labor. In the United States, they labored on

tobacco and cotton plantations. In Brazil, they worked on plantations and also in

the mining industry, while in Belize they were forced to work in lumbering and

forestry. Enslaved people were also forced to work in urban or domestic settings

throughout the Americas. Regardless of the kind of labor, the relationship

between the enslaved person and the person for whom they worked was not

employer-and-employee. It was extreme exploitation that legally defined the

relationship as "owner" and "property." The enslaved could not negotiate a fair

wage or seek other employment opportunities. Only those who legally owned

enslaved people had the power to determine their labor conditions. The owner's

priority was to generate personal wealth, so they spent as little as possible on

labor costs while requiring the enslaved to work as many hours as possible to

maximize their profits. Even though slavery in the Americas was abolished in

various places throughout the nineteenth century, today we can still see evidence

of all the personal wealth it generated. Most of the profits made from the use of

enslaved labor on sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations in the Caribbean, for

example, were sent back to countries in Europe. These funds were sometimes

reinvested in other business ventures. Other times the funds were spent on

maintaining lavish and comfortable lifestyles.

Below, the top photo shows the lavish Harewood House in Leeds, still celebrated

today as one of the "Treasure Houses of England." It was built in the

mid-eighteenth century by members of the very wealthy Lascelles family, who

had earned profits from exploiting enslaved labor on the sugar plantations in the

Caribbean. Compare this image to the artist William Clark's 1823 painting below.

This shows enslaved men, women, and children at work on a sugar plantation on

the Caribbean island of Antigua. Consider how these images portray two

extremes of wealth and poverty, yet were part of the same economic system.

Photo of Harewood House in Leeds, England. By Gunnar Larsson, CC BY-SA 3.0.

William Clark’s 1823 painting “Cutting the sugar-cane.” Public domain.

What were the justifications for using enslaved labor? The motivations for using enslaved labor were economic—that part was simple.

But the justifications for a labor system based on racialized social inequality were

often explained in very different terms. In the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, enslavement tended to be justified in religious terms. Its proponents

argued that slavery existed in the Bible, or that it was God's plan that Africans be

enslaved.

It was not until the eighteenth century that ideas about race claimed to be

scientific thought. But it's clear that these scientific arguments were built on racial

biases. People claimed, in the name of science, that people of African descent

lacked intelligence and had a natural need to submit to white authority. Some

medical doctors even argued that freedom was damaging to the mental health of

the enslaved. All of these claims lacked any credibility and have been disproven

by scientific research.

Conclusions Slavery, of course, is illegal in these societies today. It is important to remember, however, that we still deal with the historical legacy of slavery in the present day. What are some ways in which the effects of slavery still linger on? How do the justifications for slavery, for example, continue on in racist ideas and language? In what ways are the economic circumstances of certain communities, rich or poor, a historical legacy of slavery? Knowing the historical relationship between racism and economic opportunities—and reflecting on its legacy in the twenty-first century—remains relevant today. A deeper and more accurate understanding of this troubling past allows for a better understanding of the present and can help us develop solutions to the social problems and challenges we face today.

Author bio

Audra A. Diptee is an Associate Professor of History at Carleton University and

the Managing Director of the non-profit organization the History Watch Project.

Her research and teaching focus on a variety of themes related to the Caribbean

and Africa.

Complete this following chart–

Fill out the chart below using the information from the reading excerpt written by historian, Audra Diptee, connecting it with the information presented during today’s lecture.

Motivations for Slavery Justifications for Slavery

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What legacies of slavery are still present in America today? Paragraph format, 5-7 sentences. Your answer could be based on preliminary knowledge or an inference (meaning, take an educated guess if you’re not entirely sure!)