The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States

258 Pages·1974·1.18 MB·English

by  Winthrop D. Jordan

The White Man's Burden
HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF RACISM
IN THE UNITED STATES
WINTHROP D. JORDAN
To Phyllis
Preface
This study deals with the historical origins of racism in the United States. I use
the term racism with some reluctance, since it is very easy, and dangerous, to
read present conditions into the past. Racial attitudes in this country are very
different now from what they were three hundred years ago, and it is very
important that we deal with our past, insofar as possible, on its own terms.
The relevance, if any, of this study to the present is left principally to the
reader to determine, though I confess to having written several sentences on the
subject. My assumptions about the value of historical study are similar to those
of most historians. A comprehension of the past seems to have two opposite
advantages in the present: it makes us aware of how different people have been
in other ages and accordingly enlarges our awareness of the possibilities of
human experience, and at the same time it impresses upon us those tendencies in
human beings which have not changed and which accordingly are unlikely to, at
least in the immediate future. Viewed from a slightly different vantage point, an
understanding of the history of our own culture gives some inkling of the
categories of possibilities within which for the time being we are born to live.
To say this is, I suppose, to make something of a claim for the value of
studying current racial attitudes by taking, as they say, "the historical approach."
What an historian contributes, inevitably, is a sense and appreciation of the
important effectperhaps even the great weight-of prior upon ensuing experience.
A word about the provenance of this book. It is a quite drastic abridgement
with minor modifications of my White Over Black: American Attitudes toward
the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968).
Since publication of that work, it has become apparent, not altogether to my
astonishment, that marry people do not find themselves entirely comfortable
wading through six hundred and fifty pages on a single subject. It has become
obvious, too, that many college and school instructors are insufficiently
merciless when contemplating inflicting a book of that length upon their
students. In addition, I will admit to having something of a missionary urge
about the subject with which this hook deals. The White Man's Burden results
from these factors.
It may appear rather a large claim to say that a book concerning attitudes
toward Negroes is also a book about the origins of American racism. Let me say
two things by way of explanation. First of all, when I began work on what
became White Over Block I started by analyzing white American attitudes
toward blacks and Indians. It soon became obvious, as I then thought, that I
could not attempt both, so I dropped Indians. But in continuing with attitudes
toward Negroes, Indians kept creeping (to use the prevailing stereotype) back in.
So in fact there is considerable discussion about attitudes toward Indians in this
book. Secondly, I remain convinced that white American attitudes toward blacks
have done a great deal to shape and condition American responses to other racial
minorities. To prove this contention would require another book, a project which
lassitude leads me to leave generously to someone else.
Some, but by no means all, readers schooled in the behavioral sciences will
discover a disgraceful lack of system in the approach taken here toward the way
societies are held together and toward the way men think, act, and feel. There is,
however, a certain sloppiness in the available evidence. If it were possible to poll
the inhabitants of Virginia concerning their reactions to those famous first
"twenty Negars" who arrived in 16td 1 would be among the first at the foot of
the gangplank, questionnaire in hand. Lacking this opportunity, I have operated
with certain working assumptions which some readers will detect as drawing
upon some "psychologies"-the assumptions about how people operate-of the
twentieth century and upon some of the psychological imagery of the eighteenth.
I have taken "attitudes" to be discrete entities susceptible of historical analysis.
This term seems to me to possess a desirable combination of precision and em-
braciveness. It suggests thoughts and feelings (as opposed to actions) directed
toward some specific object (as opposed to generalized faiths and beliefs). At the
same time it suggests a wide range in consciousness, intensity, and saliency in
the response to the object. We are all aware that our "attitude toward" sex is not
of precisely the same order as our "attitude toward" Medicare, and the same may
be said of our attitudes toward the neighbor's cat or Red China or acid-rock or
the Ku Klux Klan-not, of course, that it is right to suppose that our various
attitudes toward these objects are altogether unconnected with another. This
book treats attitudes as existing not only at various levels of intensity but at
various levels of consciousness and unconsciousness; it is written on the
assumption that there is no clear dividing line between "thought" and "feeling,"
between conscious and unconscious mental processes. The book therefore deals
with "attitudes" toward blacks and Indians which range from highly articulated
ideas about the church or natural rights or the structure of the human skin,
through off-hand notions and traditional beliefs about climate or savages or the
duties of Christian ministers, through myths about Africa or Noah or the
properties of chimpanzees, down to expressions of the most profound human
urgesto the coded languages of our strivings for death and life and
selfidentification.
To deal with the roots of American racism in this way is not to ignore the
crucial matters of economic exploitation and social degradation. Without those
factors we would have no racism as we know it. But to say, as many have done,
that racism is merely the rationalizing ideology of the oppressor, is to advance a
grievous error. To rest the analysis there is to close one's eyes to the complexity
of human oppression.
NOTE ON THE CONCEPT OF RACE
Since the presently difficult terms race and racial are used throughout this book,
it seems desirable that their meaning be clear. It is notorious that race has been
defined in a great variety of (usually unfortunate) was, but it is less widely
known that in recent years race as a scientific concept has undergone a virtual
revolution. Since about 1950 scientists have made notable advances in the study
of human races and have dispelled much confusion on the subject. Though there
remain broad areas of disagreement and many unanswered questions, most
reputable investigators now share certain fundamental suppositions and modes
of approach.
Increasingly the tendency has been to study human races within the context of
human evolution and genetics. At first some scientists directed their attention to
physical features which seemed obviously susceptible to modification by natural
selection. Attempts were made to link the more gross and obvious physiognomic
characteristics with climate factors: thus the typical Mongolian face and stature
were declared admirably adapted to extreme cold. Partly because such
characteristics are difficult to analyze genetically, other scientists set out to
investigate certain characteristics, such as blood types, which are governed not
by many genes but by one. Initially it was supposed that blood types of the major
series A-B-O were selectively neutral (that is, that individuals were neither
advantaged nor disadvantaged by having a given type of blood); but it now
seems almost certain that some of these types are connected with susceptibility
to certain diseases. More strikingly, it has been established that a gene
responsible for sickle-cell hemoglobin (which is especially common in Africa)
often causes fatal anemia in those individuals with two parents contributing the
gene but affords protection against malaria to individuals inheriting the sickle-
cell gene from one parent only and who do not develop the anemia. In malarial
areas the frequency of the gene remains roughly constant in the population as a
whole: for while the sickling gene makes for a fatal disease in some persons, it
saves others from death by malaria but itself does no harm, and it is thereby
passed on to the next generation. In non-malarial areas, of course, the gene is
entirely disadvantageous. Discovery of these facts has served to highlight man's
plasticity under pressure of environmental change: elimination of mosquitoes
may result eventually in elimination of a racial characteristic.
The sickling gene and indeed genes as such are not commonly thought of as
racial characteristics. Obviously, however, human groups which differ markedly
in appearance also differ genetically. One of the most important recent
breakthroughs has been the conception of race as a group of individuals sharing
a common gene pool. Such a definition emphasizes the fact that racial
characteristics such as skin color are unlikely to remain stable over long periods
of time. It underlines the fact that the continued existence of races is dependent
upon geographical or social separation. It places in proper perspective the
biological differences among human beings: all mankind shares a vast number of
genes in common, yet at the same time various populations differ as to frequency
of certain genes. With this in mind, racial characteristics may be defined as
biological traits which various populations possess in varying frequencies. By
this definition, arms and legs are not racial characteristics; on the other hand,
blue eyes do constitute a racial characteristic, but blue-eyed people do not
constitute a race. Finally, the genetic approach to race makes clear that
permanent isolation of any group of individuals from the common gene pool of
the species Homo sapiens would result eventually in development of a new
species which would be incapable of genetic intermingling with its progenitor. In
this sense, races are incipient species. Obviously, however, the biocultural
attributes of Homo sapiens make the prospect of permanent reproductive
isolation very unlikely.
There are several important, broad emphases implicit in this evolutionary view
of race which run somewhat counter to widely held popular notions. It is now
clear that mankind is a single biological species; that races are neither discrete
nor stable units but rather that they are plastic, changing, integral parts of a
whole which is itself changing. It is clear, furthermore, that races are best studied
as products of a process; and, finally, that racial differences involve the relative
frequency of genes and character istics rather than absolute and mutually
exclusive distinctions. It is also true, however, that the process of human
raciation remains imperfectly understood. The evolutionary history of human
races is still a subject of dispute, though at this writing a majority of
investigators think that present races derived from a single progenitor who had
already developed into Homo sapiens.
Unfortunately, recent advances in the study of race have done little to settle
certain important questions concerning racial differences in physiology and
anatomy-let alone the slippery problem of mental abilities. It remains hazardous,
for instance, to offer summary findings as to skeletal differences between whites
and blacks, except to say that such differences do exist, have often been
exaggerated, required discussion in terms of frequency, and need further
investigation. It is perhaps more surprising that the facts concerning skin color
remain in doubt. It is clear that the complex structure of the skin consists of three
basic layers, that differences in skin color are quantitative in the sense that all
peoples (except albinos) possess in varying measure a granulated pigment
known as melanin in the middle layer, and that melanin in greater or less degree
largely governs external complexion. The most convincing of recent suggestions
is that a light complexion protects the body against a deficiency of vitamin D
and that a dark complexion prevents too much absorbtion of that vitamin. It is
well established that either too little or too much vitamin D results in injury to
the body. But this suggestion still remains only a best-possibility. The medical
and evolutionary value of light or dark skin has not been fully and
unquestionably established. It is arresting that a scientific problem which has
been grappled with for centuries by F\'estern culture still remains largely
unsolved. It is one of the points of this book that the "problem" is a problem at
all.