Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

TWO The Rise of Modern Racism(s)
from the original race of white Adamites, and then went
on to contend that the deviation had become irreversible.
They could thus preserve the concept of inherent black inferiority
and slavishness without overtly contradicting
Scripture. 51 Popular among less sophisticated religious defenders
of slavery was the reassertion of the hoary myth
that God had placed a curse on the allegedly black descendants
of Ham, condemning them to be “hewers of wood
and carriers of water” or “servants unto servants.” 52
It was, however, the hostile and discriminatory treatment
of the “free” blacks of the northern and border states,
who had been emancipated after the Revolution, that
showed American white supremacy in its starkest form.
Slavery was a legal status that could be, and often was,
defended on grounds other than race. One religious defense
was simply that slavery had existed in biblical times,
was never condemned by Christ, and therefore could not
be regarded as sinful (the standard charge of abolitionists).
Conservatives who had refused to adapt to “the age of the
common man” declared that a social hierarchy with a menial
class at the bottom was essential to any society, although
some special reason still had to be found why blacks
(and only blacks) were at the base of the pyramid. 53 But the
segregation, discrimination, and violence that were visited
upon the ex-slaves in areas where slavery had been abolished,
or where large-scale manumission had occurred,
conveyed the clear message that being the wrong color was
an insuperable obstacle—in and of itself—to membership
in the nation. 54 When the Supreme Court declared in the
Dred Scott decision of 1857 that free blacks could not be
citizens of the United States, because the framers of the
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