Race in the United States

With the start of the recent war overseas, the United States of America is once again forced to confront what diversity means not only within its armed forces, but at home as well. It is no secret that the story of race in the United States has been an unequal one for most. In gathering each of you here today for this lecture, I hope to outline the trajectory of the development of race in the United States, how it was weaponized as a tool of oppression for many, and explain how it matters today in relation to our nation's recent conflicts. Now this discussion is meant to be an overview, and as such, I will be leaving out much of the nuance of the discussion in an effort to summarize the events that have led us to our current moment. We are welcome to have a more detailed discussion at a later date during my office hours, or during the “Q and A” section after my presentation.

It’s best if we start our discussion of race at the beginning and move forward, only moving backwards when we move from one minority group to the next. Now, those with any passing familiarity with the topic know that I mean to begin our discussion with the barbaric institution of slavery that predates our own nation. Indeed, this is the starting point for most traditional discussions, but I wish to go back even further in an attempt to emphasize the uniqueness of race as a form of discrimination before I begin the discussion of the development of race as a concept.

Although there is much that has been lost to time, recent developments in archaeology and Historical methodology have shown that our ancestors were extremely connected, notwithstanding their lack of the communication and transportation technologies that have brought us ever closer in the last century. Despite being thousands of miles apart, between countless languages, cultures, and historical backgrounds, people have and will always be in dialogue with one another across the world, even if this dialogue was far slower than what we have seen in modern times. As the members of our debate team, and many of our more avid scholars know too well, dialogue is not always peaceful, often being the catalyst for conflict as much as it is for cohesion. Throughout its history, humanity has felt the need to form ever larger groups, but as these groups come into contact, they must pursue power and seek to dominate and subdue each other. Oftentimes, the driving motivator, or excuse, for these conflicts was simply difference. The Romans discuss in great detail their need to conquer the “barbarians” and their inherent inferiority, using any and all cultural differences as a foundation for alienation and disparagement, as well as the self-evident premise of Rome’s own splendor and success. You see this play out countless times across our history, one cultural group fighting another over perceived differences, or irreconcilable ideals, or, more often than not, self-advocated legitimacy to the access of resources.

Now, you may ask, what does this have to do with the beginning of race? For me and my research, it has everything to do with the uniqueness of its development. As anyone who paid any attention in elementary history class can tell you, African slaves brought over to the Americas during the triangle trade were of different cultural groups; they had different languages, different ideas, and different resources. Slaves were brought from all over the African continent, some sold by warlords and shipped downriver, others forced into servitude by the white colonists themselves, but almost all of them, for most of slavery's tenure, were people from outside the group which sold or owned them. Herein lies the aspect unique to race. Unlike human groups as they had existed up to this point, that were defined from the inside by shared cultural traits, race imposes a culture upon groups that otherwise have little to do with one another. The construct that is race became critical for the colonizers as they began to take advantage of the free labor to shape the new world as they saw fit.

Forgive me for my next brief tangent, but it is essential information to drive home the peculiarly constructed nature of race before I can properly discuss how colonial slavery birthed race as we know it. Up until the mid to late 1400s, differences in skin color meant next to nothing when classifying different groups of people. This is, of course, not to say that a rural peasant in France in the Middle Ages would not be shocked by an encounter with a Burmese merchant traveling to Paris, but the merchant's dark skin would be an indication that they were likely from a faraway land, more so than that they belonged to some distinct race of people. Furthermore, in nations such as the Ottoman Empire, where differences in skin tone and other phenotypical features were common, the merchant would likely be viewed as an average citizen were it not for their attire and accent. As a result, the treatment of the merchant would mostly be dependent on how whatever culture he was visiting at the time viewed his own, or, in the case of someone who knew little about it, how their culture viewed foreigners more broadly.

With all this in mind, let us begin at the beginning. Early efforts by the Europeans to explore and colonize the Americas were extremely brutal. Colonization brought disease, death, and hardship upon both the Europeans attempting to settle, and the indigenous populations who lived there prior. While it is certainly true that the native populations were enslaved alongside the populations purchased from the European trading posts in Africa, the diseases faced by Native Americans and their general struggles against Colonial rule was a much direr reality, decimating their populations and greatly degrading their work conditions. Slavery was handled differently depending on where it took place, but in South and Central America in particular, the death rates were so high, and the suffering so immense, that the use of cheap slaves from Africa to replace the locals became essential to conquer new land without risking the mass death of Spanish or Portuguese citizens. This deliberate sacrifice of a forcefully displaced population likely accounts for some of the nuances of race development in South and Central America compared to how it is seen by North Americans.

Although it is true that the climate of South and Central America was certainly responsible for a good deal of the mass death during colonization, large-scale loss of life and disease were also present in the North American colonies, though to a lesser extent. Much like the Spanish with the Aztecs before them, British colonials dealt with resistance from the Powhatan Confederacy, who fiercely resisted their occupation, making it hard for the early colonials to press them into service. To circumvent this, the British began importing African slaves as well as indentured servants from Europe to meet the growing demands for labor in the New World, all in order to establish their colonial empire. Although death was not as widespread in the British Colonies as it was in the Spanish or Portuguese, general conditions in the early colonies were poor, and the need to keep servants and slaves in line became paramount to the wealthy settlers. Very slowly, the seeds of Race began to develop in the colonies as a means to deepen the separation between the wealthy landowners and the burgeoning slave population, and justify the control of the former over the latter. The first racialized law in the British colonies was implemented in the 1660s, making slavery pass matrilineally, in turn causing the children of slave women to be born into slavery. This barbaric law made it so that English slave owners could, in essence, enslave their own children through the sexual exploitation of their female slaves in an effort to increase the population. We are only so lucky that such demonic practices ended in 1776…

As one could perhaps intuit if they know anything about children, they inherit features from both their parents. The result of these often ill-fated unions between white slaveowners and black slaves were children with lighter skin, who were less easily identifiable as “property”, particularly after multiple generations of interracial relations. The frequent marriages between black slaves and white indentured servants complexified the matter further, inevitably blurring the distinction between slave and servant, even with slavery passing matrilineally. After all, when white indentured servants managed to escape their duties, it tended to be difficult to get them back; this, in turn, applied to the increasingly white-passing children of the enslaved before the banning of interracial marriage in 1705.

The relationship between black slaves and white indentured servants proved to be a greater threat to white landowners with Bacon's rebellion in 1676, wherein the two groups joined forces and burned down the majority of Jamestown, Virginia in a rebellion for freedom, which was promptly put down. This collaboration between white servants and black slaves was seen as a massive threat and led to the tightening of restrictions for slaves and the further construction of the racialized nature of slavery.

New laws began to pass, further defining the legal definition of slaves throughout the later 17th and early 18th century within the various colonies, with each one further restricting the rights of slaves. However the rules were quite varied among the British colonies, with the southern colonies tending to have much harsher laws regarding their status as property. This coincided with the booming population of slaves in the south, due to the ever-increasing agricultural and labor demand from the rapidly industrializing northern colonies. For example, in 1680, African slaves made up 17 percent of South Carolina's population, whereas by 1720, they were 70 percent. It is likely that these demographic shifts accounted for the increasing restrictions slaves faced in southern colonies. This was part of the efforts to keep their large populations from rebelling, though slave uprisings still continued until their emancipation in 1776.

The position of the southern colonies was not great by 1776, as the rebellious spirit of the revolution began sweeping the soon-to-be-fledgling nation. As the colonies rapidly industrialized between 1720 and 1776, the need for cheap human labor became less clear. Willing emancipation, particularly in the northern colonies, became much more common, as the cost to room and board slaves became more expensive than maintaining a smaller group of laborers using modern farming equipment. This trend in the north appeared almost inevitable to southern colonies, which themselves were beginning to industrialize. As a result, the social divides imposed by slavery also began to wilt.

Founding Father and 2nd United States President Benjamin Franklin was the final push needed to outlaw the heinous practice. His hard principles were instrumental in the drafting of the nation’s Declaration of Independence, an important counterbalance to his southern counterparts like Thomas Jefferson. In the end, the abolition of slavery was enshrined in the new nation’s constitution with little resistance from southern states, lest Franklin subject them to a lengthy lecture. Furthermore, the rebels wished to employ the service of these former slaves in the Continental Army without the British being able to sway them to their side with promises of freedom. Consequently, many former slaves gladly fought for the new nation, bravely laying down their lives for the ideals of Franklin and Washington.

As slaves returned home from the war, former slave owners were faced with a large-scale crisis. Due to slaves’ ineligibility to own almost any property, formerly enslaved people had nothing to their names and very little chance for upward mobility. Furthermore, their former owners, enriched by forced labor, had just lost a significant part of their workforce, which desperately needed to be replaced. Many former owners took to the roles of employing their former slaves for pathetic wages as a way of maintaining control of their agricultural empires. Many former slaves refused to once again be bound to the service of their former masters who had mistreated them for so long, instead migrating en masse to the northern states or closer southern cities in search of work opportunities outside of agriculture. The factories of the North were more than happy to take advantage of the influx of new workers pouring into their industries, who, due to the sheer volume of available labor and the desperate nature of the former slaves' economic positions, could still be paid far less than most white workers.

Two new dynamics emerged as a result of the mass emancipation of slave populations. Firstly, the new American government was one that allowed the states to create their own laws, and although slavery was banned, many of the southern states chose to heavily regulate the newly emancipated slaves. Furthermore, laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and other racially specific laws from the colonial days, were reenacted in many southern states as a way of keeping them from gaining too much political power in the South. Thus the newly-acquired rights of the southern Freedmen were very quickly infringed on, maintaining their second-class citizenship status as more and more laws segregated and suppressed them.

In addition to the southern circumventions to the Constitution, tensions began to rise in the North too, as emancipated slaves migrated in search of better opportunities. A wave of layoffs swept the North as black factory workers massively replaced white workers, leading to a large resentment of former slaves. Meanwhile, the conditions at these factories and the slums that were hastily formed to accommodate the growing black population in northern cities reached a new low.

These degrading conditions inevitably led to widespread discrimination against the Freedmen. Although racial discrimination had obviously existed up to this point, quality of life for former slaves in the nation’s first century was adequate at best, and haphazard at worst. The government failed to secure the same rights and protections of formerly enslaved peoples, and corporate opportunism fomented bigotry on the social level. The issues the Freedmen face today have certainly improved, but the memory of repression is still felt by many in the population. Even as some former slaves became wealthy and seized the opportunities their new freedom afforded to them, their status as someone with dark skin in the United States tended to override their economic success, as they faced much of the same discrimination as any other.

While the struggles of the Freedmen are some of the most significant in American society, the impetus of which remains a stain on our nation’s history, it would be a disservice to imply that their experiences are indicative of all Black Americans. Not all individuals of African heritage in the United States of America trace their lineage back to the colonies. Moreover, in the wake of the revolution and their emancipation, many slaves were given the opportunity to return to their continent of origin, a small recompense for over a century of servitude. This effort of resettlement, while in many ways a case of colonization by the United States, was a unique experiment of nation formation by a group of people who largely shared the institution of servitude as their only heritage. Even as many of them had never set foot in Africa, their willingness to ‘return’ was one of survival, as they refused to return to work in their former master’s fields.

The idea for ‘repatriation’ was first suggested by Alexander Hamilton during the American Revolution, as a potential fresh start for the emancipated soldiers after they risked death for liberation. The measure was ultimately deemed too costly to sponsor in any monetary capacity, but the plan was not forgotten by its creator. The 1784 election gave America its first peacetime presidency, with John Adams winning on behalf of the new Federalist Party, founded in part by Hamilton.

When Adams later won reelection, he brought the former Secretary into the fold as his Vice President, largely to balance the divisive subfactions within the party. The other caveat Hamilton applied to the deal was eye-watering; a 10 million dollar investment in what Alexander referred to as the “Liberian Charter”. The project would establish a semi-autonomous colony on the West Coast of Africa, opening trade to the region to make up for the loss of British infrastructure, and providing a host of old-world resources. The colonial initiative was largely composed of volunteers from the recently emancipated populace, sent along with Freedmen units of the United States Army for law enforcement and engineering expertise. A small fleet of outdated or damaged military ships were committed to the effort for logistical support, as well as ferrying volunteers across on a monthly basis over the course of five years. By the end of the initial program, the colony had taken in over 50,000 emancipated slaves, who now had a home of their own creation.

While Liberia as an autonomous colony of the United States saw relative success, the resources extracted from the effort were not seen by the American public as a significant economic victory, as by the time the program was ended in 1793, only a fraction of the investment was seen in return. The infrastructure required to properly extract and deliver precious resources was still years out, with only a few industries making enough in the first five years to actually meet quotas. The failures of the program hovered over Hamilton’s reputation, hampering his own term as President less than a year in. In spite of this controversy, the people of Liberia did not forget what he had done for them, though his role in repairing the damage slavery had done in the Americas was only properly recognized after his death in 1804. The next year, the Liberian government changed the name of their capital to Hamiltown, enshrining his legacy in Freedmen society.

By the mid-century, Liberia was a thriving economy with its own uniquely developed culture, something neither American nor African. The promises of Hamilton’s investment eventually proved correct, with the project breaking even by 1830. The colony was an early source of rubber, palm oil, and large scale iron mining, fueling America’s era of westward expansion. The local Americo-Liberians had also become self-sustaining as a culture, to the point of open integration and coexistence with local societies. They even found themselves practicing America’s tradition of representative democracy locally, and had a vocal, but non-voting role in the United States Congress. For all this success however, Liberia’s grand experiment was drawing some unwanted attention.

In 1861, the United States of America went to war with the British Empire for the third time, thrusting two entire oceans into conflict. While the American Navy had the advantage in the Pacific, their Atlantic fleet was dwarfed by the British. Yes, they inevitably secured many of the Gulf states in this conflict, but the open ocean was a great risk without airships and ground forces to provide fire support. As a result, Liberia was left isolated in the fight, with their only hope of holding off the Royal Navy being negotiation. Their capitulation in 1862 was part of a separate treaty, in which Liberia severed all ties with the United States, becoming an independent and neutral port. The Federal Government did little to fight this after the war’s conclusion, as they had not only gained more than enough territory in compensation, but also simply lacked the firepower to take it back.

This ‘neutrality’ only lasted a decade, for when the British began their colonial expansion into South and Central Africa, it was in Liberia they made harbor. While not immediately “conquered”, the nation proved the ideal staging ground at the midpoint of any naval voyage into Africa. This false independence turned Hamiltown into both Africa’s biggest entrance and exit, as companies operating in the region provided methods of escape for a less than modest price. Royalty, tribal heads, and commoners alike called on these ships of last refuge in droves, with their destination ringing with the utmost irony; the United States of America. Indeed, Liberia, born out of slavery as a rejection of their traumatic past, was now one of the primary sites for another generation of wayward souls across the Atlantic.

While the actual number of refugees amid the African Diaspora are unknown, it is believed that for every two officially registered trips across the Atlantic to the United States from a continent swarming with colonizers, there was at least a third ship entering the nation ‘unofficially’. According to the 1880 census, the number of people of African background (discounting the Freedmen populations) increased by one million in the previous decade, with no accounting for the difference between children brought to the nation versus those born in it. The sudden surge in population caused many issues felt in port communities, namely an increase in job occupation, and an overall stagnation in worker wages. These problems not only resulted in increased bigotry among White Americans, but Black Freedmen as well. Cultural differences were often the reason cited for the collective disdain, though this ignores the almost forty percent of refugees who originated from Liberia, who themselves were the grandchildren of the formerly enslaved. Nonetheless, these African immigrants were often shunted off into racially distinguished ghettos, though the sheer quantity of these newcomers left many urban centers at the breaking point.

In 1889, Liberia finally fell, forced to assimilate into the greater African Commonwealth of Britain. Among the last wave of refugees to escape the port of Hamiltown was President Hilary Johnson, who had surrendered via telegram only a few hours prior. Upon his arrival to the states, Johnson met with Vice President George Hearst, a callous businessman at heart, but acting on behalf of President Cleveland. The Vice President did not mince words about his discomfort with the refugee crisis, but also recognized that Johnson, as a man of similar philosophical origins, might be able to work with him in resolving the situation amicably. In his previous life as a successful mine tycoon, Hearst had made note of many potential expansion opportunities in the central Rocky Mountains, namely to the north of Colorado state. As the Diaspora now numbered over one million, its population rivaled that of any American state, providing them both a unique economical, and diplomatic solution. With the general public chaffing at their presence, perhaps the solution was to claim a region rich in opportunity for their own, still part of the American apparatus, but away from the already established urban centers of the east coast.

While not much was made of this conversation in the moment, the two men, with very different goals, planted the seeds for the Statehood of Ulysses, a federal district established by the refugees in the wake of colonization. Established as a territory in 1895, it quickly achieved statehood in 1904 thanks to the advocacy of both Hearst and Johnson, who briefly served as its first governor. Ulysses, named both after the president and ancient tale of ‘returning home’, fulfilled both of Hearst’s goals (placating the public and of course profit), while also providing the Liberians and other African refugees with a long term solution to their conquest. The only real complaints with their statehood were found among their neighbors; Colorado and Wyoming both contest the federal government’s official land transfers on the grounds of legality. While an outlier culturally, the typical American sees no issue with Ulysses as a state, with even the most boorish takes amounting to “the African’s own Chinatown”. While an unfortunately crude comparison to make, even the most progressively-minded Freedman Harlemite found some truth in the statement, as this level of relocation was often expected of those “Not American Enough.”

Although it was established on the backs of the mining operations in the mountains, business in Ulysses was and remains just as diversified as any other. New Kano (known as Grand Junction in the Colorado days) was a significant rail hub for the interior, with lines reaching in all four directions. The introduction of African cuisine to the western palate has been quite influential, with the similarity of ingredients to Central American cooking resulting in truly unique hybrid dishes. The state has also developed a unique Pan-African cultural identity, yet intrinsically tied to American ideals by the political class, which to this day traces heritage back to the Whig Party of Liberia. To this day the state holds the only remaining Whig seats in Congress, even if their ideology only in part resembles the party of the past. The unique makeup of Ulysses society has been the swing vote in many deadlocks in the country as a result, never making policy themselves but always having an impact above their station.

For those of the Diaspora who did not find their future in Ulysses, many took to the aether for their answers. Early colonization efforts to Concord Minor were often clamoring for labor in the new colonies, where many locales were settled in part by new African arrivals, none so much as the future state of Matumain, on the eastern coast of Atlantia. While not as glamorous as Ulysses, Minor was full of both unique freedoms and opportunity for those who were willing to forgo some comfort. Matumain in particular has some of the best soil on the continent, only rivaled by that of Merchant. Today, the Tambarare Dhahabu Conglomerate (TDC) dominates the economy there, and is the largest American corporation (by employee numbers) majority-owned by people of African descent. Even in the greatest adversity, there is often opportunity.

We will briefly segue into the topic of the American tribes which used to call this land their home. While an obvious inclusion in this presentation, due to legal technicalities it is hard to qualify them an “Ethnic Minority of the United States.” Notwithstanding my own nuanced opinions on the topic, the government’s ongoing policy is that the American First Nations are just that; separate nations. This formality has resulted in a number of political maneuvers which could not be done if the government were dealing with lawful citizens protected by the Constitution.

I will spare you all a lengthy review of the early tribal conflicts common in the colonial and foundation eras, as the contents of those many wars, exterminations, and schemes could fill an entire course on their own. In the mid-nineteenth century, we had an opportunity as a nation to try and undo the damage of the past, after we had systematically crammed the First Nations into smaller and smaller territories with no delegation or representation. The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 was to be the first step of formally integrating the Tribes into the United States, and if executed properly would have allowed them a voice in Congress eventually, though at the cost of autonomy. While this first act was drafted for ulterior motives, it may have been the best course of action after all the damage that had been done. Unfortunately, this law was not passed, killed on the floor by the Whig Party for unspecified reasons. In the long term, this had massive ramifications.

Only a few groups actually assimilated into American society. The vast majority would not relinquish tribal control over their lives, and were not afforded citizenship as a result. In 1907, the United States Congress passed the Tribal Reallocation Act, banishing the Indigenous peoples to Concord Minor’s northern Atlantia. They had no say so in this exchange, as they were considered foreign powers occupying US territory. Any who resisted (save for the Quinault Tribe and a few other special cases) were either imprisoned or killed. Some tribes who feared annihilation fled over the northern border into Canada, where they faced similar bigotry, but ultimately were not expelled. Yes, the land given by the government was almost equivalent in size to what was lost, but the territory was neither hospitable, nor the culturally significant soil of their homeland, or even homeworld. While they have autonomy for the time being, who can say if we won’t change that once more.

The largest minority in the United States is by far that of the Latin-American, culturally native to the Mexican Annex and isthmus states. The region remains in many ways distinct from not only the American heartland, but from each other on the subcontinent. The region is mostly linked by history and primary language of choice, as the former Spanish colonies typically still use the language of their former overlords in everyday parlance. This is to be expected, as it is the case in the heartland with English, and in many places in the Old South and North French as well. We are fortunate to not let language divide us as a nation, and the national education system since the 1880s has provided funding for the instruction of at least two of our national tongues in each school district. Recent studies claim that as of 1935, 75% of the Earth’s population is conversational in at least two of the three languages, a useful skill when working in industrial settings with men from all over the country.

Historically the Latin population has had many struggles in the process of integration, though admittedly less than that of the Freedmen and African populations. Most of the old nations that broke away from Spanish (and later British) control were annexed into the country through conflict, which made the first generations under the Stars and Stripes one of both opportunity and occasionally oppression. Mexico was first occupied 1848, with Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas all being annexed in 1863 after the Anglo-American Island War. The Philippines were (depending on who you ask) the first of these inclusions, with the US Navy occupying it in 1843, even though the British still claimed it until the war’s outcome forced them to let it go. All of these former colonies have since been granted statehood and representation, and experience a lesser amount of bigotry than most minority groups, though regional rivalry does still play a role. The remaining states of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras have faced a little more discrimination in recent years, even though they have all earned statehood as well. This is due to their inclusion resulting from the Colombian War from 1900-1904, as many veterans of that conflict still live, serving in both government and military roles. While these old wounds bring with them an unfortunate side effect, the conflict was the impetus for many societal changes, including the formal dissolution of segregation.

Part VII: The Maderos, Debs, and Desegregation