Essay #1 Outline Eric Williams once wrote that slavery "was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery" (Buck-Morss 90). Such a claim is difficult to evaluate, mainly because written historical dialectals that discuss racism are not easily translatable to our modern understanding of race. However, various modern authors of the Haitian revolution such as C.L.R. James and Alejo Carpentier have remarked on the role of anti-black racism in the perpetuation of the slave institution. While the validity of William 's claim may be difficult to prove, it is undeniable after analyzing the works of these authors that racism and slavey are closely intertwined with one another in the scope of the Haitian revolution. Both historical
…show more content…
James ' historical narrative on the events leading up to the Haitian revolution shows that the racist, derogatory portrayal of Haitian slaves by their owners was an attempt to perpetruate the image of their inferiority, which made it easier to justify their enslavement. As illustrated by James in The Black Jacobins, white slave owners not only tortured and degraded their slaves with labor and punishments, but also attempted to suppress any evidence of the slaves ' humanity. One colonist by the name of Hilliard d ' Auberteuil, for instance, wrote of the intelligence and the "precision of ideas and accuracy of judgment" of the black man in his book in 1749, which was subsequently banned. According to James, "It was this intelligence which refused to be crushed, these latent possibilities, that frightened the colonists, as it frightens the whites in Africa today" (James 26). The very fact that the white colonists knew their slaves to be intelligent and were, more importantly, afraid of the slaves for this reason, shows that they did not truly believe the conventional mindset that listed black Haitians as savages. Morever, that any voice that spoke on behalf of the slaves ' humanity was fervently quelled is further proof that whites did not want them to be seen as anything more than property. If the slaves and the rest of society knew of the black man 's intelligence, it would have only been a matter of time until their freedom and human rights was demanded with a
James ' historical narrative on the events leading up to the Haitian revolution shows that the racist, derogatory portrayal of Haitian slaves by their owners was an attempt to perpetruate the image of their inferiority, which made it easier to justify their enslavement. As illustrated by James in The Black Jacobins, white slave owners not only tortured and degraded their slaves with labor and punishments, but also attempted to suppress any evidence of the slaves ' humanity. One colonist by the name of Hilliard d ' Auberteuil, for instance, wrote of the intelligence and the "precision of ideas and accuracy of judgment" of the black man in his book in 1749, which was subsequently banned. According to James, "It was this intelligence which refused to be crushed, these latent possibilities, that frightened the colonists, as it frightens the whites in Africa today" (James 26). The very fact that the white colonists knew their slaves to be intelligent and were, more importantly, afraid of the slaves for this reason, shows that they did not truly believe the conventional mindset that listed black Haitians as savages. Morever, that any voice that spoke on behalf of the slaves ' humanity was fervently quelled is further proof that whites did not want them to be seen as anything more than property. If the slaves and the rest of society knew of the black man 's intelligence, it would have only been a matter of time until their freedom and human rights was demanded with a