During our class discussion last week, we talked about African Americans being excluded from the melting pot of races that is present in New York, and the Harris reading blatantly states this point and highlights the beginning of racism in New York. “The system of racial slavery became the foundation of New Yorkers’ definitions of race, class, and freedom far into the nineteenth century…the initial purpose of slavery was to secure a labor force – to “make class.” But as white New Yorkers created a working class based on African slavery, they also developed racial justifications for the enslavement of Africans above all other groups of workers…Europeans defined blacks as the only group fit to be slaves amid a society with numerous racial and religious groups. The use of racial ideologies that defined blacks as inferior to other racial groups and thus deserving of enslavement condemned blacks to unequal status into the nineteenth century and beyond” (pg. 12). Reading this section of the chapter was appalling. What gave white New Yorkers and Europeans the right to decide who is superior and who is inferior in society? What makes blacks inferior to other racial groups? The only thing that is different about them is their skin color, but that does not change their intelligence and their abilities.
For some reason, I always thought of the North as anti-slavery. I know that in the Civil War, the North was against slavery and helped abolitionists, but I always thought that slavery was not a huge part of the development of the North. In middle school and high school, the idea of the North being against slavery was always stressed, so I guess the idea of the North having slaves and promoting slavery never occurred to me. However, the Harris article stresses the importance of slavery in the North, especially in New York. “African slaves constituted the predominant part of New York City’s colonial working class…the colony relied heavily on slave labor…Neither did colonies limit slavery to Africans–Europeans enslaved Native Americans when they could, although not other Europeans” (pg. 15-16). I never knew that Manhattan once had such a large number of slaves, so I thought this was a very interesting fact. Also, the spread of slavery to Native Americans reminded me of immigrant experiences in New York. Europeans and white New Yorkers basically exploited their slaves, which is similar to what business owners did in the 1900s when immigrants came over to New York. My dad told me that he and his friends were asked to perform a lot of labor, but they were not paid nearly as much as they should have been for their hard work because the owners knew the immigrants did not know English and would not fight back. People continue to take advantage of other people who are weaker than them to this day, which I find very unfair.
Another thing that I found intriguing has to do with the time when slaves started to revolt against the slave system and their masters. Slaves did not have much freedom to begin with since they could not leave their masters’ homes without permission, possess any weapons, or gather in groups of four or more (later, groups less than three people). “Through such regulations, New York lawmakers sought to control the cultural, social, and political independence of slaves.” This is the reason that African Americans revolted against the system, but then the reaction of the white New Yorkers to the revolts was to strengthen the laws and further limit the activities of slaves. Further restricting the slaves is a surefire way to have them rebel again, so why not ease the tension by loosening the laws just a little?
