Slavery And The Bacon Rebellion

Slavery and race were prevalent and accepted practices and ideologies through American history up to and including the 15th and 16th century. Due to the concept of slavery, the term “race” arose. Race was a way for the English settlers to separate and establish power over the slaves brought from Africa. Both of these concepts, race and slavery, support one another in the as proven throughout American history and would have occurred either way. One important event that brought slaves and the colonist together was the Bacon Rebellion of 1676. The Bacon Rebellion also became a significant event in American History. Although the issues, racism and slavery, are from early American history and ideology, they have become integrated into American …show more content…
The governor, Berkeley had an agreement with the Native Americans so that peace would continue and the land be shared. In Virginia, there were freed slaves and freed indentured servants1. However, Berkeley had given the good land to the people he knew, so not much was left1. The freed men were once again working for little to nothing or became tenants. Soon enough Berkeley had forced heavy taxes on the community1. In 1670, poverty hit and the right to vote was only given to landowners1. There was already tension rising between the rich and the poor and with the new laws Berkeley imposed the social tension became too much. Nathaniel Bacon helped start the rebellion1. Bacon didn’t like how the Indians occupied so much land, when the poor of the colony could have it. He wanted the Indians removed from the land and with his help Africans and whites represented a unified front even though racism was at the core of the argument. Bacon gained support and followers and they played a significant role in American History because it was the first time we see people with differences unite, the people speaking out and demanding …show more content…
It has influenced race to become a priority and a permanent ideology in modern American society. Although slavery was eventually outlawed, the concept of race was not. The discrimination against a person or community based on race was given term; racism. In Charles M. Blow’s article Smoke and Horror, “How can such a grotesquely race-biased pattern of arrests exist?”2 Race-biased pattern has always been around and society has just engraved it into their practices and picked on the minority groups. He also quotes from a book called The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, “…the American justice system is being used to create a permanent “undercaste — a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society.”2 Exactly what we see happening when the slaves and poor start to rebel against the ones in control, laws are enforced to keep them from making a change and keeping them in that low