Remarkably Unconcerned with Race

Become historians, for in knowing our past, we can learn to avoid the pitfalls of our present and shape a preferred future. You see, history tells us that despite preconceptions about blackness in Colonial America; and despite a purposeful subordination of African people in the Americas in the seventeenth century, there is evidence that where European Servants and African Slaves found themselves with common problems, common work, a common enemy in their "masters," they behaved toward one another as equals. 

One scholar who specialises in studying the American Slave Trade, Kenneth Stampp, records that African and European servants of the seventeenth century were "remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences" between them. 

The two despised groups initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament. It was expected, for example, for servants and enslaved people to run away together, steal hogs together, and get drunk together. It was not uncommon for them to make love together. They worked together and fraternised together. In fact, laws had to be passed to forbid such relations.

In 1661 a law was passed in Virginia that "in case any English servant shall run away in the company of any Negroes", he would have to give special service for extra years to the master of the runaway African. Further, in 1691, Virginia provided for the banishment of any "white man or woman being free who shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free." 

In the early years of slavery, before racism as a way of thinking was firmly rooted in America, while white indentured servants were often not treated as severely as enslaved Black people, cooperation was still possible. From time to time, history tells us European Servants were even involved in resistance against enslavers. As early as 1663, indentured European servants and enslaved Africans in Gloucester County, Virginia, formed a conspiracy to rebel and gain their freedom. And in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a "mixed-race" rebellion against Jamestown that nearly burned it to the ground. 

Bacon's rebellion was the great fear of the ruling class — what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight against them? The only greater fear than the fear of African rebellion in the new American colonies was the fear that discontented Europeans would join enslaved Africans to overthrow the existing order. Their fear hastened the transition to racialised slavery. And this fear is what ultimately dissolved the bond, through law and other means, of the poor European Servant and enslaved Africans.

As Edmund Morgan writes, "masters" believed, "if freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done." 

So measures were taken. About the same time that the Slave Codes, involving the discipline and punishment of enslaved people, was passed by the Virginia Assembly, Virginia's ruling class, having stated that all European men were superior to Africans, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. 

In 1705 a law was passed requiring "masters" to provide their now and suddenly "white" servants whose indentured time was up, up to ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun; while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to acquire 50 acres of land.

Edmund Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big [planter] neighbour not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests." 

The small gift of status changed everything in Colonial America and solidified once and for all the racialisation of slavery and the racialisation of the American Economy itself. What is most appalling is that these early American Colonies were supposed to be founded by Christians and upon Biblical Truth. In 1610, a Catholic priest in the Americas named Father Sandoval wrote back to a church functionary in Europe to ask if the capture, transport, and enslavement of Africans was legal by church doctrine. 

A letter dated March 12, 1610, from Brother Luis Brandaon to Father Sandoval gives the answer:

...to this, I reply that I think your Reverence should have no scruples on this point because this is a matter which has been questioned by the Board of Conscience in Lisbon, and all its members are learned and conscientious men. Nor did the Bishops who were in SaoThome, Cape Verde, and here in Loando—all learned and virtuous men—find fault with it. We have been here ourselves for forty years, and there have been among us very learned Fathers... never did they consider the trade as illicit. Therefore we and the Fathers of Brazil buy these slaves for our service without any scruple…

They truly believed this partiality, this discrimination; this evil institution was acceptable according to Scripture… Sadly, the acceptability of injustice is still significantly rooted in certain corners of the Church. As much minimal progress as has been made in the West, where race, ethnicity, education, gender and poverty are concerned, there is still a great way to go. Unfortunately, the church has been more complicit in maintaining the status quo than it has been in living out the mercy and compassion of God. 

Though you may not be personally partial, discriminatory, or racist, we further their aim through our silence when we do not fight against the concretisation of partiality and prejudice through laws and power centres. What the Scriptures reveal, though, is that God's heart is uniquely turned toward those who have the smallest pockets or most minor place in society. He stands on their side. He fights their battles. He has granted them the gift of the Kingdom if they love Him and turn to Him in their desperate hour!

Of course, God loves everyone equally, but for that very reason, He wants everyone to have equal access to His good gifts in the creation and common grace. To redress generations-long systemic discrimination may require a temporary imbalance, supported by God's people, to see actual equity come to fruition.