only a black slave. This said, slaves under Islamic rule were generally treated
more humanely, were more likely to be manumitted, and were more readily
assimilated than those who came to the New World.
Starting in the fifteenth century, Europeans followed the Arab lead in
enslaving and dehumanizing black Africans, just as white serfs had once
been stigmatized. Even though a rapidly growing European population could
have sent enough of its own convicts, prisoners of war, and vagrants to
satisfy its labor needs in the New World and done so at lower shipping costs,
Portuguese, Spanish, English, Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish, and Prussian
traders traveled long distances to acquire black Africans and market them
like livestock. Europeans no longer enslaved each other because they gradu-
ally concluded their ethnicities were more alike than different and therefore
above such debasement, because they came to value individual liberty for
themselves (but not others), and because their advancing ship technology
made it possible to procure distant peoples. In the race for national greatness,
Europeans established trading stations in west Africa, solidifying the con-
nection between skin color and slavery. Europeans regarded ‘brutish’ black
Africans, such as the Igbo, Wolof, and Mandingo, as suited to slavery because
they were reportedly pagans who wore little, if any, clothing and practiced
torture, cannibalism, and cosmetic mutilation. Even when Africans adopted
European cultural and religious forms, their apparently polluted skin color
consigned them to an inferior place.
For the ethnocentric English, skin color mattered a great deal because
in the mid-sixteenth century they were discovering themselves as a people
and suddenly became aware of black Africans at the same time. To the
English, black Africans were the antithesis of Englishness. Above all, the
English regarded themselves as civilized, whereas they denigrated blacks as
savage, dirty, and wicked. These attitudes were reflected in the works of well-
known English writers, including Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare. Scottish
philosopher David Hume maintained that ‘There never was a civilized nation
of any other complexion than white, not even any individual eminent in
action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no
sciences.’ The English concluded further that their institutions, especially
Parliament and the common law, and a purified Anglican church that had
broken with Rome, made them superior to non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. In the
middle of this rising prejudice, a Dutch ship captain named Jope sailed into
Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay in 1619 and swapped twenty ‘Negars’ for provi-
sions. A fateful moment in American history had arrived a decade after the
English founded Jamestown.
More than simple prejudice was involved in enslaving Africans over four
centuries. A new consumer society in Europe developed an incurable sweet
tooth and a penchant for tobacco that merchants and planters rushed to2 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTTHEC_A02.qxd 3/26/08 6:12 PM Page 2