Toni Morrison NPR interview for 'A Mercy' + Debate Questions

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96118766

Of interest are the comments and links to Ms. Morrison reading selections from her newest novel. This interview also ties in with our debate on Race and Slavery.

I have questions for both teams.

The Debate Topic: (from memory) Did race (and racism) play a role in the enslavement of Africans in the Americas?

First let's define Racism:

Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

For the Con Team.

The very word slave originates from the ethnic group used as slaves during the Middle Ages: slavs. Racialized slavery (as defined by impressing others not of your ethnic group into servitude) is found in many civilizations across time (including, but not limited, to the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, & Ottomans.) From what I understood, you were arguing that African slavery in the Americas did not have a racialized component; it was purely economic in nature, with racism later being used to justify and perpetuate it. How do you explain that traditional forms of slavery involved using the "other" -war captives, kidnapped individuals, defeated enemy populaces- who were viewed as inferiors as slaves without bringing racism into the discussion?

For the Pro Team.

This is less of a question and more of a rebuttal to a response your team gave when the Con team compared the enslavement of Africans in North America to Native Americans by the Spanish in the Americas.

You mentioned the initial enslavement and then protection from slavery of Native Americans by the Spanish as a rebuttal against the idea that certain groups were viewed as slaves, or at the very least enslavable; that Africans, due solely to their race, were enslaved, while the Spanish somehow realized that the indigenous peoples of Central and South America were somehow deemed to be more human, or less slave like.

The Spanish repudiation of this scheme to enslave the natives is a red herring in terms of arguing for the racialized slavery of Africans over other groups. This was done less because they were viewed as free people, and more because of several separate factors, among which were:
-the plantation and mining labor led to them being literally worked to death: primarily from hunter and gatherer societies, they did not have the practice of or constitution for hard labor;
-the diseases that the Europeans brought decimated their populations;
-it was relatively easy for the natives to run away (they were not transported far from where they originated from, and knew the language and the terrain)
as the early Spanish settlements in the Americas were primarily coastal;
-and the missionaries that came with conquest opposed their exploitation, both writing tracts against their enslavement (de las casas is the most famous author of these) and protected them in the mission settlements set up by various religious orders. The Catholic priests considered enslavement to be problematic in terms of converting the Natives to Christianity.

This is not to say that the Spanish were not racist, or that racism did not play a factor in racial slavery of the indigenous in Spanish America. Indeed, in one of the first letters of Columbus (to the Spanish King and Queen) upon reaching the Americas and interacting with the inhabitants, he states that the indigenous people that he encounters are meek, mild, and unarmed, and therefore would be perfect slaves. A ready workforce which he had stereotyped as exploitable by temperament and lack of defense, who were viewed as inferior by lack of "civilization" (clothing, religion, material goods) and were of a separate and distinct racial group: this sounds like a textbook definition of racism to me.

Ultimately, the fact that the Native population was rapidly dwindling due to overwork and disease, increasing hostile, religiously and politically protected, and easily mobile (compared to Africans) led to their reduced use as slaves, not the idea that the Spanish were less racist against them then Africans. Indeed, writings from that time that argued they should be protected from slavery show that Spanish believed the Native Americans to be simple and childlike; as such, the Spanish acted paternally towards the Natives by not enslaving them. I suppose one could argue that they believed this to be their "White Man's Burden."

I apologize if this seems overly didactic, but I thought the response you gave was not grounded in historical basis. Feel free to respond if you think that what I have written is incorrect, or that I misinterpreted your arguments.

That is all. -ND