INTRODUCTION

For almost two-and-one-half centuries, the US government (by which I mean not only the republic formed under the Constitution of 1787, but also its predecessor regimes) forced millions of black Africans and their descendants (‘African Americans’) into a brutal system of human bondage. Once captured in Africa, these innocent people were packed like sardines into ships for the hellish journey to what is now the US. Many died during the voyage, some by suffocation from being shackled in a coffin-size space for a long period of time and others by throwing themselves into the ocean. Mothers sometimes jumped with babies in arms. Those unlucky to survive the ordeal faced more hardships upon arriving in the US. The infamous auction block, for example, often broke up families as each member was sold to a different plantation owner. Plantation life for the vast majority of African Americans was sheer pain: backbreaking work, suffering, humiliation, and death from dawn to dusk. All this so that whites in the US could make a buck.

This cruel attempt to bestialise human beings – what is generally referred to as ‘chattel slavery’ – was quite different from prior practices of slavery dating back to Mesopotamia. Most significantly, American slavery, like slavery in other parts of the New World, injected the element of colour into the master-slave relationship. Colour became the social marker of slavery. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted: ‘Among the ancients, the slave belonged to the same race as his master.’ Among the Africans as well, the slave belonged to the same race as his master. But in the Americas, the slave belonged to a different race from that of his master. When colour became the social marker of slavery, it destroyed the ancient prospect that a slave could one day become a respected teacher, an important statesman or even his master's master. Nathaniel Weyl summarises the social construction of slavery in ancient times: